Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the series of the same name and became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon.

Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer space—a so-called "Wagon Train to the stars"—he privately told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale.

[8][9][10][11] Most Star Trek stories depict the adventures of humans and aliens who serve in Starfleet, the space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping armada of the United Federation of Planets.

[12] Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, economics, racism, religion, human rights, sexism, feminism, and the role of technology.

[13]: 57  Roddenberry stated: "[By creating] a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles.

"[14] Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive political agenda reflective of the emerging counter-culture of the youth movement, though he was not fully forthcoming to the networks about this.

[19] After the original series was canceled, Desilu, which by then had been renamed Paramount Television, licensed the broadcast syndication rights to help recoup the production losses.

Paramount Pictures and Roddenberry began developing a new series, Star Trek: Phase II, in May 1975 in response to the franchise's newfound popularity.

[31] Following Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Roddenberry's role was changed from producer to creative consultant, with minimal input to the films, while being heavily involved with the creation of The Next Generation.

[13]: 268 [10]: 591–593  Star Trek had become known to those within Paramount as "the franchise", because of its great success and recurring role as a tent pole for the studio when other projects failed.

[32] The Next Generation had the highest ratings of any Star Trek series and became the most syndicated show during the last years of its original seven-season run.

Star Trek production reached a peak in the mid-1990s with Deep Space Nine and Voyager airing concurrently and three of the four Next Generation-based feature films released in 1994, 1996, and 1998.

Proposals included pitches from film director Bryan Singer, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, and Trek actors Jonathan Frakes and William Shatner.

[64] The first of these movies, Section 31, stars Michelle Yeoh, reprising her role as Empress Georgiou from Discovery,[65] and was given a release date of January 24, 2025.

Several actors from the television series have also written or co-written books featuring their respective characters: William Shatner, John de Lancie, Andrew J. Robinson, J. G. Hertzler and Armin Shimerman.

[72]: 213 A 2014 scholarly work Newton Lee discussed the actualization of Star Trek's holodeck in the future by making extensive use of artificial intelligence and cyborgs.

On April 23, 2023, Star Trek: Resurgence, a narrative adventure video game set in the Next Generation era, was released by Dramatic Labs.

Star Trek also brought teleportation to popular attention with its depiction of "matter-energy transport", with the famously misquoted phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" entering the vernacular.

While more common in subsequent years, in the 1960s it was controversial to feature an Enterprise crew that included a Japanese helmsman, a Russian navigator, and a black female communications officer.

[98][99] In 2020, the US effort to develop a vaccine to protect against COVID-19 was named Operation Warp Speed, which was suggested by a Star Trek fan, Peter Marks.

[100] Early parodies of Star Trek included a famous sketch on Saturday Night Live titled "The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise", with John Belushi as Kirk, Chevy Chase as Spock and Dan Aykroyd as McCoy.

This film is based on the premise that aliens monitoring the broadcast of an Earth-based television series called Galaxy Quest, modeled heavily on Star Trek, believe that what they are seeing is real.

Pinafore that sets the operetta in the world of Star Trek has played in Los Angeles and was attended by series luminaries Nichelle Nichols,[citation needed] D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold.

Revealed to the public in 2013, the spoof along with parodies of other media franchises was cited as an example of the misuse of taxpayer funds in a congressional investigation.

[115] MacFarlane has made references to Star Trek on his animated series Family Guy, where the Next Generation cast guest-starred in the episode "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven".

The profit-sharing agreement for the series split proceeds between Norway, Desilu (later Paramount Television), William Shatner's production company, and the broadcast network, NBC.

However, Star Trek lost money during its initial broadcast, and NBC did not expect to recoup its losses by selling the series into syndication, nor did Paramount.

[citation needed] Rights and distribution issues, and the fraught relationship between the leadership at CBS, Viacom, and the National Amusements' board of directors, resulted in a number of delayed and canceled Star Trek productions between 2005 and 2019.

[138] During this period, both CBS and Viacom continued to list Star Trek as an important asset in their prospectus to investors, and in corporate filings made to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[140] National Amusements' board of directors approved the merger on October 28, 2019, which was finalized on December 4, bringing the Star Trek franchise back under one roof.