234: When You Orb an Orb Anything Is Possible

The Ready Room: A Star Trek Podcast

The State of Star Trek 2022

We long called the 1990s the golden age of Star Trek. From 1993 to 1999, two series overlapped one another on the airwaves and, once The Next Generation left the small screen, we even got doses of three incarnations of Gene Roddenberry’s vision from time to time. But it all came to an abrupt end in May 2005, with the final episode of Enterprise. J.J. Abrams would later step in and tease us through the fallow years until the battle among streaming services offered a financial incentive to dust off intellectual property and Discovery came along. And now, there is more Star Trek than ever. A new golden age is upon us.

In this episode of The Ready Room, recorded as we end an unprecedented 48 consecutive weeks of new Star Trek content, hosts C Bryan Jones and Larry Nemecek take a look at the state of the franchise in 2022. We discuss each of the “modern” series—Strange New Worlds, Picard, Prodigy, Lower Decks, and Discovery—dig into the fan split over old and new, and imagine what new series might be on the horizon. We also debate the pros and cons of the streaming model for storytelling and talk about how Star Trek and Star Wars are pushing each other forward.

Chapters Intro (0:00:00) The Mood at SDCC (00:05:13) Resurgent Franchise(s) (00:14:17) Pros and Cons of Streaming (00:20:34) The Modern/Classic Trek Division (00:26:50) Strange New Worlds (00:34:26) Picard (00:59:37) Potential Future Series (01:14:00) Lower Decks (01:24:41) Prodigy (01:34:19) Discovery (01:50:37) Closing (02:04:26)

Hosts C Bryan Jones and Larry Nemecek

Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer) Renee Roberts (Associate Producer)