StarTrek.com is Up For Grabs!

For the past, um… well, I guess… 10 years or so, whenever I’ve gotten bored and found nothing else to do online I’ve often ended up at StarTrek.com. It’s not the best of websites, and definitely is not the most exhaustive Star Trek site on the internet, but since it was the official, network owned site they’d often have breaking news and photos before anybody else.

Well, it turns out those breaking news and photos might have gotten them in trouble.

I thought it was a little odd that a studio-owned site would follow the WGA strike since, you know, it’s pretty much general consensus that the studios are the ones being dicks. Their coverage of “Star Trek Day” at the picket lines was very pro-WGA.

So, it wasn’t really “surprise” as much as “shock” that I felt when I went to StarTrek.com today and read the following message from the web team:

12.14.2007
Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team

Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.

We don’t know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.

If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com - we hope someone at CBS will read them.

Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.

So there you have it.

First the cancellation of Enterprise and then the shutdown of the entire StarTrek.com website–man, Trek isn’t doing too good these days. But with the JJ Abrams’ movie still in production, I’m guessing the studio is taking this opportunity to make www.startrek.com into the site for just that movie. Since it’s a “reboot,” my guess is that they are trying to lure in “the next generation” of fans by erasing the vast Star Trek mythology that’s been established over the past 40 years.

They’ll never come out and say either of these things, though. Saying they fired the creative team because of their pro-WGA stance would make them look like asses, and saying they want to “reboot” Star Trek would make a lot of established fans angry. Instead, they’ll say something like “to better serve your needs, we’ve restructured the often dense and thoroughly comprehensive Star Trek universe in order to offer a better user entertainment soultion.”

Rage… rage against the machine!

UPDATE:  Here is a picture of the people who ran the site and who will no doubt be very concerned about how they’ll make it through Christmas (er, sorry, “the holidays.”)