I always thought the glaring western motifs were a tribute to the original concept of Star Trek being “A wagon train to the stars.”
It is the reason a lot of Stargate was shot in various temperate rain forests.
To be fair, I’d say cowboy appearances would be relatively proportional to the population, maybe 1 or 2% of each series… Except DS9, which has a bit of an Alamo obsession.
A black sheriff?
It worked in blazing saddles!
He said the sheriff is near!
Did Voyager or Discovery ever have cowboys?
In cowboy times they went to Fairhaven, Ireland instead.
Guess Tom Paris prefers horseless carriages.
Maybe not literally, but the season 3 episode where Discovery arrived in the future went hard on the western vibes. I think they even included swinging saloon doors at one point.
Fun fact: Star Trek has lasted longer than the wild west did. 58 years versus 47 years
you would do well to stay away from firefly.
These are literally paid advertisements for the animal agriculture lobby.
Don't underestimate the power of "We need a cheap episode, where's the literal decades of western props we keep in storage?"
In case of TOS, they literally pitched it as a kind of Western but in space to the studios due to the popularity of the genre on TV (both DeForest Kelly and Shatner had also already appeared in Western serials).
