Star Trek is a phenomenon, no doubt about it. Since 1966 we’ve had the original series, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine (now in its fourth year) and Voyager (now in its second). There were 263 hours available for viewing in 1994, with more appearing all the time, seven feature films, and over one hundred titles in the novelisation series, of which 35 have made it into the New York Times bestseller list. With judicious channel-switching you can watch Star Trek pretty well all the time on American TV, and there are no doubt people who do. You might feel like saying to such ‘Trekkers’ – as, famously and unforgivably, Bill Shatner, the original Captain Kirk, did – ‘get a life.’ But it’s a good rule not to argue with success, at least until you understand what’s causing it, and anything which sparks such enthusiasm and active devotion among passive TV viewers can’t be all bad.

LRB 23 May 1996 | PDF Download