Star Trek Props Are Going On-Sale As the Franchise Ends an 11-Year Streak

Fans love collecting merchandise from their favorite franchises, and few things are as coveted as officially used on-screen materials from movies and TV shows. There’s a reason why people are willing to part ways with an extraordinary amount of money to own Darth Vader’s lightsaber, Miss Piggy’s lavender heels, and even Walter White’s underwear. Having been around for six decades, Star Trek has amassed a passionate, loyal fan base who have unsurprisingly participated in some prop auctions of their own over the years. With the latest one, fans can own pieces of recent Star Trek history, but there’s a bittersweet undertone to the whole event.

Per TrekMovie, Paramount has announced the “Star Trek Universe Auction,” which will take place in Toronto. A full list of items that will be available has not been revealed yet, but it’s expected the auction will focus on the most recent wave of Star Trek TV shows, many of which were filmed in Toronto. Proceeds from the auction will benefit DoSomething.org. This is all coming together as sets from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy are being dismantled.

For those interested in bidding on items in the auction, it is important to note that shipping is not available “due to tight auction timelines.” Non-Ontario residents can still bid “by submitting an Interac e-transfer (available through Canadian banks) or by leaving an in-person cash deposit.” Visit the auction’s official site for more information and to sign up for reminders.

The Future of Star Trek Explained

As exciting as it’ll be for Star Trek fans to bid on materials from the recent wave of Paramount+ shows, it’s hard to ignore the larger context surrounding the auction. The Star Trek franchise is now in a transitional period; for the first time in 11 years, there isn’t a Star Trek TV show that’s been either greenlit or in production. Auctions like these are par for the course when a project wraps, but this one is commemorating the end of an era for one of sci-fi’s most iconic IPs. There was hope that there could have been a Kirk spinoff, but with Strange New World‘s Enterprise set being taken down, that seems highly unlikely now.

This is seemingly a byproduct of Paramount now being under new leadership. With the Skydance merge completed, the studio has been doing some reshuffling and evaluating the franchises it has under its umbrella. Star Trek has been deemed a “top priority” for Paramount, and the dynamic directing duo of Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley have already been hired to helm a new movie. In addition to that, Paramount executive Dana Goldberg has said they plan to have more synergy between the movie and TV sides of Star Trek, ensuring the two are not “siloed off” from each other moving forward. This indicates that instead of having a film series that takes place in a separate continuity (the Kelvin Timeline), the upcoming movie could spawn its own TV spinoffs a la Marvel and Star Wars.

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From a creative standpoint, that would make a good deal of sense. It goes without saying that the next Star Trek film represents a fresh start for the franchise; while it will be important to make sure it connects with long-time fans, it’s probably also going to be designed as a gateway for newcomers — similar to J.J. Abrams’ 2009 film. Giving the entire IP a fresh start on both the big and small screens will ideally make things more accessible for those new fans, as they won’t have to do any homework and catch up with multiple seasons of Paramount+ shows.

Changes behind the scenes for Star Trek are also indicative of the changing streaming landscape. Last year was arguably the end of the peak streaming era, as production budgets for these live-action genre streaming shows contributed to making the business model unsustainable. After years of flooding the marketplace with new content, we’re now seeing Marvel scale back on output and Lucasfilm pivot back to live-action theatrical features. Streaming services aren’t going anywhere, obviously, but they don’t appear to be as big of a priority for studios as they were earlier in the decade. Paramount is probably going to take a bit of time to see where things stand before giving a new TV show the green light — although, there are Star Trek fans who feel it would be for the best if the franchise went away for a while.

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