…we need a new Star Trek series. No Kirk. No Spock. No Picard. No anyone from a previous series. Final Destination.

With all of Star Trek on Netflix now (minus DS9) and the final launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to how Star Trek has influenced our country and its space program for over 40 years. The Apollo program started with the tragedy of Apollo 1 in 1967, a year into the run of The Original Series (TOS). Humans fascinations of space and the stars were amplified by the landing on the moon years later, and helped to spark a generation of people to enter science fields in the hopes of being an astronaut or space engineer. The first shuttle in the Space Shuttle program was named Enterprise, and while she did not fly into space, she was seen with the cast of TOS and Gene Roddenberry before being housed in a museum. Even with Challengers explosion in 1983, Roddenberry’s revival of Star Trek, with The Next Generation (TNG) in 1987 helped renew a new generation of kids into the hopes of reaching for space and the sciences. Through both series, Roddenberry told stories of exploration, conflict both internal and external, love, and determination to achieve goals in humanity we can only dream of in the future. Technologies that were showcased in the shows became realities today, like touchpads, holographics, and more. Even the technologies that do not exist today, like phasers, transporters, and warp engines, have inspired engineers, physicists, and others to study their theory for the day they may become a reality. Even Deep Space Nine (DS9), Voyager (VOY), and Enterprise (ENT) have continued to span modern Trek’s 18-year history of human space exploration and the challenges we may face in a future amongst the stars. There is no doubt that Roddenberry, like George Lucus, helped inspire generations of people to reach beyond the sky they see.

But it has been six years since the last episode of Star Trek aired on TV, ten years if you didn’t acknowledge ENT as part of the “modern” universe. We’ve seen the rebooted movie after Nemesis showed us the TNG cast was over, and while it was an excellent film, its creators played it safe. Rather than try to reboot the series with new cast, new ship, new time, like TNG, DS9, or VOY, they stuck to the time-honored formula of Kirk and Spock, and the adventures of the Enterprise. For a movie, it works. Using Star Trek’s ever-so-ingenious methods of subspace and time travel they could spin a film that does not take into account the original material, and deviate from it without having to go back and retcon decades of previous stories. But even given its praise, it was still a cop-out to me.

No, what I am looking for is a brand new Trek. A new ship. New crew. New stories. Maybe a few old stories. Maybe a few old places or familiar races. Cannon with the last modern Trek, Voyager. Perhaps during Voyager’s disappearance. During the Dominion War. After the Dominion War. A journey through the Beta or Gamma Quadrant with members of other races. Maybe something like Sliders with 29th Century Federation timeship Relativity. I’m sure there are plenty of ideas out there for a new Trek that might respark interest in one of the country’s oldest and proudest space franchises ever made.

Why? Would Trek sell today? That’s potentially my only fear. Part of why I feel NASA’s Space Shuttle program has failed to continue prolonging an era of space exploration is that the people inspired by space twenty years ago are older, either already working for NASA, another science field, or gave up their dreams for something else, or something worse. Columbia’s tragedy in 2003 helped seal the shuttle program’s fate, and with terrorism the focus of the last decade and the wars in The Middle East, space took a back seat in most people’s minds for other matters closer to Earth. Even in video games, which has withstood the test of time in keeping the spirit of futuristic and space-themed games alive, has struggled to produce successful titles that are not military simulators “stuck in the past” re-enacting old wars and conflicts from Earth. Children are too concerned with fighting each other on virtual battlefields with guns and explosives to consider the vast imagination space has to offer. For everyone else, the economy, taxes, and situations at home has left people without any reason to see beyond their own walls. What good is imagining about what is out there when most of us will never reach it? I suppose it’s natural to be envious of the men and women who are fortunate to ride our shuttles into space, and spend two weeks doing something billions of people on this planet will never experience in a lifetime, so far.

I guess in the end, for me, my love and imagination of a world free to explore and analyze is why I was an avid Trek fan as a child and sparked my considerable interest in our manned space program. I only wish I did more to become one of those few to make it to space, and it’s in that regard that I sincerely hope that if someone involved with Trek in any official capacity reads this, that they figure out some way to convince someone to bring Trek back. Maybe not just for me, but for a new generation of kids who need to be inspired to reboot our space program after Atlantis is retired, to push ourselves beyond an asteroid or Mars, perhaps even to help expand the ISS into a large space colony more people can be a part of. Human advancement needs to go to space, someday. I wish it was only in my lifetime.