Has Star Trek Overused Time Travel?

*10 Enterprise episodes (not counting that Temporal Cold War stuff)

Yes, Star Trek has way overused time-travel, though I can't blame them for doing so. Time-travel is a very tempting story to tell, because it opens up a lot of possibilities, and it can be good for character development, because invariably it presents a moral dilemma that tells us more about the character than we knew before.

But the problem with the way Trek has usually handled time-travel is that the characters are trying to preserve the status quo, and not deliberately trying to change anything, because they're under the rubric that if they do they may cease to exist (the Back-to-the-Future-dilemma). That can be fine, except when it's overused it becomes rather predictable for the audience, and the only thing keeping them from changing the channel is finding out how they preserve it.

TNG and DS9 handled time-travel the best, in my opinion. At least with TNG, when they had some sort of knowledge of the future, they hoped to change it in order to survive (Time Squared, Cause and Effect, and Timescape), and did. But, when it's something they have to preserve somehow (Time's Arrow, and Trials and Tribble-ations), while they can be charming, at the same time they aren't all that compelling in a dramatic way.

The two best time-travel episodes Trek ever did was City On The Edge of Forever (of course), and DS9 Past Tense, where Sisko has to take on the role of a historical figure in order to preserve his timeline. The first was an attempt by Harlon Ellison to introduce a major bone of contention between Kirk and Spock, and that was fiercely resisted by Roddenberry, for good and bad reasons, so he took it out. With Past Tense, we're seeing Sisko put into a position where he may have to die in order to preserve the timeline. These kinds of episodes are rare in Trek because the writers/producers really don't want to do anything that forces the characters to alter continuity, and at the same time want to ignore salient issues that would arise under such adventures. Kirk, having listened to Spock and allowing Edith Keeler to die, based solely on his judgment, should have kept that as a wound for a long time until it was resolved. It's unfortunate that we did not end up getting Ellison's true vision of what he wanted in this episode, because I think that would've kept Trek on the air for a fourth season.

Overused? No. As noted above, that's a pretty small amount compared to the hundreds of episodes of the franchise.

I just don't think they always used it in an effective way, as also noted above (by a different poster). Just because it's a good story idea or tool doesn't mean it ends up being good storytelling. 

Brent Spiner  Matthew Gray Gubler is 4ever bae. Kat Dennings is wifey