CURIOSITYAndy Weir Torched Modern Star Trek and Now He’s Very Sorry4 min read

The Social Commentary He Never Wanted

This wasn’t new territory for Weir. Back in 2017, promoting his novel Artemis, he told Futurism he’d always been bothered by what he called the “presumed responsibility” within Star Trek to take on social issues. His preference was blunter: “I just want to watch Romulans and the Federation shoot at each other.”

The irony there is almost too easy. “Balance of Terror,” the original series episode that introduced the Romulans, is remembered sixty years later not for the space battle but for its unflinching look at wartime xenophobia. The shooting is the frame. The idea is the point. Pull the social commentary out of that episode and you lose most of what makes it worth watching.

Shatner Responds to the Cancellation

When Starfleet Academy was canceled, Weir’s original comments had greeted the news with something close to satisfaction. William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk across decades of film and television, went the other direction. In a public post, he described Star Trek as existing in two worlds simultaneously — the world of science fiction spectacle, and the world of human aspiration: the perfection of human beings, the moral and physical exploration that defines us. He called the cancellation sorrowful.

Two public figures. Same piece of news. One found the cancellation deserved; the other found it a loss worth mourning. The gap between those reactions is its own argument about what Star Trek has always been — and whether the social commentary Weir wanted stripped out was ever really optional at all.