How
Star Trek
’s twenty-first-century reinventions illuminate the unique challenges and opportunities of franchise-style corporate storytelling
Late Star Trek
explores the beloved science fiction franchise’s repeated attempts to reinvent itself after the end of its 1990s golden age. Beginning with the prequel series
Enterprise,
Adam Kotsko analyzes the wealth of content set within
’s sprawling continuity—including authorized books, the three “Kelvin Timeline” films, and the streaming series
Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy,
and
Strange New Worlds
—along with fan discourse, to reflect on the perils and promise of the franchise as a unique form of storytelling.
Significantly including the licensed novels and comic books that fill out the
universe for its fans, Kotsko brings the multiple productions of the early twenty-first century together as a unified whole rather than analyzing them in their current stratified view. He argues that the variety of styles and approaches in this tumultuous era of
history provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on the nature of the franchise storyworlds that now dominate popular culture. By taking the spin-offs and tie-ins seriously as creative attempts to tell a new story within an established universe,
highlights creative triumphs as well as the tendency for franchise faithfulness to get in the way of creating engaging characters and ideas.
Arguing forcefully against the prevailing consensus that franchises are a sign of cultural decay, Kotsko contends that the
universe exemplifies an approach to storytelling that has been perennial across cultures. Instead, he finds that what limits creativity within franchises is not their reliance on the familiar but their status as modern myths, held not as common cultural heritage but rather owned as corporate intellectual property.
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