Show notes provided by Jack Adrien This year marks Star Trek’s 60th anniversary. Created by Gene Roddenberry – with more than a helping hand from D.C. Fontana and Gene L. Coon – to date, the science fiction media franchise has generated 13 television series and 13 theatrical releases, totaling 800 to 837 hours of content. Thus, it would take roughly 35 days of continuous viewing to watch every single episode and movie in the franchise. For those unfamiliar, with a focus on space exploration, diplomacy, and humanity's future among the stars, Star Trek uses science fiction allegory to address real-world social, political, and cultural issues since its television debut on Thursday, September 08, 1966. Most notably, Star Trek series storylines have covered multiracialism, racism, civil rights, artificial intelligence, the Cold War, war and peace, nuclear anxiety, geopolitical standoffs, gender identity, LGBTQ+ representation, terrorism, nationalism, post-scarcity, post-capitalistism, refugees, migrancy, artificial intelligence rights, and ethno-nationalism. And while Star Trek fits squarely in the science fiction genre, the franchise has strong elements of action, adventure, comedy, drama, mystery, soap opera, and western. Moreover, the predominately live-action franchise has created some installments through the animation, musical theater, and even puppetry mediums. With such wide ranging themes and storytelling methods across a sixty year period and counting, how can anyone hope to categorize, much less define, the franchise? Join the Mint Condition crew of James, Joe, John, Keith B., and Jack as we discuss “What is Star Trek?”...yesterday, and today.
