"Could Star Trek be dying?" Those were the opening words of my New York Times article in 2004. At that time, as in some previous moments, the threat was that there would be no new Star Trek stories on television or as feature films. (Leonard Nimoy laughed when I asked him that. Of course he turned out to be right. So far.)
Today, sixty years since it began, Star Trek is endangered again, but in a different way. There is likely to be a new feature film, and possibly more television beyond the series' now running or ready to resume. But recent events suggest the distinct possibility that future stories could well be Star Trek in name only. In essence they may even be anti-Trek: Star Trek without its soul.
The first of these events was the purchase of Paramount by Skydance Media, headed by David Ellison. He is, in the words of Wikipedia, "the son of Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison, a centibillionaire." It has been widely reported that David Ellison became an ally of President Trump, possibly or probably to help secure federal approval of the deal.
Paramount is the parent company to the CBS network, and Ellison soon installed a Trump-friendly far right commentator as editor in chief of CBS News. She engineered firings and layoffs, delayed broadcast of a 60 Minutes segment that cast the Trump administration's war on immigrants in an unfavorable light, and has by numerous accounts turned the network in a far right direction, losing viewership and staining the good name of what was once among the most hallowed in television news.
More recently, Ellison attended the State of the Union address, a day before he made the only offer now existing to purchase Warner Brothers properties, including CNN. He promised Trump he would make sweeping changes to that news network. Warners had previously signaled it would accept the purchase offer of Netflix, but federal approval was delayed. On the day Ellison made a new offer for Warners, Josh Marshall at Talking Points memo reports, the Netflix CEO was at the White House "apparently trying to see whether Netflix had the thing any company needs for a merger in 2026: the personal approval of Donald Trump. Apparently they didn't have it. That's the autocracy playbook. And at the federal level that's the game we're playing right now." Netflix declined to make a new offer, leaving the field wide open for Ellison.
What this may mean for Star Trek revolves around this administration's evident white supremacist and white nationalist agenda, its wanton cruelty and bad faith, all antithetical to what Star Trek has represented for more than half a century.
There are other recent events that are suggestive in this regard, both generally and specifically in terms of a current Star Trek streaming series. In January 2026, Secretary of Defense (which he styles as Secretary of War) Hegseth and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke jointly about employing advanced Artificial Intelligence systems in warfare, in events they titled "The Arsenal of Freedom." They both pronounced their goal is to "make Star Trek real."
It's long been known that a lot of tech industry people consider themselves Star Trek fans. Musk was one. Another was Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. (I watched Bezos receive a Legacy Award at the 40th anniversary Star Trek convention in Seattle. His mother showed off the cardboard communicator he made as a child.) Bezos purchased the Washington Post and then, apparently to please Trump, censored it, drove away its top people and gutted its staff, losing subscribers and respect.
A number of actual Star Trek fans and several publications pointed out that this Musk-Hegseth event's title, "Arsenal of Freedom," was the title of the Next Generation episode which exposed the fatal folly of depending on the same sort of AI systems they were bragging about. Hegseth also had the temerity to flash Spock's Vulcan salute.
Remember that Musk went to Washington at the start of this second Trump administration as the first loud voice decrying Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs (not exactly enacting Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.)
He had his Department of Government Efficiency minions and thugs bodily throw out staffers of the Institute of Peace and trash the place. He cut off US funding for medical programs and other aid to poor populations in poor countries--"the richest person in the world killing the world's poorest children," as Bill Gates described it. He supported false accusations of genocide of whites in South Africa and supported far rightists in Germany, raging against multiculturalism. At Trump's second inaugural he repeatedly gave what has been described as the Nazi salute. Not exactly Live Long and Prosper.
For his part, Hegseth presided over firing much of the top brass in the US military who coincidentally included almost all blacks and women, at the same time as he vilified DEI. Recently he announced that the Pentagon will forbid military personnel from taking graduate courses at some of the top universities in the US, because he calls them "woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination."
Hegseth is also a proponent of lethal military force first, last and always, and evidently agrees with the aide behind the White House throne, Stephen Miller, that the world "is governed by force." That's a long way from the time that the US Secretary of State praised Star Trek: The Next Generation as a global model of peaceful mediation.
I could not help but think that a subtext of these "Arsenal of Freedom" events is to re-imagine Star Trek for the Ellison regime. Or perhaps it reflects a triumphant belief that this is going to be the direction that Ellison takes. I see this also in the tenor of some unusual criticism of the new Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy.
Star Trek fans, especially on line, can be prickly. Although I enjoy Starfleet Academy a lot more than I thought I would--I think it's very well done, and a breath of fresh air-- I sympathize with those who see its very contemporary slang and "language" as a little problematic. Other nitpicks don't bother me. But the sudden criticism over its "diversity" caught my attention, especially when it came from those who don't usually comment on Star Trek (which included the aforementioned Stephen Miller), and especially in the context of the Ellison takeover and the Musk-Hegseth appropriation of Star Trek. Some of this critique, especially online, even seemed a little--shall we say-- organized.
For it's not as if Starfleet Academy is an exception in terms of enacting diversity, of embodying IDIC. If anything, this was even more pronounced in Star Trek: Discovery, from its inception in 2017. Why single out Starfleet Academy now? Well, why do you think?
As I write this, the fate of the team now in charge of Star Trek on television is not settled--contracts reportedly end this year. There's not even a date set for the resumption of Strange New Worlds, which has seasons 4 and 5 ready to go. What is known is that all previous Star Trek movies in development were cancelled, including the proposed fourth of the "Abramsverse" features. Instead, a new movie is being written and developed by people new to Star Trek.
I suppose the tech is what far right fans like about Star Trek, but it's not all about the toys. Yet that seems to be what they want to make Star Trek represent.
So here is what I fear, and unfortunately what I expect: There will be a new movie with Star Trek in the title, and it will be about high tech warfare, pitting humans against aliens. And the central starship will feature a cast overwhelmingly comprised of white males identifiable as Americans. By then the current team running Star Trek television will be gone, and so will Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, and nearly everything that has constituted the soul of Star Trek for sixty years.
Coming soon: Star Trek: In Name Only. STINO. I hope I'm wrong. But I will also be surprised if I am.
Photos 1 and 2: Screen captures from Star Trek: The Next Generation first season episode "Arsenal of Freedom," from Trekcore. Photo 3: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
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