Films
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, compared to Star Trek: The Motion Picture and much more than the series. With all the graphic injuries on display, it would not be rated PG today. It's the only Star Trek film with a 15 certificate in the UK. Even Star Trek: First Contact is only a 12.
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
- Shatner wanted to depict an edgier future, so we got a desolate city named "Paradise", a malfunctioning Enterprise, and the Star Trek universe's first (but not last, alas) fart joke. Wow.
- Shatner was also (reportedly) never thrilled with Roddenberry's idea of a utopian future, so he introduced those elements to show a more "realistic" future.
- With regard to the Next Generation film series, Star Trek: First Contact is moodier, gorier, and more self-critical than the preceding Star Trek: Generations. For instance, it's more or less admitted that Roddenberry's "Vision" (as embodied by Zefram Cochrane, inventor of the original warp drive) was enormous stacks of cash, tons of loose women and mountains of drugs.
- Star Trek (2009) destroyed Vulcan and killed Kirk's father, years before Star Trek TOS is set. As a result, the Federation in future Treks is likely to more closely resemble the post-Wolf 359 and post-Dominion War Federation seen in DS9 instead of the happy-go-lucky world of TOS and TNG.
- Star Trek Into Darkness is even darker, even after the previous film's destruction of Vulcan, with a villain whose attacks on Starfleet recalled al-Qaeda terrorism and the revelation of a semi-fascist xenophobic warmongering faction within Starfleet.
TV series
- Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the first season and a few lingering bits of it in the second season, Picard is antisocial and short-tempered, Q is significantly more malevolent, the sets are dimly-lit, a major character is violently killed off, and the topic of sex feels forced into many episodes. We encounter aliens with drug problems, cannibalistic Ferengi, phaser beams that set people on fire, and one infamous episode in which a character has his head shot off and then his stomach explode outwards with alien parasites. The show got more critical notice right about the same time these bits went away, focusing a bit more on highbrow concepts and moral dilemmas. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is considered by many to be the 'dark' entry in the franchise, but it has nothing on TNG Season One.
- DS9 claims credit for it, but it was really "The Best of Both Worlds", which featured the infamous battle at Wolf 359—referred to in some circles as "The 9/11 of Star Trek"—and what followed it. After this point, stories started focusing more on the imperfections of the Federation, which had until that point been portrayed as a Utopia, and introduced some grey into their allies and their enemies. This is especially relevant to the plots of Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager.
- However, while Deep Space Nine didn't start the trend, the series earns its reputation for being Darker and Edgier through the Dominion arc, a sustained arc of darkness that was far beyond what any other series had done. It's especially noticeable in the final two seasons, where this conflict forms the basis of the majority of episodes, but the threat of the Dominion and related threads (like the Klingon-Cardassian conflict, which turns out to have been orchestrated by the Dominion) became a recurring theme as early as Season 3. note
- The actual 9/11 had a profound effect on Star Trek: Enterprise. Picture it as George W. Bush's America in Space, right down to the "enhanced interrogation" and terrorism allegories which don't do much in the way of making anyone think too hard about it all. Although it's true that the show didn't really have a direction beforehand, and considering the S3 Xindi arc is considered by some to be the best the show ever did, it's fair to argue the show was improved by September 11th in some ways.
- Star Trek: Discovery is the first Star Trek show to receive a TV-MA rating. The fact that the show is airing on a streaming platform (Paramount+) is a major departure from every other Star Trek show. The first season was a dark and depressing slog about an all-out interstellar war between the Federation and the Klingons. Emblematic of the direction of the show as a whole, in the second episode when war breaks out we see a minor character wander up looking shell-shocked and say "Why are we fighting? We're Starfleet. We're explorers, not soldiers!" ...and immediately afterwards the room he's in gets blasted and he's sucked out into space and dies. The tone lightened up somewhat in the second season after the war storyline was concluded and Captain Pike was introduced.
- Star Trek: Picard beats out Deep Space Nine as the darkest portrayal of the Star Trek universe to date. As of 2399, The Federation has become more insular and cynical following an attack on Mars fourteen years prior, a botched evacuation of the Romulan homeworlds have turned the former Romulan Neutral Zone into a Balkanized Wretched Hive overrun with pirates and warlords, and former-Borg are being hunted down and vivisected so their implants can be sold on the black market. It's still Crapsack Only by Comparison — from what we see, the Federation itself still appears to be a great place to live (unless you're an android) — but the show really demonstrates how much the Star Trek universe relies on the Federation to keep it clean.
