Amid SAG And WGA Strikes, Fans Celebrated 57 Years Of 'Star Trek' On Star Trek Day
Image Source: Keith Loves Movies
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek: The Animated Series, CBS Studios is releasing a set of shorts called Star Trek: Very Short Treks with creator Casper Kelly. These episodes are explicitly “anything but canon” Star Trek and feature favorite characters returning in various animation styles. The first episode, “Skin a Cat,” premiered on Star Trek Day, September 8. The episode features Spock, voiced by Ethan Peck, and an unspecified Captain, voiced by comedian Pete Holmes, alongside returning characters M’Ress and Arex from The Animated Series. With a runtime of under four minutes, “Skin a Cat” plays on the horrors of human idioms, like “to skin a cat,” to the non-alien species in Starfleet.
The second episode of Star Trek: Very Short Treks, "Holiday Party," premiered on September 13th and captures the return of Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura, Bruce Horak as Hemmer, Ethan Peck as Spock, and other special guests. In a non-canon fashion, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds characters on the Enterprise are celebrating First Contact Day when Earth humans and Vulcans made first contact. Hemmer gets the glorious line, “I guess [the Captain] believes the ship is immune from having engineering problems when we’re having a party,” and the crew watches bloopers that Spock has complied. What exactly does a Vulcan add to a blooper reel?
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Image Source: StarTrek.com
Later Star Trek: Very Short Treks will have more actors reprising their roles, including Jonathan Frakes as Will Riker and Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Armin Shimerman as Quark from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, George Takei as Sulu from Star Trek: The Original Series, Connor Trinneer as Trip Tucker from Star Trek: Enterprise, and Noël Wells as Tendi from Star Trek: Lower Decks. The three remaining episodes air on Wednesdays at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET on YouTube and StarTrek.com. Not to be outshined by the Very Short Treks, even more content has been released with Star Trek Day, including the new comic series, Star Trek: The Animated Celebration Presents The Scheimer Barrier. These 2D tales are also the creation of Casper Kelly and are drawn by Jonathan Case. New chapters are released on StarTrek.com on Wednesdays and the first two are available now.
Image Source: StarTrek.com
In other news, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes continue, seemingly without end. For the Star Trek universe, it has already impacted the futures of at least four production schedules - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season three, Star Trek: Discovery season five, the Star Trek: Section 31 movie event, and the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series. Two past writers’ strikes, in 1973 and 1988, generated new takes on Star Trek. In 1973, Star Trek: The Animated Series was just taking off when WGA went on strike, but guild members were able to write one episode for an animated series thanks to a loophole. This loophole gave showrunner D.C. Fontana the ability to bring in past Star Trek: The Original Series writers, as well as feature the work of science fiction writer Larry Niven (who wrote “The Slaver Weapon”) and actor Walter Koenig (who played Ensign Chekov in The Original Series and wrote “The Infinite Vulcan” for The Animated Series).
Image Source: Animation World Network
Star Trek: The Next Generation was finishing up its first season as the 1988 WGA strike emerged and consequently lasted for 154 days. The first season almost managed to avoid any issues due to the strike, but the second season definitely had noticeable changes. Some of the episodes were lacking in quality and the season was cut to only 22 episodes, making it the shortest of The Next Generation seasons. To avoid losing too much time in pre-production for season two, lawyers for the network were able to establish a contract stating that fans could submit story ideas and scripts for the show. Season two started four weeks late as scripts slowly emerged from fans and were accelerated into production.
Bringing us back to the present, the current WGA strike against studios has lasted over 4 months now. Members hold out from higher pay, including residual income, as well as assurance that they will not lose out on jobs to AI creation software. SAG-AFTRA actors joined the dual strike in July. On Star Trek Day, many Star Trek actors - including LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation), Jeri Ryan (7 of 9 in Star Trek: Voyager), George Takei (Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series), and Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation) - joined other WGA and SAG-AFTRA members on the picket line. Burton had this to say - “Let’s come back to the table. Let’s make a fair and equitable deal and let’s get back to work.”
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