It’s dying because its repeating the old mistake of trying to go back to the exact same formula, and because it’s less accessible.

In my opinion, Paramount taking Disco off of Netflix, in favour of sticking it onto its own streaming service, was a mistake. Although it meant that people were less able to access it, either because Paramount Plus wasn’t available in their region, or because they couldn’t justify the cost of spending money on another streaming service.

And in the meantime, it keeps trying to go back to the same thing. That was what killed it back at the start of the 21st century. Enterprise and Voyager were variants of exactly the same kind of thing as TNG, with better special effects. Everything keeps trying to go back in time, and cater to Nostalgia. Remember Captain Kirk? What about Picard? Or the Constitution-class Enterprise? There doesn’t feel much like there’s anything interesting in Trek any more. It’s basically all rehashing or nostalgia.

For all its flaws, part of what made Discovery interesting was that it was (not unlike the ship itself) an experimental testbed. Writers would, and did, just throw everything at it, for good and ill, and I’d argue it worked. Having that flexibility gave us the second wave of Trek, and I’d argue just as much that Discovery settled into being some kind of 32nd century TNG was either a harbinger, or hurt it severely.

What Trek really needs for a revival is something that the network would never allow (CBS/Paramount would never risk their cash cow.), and that is to go back to its roots. Not in the Federation-and-Enterprise way, but in what made TOS.

TOS stood out because it wasn’t like the other cowboy shows at the time, or like the rocketty sci-fi of the era. It was distinct. It pushed the social-progressive line so hard it was nearly pulled off the air, and if Roddenberry had had his way with including an LGBT member in TOS like he’d wanted, might have done so outright.

Newer Trek (TNG and onwards) is much safer and more conservative by comparison, to the point of being boring. It barely pushes the line, if at all. The Orville, by virtue of having less brand baggage behind it, arguably does a better job of being progressive.

Visually, too. Every Federation starship basically follows the same template, even into the far distant future. Trek is not glued to the appearance of the Constitution-class Enterprise, or a variant of such for its hero ships, nor does every ship need to use warp engines and that.

A minor side tangent, but reverting to the same kind of thing is why I was rather disappointed with what Discovery did with the 32nd century. It would have been far more interesting if they’d gone to a time when all the powers we know and are familiar with, and even the tech aboard Discovery were ancient and long-deprecated.

Discovery in the 32nd Century, as an Equinox counterpart of the Voyager plot could have been amazing, both from them being an outdated starship in what used to be familiar territory and what it would mean to maintain Federation values when the Federation doesn’t even exist any more.

Honestly, I think bits of Picard and Strange New Worlds had the right idea when it came to the Synth ban, and the Illyrian extinction. Show us the downsides of Federation policy for things that might have been well-intentioned, but had negative or mixed effects, and how they fixed/improved it. That’s something we’ve rarely seen in Trek, in a way that wasn’t just “we don’t like this rule, so we’ll ignore it”.

Here comes the question: If you’re in Alex Kurtzman’s position, how are you going to sell the franchise to a new, young audience? How are you going to convince kids who spend their time playing Roblox and watching Mr. Beast that Star Trek is a good show to watch?

The young audience isn’t a monolith, and I’d argue that Star Trek is better off not competing head-to-head. Could you imagine DS9 or Voyager with their totally not-a-square radical groovy Teenage Mutant Starfleet Captain? It would be unwatchable. Hell would be upon us.

Instead, Trek could benefit by competing through simply not competing, and stand out, rather than copy other sci-fi. Give us what Trek has always been, a nice slow comfort watch, where everyone is competent, and everything isn’t always at stake or fisticuffs all the time. That may work to its benefit, when everything else is dark and gritty, since it would be distinct compared to other things.