Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry and owned by Paramount, which began with the series of the same name and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon. Since its creation, the franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books, and it has become one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
The franchise began with Star Trek (The Original Series), which premiered on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. In the United States, it debuted on September 8, 1966, on NBC. The series followed the voyages and crew of the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century, on a mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before". In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series of novels, Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, and television westerns such as Wagon Train.
The Star Trek canon includes The Original Series, several subsequent television series, and a film franchise; further adaptations also exist in expanded media. After the conclusion of The Original Series, the adventures of its characters continued in The Animated Series, and six feature films. A television revival beginning in the late 1980s and concluding in the mid 2000s saw four spinoff series: The Next Generation, following the crew of a new starship Enterprise a century after the original series; Deep Space Nine and Voyager, both set in the same era as the Next Generation; and Enterprise, set a century before the original series in the early days of human interstellar travel. The adventures of the Next Generation crew continued in four additional feature films. In 2009, the film franchise underwent a reboot, creating an alternate continuity known as the Kelvin timeline; three films have been set in this continuity. The most recent Star Trek revival began streaming on digital platforms in 2017 with series set at various points in the original continuity: Discovery (Seasons 1–2) and Strange New Worlds set before The Original Series; anthology series Short Treks; Picard, Lower Decks and Prodigy set during or after the Next Generation era; and Discovery (seasons 3–5) and Starfleet Academy set in the 32nd century.
Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. From 1998 to 2008, there was a Star Trek–themed attraction in Las Vegas. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world. The constructed language Klingon was created for the franchise. Several Star Trek parodies have been made, and viewers have produced several fan productions.
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