Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books. With an estimated $10.6 billion in revenue, it is one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time.[1][2][3]
The franchise began with Star Trek: The Original Series, which debuted in the US on September 8, 1966 and aired for three seasons on NBC. It was first broadcast on September 6, 1966 on Canada's CTV network.[4] It followed the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century, on a mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before". In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series of novels, Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, and television westerns such as Wagon Train.
The Star Trek canon includes the Original Series, nine spin-off television series, and a film franchise; further adaptations also exist in several media. After the conclusion of the Original Series, the adventures of its characters continued in the 22-episode Star Trek: The Animated Series and six feature films. A television revival beginning in the 1980s saw three sequel series and a prequel: Star Trek: The Next Generation, following the crew of a new starship Enterprise a century after the original series; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, set in the same era as the Next Generation; and Enterprise, set before the original series in the early days of human interstellar travel. The adventures of the Next Generation crew continued in four additional feature films. In 2009, the film franchise underwent a reboot, creating an alternate continuity known as the Kelvin timeline; three films have been set in this continuity. The newest Star Trek television revival, beginning in 2017, includes the series Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, Short Treks, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds, streamingexclusively on digital platforms.
Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades.[5] Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. From 1998 to 2008, there was a Star Trek–themed attraction in Las Vegas. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world. The constructed language Klingon was created for the franchise. Several Star Trek parodies have been made, and viewers have produced several fan productions.
Star Trek is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction.[6] The franchise is also noted for its progressive civil-rights stances.[7] The Original Series included one of the first multiracial casts on US television.
As early as 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted a proposal for the science fiction series that would become Star Trek. Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer space—a so-called "Wagon Train to the Stars"—he privately told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale.[8][9][10][11]