Not my OC
These are literally paid advertisements for the animal agriculture lobby.
Don’t underestimate the power of “We need a cheap episode, where’s the literal decades of western props we keep in storage?”
To be fair, I’d say cowboy appearances would be relatively proportional to the population, maybe 1 or 2% of each series… Except DS9, which has a bit of an Alamo obsession.
Should come as no surprise the folks stationed on DS9 were obsessed with the defense of a lone fortress against impossible odds.
The difference being that the Federation was there by consent of the Bajorans and didn’t proceed to seize the entire area from its rightful owner. 😂
It had an oddly large amount of episodes involving ancient Mediterranean civilizations, though… Those darn Greeks/Romans taking over our Trek!
A black sheriff?
Fun fact: Star Trek has lasted longer than the wild west did. 58 years versus 47 years
I always thought the glaring western motifs were a tribute to the original concept of Star Trek being “A wagon train to the stars.”
Nah, it’s for the same reason they never went to a jungle world.
Back in the day they just shot everything in the desert outside of LA. It’s the whole reason westerns were a thing in the first place, free setting.
So there was a bunch of props and sets from the studio, and Star Trek could do it for free.
I mean, wasn’t even MASH in the desert for some reason?
The Original Series straight-up used the Downtown Mayberry set from The Andy Griffith Show twice.
Star Trek used a LOT of stuff from other properties due to money. But I still feel like the western sets were used by choice. Especially in Enterprise, which was meta at that point.