--- title: How Star Trek: The Next Generation Changed Pop Culture Forever description: This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first of many extensions of Gene Roddenberry's "Wagon Train... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7121189/25-years-later-how-star-trek-the-next-generation-created-changed-pop-culture-forever/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-09-26T12:00:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T05:59:37.377Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Next Generation Created Today's Pop Culture Landscape og:description: As 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' turns 25, we look at the ways in which it introduced us to the future we all live in og:url: https://time.com/archive/7121189/25-years-later-how-star-trek-the-next-generation-created-changed-pop-culture-forever/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt141e2ec77e0a6596/698a8f9f18689241b66cdd96/star-trek-the-next-generation.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Star-Trek-The-Next-Generation og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Next Generation Created Today's Pop Culture Landscape twitter:description: As 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' turns 25, we look at the ways in which it introduced us to the future we all live in twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt141e2ec77e0a6596/698a8f9f18689241b66cdd96/star-trek-the-next-generation.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # How Star Trek: The Next Generation Changed Pop Culture Forever > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Sep 26, 2012 12:00 PM UTC  Keine Verwendung in Gro britannien, No usage in Great Britain, Please check additional restrictions!, Bitte Einschr nkungen der by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Sep 26, 2012 12:00 PM UTC This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of _Star Trek: The Next Generation_, the first of many extensions of Gene Roddenberry’s [“Wagon Train To The Stars”](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WagonTrainToTheStars) concept for a television series. Although it’s easy to make fun of the series for its many quirks — it was, after all, a show where everyone wore space-age [onesies](http://www.gerberchildrenswear.com/Boy/gerber-onesiesbrand-boy,default,sc.html) for the first three years — what’s often overlooked is that, in many ways, _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ turned out to be an eerie predictor of the world we live in today. I don’t mean that in the traditional sense, where people point out the way in which the show’s futuristic technology — [The Holodeck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual%5Freality)! [Geordi’s visor](http://royalsociety.org/news/retinal-implant/)! [_Warp drive_](http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html)! — has started to work its way into our reality. (And, yes, I know; _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ [invented the iPad more than two decades before Steve Jobs](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/08/how-star-trek-artists-imagined-the-ipad-23-years-ago/). They even called it [the PADD](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD), somewhat presciently.) I’d rather focus on the fact that _Star Trek: The Next Generation_, seemingly by accident, managed to create a model of what pop culture would be like a quarter of a century later — and no one really noticed. Such grand ambitions clearly weren’t the primary motivator behind the creation of the series. That was a simple business decision. Looking at the success of the _Star Trek_ movie series — _Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home_ was [the fifth most successful movie of the year in 1986](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1986&p=.htm) — executives at Paramount, which owned the series at the time, asked themselves whether or not they could return the property to the small screen on a regular basis and make it profitable. In one sense, this wasn’t a new idea; movies had been translated into television shows for years by this point, with [wildly](http://www.mash4077tv.com/) [variable](http://www.tvrage.com/shows/id-2466) [results](http://planetoftheapes.wikia.com/wiki/Planet%5Fof%5Fthe%5FApes%5F%28TV%5FSeries%29). However, what Paramount had in mind was something less common; instead of transferring the same characters, settings and status quo of the movies to the small screen, recasted with cheaper actors, they wanted to create something that would be _Star Trek_, but also leave enough space (no pun intended) for the successful movie series to continue without their appeal lessened by the same material being available each week for free on TV. (**MORE:** [Get Back: _Prometheus_, _Before Watchmen_ and the Complicated Art of the Prequel](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/07/get-back-prometheus-before-watchmen-and-the-complicated-art-of-the-prequel/)) What emerged from this need was a show that was both a sequel to the original _Trek_, but almost entirely new at the same time. The mission survived the translation — although “where no man has gone before” was updated for the ’80s and became “no _one_“. A surface reading of both the original _Star Trek_ and _The Next Generation_ could cast both shows as the same beast, but that’s not really the case. _The Next Generation_ was a more thoughtful series — at times, to its detriment — one that was less likely to jump into action or romance the closest sexy alien lady that week than it was to [sit down and talk about its feelings before deciding that, well, maybe things are _very complicated_ and perhaps inaction is a valid response to events after all](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mH-L6UCCAE). _The Next Generation_ was a new take on the _Star Trek_ mission statement, separate enough from what had come before — and what the movie audiences were paying for when they watched Kirk, Spock et al. save the day in _Star Trek V: The Final Frontier_ and _Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_, both made and released during _The Next Generation_‘s run — to turn the sure thing into something that must have seemed far riskier at the time. These days, of course, we’re used to the idea of rebooting series and franchises and getting new takes on what had come before, keeping the best bits and discarding what doesn’t fit for something that everyone hopes is better. That wasn’t the case back in 1987\. Back then, translations between media tried their best to faithfully replicate previous iterations, and even oddities like the Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks _Dragnet_ movie that predated _The Next Generation_ by a matter of months tried their hardest to offer affectionate homage to their predecessors, even as they pretended to parody them. _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ may not be a reboot in the common usage of the term today: It takes place in the same continuity as the earlier series, and doesn’t seek to _replace_ it or undo anything that came before, but for all intents and purposes it was a reboot for the concept and a chance for Roddenberry and staff to correct whatever mistakes or bad decisions had been forced on the original. The show was an unknown quantity, of course. _Star Trek_ without William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy? Who would _watch_ such a thing, the common wisdom wondered, secretly expecting a flop. Instead, the show was a hit and, within five years and the addition of spin-off series _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_, a successful franchise. The creators of the _Star Trek_ television series — Roddenberry himself, but also producers and show runners like Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor and many others — managed not only to demonstrate how to make fans accept a reboot of a much-beloved concept, but also turn said concept into a repeatable, formulaic format that could sustain multiple series running concurrently. Not only does modern-day reboot culture have its first blossoming here, but so does procedural culture. Whether intentionally or otherwise, the team behind all things _Star Trek_ successfully managed to turn story into commodity — and, more importantly, have everyone from the creators to the fans, accept this as a really good thing. _CSI_ and _Law & Order_? You’re welcome. (**MORE:** [Top 10 Long-Running Movie Franchises](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/07/18/top-10-long-running-movie-franchises/)) But modern-day pop culture owes more to _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ than just making the world a safer place for _NCIS: Los Angeles_. _TNG_ was a massively successful show; when the show finished in 1994, it had [become the highest-rated drama in syndicated television, boasting 15 to 20 million viewers a week](http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,302144,00.html). This was far beyond anything managed by the original _Star Trek_ — a show that had, after all, been canceled twice in its three-year run. This kind of success took the show far beyond any expectation of “cult” and transcended what was expected of genre television in general. _Star Trek: The Next Generation_, somehow, made nerd culture mainstream for the first time. (For those wanting to quibble with the “first time” thing by pointing to the success of _Star Wars_… Okay, I might give you that, but I would argue that _Star Wars_‘ original release was more phenomenon fad, whereas _The Next Generation_ sustained its level of popularity fairly consistently for seven years. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.) This may seem less impressive in today’s world filled with _Avengers_, _Dark Knight_s who _Rise_ and Spider-Men, _Amazing_ or otherwise. Nowadays, nerd culture _is_ pop culture, in many ways. But before _Star Trek: The Next Generation_, that wasn’t the case. Genre programming had been on the decline since the 1960s, replaced by more action-oriented series for men and soap operas like _Dallas_ and _Dynasty_ for women. Even though the fervor for _Star Trek_ faded when that show finished (_Deep Space Nine_ and _Voyager_ both performed well in terms of ratings, but nowhere near the level of _The Next Generation_, and the less said about _Enterprise_, the better), nerd culture had broken through and refused to disappear entirely. _The X-Files_, _Buffy_, _Lost_… There’s always been at least one successful, zeitgeist-defining genre show on American television since _The Next Generation_ (today’s, I’d argue, is _Doctor Who_. An import, sure, but it sets the tone in a way that nothing else really matches on the small screen these days) — something that would have seemed unimaginable before Captain Picard stood up on a weekly basis, tugged on his jersey and told his faithful audience to make it so. Preparing us for a world of reboots and procedural franchises, making the geek mainstream… there’s a lot to be thankful for when it comes to _Star Trek: The Next Generation_. It may not have been the best of the _Trek_s — that’s _Deep Space Nine_ as far as I’m concerned, although you can argue in the comments about the merits of that choice — and it may even, at times, sailed a little too close to being hokey or even dull, but no one can complain that it didn’t fulfill the one promise it made at the start of every single episode, to boldly go where no one had gone before. And, of course, take us along for the ride. **PHOTOS:** [Star Trek ‘s Most Notorious Villains](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1896948,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121189/25-years-later-how-star-trek-the-next-generation-created-changed-pop-culture-forever/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121189/25-years-later-how-star-trek-the-next-generation-created-changed-pop-culture-forever/"},"headline":"How Star Trek: The Next Generation Changed Pop Culture Forever","datePublished":"2012-09-26T12:00:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:59:37.377Z","description":"This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first of many extensions of Gene Roddenberry's \"Wagon Train...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7121189/25-years-later-how-star-trek-the-next-generation-created-changed-pop-culture-forever/","keywords":["iPad","Enterprise"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt141e2ec77e0a6596/698a8f9f18689241b66cdd96/star-trek-the-next-generation.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt141e2ec77e0a6596/698a8f9f18689241b66cdd96/star-trek-the-next-generation.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Star-Trek-The-Next-Generation","caption":"","creditText":"Keine Verwendung in Gro britannien, No usage in Great Britain, Please check additional restrictions!, Bitte Einschr nkungen der","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121189/25-years-later-how-star-trek-the-next-generation-created-changed-pop-culture-forever/","name":"How Star Trek: The Next Generation Changed Pop Culture Forever"}}]}] ```