If you want to be like that about, what we think of as American "cowboy" culture only lasted 25-years or so, Civil War-ish to 1880-ish. Yet we treat it like it was a 100-year block of Western history.
you would do well to stay away from firefly.
I always thought the glaring western motifs were a tribute to the original concept of Star Trek being “A wagon train to the stars.”
Nah, it's for the same reason they never went to a jungle world.
Back in the day they just shot everything in the desert outside of LA. It's the whole reason westerns were a thing in the first place, free setting.
So there was a bunch of props and sets from the studio, and Star Trek could do it for free.
I mean, wasn't even MASH in the desert for some reason?
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.
Should come as no surprise the folks stationed on DS9 were obsessed with the defense of a lone fortress against impossible odds.
Did Voyager or Discovery ever have cowboys?
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.
In cowboy times they went to Fairhaven, Ireland instead.
Guess Tom Paris prefers horseless carriages.
