Star Trek: World-Building Over Generations—Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #42

The world-wide Trib­ble infes­ta­tion and Star Trek: Picard drop­ping make this an apt time to address our most philo­soph­i­cal sci-fi fran­chise. 44 years of thought exper­i­ments (with pho­ton tor­pe­does!) about what it is to be human should have taught us some­thing, and Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er along with Drew Jack­son (Eri­ca’s hus­band) reflect on what makes a Star Trek sto­ry, world build­ing over gen­er­a­tions in Gene Rod­den­ber­ry’s land, canon you don’t remem­ber vs. some­thing that just has­n’t been shown on screen, Trek vs. Wars, and step-chil­dren like The Orville and Galaxy Quest.

We have gath­ered a heap of arti­cles for fur­ther cog­i­ta­tion:

• “Star Trek Picard: 5 Things Trekkies Loved (& 5 Things They Hat­ed)” by Tim Buck­ler
• “Is There Any Hope for Picard?” by Angel­i­ca Jade Bastién
•  “How many Picards are there?” by Antho­ny Pas­cale
•  “How Picard Fits Into the Star Trek Time­line” by Eliana Doc­ter­man (Read more about the time­line on Wikipedia.)
• “Discovery’s Michael Burn­ham Obses­sion Is Hurt­ing Star Trek Canon” by Dusty Stowe
• “Why Michael Burn­ham is Great and ‘Star Trek: Dis­cov­ery’ is Not” by Christi­na Esco­bar
• “Hear Me Out: JJ Abrams’ Star Trek Movies Are Bet­ter Than His Star Wars Films” by Sean O’Connell
• “Report: Para­mount Eyes Chris Pine To Reboot ‘The Saint’ As They Await Noah Hawley’s Star Trek Script” at trekmovie.com
• “Quentin Taran­ti­no Clarifies—Then Confuses—The Time­line For His Star Trek Project” by Antho­ny Pas­cale
• “Star Trek 4 Has Some Big Hur­dles To Over­come” by Dusty Stowe
• “10 Strange Star Trek Time­line Con­ti­nu­ity Errors” by Liam Horn

For some sug­gest­ed episodes to catch up on, there are lists online rec­om­mend­ing those from the orig­i­nal series and from the fran­chise over­all. There are also fan cre­ations like these orig­i­nal series episodes, a Star Trek musi­cal, and of course the Impro­vised Star Trek pod­cast. For some rel­e­vant words from Rod Rod­den­ber­ry, check out episode 55 of the Mis­sion Log pod­cast.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.