No matter where you go, there you are.
Somebody groused on Reddit about, "Why is Star Trek always going into the past‽ I wanna see its future! Wah!" I'm paraphrasing. Anyway, they deleted their post before I'd finished my comment, so now I'm posting it here because I refuse to let it go to waste.
"The City on the Edge of Forever" featured McCoy, Kirk, and Spock traveling back to New York of the 1930s. It's one of the most-beloved episodes of the original Star Trek.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home made 5.12 times its budget at the box office. It centered around the original-series crew traveling back in time to 1980s San Francisco.
"Time's Arrow" is a 1992 Next-Gen episode about crew from the Enterprise-D traveling back in time to 19th century San Francisco. The two-part episode of the fifth and sixth seasons is often highly-ranked by both critics and fans.
Star Trek: First Contact, about time travel from the late-24th to the mid-21st century, made 3.24 times its budget, and is probably still the best-loved Trek film since 1991.
"Past Tense", wherein the DS9 characters Sisko, Bashir, and Dax travel in time to 2024 San Francisco, has continued receiving accolades long after it was originally broadcast.
In 1996's Voyager episode, "Future's End", the entire eponymous ship travels back to contemporary Earth, with crew traipsing through Southern California. Wired, Tor, and Syfy categorized it as one of the show's best episodes.
Star Trek: Picard season two spent much of its time in 2024. It was in the top ten for viewership of original streaming (excepting the first episode, set entirely in the 25th century), and the third-most demanded US streaming series in March. It has an 85% Tomatometer score.
Star Trek travels to the past because it usually performs well with audiences ("Carpenter Street" notwithstanding). If we, the collective viewing audience, didn't want to see them and/or didn't ever enjoy them, then the showrunners wouldn't make them.
thumbnail credit: Wolf359.jpg by Klaus Hohmann (PD)
