Review of Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era by Adam Kotsko

Most of you probably know already: Star Trek is my first science-fiction love. Before Stargate, before Buffy, before even Supergirl, I grew up in the nineties watching the bright primary colours of TOS on a 13-inch CRT TV. I eschewed for a long time the muted, overly polished sequel series—the simplicity of the 1960s original made more sense to my kid brain. Yet I eventually succumbed (DS9 is my favourite, though TNG is an easier rewatch), and I was hooked. My first online community when I joined the internet at fourteen was a Star Trek roleplaying community. So any time I get to read an academic book about Trek, I will do so. Late Star Trek is such a book: a work of primary criticism, grounded in reference to primary and secondary sources, that explores the era of “Nu Trek,” starting with the connective tissue of Enterprise and going all the way through the Kelvinverse movies into Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy. It’s forthright and honest and insightful, and it’s exactly the kind of analysis I love reading about science fiction. I received an eARC from NetGalley and the University of Minnesota Press in exchange for a review.

Adam Kotsko is—and I say this as the utmost compliment—a huge nerd. Like, he spends time in the introduction explaining how he rose to the rank of Commander in r/DaystromInstitute because of how much time he has spent in the trenches there. Respect. It’s not a competition, but because it is relevant I want to highlight how Kotsko has clearly spent more time in the world of tie-in media—especially the novels and comics—than I have. (Though, nary a mention of any of the tie-in video games except for Star Trek: Online. Hath thou no respect for Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen, Adam???) Indeed, one of the tensions Kotsko explores here is how the revival of Star Trek’s Prime timeline beginning with DISCO but felt more deeply with PIC overwrote the “Beta canon” of the novelverse and how the novelverse itself reacted to that by trying to deal with this in-universe (god, I love science fiction writers so much).

More broadly, however, Late Star Trek encapsulates, as its subtitle implies, the ways in which the weight of the franchise has changed how people write and produce Trek in this era. Although canon and continuity are one dimension Kotsko analyzes, they aren’t his primary focus. Instead, he examines how cultural shifts—in values but also in more mundane things like the nature of the television industry and capitalism—have placed different constraints on modern Trek producers. While TOS might have suffered from increasingly constrictive budgets and flagging support from its network, it was unburdened by the expectations of fifty years of franchise. In this way, Kotsko argues that what he calls “late Star Trek” can measure its successes and failures not only by how its stories are received by fans (new and old alike) but by how well its multiplicity of series has weathered the ups and downs of a streaming era marked as much by corporate cynicism as by corporate greed.

Early on, Kotsko makes an interesting claim that gave me pause (emphasis mine):

… let us imagine the perspective of fans for whom Enterprise has served as their entry to Star Trek…. What would such fans think Star Trek is all about? I think the answer would be that Star Trek is about terrorism.

At first I was like, “Nah,” but then I pondered, nay, I ruminated, upon this proposition and eventually had to concede Kotsko has a point. As he argues, pretty much every installment of the franchise post-ENT has, in one way or another, foregrounded our twenty-first-century obsession with terrorism. And I think this observation is as fascinating as it is true simply because it’s not one that I have really seen before in my perusal of Trek commentary.

Late Star Trek goes on to analyze each aspect of the modern franchise. It begins with a post mortem of the much-panned ENT. Kotsko is more sympathetic to this series than I am—I always have at least once Trek series rewatch on the go, and it has never been ENT! Nevertheless, I see his point. From there, he examines the novelverse that took off during the dark times between ENT and DISCO, and he also devotes a chapter to the Kelvinverse movies. Then he gives DISCO and PIC their own chapters, respectively, before a single chapter looking at the “minor triumphs” of Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds. The book is pretty much up to date on all new Trek stories, though Kotsko notes his coverage of season 5 of DISCO is lighter because the book went to press just as this final season was airing. I’m glad for this, particularly given how the reveal about Crewman Daniels from ENT in the finale of DISCO corroborates Kotsko’s argument that one of DISCO’s primary legacies will be the way it cemented ENT into the Trek canon in a way that ENT itself could not have achieved were it still the final Trek television property. The only thing it really can’t comment on is the critical and commercial failure of Section 31, though given Kotsko’s critique of the over-reliance on this shadowy organization in the book (I concur, btw), I can guess what he might have to say about it.

This method of organization works great, and Kotsko’s writing is similarly fluent and easy to follow. Though academic and well-supported by references to various scholars, fan writers, and the primary texts themselves, Late Star Trek reads more like fan commentary than a dense academic text, and that’s all to the good. Basically, if you like reading hot takes on clickbait-heavy pop culture sites, Late Star Trek is exactly that—just much longer and with fewer ads.

I was pleased by how much I agreed with Kotsko despite notable points of disagreement too. For example, his critique of DISCO writing itself out of Trek canon (almost) with its constant, insecure need to reinvent itself culminating its flight into the timeline’s far future matches a lot of my feelings about this series. On the other hand, he is far more forgiving of the first season than I am—I famously disowned the show back when it premiered, though my stance softened over the years and culminated in a more philosophical outlook on the series. Similarly, Kotsko echoes some of my feelings about the first season of PIC, and though I did not write about it, I seem to be in the minority of fans who share Kotsko’s view that the third season’s fan service was, shall we say, cringey, and might be one of the weakest Trek seasons of this entire era.

All of this is to say, there is plenty in this book to think about, agree with, or disagree with. This is a book written by an avid fan for avid fans. It is a labour of love that pulls no punches when it dissects the quality of various series’ storytelling even as, overall, it clearly stakes a position that the current era of Trek is a good thing. Indeed, as I have said before, it blows my mind we live in a world where there is more new Trek broadcasting these days than at any other point in the franchise’s history. However, too often the criticism of newer Trek has been simplistic: this or that series is garbage; this or that series if for “real fans” versus the “new fans” or “fake fans” or whatever gatekeeping nonsense has seized a small yet vocal minority of the fandom. In reality, criticism needs nuance. No series—not even ENT!—is without its redemptive qualities. Similarly, being a fan of the franchise does not mean one must hold one’s tongue in criticizing any or all of the new series. Late Star Trek boldly goes forward with this mindset, and the result is a rewarding read for any Star Trek fan.