TheLast Generation — CBS sets phaser to stun and fires Star Trek web site staff

Informationweek reports that CBS has fired the entire production staff at StarTrek.com, a site which has operated for the past 13 years, housing news, features, images and video related to the original Star Trek series — not to mention the numerous movies, sequels and prequels it generated.

While I haven’t been a fan for years, I am really surprised to hear this. True, I don’t know the business case for keeping the site up — honestly half the time I can’t see the profitability model for most sites — but I know that Trekkies are a very dedicated bunch. And there is advertising on the site — not to mention promotions and sales for Star Trek ringtones.

Back in 1967 when NBC announced they were canceling the original show, tens of thousands of fans wrote in and saved it (I was one of them — a member of Vulcanian Enterprises, the NY Star Trek fan club and we generated a lot of letters). Next season NBC tried to cancel it again and the same thing happened.

The fan base is so devoted that they have become worthy of anthropological study. After all, this is a franchise that has been going strong now for 40 years. Over at Boing Boing they note that the show ihas become the subject of academic study — with a group of religious studies professors in Canada, Britain and the United States contributing essays to a scholarly book entitled Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture. I would have never guessed back when I was 16 and going to my first SF Worldcon.

So will an email writing campaign save startrek.com? As a gay man angry with our invisibility on the show, I have to say at this point I don’t really care.