Star Trek: The True Story was a documentary produced by and broadcast on the Discovery Channel in the US on 5 January 2013 as the 29th episode of their "The True Story" documentary series. It was also broadcast in the UK by Channel 5 on 9 May 2013 . In France by Arte on 9 September 2016 . Running for 45 minutes, the documentary broached the subject of Star Trek from two angles. First, it chronicled in broad strokes the genesis of the franchise, from the inception of Star Trek: The Original Series through cancellation and resurgence in syndication and subsequent fandom, to its rebirth in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The second approach was the discussion of the current state of both the theoretical and practical development of the various scientific basic principles, that served, as per G