In 1976, when Kerry O’Quinn launched the magazine Starlog, he knew it could be a success. Not only was he confident that Star Trek — and its connected sci-fi fandoms — represented a large, untapped readership, but he also understood the business of magazines focused on news about TV shows. Why? Well, in the time before Starlog galvanized an entire generation of sci-fi fans and created the foundation for countless internet publications we all enjoy today, O’Quinn, along with his partner, Norman Jacobs, had previously created soap opera magazines in 1972. The creative leap to Starlog was easy: O’Quinn knew that the soap opera audiences, while separate from Star Trek fans, were somewhat similar.
Now, 50 years after the launch of Starlog, Star Trek is tipping its hat to the connection between soap operas and the Final Frontier. In Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 7, “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass,” Captain Pike (Anson Mount) finds himself trapped in a soap opera version of his own life, thanks to the meddling of the rogue Q, Trelane (Rhys Darby). And throughout the course of this melodramatic and self-aware episode, Pike unpacks all of it by talking to the ship’s counselor of the Enterprise in this time, Dr. Chivers, played by soap opera royalty, Deidre Hall. Speaking to Inverse, Hall says the connections between Star Trek and soaps like The Young and the Restless are certainly there, and nothing to be ashamed of.
