7 things nobody wants to admit about Star Trek

7. Trauma treatment

The format of the original series and its immediate successors did a great job of avoiding extended story arcs and focused on self-contained episodes. This didn’t translate well to distinct portrayals of psychological trauma and its long-term effects. Characters would frequently experience horrific events – much like Captain Kirk watching a loved one die for the greater good or Captain Picard being assimilated by the Borg – only to seem mostly unaffected in the following episodes.

Now, there were exceptions, like the Next Generation episode “Family,” where Picard deals with his own trauma. But those episodes were rare. The episodic and storytelling formats of the time resulted in the original series completely overlooking the mental and emotional toll of the life-or-death situations that these characters faced on the regular.

However, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard were written in such a way that they allow for deeper character development and more realistic portrayals of trauma. For instance, Michael Burnham in Discovery continuously deals with her complex feelings of guilt and loss over the death of her parents and her role in the Klingon war.

In Picard, Picard not only faces the lingering emotional scars from his past but also confronts the existential dread brought on by his health and age. By taking the time to explore these issues across multiple episodes or even entire seasons, these newer series in the franchise acknowledge that trauma is real, nothing to joke about, and a complex issue that needs more than a single episode to resolve.

The quirks and inconsistencies in the Star Trek franchise are less about shortcomings and more a testament to the franchise’s changing and adapting to the modern world and its own issues. While some of these are a little… off, they’re also part of what makes Star Trek uniquely engaging and relevant to this day, 57 years after its introduction.

As the franchise evolves, it has started to address some of its more relevant inconsistencies, especially in newer series. But even if some questions are never fully answered, these little blips have a way of becoming treasured aspects of Trek lore and history.