ABSTRACT
As the most extensive and important multimedia franchise in the history of science fiction, the Star Trek empire provides some especially interesting examples of the issues involved in translating content from one medium to another. With the original television series, broadcast on NBC from 1966 to 1969, as the founding text, the franchise grew through the 1970s, when the original series both went into syndication and underwent its first adaptation into another medium when converted into an animated series (Star Trek: The Animated Series,1973–74), with most of the original cast providing the voices for their increasingly iconic characters. From there, talk of reviving the original series on a new television network to be founded by Paramount Studios gradually morphed into plans for a Star Trek feature film from Paramount, especially after the huge box-office success of the original Star Wars in 1977. Those plans eventually led to the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Much maligned by critics (and many fans of the original series), this film was nevertheless a commercial success that led to the release in 1982 of a much-admired sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, then further sequels (still featuring the original series cast) in 1984, 1986, 1989, and 1991. By the time Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was released in 1991, the Star Trek film sequence was clearly losing steam, although the franchise had returned to television with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), featuring a new cast and an overall look and feel that clearly identified the series as inspired more directly by the films than by the original television series. Meanwhile, the success of this new series suggested that the Star Trek franchise was still far from morbidity.
