Star Trek Is Winding Down Just When We Need It Most

Star Trek turns 60 in 2026 just as TV production winds down. Why its optimistic vision of diversity, technology, AI and humanity’s future matters more than ever

Next month, September 2026, marks an extraordinary milestone: 60 years since Star Trek first hit television screens, and in recent years we’ve been particularly lucky to have an avalanche of Trek on TV, from Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks and Prodigy, to Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy. But as we approach that anniversary, something rather sad is happening because, as I write this in August 2026, there are no new Star Trek television shows or movies currently in production.

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19/08/2026 0

The Future We Promised Ourselves – And Why We’re Not at Warp Yet

Shahzad Sheikh staring at the Starship Enterprise from a shuttlecraft window

I’ve always loved Star Trek for its vision of a hopeful, united, intelligent humanity. But as the USS Enterprise prepares to warp into the future, I can’t help but wonder – have we stranded ourselves in the past?

Stardate: Right-Here-Right-Now

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved Star Trek. Not because of the phasers, photon torpedoes, or the occasional red-shirt casualty (though let’s be honest, those were fun too). No – it was the future it promised. A future built on intellect, compassion, curiosity, and progress. A future where humanity finally grew up, stopped arguing about nonsense, cured disease, ended hunger, explored the stars – and had the decency to put cup holders on shuttlecraft.

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12/11/2025 0

The-last-sane-person-in-the-Asylum sort of day…

I’m sad, and more than a little personally gutted as something of a Trekker, to concede that the utopia dreamt up by Gene Roddenberry in the Star Trek universe will never come to be. This is not because Einstein killed the Warp Drive, or because we’ll all end up as scrambled molecules after ill-advised mass Transporter experiments.

It’s simply because the easiest of all the advancements depicted in Star Trek is beyond our grasp. That of course being ‘human evolution’. I’m not referring to the disappointment of not growing an extra pair of eyes in the back of our heads, or developing telepathic abilities, nor even sporting cybernetic implants and robotic limbs.

I mean sociological, conscientious and cultural evolution.

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06/02/2016 0