There are plenty of good responses here already, but to me the main thing in marketing Trek to new audiences would be stop the frigging nostalgia fest.

• don’t circle back to the TOS characters at the tip of a hat. Yes, JJ Abrams, I’m looking at you, but also every other recent attempt at new Star trek movies.
• All the stories around those characters have been told already. Make something new and current within the same universe.
• Don’t shoehorn canon and continuity onto every new show. Having Bones make a cameo in the TNG pilot was cute. Making Burnham a previously unmentioned lynchpin in Spock’s character was… unnecessary. Don’t get me started on SNW.
• The wealth of continuity from previous shows shouldn’t be a namecheck scorecard, but a backdrop that curious current viewers can track down and explore on their own.

Twenty years ago when the BBC relaunched Doctor Who, they played down all the background stuff for most of the first season, only drip feeding lore to the audience.

• The stories, the characters had to be appealing on their own
• The 26 seasons worth of classic Who wasn’t required watching to keep up, but it gave resonance to the new show.

Star trek needs to learn from that approach to focus on good stories and engaging characters — and to aim outside of the established but dwindling fan group by allowing the almost 60 years of canon to play second violin.

Un-cancel Lower Decks. 😉

Honestly, though, I feel like most media groups in general forget why the streaming model worked in the first place. They want Office-level hits, but forget that The Office wasn’t immediately successful. Not immediately killing it just because of that gave it time to find a fandom.

Most shows should automatically get 2-3 seasons, and they often aren’t getting that.

As for the whole “none of them knew what Star Trek was” anecdote - I find that a bit exaggerated. I’m a college student, and I wore a Boimler costume for Halloween- most could identify that I was something Star Trek. Around other people my age, they can at least think of Spock or Patrick Stewart.

How I got into Trek as a kid was my mom would be watching it, and she’d let us join even though we were supposed to be doing homework. TNG was the one I saw the most during that.

P.S: As I’ve floated around this forum several times, I think an animated anthology series of strange new crews would be awesome.

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.

What is the age range they are classifying as young? Are they talking like teenagers or mid-20s to 30s? The thing with Star Trek that I think attributes to the non-fans not watching would be the stylization. Going back to the comparison of MCU, HP, and Star Wars: they all have something unique (be it the directing, photography, acting, writing, music, special effects, etc.) that if you pay attention for a significant period will find. Star Trek is no different. When you watch a MCU movie or TV show you probably see the sleek costumes and fast paced fight choreography. With HP, it was probably all the special effects, makeup and set design. For Star Wars it might be the writing, special effects and music.

I’m being non-specific here of course. Star Trek like I said is no different. There are visual and non-visual language being utilized that we find enjoyment in. For anyone not currently into these properties, it could be difficult to enjoy. Especially if you haven’t been someone who watched these properties from a young age or from the early years. For example, if you had someone exposed to only the Kelvin Timeline try to watch TOS or TNG with no context for how it relates, a disconnect might form. Visually those series are not as sleek or modernized as those movies.

As for the comparison to video games… that is simply a different medium. What appeals to one person to the next will be hard to gage. That doesn’t preclude the likes of Fortnite players from enjoying Trek, but culturally that kind of entertainment is very different from what a kid who grow up with TNG was exposed to.

My personal experience is that one should be ready to watch star trek.

When I was 20 I simply wasn’t ready and didn’t try watching any of it despite a friend insisting it was worth it.

Two years ago, instead, I was so ready that I could enjoy TOS too

I’m still not at discovery, so I need to see the nuTrek to say more. But I really just think you can’t advertise trek too much.

Re runs and free yt uploads of TNG with advertising like “here’s a future we can have, with quality leadership. Keep fighting for decency”

@concrete_baby

Could there be a reboot that decides to go back to the optimistic world view of the original?

It’s not just Trek. Who decided that all SciFi has to be dystopian, brooding, militaristic, or horror?

It’s ironic that if you want Trek with the vibe of the original you have to watch “The Orville”.

It’s more TV is dying and Kurtzman hates Star Trek as a concept and can only write one kind of story. There is this thing we need to find that thing. An entire season about finding that thing.

When star trek is done right it works and gets shared around and does well. The five OG star trek series. Strange new worlds, The Orville Prodigy

It also kills me that Kurtzman misses the entire point of what Section 31 was in DS9. When he said a utopia can’t exist without someone doing the dirty work like S31. That kinda of undermineds the entire point of star trek and If we have gotten to that point star trek is already dead and a dystopian zombie is wearing it’s face.

They had the good idea with the Kelvinverse as a more approachable, mainstream friendly variant to classic Star Trek. Then they made Discovery and killed all momentum, alienating both old and new fans.

Either reboot it or let it die. If I wanted to make the effort to dive into such an convoluted world, I’d get into LotR. I will never understand everybody’s fascination with decades old franchises with impenetrable lore. Nothing against Star Trek specifically, I’m just tired of seeing media and thinking “Oh, that looks interesting, I’d like to get into that” just to find out there’s a backlog of 47 years of world building I have to catch up on before I get to enjoy it. This is why I never got into Dr. Who, Star Trek, LotR, Warhammer, WoW or One Piece.

I think the sensibilities of the audience has shifted since the new millennia. Multicam feels claustrophobic to the modern audience and that’s one of the main aesthetics of retro trek.

The other thing is that every Trek series, aside from DS9, depicts a pretty rigid, hierarchical, militaristic environment. Maybe not as much as Klingons or Cardassians but I think this setting, the nomenclature, the general vibe is becoming alienating to a modern audience. Keep in mind, people have become highly cynical toward predominately white and Westernized institutions, and the Federation is very much that. It feels like America with Aliens on board. English is the only language ever really spoken aside from some alien languages.

In my opinion, there needs to be a show that pulls heavily from DS9 while maintaining some of that optimism and sincerity we love from retro Trek. It needs to oscillate between these juxtaposed tones. The show should be told from the perspective of multiple equals that make consensus based decisions instead of a primary Captain like Picard, Sisko, or Janeway who supersedes all decisions. Everyone has specific roles but there is no hierarchy.

Also, remove the white savior element that retro Trek holds over many of the beings they come across in the franchise. The group, whomever they are, would be far more interesting as some kind of nomadic space commune that is extremely removed from federation involvement. If anything, I’d say at most there is one person with ties to the federation but perhaps they left for unknown reasons providing rich backstory and future storylines if they do come across the federation.

This perspective is more akin to the actual lens the average viewer sees the world. We are not making cosmic decisions, we’re just trying to survive. And, when we see the government, we see a dark looming presence hovering over us, trying to tell us the best way to live our lives, and it’s fucking annoying, right?

That should be the New Trek.

Honestly, the things that made me start to like it again was Below Decks, because it was different and fun and animated, sure, but what made me like Star Trek again was the moments of optimism and niceness that were in the show. Sometimes it was as a joke where you think something is going to be bad and it turned out fine, which is fine, but if reminded me of the thing that separates Star Trek from other shows is that it has this sense of optimism. Optimism for the future, that things are going to be ok, and humanity will get it’s act together and live up to our own ideals.

The edgy remakes don’t feel like that.

I fell in love with Star Trek through TNG and reruns of the original series. I remember watching reruns of both for hours on end. DS9 and Voyager were great as well. What kept me interested and engaged was the network accessibility. I haven’t watched any of the series since Voyager because they weren’t available without a subscription.

You want a growing fanbase, you need to remove the walls.

I think the current approach is the correct one, even if it produces a few misses here and there.

A variety of tonally distinct projects, aimed at different demographics, telling stories.

I would lecture the little weaklings on how life was like in my day, and tell them to get off my lawn.