Popverse's top stories of the day

• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Watch: Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]
• Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]

People taking Star Trek seriously has always been strange because, for the most part, it has always been a uniquely silly show. For every episode that explored the complexities of deep space exploration or cultural exchanges with unknown lifeforms, there were episodes where the crew encountered their evil, goateed doppelgangers, or found themselves overrun by swiftly reproducing Tribbles.

Some of the camp silliness of Star Trek can be owed to the wonderfully low budget of the original series. Case in point, the original Tribbles that caused so much trouble for the Enterprise crew were little more than clumps of stuffed faux fur stitched together. One of the balls of fluff from their first appearance recently went up for auction and you can see how simple they were. Yet they became one of the most iconic parts of the Star Trek legacy. The mighty crew of the Starship Enterprise was nearly taken down by lumps of stuff thrown together at the local craft store.

Star Trek, for all its lofty ideals and philosophical leanings, was largely held together by cardboard and imagination. That it has become a cultural touchstone is largely due to the vision of Gene Roddenberry that was delivered mostly in the later entries in the franchise. The original show was always at its best when the cast and crew were delighting in the pantomime shenanigans of deep space, with the occasional serious note sprinkled in. Sometimes that is the best way to deliver a deep message, hidden amongst a growing mass of Tribbles.

Space may be the final frontier, but there's no end to Popverse's love of the Star Trek universe. Hop aboard the starship Enterprise with our Star Trek watch order, explore strange new worlds with our upcoming Star Trek TV shows and movies list, seek out the new life of the franchise, and boldly go where no Star Trek film has ever gone before - with Quentin Tarantino?