Entertainment
New Star Trek Spinoff Is Running Out Of Time
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The new Star Trek spinoff, Starfleet Academy, has proven to be very controversial, but its fans always offer the same rebuttal to any criticism of the show: “give it time.” The logic goes that this show might need time to find its footing, just like The Next Generation and Voyager did. However, given that the show is limited to 10 episodes per season and a maximum of four seasons, Starfleet Academy is officially running out of time to impress viewers.
This reaction to a new spinoff began with Star Trek: The Next Generation, whose first season was its absolute worst. Season 2 wasn’t much better, but the show (thanks largely to new showrunner Michael Piller) transformed into must-see TV with Season 3. After Deep Space Nine had a similarly rocky Season 1, it became gospel among many Trek fans that you should always give a new series a season or two to really find its footing.
It Gets Ugly When You Run The Numbers
Needless to say, this has become the most common defense Starfleet Academy fans have used against any and all criticisms of the show. Those fans love to make comparisons to TNG and say that critics should give these cadets time to find their space legs, just like we gave Picard and crew time. However, what these Starfleet Academy fanboys don’t realize is that the new show is racing the clock, and it’s all Paramount’s fault.
Back in the Golden Age of Star Trek, shows ran for seven seasons, with (outside of the occasional writer’s strike) 26 episodes per season. This is why shows like Voyager could afford to have a rocky first season: whenever there was a bad episode, fans could reasonably expect that a good one was around the corner. Even if the first two seasons were wildly rocky (looking at you, The Next Generation), there would be 130 episodes left that would be, relatively speaking, very good.
Each Season Is A Bubble, Waiting To Pop
But those were the salad days of network television. In the streaming era, shows are more streamlined, and Starfleet Academy (like Strange New Worlds before it) has only 10 episodes per season. Moreover, executive producer and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman has confirmed that the show is designed to last only four seasons, mirroring the four years it takes the cadets to complete their academy training.
That means that Starfleet Academy has a much more limited window to find its audience than fans think. Every episode represents ten percent of an entire season, meaning that a few bad episodes can make the entire season feel like a mixed bag. This is why fans began turning against the more whimsical episodes of Strange New Worlds: while the occasional lighthearted story can be fun, it feels weird when 30 percent of your third season is devoted to overly wacky episodes.
Starfleet Academy is facing a similar problem because the writers keep dragging decent stories down with juvenile humor. Tales of parental trauma and racial diaspora exist uneasily alongside jokes about cadets eating comm badges and vomiting glitter (incredibly, these are different cadets). By the time the show ends, fans may well wonder how much more character development we might have gotten if there had been fewer scenes of farting fish, drunken dancing, and other try-hard attempts to make us laugh.
The Show Will Be Over Before You Know It
It’s also important to remember that Starfleet Academy lasting four seasons is actually a best-case scenario. Previously, NuTrek shows like Discovery and Lower Decks were prematurely canceled by Paramount. Strange New Worlds, meanwhile, unexpectedly had its final season (which recently finished filming) cut in half. While Starfleet Academy has already been renewed for a second season, poor reception of Season 1 could very well get the show prematurely canceled.
That may already be happening, as Starfleet Academy recently tumbled out of the Top 10 list on Paramount+. With any luck, the show will continue to smooth out its rough edges and grow more impressive over time, like The Next Generation before it. But considering that Starfleet Academy will have fewer episodes in its total run than TNG had for only two seasons, it’s important for fans and showrunners alike to realize that this new show is rapidly running out of time to win over new audiences.