By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 20 seconds ago

Starfleet Academy is the latest Star Trek show, and one of its big hallmarks is diversity. This includes showcasing characters from very different backgrounds (a human thief, a childlike hologram, an empathic princess, a pacifist Klingon, etc), complete with a wide range of sexualities (gay, straight, and bi? Oh my!). There is even diversity in age: the show focuses on both young characters and their older instructors, and Chancellor Ake alone has a few centuries on her young students.

However, calling itself diverse is a lie. Starfleet Academy is secretly the least diverse Star Trek series ever made. That’s because it has one flaw that effectively cancels out all of the diversity of its character backgrounds and sexualities. Namely, that every single alien character is written like a boring old human being.

The Oldest Trope In Star Trek

Since the days of The Original Series, Star Trek has had an unofficial rule: each show must include an outsider alien character who helps the audience learn more about their own humanity. Spock’s emotionless Vulcan ways contrasted with McCoy’s fiery passion, for example, and Spock ultimately sacrificed his life after learning the value of Kirk’s relentless drive (there’s no such thing as a no-win scenario). After Spock died foiling the ultimate no-win scenario, Kirk declared, “Of all the souls I’ve encountered, his was the most human.”

This wasn’t literally true, of course: not only did Spock remain fully green-blooded, but his decision to save the ship was rooted in his flawless Vulcan logic (the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one). But his death helped Kirk to find joy in life and rededicate himself to new beginnings. In this way, Spock began the oldest trope in Star Trek: the outsider alien helping others learn more about their own humanity.

Trek Trope: The Next Generation 

Later Star Trek shows embraced this trope to great effect: on The Next Generation, the android Data dreamed of becoming more human, and his quest helped everyone learn more about the power and promise of their own human journey. On Deep Space Nine, Odo was a Changeling who could never master looking like a solid, but his efforts to understand everyone else helped everyone gain new perspectives on what they took for granted. Neelix helped Voyager’s human crew discover joy in the small things, while T’Pol helped the humans of the Enterprise crew learn from their species’ mistakes as they began exploring strange, new worlds for the first time.

NuTrek has dabbled in this trope: on Discovery, Saru teaches the crew how to adapt to any situation, and Michael Burnham’s Vulcan upbringing helped her discover (for better or for worse) the importance of her emotions. Picard also dabbled in different alien outsiders, ranging from the android Soji to her positronic papa, Data. The return of Data hailed the return of TNG’s beloved alien outsider, and Strange New Worlds brought things full circle by putting Spock front and center.

Starfleet Academy Is Too Human For Its Own Good

Starfleet Academy is often praised for its diversity, and the cast of characters is truly unlike anything we have previously seen in other Star Trek series. Fully eight of the show’s 12 main characters are aliens, and over half of them are women. The show also puts men and women of color front and center: holographic SAM is the show’s biggest link between both Voyager and Deep Space Nine, and Jay-Den Kraag is showing us a strange new world of Klingon culture. Caleb, meanwhile, is the show’s de facto main character, and he often bridges the gap between the more dramatic and comedic elements of the show.

However, once you get past the diverse character archetypes and occasional forehead loaf, a surprising truth emerges: pretty much all the alien characters are written to be human. Darem is meant to be an exotic alien (he’s Khionian, b*tch!), but he is simply written as a cocky human, which is why he and would-be Alpha Caleb are constantly butting heads. SAM is an emissary from a holographic race who knows nothing about humanity, but she is constantly and inexplicably written as a teenage human.

The same goes for Genesis, an alien who is so human that she likes to chew bubblegum and wax philosophic about Daddy issues. Chancellor Ake is a Lanthanite who is nearly half a millennium old, but she is virtually indistinguishable from a quirky wine mom. On paper, the Klingon Jay-Den would be the most alien of them all because he hails from a warrior race, but in making him a softspoken, quippy pacifist making moony eyes at his crush, Starfleet Academy has made him the most human Klingon we’ve ever seen (yes, even more than Alexander).

They’re Only Human 

Making all these aliens effectively human is by design, of course: Starfleet Academy is designed to appeal to young audiences, so this is a way of ensuring that these young characters are relatable despite their alien heritage. No matter what exotic planet they hail from, all of these 32nd-century cadets utilize slang and references very familiar to 21st-century youngsters. In this way, Paramount hopes to retain the old guard of Star Trek fans while appealing to Zoomers and even Generation Alpha.

Time will tell if Starfleet Academy manages to secure the (ahem) “next generation” of Star Trek fans, but they are already alienating older fans through (ironically enough) the lack of truly alien characters. There is no alien outsider to help characters and viewers appreciate their own humanity; instead, every alien is written as a human with a chip on their shoulder and a mouth like a sailor. Sure, this makes the latest Star Trek series feel like other popular drama series, but it also dilutes the new show by removing one of the franchise’s most distinctive sci-fi elements.

When Is A Star Trek Show Not Actually A Star Trek Show?

That leads to some downright philosophical questions, like “When is a Star Trek show not actually a Star Trek show?” Paramount is gambling that stripping the franchise of everything familiar in the name of mass appeal is the only way forward, but it’s an approach that has been driving away legacy fans in droves. Now, the studio is about learn the answer to “when is a Star Trek fan no longer a Star Trek fan?”

Simple: when they unsubscribe from Paramount+, the worst streaming platform the galaxy has ever known.

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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 29 seconds ago

The most recent episode of Starfleet Academy (“Come, Let’s Away”) was a glorious return to form for the franchise, giving us a cool plot that revolved around our cadets managing to restart an old Starfleet vessel, the USS Myazaki. The vessel is now derelict because it was using an experimental new form of propulsion known as a singularity drive, which caused a series of cascading malfunctions. However, the episode didn’t really address how this technology was different from the traditional warp drive, and this reignited a classic question within the fandom: why were the Romulans affected by the events of the Burn?

This all goes back to Star Trek: The Next Generation, where episodes like “Face of the Enemy” revealed that the Romulans power their starships with a quantum singularity drive. Basically, instead of a traditional warp drive, they use an artificially-made black hole to travel the galaxy at faster-than-light speeds. As cool as that is, TNG never really elaborated on how this was supposed to work, and fans generally forgot about this until the third season of Star Trek: Discovery.

When Good Tech Goes Bad

After the Discovery traveled to the 32nd century, they found that the Federation was a decimated version of its former self. The main reason for this was the Burn, an event in which dilithium throughout the galaxy went suddenly inert. Active dilithium keeps matter and antimatter from colliding in starships (among other things), so once it went inert, countless starships exploded due to instantaneous warp core breaches.

Even before the Burn, dilithium was becoming scarce, so the Federation began experimenting with other forms of propulsion. One such alternative was the Pathway drive, which eventually became a standard alternative to both warp drive and Discovery’s spore drive. The Starfleet Academy episode “Come, Let’s Away” introduced the fact that the Federation was working on its own singularity drive, which reignited a question Discovery fans have been asking for years: why were the Romulans affected by the Burn in the first place?

What Did The Romulans Know?

Discovery gave a kind of happy ending to the Romulans, showing that they finally reunified with the Vulcans (Spock’s mission is finally accomplished!) after many millennia. But the show also made it clear that the Romulans were just as affected by the Burn as the Federation and (as we found out later) the Klingon Empire. This understandably confused fans because The Next Generation established that Romulans use singularity drives rather than warp drives, which implies that they don’t use dilithium and should therefore have been safe from the Burn.

Fans continue to debate whether the Romulans rely on dilithium or not for many reasons, including the fact that TNG didn’t tell us all that much about the singularity drive. It’s entirely possible they use dilithium but in different ways; for example, it may be used to contain the singularity. Plus, we know from Star Trek: Nemesis that Romulans mine dilithium, and while they could simply be using it for other purposes (like the Klingons using it to power planets), this fact implies it is still somehow important to Romulan interstellar travel.

Bringing Old Controversies Back Online

Now, though, the Starfleet Academy episode “Come, Let’s Away” has reignited this mystery. Previously, fans were willing to accept (more or less) that the Burn affected the Romulans because they must have somehow used dilithium in ways the Federation didn’t know about. Therefore, the singularity drive would be just as vulnerable to the Burn as a traditional warp drive.

However, the Federation working on their own singularity drive as a warp drive alternative implies that this technology would work in a post-Burn galaxy. That leads us to something of a lore paradox: if singularity drives are immune to the Burn, why were the Romulans affected in the first place? But if singularity drives are not immune to the Burn (and, therefore, still rely on dilithium), why is the Federation bothering to research this technology in the first place?

So far, it doesn’t look like we’ll get answers anytime soon, and that’s fine: in “Come, Let’s Away,” the singularity drive is more of a MacGuffin to keep the plot moving than some major new addition to Star Trek lore. Plus, it’s part of arguably the best episode of Starfleet Academy, one that balances romance, action, and tension to great effect. Given the choice between whistling past old lore or destroying old lore (like sending almost every Klingon to hell in an offscreen catastrophe), it’s fair to say that most fans will happily learn to whistle!

Few series manage to maintain their quality throughout their run, and when a show manages that, it deserves to be remembered. Fortunately, in the era of streaming, shows are readily available in their entirety for fans to judge for themselves, including Orphan Black, a 2013 sci-fi thriller that earned an incredible reputation. The sci-fi genre has provided several stellar TV series, especially recently, as Stranger Things, Severance, and Pluribus have risen to prominence. While these shows may have ignited a new interest in the genre, some of the older series are just as good, and Orphan Black is a perfect example.

Even 13 years later, the series holds up. Starring Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black centers on an intriguing mystery as a group of clones uncovers their past. Through this concept, the story explores the ideas of identity, nature versus nurture, and the morality of scientific advancement. Many such series with a fascinating premise fail to live up to their potential, yet Orphan Black doesn’t have that problem. With five seasons, the series is a perfect binge-watch that will not only keep audiences guessing but also remain consistent and offer a satisfying ending to the story. Though underrated, Orphan Black is ideal for any sci-fi fan with a Netflix account.

What Is ‘Orphan Black’ About?

Orphan Black‘s story revolves around a mystery that the audience discovers alongside the characters. The series begins by introducing Sarah Manning (Maslany), a con artist who discovers a woman who looks shockingly like her on a train. But the mystery grows when that woman kills herself. With questions that she can’t answer, Sarah assumes the look-alike’s identity as she tries to uncover their connection. Ultimately, she discovers that they are both clones, and they are not the only two. Sarah finds more clones, teaming up with them to understand how and why they were created. The series’ main characters include several clones, all played by Maslany, who has the unique challenge of playing multiple identical-but-distinct clones, totaling 17 different parts. The performance earned Maslany an Emmy in 2016.

Throughout Orphan Black, the characters, including Sarah, her “sisters,” and her foster brother, Felix (Jordan Gavaris), discover that the clones are part of an illegal experiment by the Dyad Institute and someone is trying to eliminate them. As they search for answers, they learn that the Dyad Institute hopes to profit from this technology and, as such, closely monitors the clones, treating them as experiments rather than the human beings they are. The series allows Sarah and the other clone characters to undergo a journey of self-discovery as they learn the truth and assert their independence, but at its heart, Orphan Black is a gripping mystery about the conspiracy surrounding their creation.

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‘Orphan Black’s Story Remained Consistent Throughout Its Five Seasons

Image via BBC America

While Orphan Black is a fascinating sci-fi series, it isn’t all mystery. The show balances intrigue with personal drama and comedy, creating a well-rounded story that everyone can enjoy. And, most remarkably, in five seasons, there isn’t a sudden drop-off in quality at the end. The final two seasons have scores on Rotten Tomatoes as high as the first two, and although Season 3’s score sinks slightly, it remains at a very respectable 83%. This is a rarity, especially for mysteries that are constantly trying to outdo themselves from season to season. Orphan Black‘s consistency proves that the show deserves more recognition.

Orphan Black avoids another common issue with its conclusion. Finales are hard, especially for mystery series, which have built so many questions that require satisfying answers, but without spoilers, Orphan Black sticks the landing. Fans widely agree that the show has a satisfying ending as it embodies the themes of humanity and found family while bringing the story full circle. Of course, there is a short-lived spin-off, Orphan Black: Echoes, but the addition is unnecessary for the story’s conclusion. Orphan Black may be a bit of a commitment, but its fascinating story and perfect ending make it well worth the time.

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Release Date

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2013 – 2017

Network

Space, BBC America

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Showrunner

Graeme Manson

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Directors

Ken Girotti, T.J. Scott, David Wellington, Grant Harvey, Helen Shaver, Aaron Morton, Brett Sullivan, Chris Grismer, Peter Stebbings

Writers

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Aubrey Nealon, Karen Walton, Tony Elliott, Peter Mohan, Sherry White, Jeremy Boxen, Kate Miles Melville, Greg Nelson, Jenn Engels, Nikolijne Troubetzkoy

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  Sarah / Cosima / Alison / Helena / Rachel

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  Jordan Gavaris

  Felix ‘Fee’ Dawkins

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Travis Kelce & Taylor Swift
‘Wood’ You Be My Valentine???

Published
February 14, 2026
12:06 PM PST

When Apple TV’s phenomenal track record with the sci-fi genre is discussed, one show is invariably overlooked. Everybody correctly praises Severance and Silo, and even Invasion and Foundation. The list grew recently, with the release and reception of Pluribus. Created by Vince Gilligan, best known for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Pluribus holds a 98% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, and has already been hailed as an instant classic by many. However, there is a rather large missing element on this list: a sci-fi show that debuted to excellent reviews a couple of years ago, but has perhaps not been given the respect it deserves because it’s part of a larger franchise, and not strictly original. That said, the show in question has passed a major streaming milestone, proving how popular it remains.

The show premiered in 2023 with a 10-episode season set across three different timelines. It was about as ambitious as Apple TV’s own Pachinko in this regard. Created by Chris Black and Matt Fraction, the show featured Anna Sawai in the lead role, before she appeared in Hulu’s breakout hit Shōgun. She was joined by Kiersey Clemons, Anders Holm, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Joe Tippett, and father-son duo Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell. Matt Shakman, who directed The Fantastic Four: First Steps last year, helmed the first two episodes of the first season.

Apple TV’s Sci-Fi Show Is Silently Slaying Competition on Streaming

We’re talking, of course, about Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. The mega-budget show is set to return with its second season on February 27, and has already begun generating interest. According to FlixPatrol, the show has now spent more than 200 days on the domestic Apple TV chart, currently topped by Shrinking. The first season holds a “Certified Fresh” 87% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “With performances by father-son duo Kurt and Wyatt Russell that work like a charm, Monarch adds a welcome wrinkle to the Godzilla legacy by honing its monstrous scope to a very human level.” Monarch is an extension of the MonsterVerse film franchise that has grossed over $2.5 billion in theaters. Along with the second season of Monarch, the franchise will continue with Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, which is set to be released theatrically next year.

You can watch Monarch at home. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

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Release Date

November 16, 2023

Network

Apple TV

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Showrunner

Chris Black, Matt Fraction

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Directors

Julian Holmes, Matt Shakman, Mairzee Almas, Andy Goddard, Hiromi Kamata

Writers

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Al Letson, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Chris Black, Mariko Tamaki, Amanda Overton, Andrew Colville, Matt Fraction, Milla Bell-Hart

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By Robert Scucci
| Published 16 seconds ago

If I ever won a $156 million lottery jackpot, I wouldn’t tell anyone, but there would be signs. First, I’d fake my own death, only to resurface a couple weeks later wearing a fake mustache and going about my business as usual.

When approached by people who say, “Hey, didn’t you just die?” my answer would be simple: “That wasn’t me, that was the impostor.” When they inevitably respond with “What?”, I’d say “Huh?” throw a smoke bomb on the ground, and run away because I’d have enough disposable income for a limitless supply of smoke bombs. Then I’d fake my death again, this time resurfacing a couple weeks later with a goatee.

I’d repeat this process a dozen or so times until the novelty wears off. Then I’d fake my death for real and retire to my underground bunker. My intended elusive methods may seem insane, but this rock solid plan is nothing compared to what happens in 2023’s Your Lucky Day. Here, a guy wins the jackpot at a convenience store, brags about it loudly, and immediately gets compromised by another patron who just so happens to be hard up for cash and willing to do whatever it takes to claim the ticket.

A Terrible Plan, And Its Many Escalations

In Your Lucky Day, we’re first introduced to a low-level drug dealer named Sterling (Angus Cloud), who gets robbed during a deal gone wrong. Not knowing how to recoup his losses, Sterling pops into a convenience store to take a quick breather. Inside, the store’s owner, Amir (Mousa Hussein Kraish), and a regular customer, Mr. Laird (Spencer Garrett), are making small talk while Mr. Laird scans his Mega Ball tickets at the lottery kiosk to see if he won anything. Also in the store are Abraham (Elliot Knight), his pregnant girlfriend Ana (Jessica Garza), and a cop named Cody (Sterling Beaumon).

Here’s how it all goes down. Ana and Abraham are grabbing ice cream, Cody is in the bathroom, and Mr. Laird discovers he just won the $156 million jackpot. Sterling tapes a makeshift mask made from a Mega Ball flyer to his face and decides to rob the store to take the ticket. The scuffle that follows brings Cody out of the bathroom with his weapon drawn. In the ensuing chaos, Cody accidentally kills Mr. Laird. Sterling, who now has nothing to lose and everything to gain, shoots Cody, presumably killing him as well.

Sterling locks down the store and demands that Ana, Abraham, and Amir help him dispose of the bodies, but not before discussing how they’ll split the winnings. Everybody is understandably apprehensive, especially since the winning ticket is now tied to a fatal robbery, potentially rendering it useless. Still, they come up with a plan that, on paper, allows them to get rid of the bodies without drawing suspicion, cash in the jackpot, and go their separate ways. Or so they think. The plan sounds airtight until unexpected complications start piling up.

Unexpected, But Welcome Lead Role Switcheroo

Kicking off from Sterling’s perspective, Your Lucky Day pivots quickly once the robbery spirals out of control. Sterling may have secured the Mega Ball ticket, but he’s still a low-level criminal thinking one step ahead at best. Ana, one of his hostages, gradually takes control of the situation, and it’s the best part of the movie.

Ana is nine months pregnant and rightfully terrified by everything that’s happened, but that doesn’t stop her from stepping up. She’s calculating, sharp, and quick to map out a contingency plan that makes you wonder what kind of crime lord she was in a past life. What she doesn’t anticipate is that Cody’s corrupt cop family is looking for him, and they’re closing in fast.

Your Lucky Day is a tight, low-budget thriller with more charm than its back-pocket production values would suggest. It tells a simple story, and that simplicity works because of how fast it escalates and how confidently it throws curveballs at the audience. 

Watching how quickly everybody adjusts to the situation once they realize they could walk away from this never worrying about money again is half the fun. Loyalties shift, nerves fray, and the stakes keep climbing as the walls close in, but you’ll want to stick around to see how it all plays out.

As of this writing, Your Lucky Day is streaming on Netflix.

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See Our Valentine’s Day Cards, Featuring Shackled Nicolás Maduro!

Published
February 14, 2026
7:55 AM PST