Future Technology in the 'Star Trek' Reboots: Tethered and Performative

As human beings, we are constantly developing, and exploration is one of the ways in which we can expect to know ourselves better, grow and evolve in directions hopefully of our own choosing, and exert ourselves outwardly towards boundaries and borders in an attempt to better understand and shape the societies and cultures within which we are situated. Likewise, with Captain Kirk's (William Shatner) opening staccato from Star Trek The Original Series (hereafter TOS)--a mantra which is repeated across the Star Trek reboot films--the focus is also on exploring "new" horizons, as in "new worlds", "new life" and "new civilizations". This interest in newness is a reflection of the USS Enterprise crew from the fictional future(s); the time at which the show and its various franchise permutations were created in the past; and ourselves, watching and considering Star Trek in the present. While all of our notions of what constitutes "new" may vary, this desire for expansive and novel discovery is a consistently integral part of the allure for those that have come together on the intrepid voyage, either as a fully-fledged bridge-crew member or as a disposable red-shirted viewer. Although this is certainly a factor, especially in the reboots--Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Star Trek Beyond (2016)--where Hollywood action plays a significant box-office role, science fiction, the genre at the heart of Star Trek, has been defined as "a contemporary mode in which the techniques of extrapolation and speculation are utilized in a narrative form, to construct near-future, far-future, or fantastic worlds in which science, technology, and society intersect" ("The science fiction of technoscience: the politics of simulation and a challenge for new media art".