60 years on, Paramount has ruined Star Trek

Well, it certainly seems like we’ve reached the end of the final frontier.“Star Trek,” starring William Shatner as Captain James T.Kirk, premiered 60 years ago this week on CBS.Accompanying the U.S.S.

Enterprise on its five-year mission to boldly go where no man has gone before, the groundbreaking show set the course for modern science-fiction storytelling as we know it and smashed societal barriers.Ahead of its time, Gene Roddenberry’s series was canceled in 1969.Call it the “original” sin.

But those three seasons birthed a sprawling franchise of interconnected TV and movie properties decades before the concept of onscreen “universes” was widely embraced by Marvel, “Star Wars” and, oy, King Kong.And, for a while, “Trek” kept getting better and better.“The Wrath of Khan,” “The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine” — all glorious.Um, what the hell happened? The current powers that be have certainly not heeded the sage wisdom of Lt.

Spock: “Live long and prosper.” Because what was once — and what still should be — the jewel in Paramount’s crown is now a mismanaged, barely watchable afterthought that nobody pays any attention to.I’ve attended “Star Trek” conventions.I stood in line and forked over $60 for a photo with an unsmiling Kate Mulgrew from “Voyager.” But now I can hardly make it through any of the dull and badly conceived dreck they’re routinely churning out.Overabundant “Star Trek” shows are irrelevant castaways on Paramount+ that have been banished from CBS and are canceled before you’ve heard of them.

A bunch of other duds are weirdly animated.And in-development big-screen movies keep falling apart.

Here’s another less auspicious anniversary: It’s been 10 years since the last one.There was one recent dreadful streaming movie called “Star Trek: Section 31,” starring Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh.It boasts a 15% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and makes “Nemesis” look like “20...