So much sci-fi and fantasy is ugly and dystopian Star Trek places great faith in humanity. One could argue that part of Star Trek’s power comes from the fact that it is utopian: the universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s depicts a post-scarcity future in which the Earth is united, and in turn part of a United Federation of Planets. “Star Trek has a big fanbase,” Goldsman says “But Next Generation has an even deeper fanbase.” What is it about Star Trek that turns Hollywood bruisers into excitable amateurs? Why has the series inspired such loyalty? Goldsman and the other members of the Picard command team are vibrating with enthusiasm when I speak to them about working on this “amazing franchise” as he calls it. (Dare one include Galaxy Quest, the hilarious 1999 Star Trek tribute?) Kurtzman collaborated with other heavyweights like JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof on the most recent big-screen Star Trek reboot, featuring Chris Pine as Kirk, which produced three films in 2009, 20. In addition, the canon includes 13 feature films, with two more apparently in the works. At the helm of the production is what one might call a dream team of Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Alex Kurtzman and Kirsten Beyer (an Oscar winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, an adroit media power player, and a battle-hardened Star Trek aficionado), all with serious writing chops, and all die-hard fans of the franchise. It is building on more than 50 years of trekking history. It is the eighth series in the Star Trek franchise – with more apparently in the works – since the first launched in 1966, with William Shatner as James T Kirk. Trekkies may now bow their heads and pray to Roddenberry, for another new Star Trek series, Star Trek: Picard, launches today on CBS All Access in the US and Amazon Prime around the rest of the world. TV’s new Dracula is like an evil James Bond As Kevin Lyons of the British Film Institute, says in his history of trekking, “Star Trek was the first of the media-led fandoms, the ‘mother fandom’ from which all similar followings sprang.” Although I’ve only ever dressed up as Spock, once.) In a sense, Trekkies were the original geek superfans, turning up en masse for conventions and meetings, and hotly debating minutiae of the scripts of the original Gene Roddenberry series (1966-9) as if they were far more pressing than reality itself. (I count myself among the most rabid of them. Fans of Star Trek, or 'Trekkies', are notorious for their zeal.

I am spock