Star Trek and the franchise era.

In his book Late Star Trek, Adam Kotsko analyzes the wealth of content set within Star Trek’s sprawling continuity, beginning with the prequel series Enterprise, highlighting creative triumphs and the tendency for franchise faithfulness to get in the way of new ideas. Arguing against the consensus that franchises are a sign of cultural decay, Kotsko zeroes in on their status as modern myths, owned as corporate intellectual property, as a source of creative limitation. Here, Kotsko is joined in conversation with David Seitz.

Adam Kotsko teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College and runs an active, free-to-read Substack. He is author of many books including Late Star Trek, Agamben’s Philosophical Trajectory, Neoliberalism’s Demons, and What Is Theology? 

David Seitz is associate professor of cultural geography at Harvey Mudd College. He is author of A Different Trek and A House of Prayer for All People.

REFERENCES:
Shawna Kidman

Frederic Jameson

Anna Kornbluh

Christopher L. Bennett

Kirsten Beyer

David Mack

Michael Chabon

Lauren Berlant / On the Inconvenience of Other People

Star Trek references include:

Deep Space Nine

Enterprise

Nemesis

Discovery

Praise for the book:

​​”Combining the rigorous critical eye of a literary and political theorist with the encyclopedic knowledge of a devoted fan, Adam Kotsko offers an original, persuasive, ethical, funny, grim, and nevertheless hopeful examination of Star Trek’s twenty-first-century incarnations. Late Star Trek is a salutary intervention, a sustained, cogent analysis of what’s gone wrong, what’s gone right, and what possibilities remain for creative and critical storytelling in our late-neoliberal streaming era.”

—David Seitz

“Adam Kotsko has written an eminently readable and deeply researched book on twenty-first-century Star Trek, providing an analysis that is both timely and long overdue. A must-read for anyone teaching, doing research on, or just thinking about this ever-growing franchise.”

—Sabrina Mittermeier, coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek and Fighting for the Future: Essays on “Star Trek: Discovery”

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era by Adam Kotsko is the inaugural volume in the University of Minnesota Press’s Mass Markets series.

Episode Transcript

Adam Kotsko (00:07):
I think that my most contrarian position is that
enterprise is fine. It's sohated, so loathed that just
saying it's fine is the ultimatebetrayal.

David Seitz (00:18):
You really make a strong case for the novel versus
ability to synthesize continuityand originality. Why Star Trek
and why late Star Trek? Hello,my name is David Seitz. I am
Associate Professor of CulturalGeography at Harvey Mudd College

(00:40):
in Claremont, California, andI'm the author of A Radical
Geographies of Deep Space Nine.It is my honor and delight to be
speaking today with Adam Kotzko,Kotsko, who is the author of
Late Star Trek, The FinalFrontier in the Franchise Era,
which is hot off the press fromUniversity of Minnesota.

(01:02):
Adam teaches in the ScheimerGreat Book School at North
Central College and is theauthor of many books, including
Neoliberalism's Demons on thePolitical Theology of Lake
Capital, Agamben's PhilosophicalTrajectory, and What is
Theology, Christian Thought andContemporary Life. Welcome,
Adam.

Adam Kotsko (01:20):
Thank you. Thank you for doing this, David. It's
a privilege to talk to anotherStar Trek scholar.

David Seitz (01:26):
A trekademic as So Steve Ravich would Adam, this
book has so many implications.It's a really important book,
including for how we think aboutpossibilities for creative
storytelling in what you referto as the franchise era. Now, to
put things into historicalperspective, media historian

(01:46):
Shauna Kidman observes that inFebruary, franchise films
accounted for 25% of all studioswide release features. In 2017,
that number was 64%. So my firstcouple of questions for you have
to do with what Star Trek inparticular adds to assessments

(02:08):
of the franchise era.
Why Star Trek and why late StarTrek?

Adam Kotsko (02:13):
Yeah, I think the real honest reason of why Star
Trek for this particular bookfor me is that I personally just
love Star Trek and I writebooks. And so I was eventually
going to write something on StarTrek. There is something about
this moment that makes Star Trekespecially illustrative of
what's going on in our culture.This book is the inaugural

(02:34):
volume of a series thatMinnesota's putting out called
Mass Markets. It's edited byJerry Canavan and Ben Robertson,
And this speaks to the desire tounderstand in an academic and
more holistic way what's goingon with our culture that these
franchises are taking over.
We all agreed that having StarTrek be the first volume was
appropriate because Star Trek isin many ways the first
franchise. It's the firstproperty to have this kind of

(02:57):
ongoing open ended stories,constantly accruing canon of
real fictional events,authoritative for future
installments, and that it hasunfolded across multiple media,
television, animation, film,novels, comic books, more

(03:19):
recently video games, basicallyany genre that you can think of,
you know, like happy meal toys,like anything, you know, like
there's been a Star Trek versionof everything. Because it's the
most long running franchise andone that promotes a great deal
of personal loyalty from itsfans. But at the same time, I
think it's been a troubledfranchise for most of its

(03:39):
existence. It's been successfulin the long run, but almost
never in the short run.
And I think that that's just areally interesting dynamic. And
that's what drew me to writingthis book in a kind of
contrarian way about all of theStar Trek that people dislike
and reject and say, it's like afall away from the great, you

(04:00):
know, next generation andoriginal series, the more
authoritative, the moresuccessful versions of Star
Trek. And I thought that gettingpast that kind of dismissive
attitude was necessary to try tounderstand like what is
happening to Star Trek as afranchise and how can we use
that as a model for how to thinkthrough what's happening to

(04:21):
others, the franchises as well.

David Seitz (04:23):
So where does late fit into that account? Do I know
you draw a little bit onFrederick Jameson and Anna
Kornblu tell us about lateness.

Adam Kotsko (04:32):
Yeah, lateness, the term late capitalism, it's a
famously failed prophecy, youknow, because capitalism seems
to keep going and going andgoing. How do we know that it's
the late period? I've heard itsaid that it's late in the
state, in the sense of like latestage cancer, like that
everything's becomingcapitalism. It comes to feel as
though everything is absorbed bycapitalism or capitalist values

(04:54):
are the only things that holdany sway or that kind of shape
our lives. And I kind of draw ananalogy to that, like this late
stage of Star Trek where it canseem like they're just putting
out more and more stuff with theStar Trek name put on it so that
people will be forced to buy itout of loyalty.
That it's the absorption of StarTrek, which seems to have these

(05:17):
kinds of anti capitalist andprogressive values, like the
absorption of Star Trek intothis pure commodification. And I
think in both cases, can seethat, that the, this dynamic
never fully succeeds, that wenever become like the capitalist
board who are just synergizingour networking or something like
that, that we still have kind ofthis, this authentic humanity,

(05:42):
that we still treasure having aspace apart from capitalist
values. And often most of usview that as, as being what is
most important in life. And Ithink similarly that Star Trek
has always resisted this kind ofpure commodification, even
though from like the earlyseventies, if you were in the
market for spending money onStar Trek, you could spend all

(06:02):
your money on Star Trek. Likefrom very early on, there was
like this ability, this likethis kind of cash cow aspect to
it for the cult followers.
And yet it's always beensomething more. And I think that
continues to be the case now.

David Seitz (06:17):
I like that theme of excess a lot, right? The past
twenty four years of trek, treksince nine eleven, Trek starting
with Enterprise, it's not justall, you know, uniformly mere
slop that's cynically doled outto already captive fans, you you
and I very much included, nor isit completely incommensurable

(06:37):
with the first thirty five yearsof the franchise. So in the
book, you identify three primarystrategies that creators use
that are between continuity andoriginality as a side of kind of
navigation and negotiation. Canyou tell us a little bit more
about what those threestrategies are and how they
work?

Adam Kotsko (06:56):
Yeah, thank you for that. For me, the key insight
that made me feel like I had abook here was actually these
three strategies. And I don'tthink they're particular to Star
Trek or franchises. I thinkthey're perennial kind of
strategies that people, whenthey're trying to make a new
contribution to an alreadyexisting kind of mythology that
these are strategies that theybuild on. And the first and most

(07:20):
obvious thing you're gonna do ifyou're contributing to something
that already exists is just domore, just do more of the same
thing.
And, I call that fan servicebecause it's just giving us more
adventures in the same basictone as what has come before.
We're making sure not to causeany controversy or
disappointment by just imitatingwhat came before. And of course,

(07:43):
if you just keep doing that overand over, you start to wonder
like, what is the point if we'resimply reproducing what was done
before? Why not just watch theoriginal episodes over again,
instead of this derivativeproduct, that's just trying to
imitate them. And so that callsforth a subsequent strategy of
seeking creative freedom.
You are given control of StarTrek, for instance, and you want

(08:06):
to say, we're not just going todo more of the same Star Trek.
This is not your father's StarTrek. We can push this franchise
in new directions. We can do newthings with it. We can defy your
expectations.
Probably one of the biggestexamples of that is your area of
expertise, deep space nine,which in many ways
systematically reverse theformula of star Trek instead of

(08:28):
having a ship they're out ofstationary, you know, location
instead of being episodic, it'svery, intricate politics and
these kinds of long runningstorylines with much greater
continuity. Many fans detectdarker themes as compared to
other installments. Once you dothat, once you're kind of, you

(08:49):
know, the question that arises,if you're trying to just negate
everything that Star Trek isabout, why are you even still
doing Star Trek? Like what isgoing on here? And I think that
a kind of uneasy synthesisbetween these two tendencies is
to say that we're giving youworld building.
We're not just giving you morestories. We're not just giving

(09:09):
you more characters. We'regiving you like insight into how
the world works, how the StarTrek universe works in answering
questions that maybe fans havehad for a long time. I think
that fans have always been veryintrigued by the politics of
Star Trek. And, you know, that'sone area that Deep Space Nine
really delves into.
But it also, I think in ananxiety prove that it's

(09:30):
authentic Star Trek, Deep SpaceNine piles on all kinds of
references, including referencesto the original series, which at
that point had not been muchtouched by next generation. And
there's a kind of just likedesire to show that this world
is more cohesive and that thiswork, that this particular
installment is giving you thatcohesion and making things fit

(09:54):
together much better. And Ithink that Deep Space Nine
really did actually achievethat. And sometimes I've joked
that Deep Space Nine is like theorigin of the Star Trek universe
as a universe. But in any case,I think that these three
strategies, it's simplistic tosay that they're all isolated.
Any installment that's onlydoing one of them probably isn't
doing a very good job. Any giveninstallment, could probably say

(10:18):
pretty clearly they're doing twoof them at one time. And when
things really get interesting iswhen they try to take on the
extra work of doing three at thesame time and doing a true tour
de force that's just embracingeverything.

David Seitz (10:29):
A true synthesis. Yeah, it's interesting about DS9
because like on the one hand,there is a lot that feels like
anti thesis, but then you're soright, like they bring back the
Mirror Universe, they have thattime travel episode where they
actually go back to Kirk'sEnterprise that people love. We
can have a whole conversationabout DS9, but I think that's

(10:50):
best reserved for anotherpodcast. So, part of what I
really appreciate about thisbook is that I think it is both
contrarian and fair. So, I thinkthat's a testament to its rigor
and the rigor of this three partmethod.
You do not pull any punches whenit comes to writers and
producers' poor choices, andespecially I think when it comes

(11:14):
to some of the disastrousimpacts of certain corporate
decisions made by Paramount'sleadership. But at the same
time, you do engage in goodfaith and genuinely assume, you
know, that creative workers aredoing their best under really
constrained and increasinglyconstrained political economic
conditions around writing inHollywood. And by the same

(11:36):
token, I think you defend theintellectual rigor of
institutions of Trek fandom,particularly Reddit's Daystrom
Institute, while at the sametime you break with fan
consensus on a number ofoccasions. We see this on
display, I think, the firstchapter of the book on
enterprise, which is kind ofmuch loathed, you know, running

(11:57):
between 2001 and 02/2005. Tellus a little bit about the
changes in Enterprisesrelationships to the Trek fandom
over the course of itsproduction.
And tell us in particular, Iwant to hear more about an
Enterprise episode called TheInterregnum and what it tells us
about those relationships.

Adam Kotsko (12:17):
Yeah. So I think that my most contrarian position
is that enterprise is fine. Likeit's, it's so hated so low that
just saying it's fine is likethe ultimate betrayal. And I
kind of, you know, in theDaystrom Institute fan forum,
where as I was rewatching StarTrek, kind of as an adult, maybe

(12:39):
like around ten years ago or so,I really started to cut my teeth
as a Star Trek commentator. Ifound that enterprise was the
area that I really dug in and Ibecame kind of the resident like
enterprise expertapologistsimply because I couldn't
understand why their reactionwas just so one sidedly
negative.

(13:00):
You know, I'll admit when Ifirst watched it, we had just
gotten through like all theother series. It was the last
one left. And when it got to thetheme song, I looked over at my
partner. I'm just like, cannotbe real. This cannot actually be
the theme song because it wasthis bizarre, like Rod Stewart
rock song, like so completelydifferent than every other

(13:22):
thing, but you know, that's whyGod invented the mute button.
And once you hit the mute buttonduring that song, it's clear
that the quality of enterpriseis broadly comparable to Voyager
and broadly comparable to kindof like forgettable Deep Face
Nine episodes. Like, it's notlike outside of the ballpark.
And I think that I was trying tounderstand why it was so hated

(13:46):
and why fans were so resistantto it. And doing that required
me to accept in good faith, likethe producers, they presumably
were not trying to betrayeverything that Star Trek was
and like overwrite all existingCanada and like piss off the
fans to no end. And I think thatwhat I arrive at in the chapter

(14:07):
is that Enterprise is this kindof weird neithernor.
By creating a prequel, they wereopening up all kinds of
problems. The biggest problemwould be, did Klingons really go
from having bare foreheads tohaving ridges at a certain point
in their evolution within likefifty years? Did Captain Kirk

(14:29):
really just operate the shipwith like little dials and
switches? All of this kind ofstuff, as well as suddenly
needing to keep faith with thefact that certain things happen
at certain dates, throw awaylines from past episodes
suddenly, or like interferingwith the story that you're
trying to tell. They didn'trealize about what they were
doing was turning Star Trek intoa different kind of franchise

(14:50):
where Canon mattered a lot moreand where the ongoing history
was supposed to be taken muchmore seriously.
And I think that the tragedy ofthe show is that the producers
didn't understand that that waswhat they were doing. And that
when they were confronted withfans who kind of were taking
these expectations moreseriously than the producers
themselves did that they justgot irritated and just kind of

(15:16):
doubled down. Like there's oneepisode that I think is
literally just an allegory offans being way too picky about
stupid things. They spent anentire episode just to say fans
stop it. And I think that, youknow, to kind of transition to
the interregnum, which is myfavorite episode of enterprise.
This was one of my favorite,discussions from the Baystrom

(15:39):
Institute, the forum. I askedpeople because there was one
story arc in enterprise where itwas like, it was a continuous
arc for 26 episodes, which theyhad never tried to do anything
like that before. And I askedthem like, what was it like to
try to watch this live? Like atweek to week, how did it feel to

(16:00):
watch for people who werewatching it at that time? And
one person said it was actuallyincredibly difficult to watch
because one thing that theynever talk about when talking
about the success of enterpriseor the failure of enterprise is
that its time slot wasconstantly moving around and it
was constantly getting preemptedby other shows.
And back in the linear TV days,that was the kiss of death

(16:23):
because people base their TVviewing on their habits. If you
can't form a habit of watchingit at a particular time, you're
just not going to get into it.And so this person was
sufficiently committed to figureout when it's running. And he
said though that on the fanforums, they usually have like a
forum to discuss that night'sepisode. And yet on a particular
night in the middle of this arc,suddenly it had been preempted

(16:47):
unexpectedly again unannounced.
They were probably watching likeWWE or something instead of
enterprise. And somebody put upa thread saying, what do people
think of tonight's episode, theinterregnum? And they just like
made some like little remarksthat would be applicable to
almost any episode, you know,like this character gets
underplayed or something likethat. The rest of the fans

(17:09):
started like jumping in and kindof riffing on it until they had
developed this entire elaborateplot. And there were people
there were haters who weresaying, isn't this just as bad
as every other episode?
There were people who were likedefenders, no, this was a cool
idea. And the episode neverhappened. I went to great
lengths to track down thisthread when I was writing the

(17:29):
book. I had to collaborate withanother more technically
oriented person to like get onthe way back machine and like
dig into the innards of the HTMLbecause it wasn't showing up or
whatever. Because to me, thestory shows that the fans that
were watching that did manage tofigure out when to watch it.
We're into it and they wereinvested. And even if they were

(17:51):
negatively invested, they were,they were taking it seriously.
They, it was like part of theirlives, part of their routine and
like complaining about it waspart of how they engaged in this
community. And I think to justview them as a bunch of like
nitpicky comic book guys, likestanding there with their arms
crossed. I don't think thatthat's really what was going on
at all.
And I think that a moreproductive dialogue with the

(18:12):
fans was possible, and that wasa terrible missed opportunity.

David Seitz (18:15):
You're making me think of some of your other work
on TV creeps and sociopaths,because whenever my mom emails
me about the latest thing Trumphas said, I always say, hate
watching is a kind of love mom,you know? And I think as goes
with Trump goes with enterprise.It's interesting because rightly
or wrongly, I did feel that wayabout enterprise when it was on
the air. Was on the air when Iwas in high school. I do

(18:38):
remember high school, sort ofthat early aughts period.
It was a harder time to be aStar Trek fan. And then we
Enterprises canceled in 02/2005.We don't get more small screen
Trek for a dozen years afterthat. You know, Star Trek
Nemesis, which came out in 2002was also not so good. Roger
Evertz said something like,let's face it, they're out of

(18:59):
gas.
And we didn't get another Trekfilm until 02/2009. So for you,
it's in that relative vacuumthat actually the novel verse
thrived. And so Trek novelsremain hugely understudied.
They're often dismissed asderivative, but you really
challenge this assumption andreally make a strong case for

(19:22):
the novel versus ability tosynthesize continuity and
originality. So tell us a littlebit more about like how you got
into the novel first and likewhat you observed about it,
particularly in this period?

Adam Kotsko (19:34):
Yeah. I mean, as I say in my book, I have never met
a serious Star Trek fan whohasn't read at least a couple of
the novels. Like it's a part ofthe culture in a way that's like
weirdly unacknowledged. Likemaybe this is embarrassing to
people. Shows that you're goingtoo far.
You're like, you're not justwatching a TV show. You're not
nerdy enough. You have toactually read a book too. The
novels were a big part of fandiscussion culture. And one of

(19:56):
them was famous for undoing theending of enterprise, which
everybody hated.
Like they killed off a belovedcharacter and the whole thing
was presented as a holodeck kindof simulation instead of a real
episode. And it just felt likevery disrespectful to the series
of the actors and things likethat. When they wrote a novel

(20:18):
series that was going tocontinue Enterprise, the first
thing they did was make sure tosay, this never happened. And I
was just like fascinated and Iwondered what it would look
like. I was at a used bookstore.
There it was. I picked it up, loand behold, I've probably read
like 100 novels since then. Man,I can't believe I just said that
out loud. I found it fascinatingthe way that the novels could

(20:41):
continue the story andespecially after TV track was,
you know, just kind of off theair that they felt like for all
of these series, there was nolonger anything that was going
to like override them orcontradict what they did. Like
when the shows were running andeven like when the, you know,

(21:03):
the shows were all in the same,like fictional time period or
something like that.
If you make a decision thatlike, I don't know, you know,
Captain Picard and Doctor.Crusher are finally going to get
married. And then like they do aguest spot on Voyager and
they're not married. Like yourbook is invalidated, you know,
because in the hierarchy ofvalue of franchise, like the

(21:23):
televised and film, instancesalways take priority over things
that are secondary, like thenovels. And so once they were
off the air, this actuallycreated this huge opportunity
for them to start, changing thestatus quo, to continue the
stories, like, validate certainfan intuitions, such as the fact

(21:44):
that Captain Picard and Doctor.
Crusher obviously should havegotten together and they made it
happen. And they could, they hadthis free space because they had
the reasonable expectation thatthere was never going to be
another Canon installment thatwould contradict them. And so
starting from just a handful ofnovels, re opening the story of

(22:06):
Deep Space Nine, and then theygradually folded in the other
series. It created this verysprawling continuity. By display
a section from this flow chartthat somebody developed to show
you like the order in which youcould read these novels.
And it's just overwhelminglycomplex. They were empowered
kind of by this vacuum todevelop new stories, to develop

(22:27):
new forms of storytelling. Likethey could tell longer term
stories. They could addressdifferent types of issues like
long term effects of divorce, orlike, what does it look like to
be married and then have a childand have the child grow up. And
like in a, in a seven season TVshow, you can't realistically
present as much of that.
But in like this twenty yearcontinuity that they had

(22:49):
developed, you could. Towards alater stage, they would have
like a series that wasreflecting on various events
that were affecting the wholegalaxy. They would just have
different locations with theirperspective on it. The books
were not in any particularorder. And I'm like, that's
innovative storytelling.
That's using the affordances ofthese novels in a different way,

(23:11):
to show different types ofstories that you never could
have done. The one that I'm onright now, they're doing a
strike force on a planet andthey have like six away teams
like doing synchronized action.And like, you could never
present that comprehensive wayin a one hour TV episode, but
they could do that. And so Iwanted to vindicate this as like

(23:33):
a really unique achievement, notjust for Star Trek, but just in
general, like this kind ofcollaborative story world
developed by dozens of authors,all working together, all kind
of referring to each other'sstuff, all like held accountable
to it. But like they genuinelywere able to do creative things
and to move the story forwardand to do things that I think

(23:54):
are preferable to what they didwhen they finally did bring back
Picard and all of these otherguys.
And so I use the novel verse askind of my showpiece for the
three techniques. And Ihighlight three authors who
illustrate each of thesestrategies. Christopher Bennett,
my personal favorite, who was incharge of the Enterprise novels

(24:14):
for the most part, is like atrue scholar of Star Trek lore,
and he integrates that all intohis novels. He's like the
ultimate fan service. He eventries to develop a theory of
Star Trek time travel whereeverything makes sense, even
though that's impossible.
Kirsten Beyer, who is a authorof Voyager novels. She embraced

(24:35):
the concept of Voyager bygetting them back to the Delta
Quadrant as far away fromeverybody else as possible so
that she could have likeartistic freedom to develop her
own plot lines without having tointerfere with everybody else.
And then the guy who I think isreally the architect of the
novel verse, David Mack, he wasin charge of everything. That
was a major world buildingsituation. He's most famous for

(24:57):
a series in which he gives theorigin and the defeat of the
board all in one big cohesivepackage that incorporates
characters from all the series,including enterprise.
And, he was the one who wrotethe final, novel, in the novel
verse and kind of like shut thedoor behind him. And I think
that's very appropriate. Butlike all three of them do all

(25:21):
three techniques, but they justseem to specialize, in each. And
I still think there was anedited volume that came out
about novels, but I think thatmy treatment in this chapter
remains so far the definitivetreatment of the novel
continuity. And I'm pretty proudof that.

David Seitz (25:40):
As you should be, although I have to confess when
you said that every true StarTrek fan has read at least two
of the novels. I'm at two, so Iqualify, but I'm I'm no 100.
That's that's for sure. I wrotea paper recently about Harry Kim
from Star Trek Voyager and,like, the his racialization and
his sexualization. And sodifferent novels have different

(26:00):
accounts for whether he ends upgetting married to his long
time, on again, off again fianceback in the Alpha Quadrant or
not.
So I was very interested intracking that down and memory
beta was a wonderful kind ofparallel novel verse repository
for helping me make sense ofthose different endings. I want
to go back for a minute to theperceived failures of Enterprise
and Nemesis. Because even if wedon't agree with those takes,

(26:24):
and Nemesis have cast a longshadow, you point out, I think.
And and as far as I know, you'reone of the first people to
notice that. They significantly,influenced the narratives of
both the the sort of JJ Abramsand Justin Lin films that we saw
from 2009 to 2016 and Star TrekDiscovery, the TV show that that
came out in 2017.

(26:46):
So as I was rereading your bookover the weekend, I found myself
summing up this influence, likethe the things that Enterprise
and Nemesis offered these theselater incarnations as the three
Ts, terrorism, time travel, andtrauma plots. And so I wanted to
ask you, what do you think it isthat makes sort of George W.

(27:06):
Bush era Star Trek sointertextually significant and
influential for Obama and Trumpone era Star Trek?

Adam Kotsko (27:16):
Yeah, that's a tough one. The realization of
how big of an impact that had,like, was like disappointing
because I, taking an inventoryof how many times they use
terrorism plots. In 02/2005,doing a terrorism plot, like if
they had not done that, thatwould have been strange. But the
fact that they keep going backto the well in like 2023 or

(27:37):
something like good grief, getover it. There's a couple of
factors that work.
The logic of the franchiseindicates that there's always a
desire to like redeem materialto make it a usable history
again. They'd never want toadmit a mistake basically. Never
want to admit like, justshouldn't have made enterprise
and we're just going to ignoreit. They're like, no, you have

(27:58):
to keep integrating it more andmore and more. We have to make
it essential.
We have to make sure thateverybody is obligated to keep
paying attention to enterprise.That's partly because they kept
going back to like a timeframewhere only enterprise would
apply. Like only enterprise islike an available reference
because both the JJ Abramsmovies and discovery are set in

(28:20):
the era of the original series.So the only thing that's still
in the past is Enterprise. Andso if you want to make Easter
eggs, that's what you got to do.
But I think that once theyintroduced this terrorism trope
into Star Trek, which is presentin both, it became available to
express, I think, frustrationsand anxieties that the creators

(28:41):
faced. One reason that theuniverse is always one clever
reversal of polarity away frombeing destroyed or something
like that is that they're madeto feel as though each Star Trek
production could be the very endof Star Trek as such. That the
viability of Star Trek goingforward is at stake in every
installment. And I think thatthe fact that enterprise was a

(29:04):
failure and was canceled. Andthe fact that Nemesis was such a
flop, it had apparently theworst word-of-mouth in movie
history that the box officedropped within one week, like
more than almost any other movieever.
And I believe that the onlycompetitor is Geely, the Ben

(29:27):
Affleck Shedderfer Lopezvehicle. So that's pretty bad.
They were thinking of doinganother next generation movie,
but the failure just meant thatthey couldn't like, they just,
it was it. That was it. And solike the fact that it had failed
in both respects, TV and film,it just, it's an impossible

(29:50):
pressure.
Again, they keep coming back tothis theme of like the galaxy is
going to end because the galaxymight end. If this show fails,
the whole thing could fail. Andthat goes back to the earlier
theme that you were saying oftaking seriously the fact that
the producers and creators arehardworking people who are doing
their best. Like, think thateven the creators of enterprise

(30:13):
were put in an impossibleposition. They were two dudes
with no writing staff who werejust supposed to churn out these
long seasons and like nobody cando that with any consistent
degree of quality.
And I think you can see that,with the streaming thing too. We
know that the conditions oflabor under streaming are very
exploitative and very intense.And you can see that coming out

(30:34):
in like repeated plots acrossdifferent properties and the
difficulty of stringing togethera cohesive plot for some of the
seasons. They're really put itunder like a lot of very unfair
pressure in a way that previousgenerations of Star Trek or of
TV writing in general simplywere not.

David Seitz (30:52):
So despite those constraints and despite the
despite or maybe because of thepersistence of these terror and
trauma plots, you actually kindof go against the grain in your
favorable assessment ofDiscovery Season One. And so I
was wondering if you could say alittle bit about where Discovery
Season One succeeds, where itmight be allegorically salient,

(31:13):
and then where did Discovery gofrom there in your view?

Adam Kotsko (31:17):
Yeah, I think that discovery season one is the
closest to a true like prestigelevel, quality that Star Trek
has ever attained. Not just theproduction values, the writing,
the performances, the quality ofthe actors that they're able to
get. Like, I think that JasonIsaac's performance as Lorca is

(31:40):
the best performance by a milethat Star Trek has ever had,
including Patrick Stewart,including every other person
that you could mention. I thinkit does that by taking seriously
the franchise concept and, andkind of like inhabiting these,
this world in a different waythan anybody had before. I think

(32:01):
that the serialized formatallowed them to explore the fact
that this crew where completelymessed up things are happening
to them every week, that thiswould have a cumulative effect
and it would affect their lives.
The fact that they don't referto it in the next episode just
simply isn't realistic. And sothey create a plot where actions

(32:22):
really have consequences andwhere people have to live with
the consequences of theiractions and their reputation in
their, you know, self-concept.And like the main character,
Michael Burnham has to kind ofearn her way back into Starfleet
after, you know, committing aserious betrayal of her captain.
And I think that that's clevertoo, because it kind of

(32:45):
acknowledges the situation ofthe show in the text that any
new Star Trek they know is goingto be like guilty until proven
innocent. It has to prove itselfas something that's worthy of
Star Trek.
And so they write that directlyinto the show. I think this is
like an element of selfawareness that is handled really
well, at least until the veryend. I also think that the

(33:06):
mirror universe concept, this isone of the most controversial
aspects of the season. CaptainLorca is running a tight ship.
It's a very, you know,constrained and harsh
environment compared to past,captains.
It doesn't feel like Star Trek.And it turns out that's because
he's not a star fleet captain.He is an imposter from the

(33:27):
mirror universe. And manypeople, you know, watching this,
they're just like, Oh no, theyturned a nuance character into,
a mustache twirling villain orsomething like that. And I think
they take the mirror universeconcept more seriously, maybe
then it deserves to be taken.
And they're just like, if thisis a brutal world where moral

(33:48):
values are inverted, whereeverybody gets by, you know,
like crawling over everybodyelse, where you get promoted by
killing your captain, all ofthis kind of stuff. It wouldn't
be a fun and campy environment.Like people portray it on the
other episodes. It would beterrifying and living in that
environment for a long termwould be morally corrosive to
you. And they put MichaelBurdham in the situation where

(34:11):
she is forced to kind of pose asa mirror person.
It's supposed to like pose asevil. She has to like, one of
the first things she has to dois kill like the doppelganger of
like somebody who was her menteeon the other side of the
universe. And she expressesthis, she says, I can't do this
anymore. Like, I feel like I'mlosing myself. And yet Lorca,

(34:36):
this person from the eviluniverse is able to fit in on
the Starfleet side during thiswar effort.
What people wanted out of thatplot line, I think was for us to
hear that Lorca has beentraumatized by war. He just
wants to defend the federationso hard that he winds up making
some morally questionabledecisions. And we need to

(34:59):
understand that he's really anice liberal at heart and give
him room to, you know, likeexpress his trauma and things
like that. And I am, am bored todeath of that story. That has
been the story of American popculture since 09/11.
Oh my God, military virtues aresometimes necessary to defend
liberalism. Tell me more. WhatDiscovery does is it tells a

(35:22):
story that only Star Trek cantell because of this mirror
universe concept and the kind ofpre existing infrastructure that
we have to tell a story likethat. And it sends us a message
that there really are enemies.There really are people out
there who don't share yourvalues, who are not waiting to
be converted, who are not justlike psychologically damaged and
that's why they act the way theydo.

(35:42):
There really are enemies outthere and sometimes these
enemies simply need to bedefeated. What people took to be
simplistic moralism, I think,was actually a step towards a
greater maturity in Star Trek.And I think that it's a message
that's actually necessary in ourpresent day.

David Seitz (35:58):
And I mean, it's salient for debates on the left
too, right? You know, ToddMcGowan would say that on the
left, you can't have an enemy,you can only have an adversary.
Jody Dean would say, Oh no, youcan have an enemy, especially a
class enemy. So there's lot moreto work through there. I do want
to talk about Picard though,speaking of class, because I
think Picard is in some waysmore explicitly addressed to

(36:20):
questions of neoliberalinequality.
You write on Picard that whatshould have been the streaming
era's greatest triumph turnedout to be its worst creative
failure. And even spicier, youinclude in this assessment the
season of Picard that seeminglyalmost everybody likes season

(36:42):
three, which is the beloved, youknow, cast reunion of Star Trek,
The Next Generation that manypeople wanted all along. Now I
too have spoken publicly andalso not so favorably about
Picard, So I can well appreciatehow hard it can be to hold this
unpopular view. Tell us moreabout the strategies that Picard

(37:05):
uses across its three seasonsand why, in your view, these
mostly don't work.

Adam Kotsko (37:11):
I think in a way you could say that it uses all
three strategies. It usescreative freedom and world
building more in the firstseason, which I think is the
most ambitious season. And itbrings up these class issues and
things like that. What mostpeople were expecting a cast
reunion, they radically alteredthe status quo. Picard is no

(37:34):
longer the dashing captain.
He's a bitter old man who isdisappointed that the federation
has betrayed its values byabandoning this humanitarian
effort he was heading up. And heis like just rotting in his
French chateau on his vineyard.And meanwhile, his former first
officer, Raffy, this is a newcharacter for the show, not who

(37:57):
we knew before, that she'sliving basically in a trailer in
the middle of nowhere, just kindof subsiding on alcohol and
vaping apparently. Alreadythat's like a huge shift from
how people usually view nextgeneration, that it's a post
scarcity utopia, that everythingis equal. They really want to

(38:18):
take us through kind of theseedy underbelly of the galaxy
As Picard is trying to likereconnect with his Starfleet
values and kind of get his mojoback.
And I think that I liked theidea behind it. I was willing to
give it the benefit of thedoubt, but simply on the level
of execution, they just did anabsolutely terrible job. The

(38:40):
pacing makes no sense. The plot,like they kill off a beloved
character for no reason. Theykill and resurrect Picard within
one episode.
Like there's just like so muchthat's confusing about it and
strange. And I think it'sbecause they put too much trust
in the showrunner, MichaelChabot, who's a great novelist,
but who has had never done a TVshow before. And in fact, in one

(39:04):
interview they let slip thatthey started filming before they
knew what the story was. So Ithink that was obviously a
misstep. And I think that thesecond season, they continued
down the path of not having acast reunion.
They, for some reason, had themtravel back in time to

(39:25):
contemporary Los Angeles andlike drive around. And they were
clearly only making a season sothat they could like produce
something to put out during, youknow, the COVID boom of
streaming. And this was likejust bizarre fan service, like
just trying to straighten outlike history of Star Trek and
like the near future, which iskind of a mess. If you're a fan,

(39:45):
you know what I mean? And it wasjust like constantly having
Picard geek out about seeingthings like from past episodes.
Was really not very satisfying.The final season, I was glad to
see they finally got the bandback together. I was happy to
see every new character thatthey brought back. I was happy
to see them, you know, on thatlevel, it was a success. But I

(40:09):
think that in that season,there's this kind of ugly
undercurrent of triumphalismbecause they have a plot where
the evil board queen who headsthe cybernetically connected,
you know, collective mind of theBorg manages to kind of, inject

(40:29):
this virus into all of theyounger Starfleet officers,
everybody 25 or under.
They're taken over by the boardand they start killing their
superior officers, trying toattack earth and things like
this. And I just cannotunderstand what this is supposed
to mean other than the woke mindvirus. And that all of these

(40:49):
young cadets, just like our GenZ people, like in between like
bouts of hydration, they'recanceling their elders or
something like that. And theymake it so that only the
enterprise headed by a captainBacard can solve this problem.
The final episode is literallycalled the last generation.

(41:13):
And what does that refer toother than the next generation
turns out to be the lastgeneration, the only one that
can do anything right. It'sglib. It does world building
that doesn't make any sense andhems in any future story because
how are you going to do a storyin this world without addressing
the fact that every single youngofficer is traumatized by having

(41:34):
been brainwashed and likeinduced to commit murder against
their colleagues and things likethat. Like what story is
available at that point? Theybooby trapped the franchise all
in the service of saying it wasgood back then and it'll never
be good again.
And I just think that is abizarre waste of everybody's

(41:54):
time and talent when they couldhave just given us a fun story
about what these guys have beenup to.

David Seitz (42:00):
It's really hard to miss the kind of the woke mind
virus, you know, kids these dayskind of allegory and it does
feel defensive and nostalgic inall the wrong ways to me too.
That's not a popular opinion,but it's all the more important
to say that, I think. Let's talkabout my favorite chapter, which
is more upbeat because of itsobjects. So, is the chapter on

(42:23):
Minor Triumphs, so Prodigy,Lower Decks, and Strange New
Worlds. These are programs thatyou say have less cataclysmic,
all or nothing stakes.
They have more modest ambitions.You know, they're largely not as
serialized, and you're notopposed to serialization, as you
point out with respect toDiscovery season one, but you do

(42:46):
also see virtue in thefranchises, you know, finally
coming back to to the episodicformat, particularly in Lower
Decks and Strange New Worlds,which is, you know, you suggest
part of what made the originalseries and the next generation
so popular and so accessible inreruns. So I obviously love Deep

(43:11):
Face Nine. I wrote a book aboutit, and that is kind of the show
that introduced serialization toStar Trek in the nineties. And I
think it did so really well.
But your book also forced me toconsider the ways that DS nine's
sort of serial turn might havealso left open something of a
Pandora's box in its wake. So Iwas persuaded, I think, by your

(43:35):
praise for the episodic aspectsof Lower Decks and Strange New
Worlds. And as you point out,like more contained episodic
shows can be really hard towrite well, but really
satisfying when they pull itoff. I also thought here a
little bit about Lauren Berlant,who has been a big influence on
me and a lot of other people andwho passed away back in 02/2001,

(43:59):
whose posthumous book, On theInconvenience of Other People,
has a whole discussion episodeas a concept. Verlant writes, To
call something an episode is notto denote a mere episode, life
reduced to things that happen.
It denotes a situation thattakes time, that rises and falls
in intensity and consequence,that may be forgettable until it

(44:22):
emerges later in a series. Itmight become an episode, it
might become an event that,reshapes a life or a world, but
it prefigures nothing. I thinkthat's just such an interesting
quote, especially in light ofeverything that's going on in
late Star Trek with respect toprequels and with respect to
writers having the time to dotheir work well. So, what is it

(44:44):
about these more episodic showslike Lower Decks and Strange New
Worlds? Why do these shows inyour view work to the extent
that they do?
What makes them successful?

Adam Kotsko (44:53):
I think that it's the factors that you mentioned,
like the fact that it'sepisodic, that the stories are
more self contained and by theirvery nature, they're not as high
stakes or not as cataclysmicthat it's not that the galaxy is
at stake in everything. And Ithink that that goes with the
fact that they're considered thesecond tier products that, like

(45:14):
strange new worlds was kind oflike created almost as a web,
you know, based on fan demand.After the captain Pike and the
young Spock appeared ondiscovery season two, everybody
thought that they did a reallygood job. They're like, we want
to see more from them. And theymade that happen.
And then just put out a kind of10 episode homage to original

(45:36):
series. That doesn't pretend tocontribute a ton to our
understanding of the franchiseor anything. And similarly lower
decks, you know, just it'sanimated format and that's kind
of like Rick and Morty esquetone. Just keep it from getting
too heavy into a full of itself.And I liked the quote that you

(45:59):
said from Lauren Berlant.
And I think that just on a nittygritty level of TV, back in the
heroic era of Star Trek, backwhen they had these twenty six
episode seasons that wereexpected to be 99% episodic.
They could just throw things outthere. Like sometimes an episode
could just be merely an episode.Sometimes, you know, have

(46:23):
something happens and then yourmemory is reset. You don't even
remember that it happened orsomething like that.
But then sometimes an episodecan unexpectedly touch a nerve
or lay down a marker andsuddenly you find yourself
wanting to follow-up. When Jordydecides to make a holodeck
version of the engineer whocreated the Enterprise, who
turns out to be an attractivewoman, and who in this avatar

(46:46):
gets along with him famously,one is almost compelled to have
that woman come to the ship anddiscover that this has happened,
you know, to create this like,unbearable cringe. A lot of the
follow-up stories in nextgeneration that they were
feeling their way to things.They created characters.

(47:07):
Sometimes they go away and weonly see them one time.
And then sometimes they becomelike semi recurring. Some
experiences of differentcharacters are important and
some are not. They just could,they could explore and they
could figure out what wouldresonate instead of committing
themselves to this kind oflockstep. Every single episode

(47:29):
is going to contribute to thisone overarching plot that we've
committed to and stake theentire season on. I think that
there's something about thestreaming format, serialized
format that is inherentlyinhuman.
Like if I had told you in02/2002, I am going to show you
a ten hour movie. You would havethought it was a torture

(47:52):
chamber. Like nobody wanted thisbefore streaming claim to have
like this ten hour movie format.And I think that there's
something, the fact thatstreaming seasons are so often
poorly paced so often repetitiveso often is because this is not
a format that works, that thehuman mind is set up to process

(48:14):
things and units of about a halfhour or an hour, maybe two hours
at the, at the limit. And Ithink that forcing everything
into the straight jacket of, ofa single story that's supposed
to fit everything is artificialand impossible to do.
And I think at its worst, itdivides each episode into like,

(48:37):
here's a one hour chunk of stuffthat we've arbitrarily like
divided it up. Think some of thestreaming seasons of Star Trek
do become that I thinkespecially the card season one
and two, you know, much ofdiscovery is like that. And I
think that the discipline of theepisode format, which discovery

(48:58):
season one, my favorite did Ithink do well, it did adhere to
the episode format. That thatcreates a more manageable, more
approachable, and a moreexploratory format that allows
things to emerge. I think thatthere's something about the
streaming format of the kind oflike everything has to be shoved
down this one path that fitswith the abuse of the writers

(49:22):
that we see happening thatbecame much more public during
the writers' strike.

David Seitz (49:26):
Yeah, I'll say too that the episodic shows are a
lot more teachable. When I teachmy first year course on Star
Trek, I just teach DS9 becausethen over the course of the six
weeks of viewings that we do inclass, they actually see the
build. But when I teach mysurvey class for sophomores,
juniors, and seniors, and Istart in the 60s and go all the
way to the present, I'd neverknow what to do of Discovery or

(49:48):
Picard. I usually just do thepilot because that, you know, it
sort of introduces a little bitof the concept, at least of one
of the seasons, but it's hard tosort of with these other series
that are more episodic, you canjust pick up a particular
morality play and say, okay,what was that saying about the
Vietnam War? What was thatsaying about the war on drugs?
You know, it's a little harder,not that there aren't political

(50:10):
messages, but like the form ofthem, as you say, is just harder
for the brain to digest and it'sharder to teach in a format that
like, I can't ask a studentreasonably to watch a whole
season of Picard and then writeabout it, you know, for a term
paper.

Adam Kotsko (50:24):
I did a course too. I took the risk of assigning
some Deep Space Nine episodes,even from Deep In. You know, fan
favorite episode in The PaleMoonlight, where Cisco and Garak
figure out this deceitful way toget the Romulans to join the war
and the balance of power. Like,it's so in the weeds, but it
does stand alone. Like, wasshocked how much it stood alone.

(50:44):
Rewatching it, I realizedthey're telling you everything
you need to know about thisparticular situation right now.
And the fact that you haven'tbeen following all the other
episodes, that means yourexperience is different, but it
doesn't mean that you don'tunderstand what's going on or
what's at stake in that episode.And I think that a similar
episode is one that I highlightfrom Strange New Worlds. So one
where there's the Klingonambassador who, Doctor. Mbenga

(51:07):
winds up.
This draws on the whole seasonof discovery with the Klingon
war and everything like that.And if you haven't seen that,
it'll hit differently. But thatepisode gives you everything you
need to follow it. You shouldtotally do In the Pale Moonlight
in your more survey classes inthe future.

David Seitz (51:24):
It's so salient. There's a number of episodes
about which people often say,Oh, this could have been a two
parter, but they often standapart really well because
they're not, you know, like FarBeyond the Stars could easily
have been a two parter. But thefact that it's not, it's like,
it's got the all of that densityand brilliance worked into this
episode that stands alone reallywell. Okay, so I like this book

(51:46):
a lot, right? I was one of thepress reviewers.
I was one of the blurbers. Ithink it succeeds in assessing
twenty first century Trek inassessing we could say how the
franchise got from there to hereif we wanna quote the awful
corny lyrics of the enterprisetheme song. My final question
for you has to do with whereyour work is going from here.

(52:06):
This is not your first book ontelevision. You've written
important work on politicaltheology and continental
philosophy.
What is next for you?

Adam Kotsko (52:14):
Yes. One thing that's not next for me, although
it was tempting, is I sawthere's a call for papers on a
special issue about Enterprise.And I am doing a Substack
newsletter that kind of is nowmy outlet for Star Trek stuff.
So people who want to hear moreabout Star Trek from me should
subscribe to that newsletter.But I'm kind of shifting gears

(52:35):
away from pop culture and awayfrom Star Trek for the near
future, kind of returning to myroots in political theology and
kind of the history of Christianthought.
I'm under contract right now towrite a book that's an
introduction to the topic ofpolitical theology. I'm hoping
that'll be a classroom resource,that that'll be just written at
a very kind of introductorylevel. Longer term, I had the

(52:59):
opportunity to apply for asabbatical, which would be the
first time I ever got any typeof research leave in my career.
What I am currently planning todo during that time is a study
of the Faust theme in maternity,the notion of selling your soul
to the devil and the specificversions of Faust. Things that

(53:21):
are avowedly about Faust andabout this character, you know,
like Marlowe's play or Greta'splay or things like that.
And then I want to try to mineless obvious texts that kind of
play with those themes. I'm justinterested in what Faust has to
say about modern concepts offreedom, ideas about scientific
curiosity, modern ideas ofauthority and how they're still

(53:43):
kind of working through thisChristian heritage and still
kind of have a guilty conscienceof trying to break with that
heritage. The way I think aboutFaust is as like one of the most
successful franchises of themodern world. And a lot of the
kind of patterns of thought thatI use in the Star Trek book,
would use it in the Faust bookas well. So it's not as big a

(54:05):
break as it might appear.

David Seitz (54:06):
Yeah. I was going to say, I'm going to lobby you
right now for a chapter on Inthe Pale Moonlight in that Faust
book. Cause you know, I'm sureGarik is somebody's idea of the
devil rightly or wrongly.

Adam Kotsko (54:17):
I actually wrote about that on my Substack. You
should check it out. I'll sendyou the link.

David Seitz (54:21):
Well, Adam, it's been a pleasure. I highly
recommend the book. I'm alreadythinking about I've actually
already been recommending it tostudents in my Star Trek course
this semester. The book is LateStar Trek, the final frontier in
the Franchise Era, availableeverywhere books are sold and on
University of Minnesota Presswebsite. Thanks.

Adam Kotsko (54:40):
Great, thank you.