Star Trek Is Best When It’s Boring And Paramount Doesn’t Get It

I like to think of it as the Star Trek Paradox. For Star Trek to feel like Star Trek, it has to be slow and cerebral. But if Star Trek is slow and cerebral, it only appeals to its core audience. For Star Trek to reach a wider audience, it has to be fast-paced with lots of explosions and action.

But if you fill Star Trek with explosions and action, it ceases to be boring and stops feeling like Star Trek. Hence the paradox.

In short, you can’t have a mass-appeal blockbuster and still keep what makes Star Trek special. Unfortunately, it goes against our capitalist upbringings to settle for a franchise that’s a modest earner and stays true to its roots when we can exploit it and mutate it in hopes of making more money.

Paramount’s attempts to make Star Trek less boring are understandable. I just don’t agree with them.

I don’t identify as a Trekkie (Trekker?), but I don’t know if I would consider myself a casual fan, either. My level of fandom lies somewhere in the middle.

The 1993 McCoy-centric novel Shadows on the Sun sits in a drawer next to me as I type this. Could I tell you if it’s canon anymore? Nope. I’m that kind of Star Trek fan.

Meanwhile, I could easily ramble on for hours about Star Wars lore without breaking a sweat. And that, believe it or not, is what makes me feel like I have the authority to talk on this particular subject. I know Star Trek is boring because Star Wars is not.

In case you couldn’t tell by now, I don’t mean boring in a derogatory way. I’m using it as a catch-all term for the thoughtful philosophy and technobabble that drives Star Trek. Star Trek should be boring; otherwise, why keep it going?

J.J. Abrams made the first true Star Trek blockbuster and it was the most Star Wars Star Trek movie ever made. It was almost like Abrams’ audition to direct The Force Awakens.

To me, it didn’t feel like Star Trek whatsoever. What’s the point of watching Star Trek if it’s not boring? I might as well go and watch Return of the Jedi for the umpteenth time.

Meanwhile, the most Star Trek movie is Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It’s a long, looong movie full of people standing around on the bridge talking about stuff.

Is Star Trek: The Motion Picture boring? You bet it is! And I absolutely love it for that reason.

The problem, at least as Paramount sees it, is that a Star Trek movie where boring people stand around talking for most of the film isn’t going to make a billion dollars.

Chris Pine once said during the press tour for Star Trek Beyond, “You can’t make a cerebral Star Trek in 2016. It just wouldn’t work in today’s marketplace.”

Did you catch where he said marketplace, as if Star Trek is a commodity to be bought and sold like the stock market? In the same interview, Pine said that you could have “really demanding questions and themes,” but only if you disguise them with “wham-bam explosions and planets blowing up.” Wham-bam, explosions and planets blowing up…

I don’t know about you, but those aren’t the first words I would use to describe Star Trek. Paramount doesn’t seem to grasp that it’s okay for Star Trek to be boring. It doesn’t have to appeal to everyone, nor should it.

Star Trek—as awesome as it is—was never going to have a wide audience. Instead, it has a devoted following of like-minded nerds who want to watch a captain and his crew stand around debating how to handle a cosmic anomaly without attacking it.

Star Trek’s following isn’t small, either. Paramount could cater specifically to hardcore fans who love their Star Trek boring, cerebral, and reliable, bringing in a sizable chunk of change year after year.

But the studio would rather add action and explosions so Star Trek can appeal to the kids who used to swing sticks around and go, “Vwwoosh!” As one of those kids I’m begging Paramount: keep Star Trek boring. We already have Star Wars for all the fun stuff.