UPDATED: 'Star Trek' Fans Invited to Join Cast and Writers On Picket Line for 'United We Trek'
Image: Gilbert Flores for Variety.
UPDATE 8/30 - As of today, “United We Trek” will now be held in New York City as well as Los Angeles. Please scroll to the bottom for all the details.
AUGUST 29, 2023 - All hands to battle stations!
It’s been 47 days (a meaningful number to Star Trek fans of a certain era) since SAG-AFTRA, the union for about 160,000 media professionals around the world, joined the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines, demanding a “modern contract that addresses modern issues.”
Among those issues are the use of Artificial Intelligence in creating actors’ likenesses in perpetuity and residual payments for appearing on streaming services such as Netflix.
At the risk of stating the obvious, one result of the double strike is that television shows and films aren’t getting written or filmed. That includes Star Trek. With the strikes dragging on, it looks like the upcoming release of Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4 next week (and possibly the final season of Star Trek: Discovery, scheduled for release next year) will be the last new Trek we see for quite a while.
While the wait is frustrating for fans who want the Next Big Thing right now, Trekkies have a history of waiting out a dearth of Trek, and the actors and writers assure us it’s for a good cause.
According to a release shared with DSTN by John Billingsley (Star Trek: Enterprise), he, along with actors Jonathan Del Arco (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Picard), Natalia Castellanos (Bosch), and SAG-AFTRA Vice President Michelle Hurd (Star Trek: Picard) are organizing a Star Trek Day event.
Star Trek Day, as you know, is “a day intended to pay homage to Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a future, a future where everyone is treated with respect and corporate greed is a thing of the past.” The release suggests that the studios behind our favorite shows don’t share that vision. It goes on to say,
We ask that the creatives behind Star Trek - the writers, the actors, the craftspeople and the crew-members - gather together outside the gates of Paramount on [September] 8th to remind the executives who claim to 'own' this franchise that Star Trek’s values are anti-exploitative, and rooted in a deep belief that EVERYBODY has a role to play in the protection of our shared ecosystem.
The creative folks behind Star Trek aren’t the only ones invited to the party, though. Not only is “anyone who has ever worked on a Trek production, in any capacity, in front of or behind the camera” invited but so are any fans who want to show solidarity with the people who make their favorite franchise.
Fans have long been a part of supporting Star Trek, from the earliest days of The Original Series, when a letter-writing campaign saved it from oblivion. If you want to be a part of the latest support effort, the details are below.