What is Real Star Trek?

October 8 2019

What is Real Star Trek?

It is not unusual these days to see people call Discovery or Picard ‘not real Trek’ and it is not unusual to see people call Axanar ‘Real Star Trek’.

It is a question that bugs me because I personally think it is ridiculous, there’s no such thing as Real Star Trek and no such thing as a Real Star Trek Fan or a True Star Trek Fan but people believe there are such things so the question has to be asked.

So what is the absolute definition of Real Star Trek? Can there be a fan consensus on the definition?

What is the criteria to make any episode of TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, DIS and PIC plus 13 movies meet the definition of Real Star Trek?

What amount of sex is acceptable per episode or movie?
What amount of death is acceptable per episode or movie?
What amount of conflict is acceptable per episode or movie?
What amount of combat is acceptable per episode or movie?
What amount of philosophy is acceptable per episode or movie?
What amount of politics is acceptable per episode or movie?
What amount of alien races is acceptable per episode or movie?

There’s so many questions and there will be many contradictions when people come to put their definitions together.

Prelude to Axanar and Axanar are about battle and the characters being in combat, so is the definition of Real Star Trek as simple as warfare?

It could be because conflict is in all the series because for example Voyager had its share of being in conflicts with several encounters with the Borg and Deep Space Nine had war with the Dominion and Enterprise had the Xindi to deal with, the Next Generation and TOS had encounters with various races etc.

Star Trek to me is to just sit back, relax and watch an episode that tells a good story and if I don’t like a series or episode, I can just not watch it because that’s the beauty of DVD’s and Blu-Ray and Netflix and Amazon Prime and CBS All Access etc.

When I asked the question of what is Star Trek at home, I got this answer

Watching characters seek out new life and new civilizations and to boldly go where no one has gone before is Star Trek.

It may be the answer, it may not be but it could prove that consensus is something that is something that doesn’t exist in fandom.