Star Trek at 60 Amid Paramount's 'Woke' Cancellation — SkimNews
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- Star Trek celebrates its 60th anniversary on 8 September, born in 1960s idealism as a utopian vision of humanity exploring rather than conquering.
- William Shatner, now 95 and Canadian-born, was hired in 1965 after NBC rejected Jeffrey Hunter's "ponderous" pilot performance; he suggested "a lighter touch" that sold the series.
- Nichelle Nichols shared television's first high-profile scripted interracial kiss with Shatner in the 1968 episode "Plato's Stepchildren," and Martin Luther King personally convinced her to stay on the show after she considered quitting.
- Paramount, merged with Skydance Media for $8bn, cancelled the latest Star Trek series amid claims it was too "woke."
- Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy White House chief of staff, called Starfleet Academy "Beyond parody" and urged Paramount to reconcile with Shatner and give him total creative control.
- Peter Thiel told the New York Times in 2017 that "Star Trek is the communist one" because there is no money, while "Star Wars is the capitalist show" — a framing Shatner said he'd love to debate.
- Creator Gene Roddenberry, a WWII bomber pilot who survived a plane crash in the Syrian desert, built the franchise's anti-war ethic alongside writing partner Gene Coon, a Marine and Korean War-era trained reporter.
Why it matters: Star Trek's 60th birthday lands mid-tug-of-war over its soul: Paramount's $8bn Skydance merger coincided with cancelling the latest series as "too woke," while a Trump White House aide publicly lobbies for Shatner to retake creative control. The article's sharpest irony — that the franchise's founders were combat veterans who built its identity around anti-war ethics and on-screen racial integration — directly contradicts the selective conservatism its self-described right-wing fans now project onto it.
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