Entertainment
Did Star Trek Ruin Its New Show By Listening To Fans?
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Starfleet Academy has generated plenty of controversy among old-school fans who hate the changes that Paramount has made to Star Trek. It’s common for those fans to blame executives like Alex Kurtzman, who has admittedly done his best to make NuTrek completely unrecognizable compared to what came before. However, some of the new show’s alleged problems have technically been caused by the fandom: after all, the low-stakes, episodic, highly-comedic storytelling of Starfleet Academy is clearly Paramount’s attempt to address what fans hated about earlier NuTrek shows such as Discovery and Picard.
Let’s start with some of the biggest complaints that the fandom (especially older fans) have been making about Starfleet Academy. One criticism I have heard very frequently is that the show’s stakes are way too low for this venerable franchise, as evidenced by plot points like “who will become laser tag captain” and “will Starfleet’s cadets manage to win the prank war?” So far, the most serious plot point has been the cadets keeping Nus Braka from running away with their warp core, which had all the gravitas of scaring away a tweaker before he could snatch your catalytic converter.
Foul Mouths Lead To Foul Jokes
Another complaint (one I have admittedly made myself) about Starfleet Academy is that it has too much humor, and much of it is painfully unfunny: Voyager’s Holographic Doctor makes poop jokes, for example, while another cadet earnestly complains about eating her comm badge. The half-Klingon, half-Jem’hadar cadet master, meanwhile, cartoonishly punches people across the room and screams every line like a drill sergeant having a heart attack. Oh, and the third episode had rival cadets hacking the school’s technology to beam half-naked cadets into public areas, an insanely problematic crime that is presented as just another cheap laugh.
The humor leads into the most persistent complaint about Starfleet Academy: the overly modern language, which has the cadet master referring to a situation as a “dumpster fire” while the chancellor tells her nemesis to “blow it out your a**” during an argument. Characters constantly refer to each other as “b*tch,” and one character straight up insults another cadet by saying that he has a small “fish d*ck.” That same character touts the virtue of “toilet wine” earlier in the episode, and the chancellor refers to the toes on her constantly-exposed feet (is the target audience Quentin Tarantino?) as “little piggies.”
Star Trek Is Still Trying To Make The Grade
Now, I’m not here to defend the modern language; even though I think Starfleet Academy has gotten a little better each episode, there’s still nothing more distracting than hearing 32nd-century genius cadets communicating like 21st-century Redditors. However, the sheer prevalence of the distracting vulgar language left me consistently wondering why the heck Star Trek sounds like this now. Soon enough, I realized the depressing truth: everything wrong with this spinoff is Paramount’s attempt to fix what fans hated about Discovery and Picard, but they are going about it in the stupidest possible way.
Discovery, for example, kicked off the annoying NuTrek trope of having entire seasons revolve around big mysteries, like “who is the Red Angel” and “what caused The Burn?” This was an attempt to modernize Star Trek and give it the kind of mystery box mystique that made shows like Lost so compelling. Unfortunately, the fandom was quite accustomed to episodic storytelling, and the big downside to Discovery’s approach is that if you don’t care about the central mystery, you won’t really care about the various episodes trying to unravel it.
Bursting The Bubble Of Our Expectations
This same mystery box storytelling effectively ruined most of Picard, a show whose tangled first season was about finding the connection between Data’s daughter, synthetic research, computer-hating Romulans, and Borg body parts. Sadly, the mystery was boring from the beginning, which forced all the show’s flaws (like poor characterization and an utter disregard for the lore) into stark relief. The second season was even worse, and the only thing saving Season 3 (which also had a weird, season-long mystery) was the introduction of fun new characters like Shaw and the reunion of the Next Generation crew.
Strange New Worlds tried to course-correct by bringing episodic storytelling back to Star Trek, but they still swung for the fences with the Enterprise crew taking on larger-than-life threats like genocidal time-travelers, hungry Gorn, and even the ultimate embodiment of evil. Starfleet Academy similarly embraced episodic storytelling, but the stakes are lower because our heroes are all snot-nosed cadets rather than seasoned officers. This is a further attempt to make up for the narrative shortcomings of Discovery and Picard, and let’s be real: if these cadets were out saving the galaxy instead of playing laser tag, the grumpier elements of the fandom would dub them all Mary Sues.
The Naked Truth About NuTrek
Something else that many hated about Discovery and Picard is that both shows were almost shockingly violent and gruesome. Discovery included intimate assault, murder, torture, and cannibalism, all while asking us to root for a Federation that wants to blow up the entire Klingon homeworld. Picard, meanwhile, ripped a beloved Voyager character’s eye out while turning another Voyager character into a murderer; later, we’d find out that Picard thought his father was abusive, that his mentally ill mother ended her own life, and that his evil doppelganger brutally killed everyone from Gul Dukat to General Martok, keeping their skulls as trophies.
Once again, Strange New Worlds walked so Starfleet Academy could run (or should that be warp?): SNW tried to lighten Star Trek’s tone through wildly trope-y stories, including a body-swap episode and even a musical episode. Now, Starfleet Academy has refined that more lighthearted approach, creating a show where the characters are constantly tease each other in the crudest and most vulgar way. Sure, it’s annoyingly modern teen speak, but this broad comedy is pretty much the antithesis of Discovery and Picard’s violent, grimdark storytelling.
The New Star Trek Show Is Finally Perking Up
Now, none of this is meant to be some kind of full-throated defense of Starfleet Academy’s excesses; the show may be improving, but the criticisms about lame storylines and bizarrely modern dialogue are still quite valid. But it’s worth considering that the reason these elements are so present in Star Trek’s latest spinoff is that Paramount has been trying to fiercely course-correct from the earlier failures of NuTrek. Furthermore, they are doing so in an admittedly flawed attempt to give the fans what they want, which is something completely different from Discovery and Picard.
If you’re a “warp core half full” kind of person, this is a reason to be optimistic: Paramount has time to iron out the wrinkles of Starfleet Academy, and it’s somewhat edifying to know these executives are finally (if a bit belatedly) listening to the fans. But we’re already seeing how course corrections can go too far, resulting in shows that don’t really feel like much like classic Trek or NuTrek. Unless execs like Kurtzman can finally find the sweet spot, Paramount may completely drive away the franchise’s older fans, effectively turning Star Trek’s 60th anniversary celebration into a prolonged funeral.