Could Star Trek do a series like Andor?

Sure, why not? After all, it wasn’t obvious until Andor had been going for a few episodes that Star Wars could do a series like Andor. The world is full of surprises. If somebody wanted to do a series very specifically like Andor, that followed a character as they are radicalised into a liberation struggle whose outcome we already know, then the planet of Bajor is just sitting there waiting for a gritty spy/revolution prequel show. I’d watch that or at least give it a go.

On the other hand, a grounded Star Trek series is also not very Star Trek. As discussed in yesterday’s post, Star Trek in it’s multiple forms is a series about Starfleet. The world/galaxy building is actually very mutable and the consistent elements are not so much the shared history of events but Starfleet. The galaxy in which various crews have their adventures is both more and less realistic than that of Star Wars. More realistic in that obviously, a whole galaxy doesn’t have one shared historical narrative — there are multiple polities with their own histories and events. Less realistic in that galaxy is really just a backdrop for the starship du-jour to have wacky space adventures or almost any kind from fighting space gods to time travel to not actually time travel but still meeting Abraham Lincoln or getting stuck in the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Star Wars comes with magical space knights and evil space wizards but there’s enough surrounding them that a series in which they are pushed into the background can still work. Andor pushed them further into the background than The Mandalorian. Still, both series could use shared aesthetic elements (worn down, lived-in technology, sassy robots, space nazis) that you can watch a short clip and recognise both as Star Wars shows. Step away from Starfleet and we see that Star Trek doesn’t have that same consistency — that’s not a flaw in its worldbuilding, that’s broadly a strength because it’s a big galaxy with a lot of inherent variety. However, that size and variety imply that going on beyond the Starfleet stories we actually see all sorts of planets and societies and possibly whole wars between empires. A series set of a random planet in the Alpha Quadrant isn’t really a Star Trek show unless Starfleet shows up.

Of course, a show can have Starfleet in it without it being in which the main characters are Starfleet. A show in which the main characters are at odds with Starfleet is something that could work and still be recognisably a Star Trek show.