Star Trek Needs To Steal This Game-Changing Idea From Star Wars
Right now, the future of Star Trek is in the kind of flux that not even Geordi La Forge could untangle. The surprise cancellations of both Discovery and Lower Decks have worried fans wondering what this franchise will even look like going forward, and what we do know (like that we’re getting yet another Star Trek origins film and a teenybopper Starfleet Academy show) doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
As it turns out, Star Trek could easily revive the franchise by copying Star Wars and creating a Visions-style show.
A Trek Version Of Star Wars: Visions
Some Star Trek fans don’t really “engage” with Star Wars content, and if you’re one of them, you may be wondering what the heck Visions is. This is the name of a Star Wars animated anthology show first released in 2021. Both the anthology format and the non-canonical nature of the show allowed animators to finally make Star Wars exciting again with episodes whose stories, character designs, and animation styles explored an entire galaxy of possibilities.
Very Short Treks Was A Disaster
Sadly, the closest thing Star Trek has come to copying this Star Wars idea is the release of the Very Short Treks series on YouTube. However, those mini-episodes were insanely short and extremely varied in quality; your warp nacelle mileage may vary, but I found most of the episodes decidedly unfunny. And the “Worst Contact” episode featuring snot-obsessed aliens who used boogers as a condiment on microwaved fish made me gag (quite literally doing dry heaves remembering this nasty attempt at humor).
Explore Different Genres
However, if Star Trek follows the Star Wars: Visions formula, we could have much longer episodes (Very Short Treks episodes ranged between two to five minutes and Visions episodes ranged between 11 to 22 minutes).
This would give the franchise created by Gene Roddenberry time to tell longer and more engaging stories, and episodes wouldn’t be tied to the comedy genre. Incidentally, watching Very Short Treks for one or two episodes will sufficiently remind you that the franchise has never been very good at humor.
Contained Non-Canon Episodes
Mostly, though, I’m excited about the idea of Star Trek stealing this great idea from Star Wars because it would allow writers and animators to tell stories without worrying about the precious canon of the franchise. That means we could finally get some cool stories about the Temporal Wars without worrying about what these episodes would mean for Discovery.
We could also get deeper dives into some of the fans’ favorite arcs over the years (honestly, I’d watch an entire anthology focusing on different ships and skirmishes throughout the Dominion War).
Fill The Lower Decks Shaped Hole In The Fanbase
One of the hidden strengths of Star Trek copying the Star Wars: Visions formula is that we’d get different characters in every episode thanks to the anthology format. That could avoid the obvious problem where if someone hates the cast of a show like Discovery or Lower Decks, they tune it out entirely.
Now, if someone hates the characters in an anthology episode, they can skip to the next, and the writers would be free to focus on non-traditional characters…like; how cool would it be to get entire episodes set on Cardassia or Romulus?
Anything’s Better Than Starfleet Academy
Right now, the Star Trek franchise is in danger of crashing and burning like the Enterprise in The Search for Spock, but it’s not too late to “turn death into a fighting chance to live” by copying the Star Wars: Visions formula. An animated show would please fans who are sad we’re losing Lower Decks and would even provide an excuse to feature the occasional episode with characters like Boimler and Mariner.
If Paramount continues to gamble on the success of a Star Trek origin movie and a 90210-style Starfleet Academy show, then the franchise might finally die for good, with no chance to pass its katra on to future audiences.
