Entertainment
Star Trek Icon Reveals New Series Will Avoid One Of Discovery’s Biggest Problems
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Starfleet Academy is an upcoming spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery, and many fans who disliked the latter show are worried that the new one will be just as serious and overly dark as the earlier series. However, one of Star Trek’s greatest living icons recently confirmed that this isn’t anything that fans will have to worry about because Starfleet Academy will have something Discovery often lacked: a sense of humor.
According to Star Trek actor/director Jonathan Frakes, Starfleet Academy “has lots of levity.”
In Space, No One Can Hear You Laugh
In an interview with TrekMovie, Frakes discussed comedy in Star Trek, including the fact that some fans felt like the third season of Strange New Worlds tried a little too hard to be funny. He clarified that Starfleet Academy has a more consistent tone than SNW, but that it would still have plenty of laughs. Frakes also said that he always loves to “search out the levity in any script” and that there’s plenty of humor in the latest spinoff, something which “helps the rhythm of the cutting and the storytelling.”
Obviously, time will tell how effective this humor is. While Star Trek has always had funny moments, some fans were turned off by the over-the-top antics of Lower Decks and, most recently, Strange New Worlds. Hopefully, Starfleet Academy will get the tone just right, balancing dramatic storytelling with enough humor and heart to keep things light. In this respect, it sounds like the show will be doing its best to distance itself from Discovery, and that’s most certainly a good thing.
To Explore Strange New Wars
While I personally liked Discovery as a whole, it had several excesses that turned off older Star Trek fans in a big way. The first was its early emphasis on violence and gore: not only did Season 1 focus more on war than exploring strange new worlds, but it presented a Starfleet that was ready to blow up the Klingon homeworld, killing billions in the name of peace. Along the way, the show gave us visceral scenes like Ash Tyler being tortured and assaulted, all while throwing out plot points like Michelle Yeoh’s body getting eaten by starving Klingons and her mirror universe doppelganger doing the same thing to enslaved Kelpians.
The show lightened up a bit in subsequent seasons, but its early, grimdark sensibilities affected other shows, which is why Picard’s first season featured scenes like beloved Voyager character Icheb getting brutally tortured. In many ways, Strange New Worlds was Paramount’s repudiation of Discovery: it was a show that focused on episodic storytelling rather than season-long arcs, and it featured more humor than you could shake a Tribble at. With Starfleet Academy around the corner, though, fans couldn’t help but wonder if it would be as dark and gritty as Discovery, the show it is spinning off from.
A Cast Of Comedians
According to Jonathan Frakes, though, the new spinoff will have plenty of humor. That was perhaps to be expected, considering that two of Star Trek’s funniest actors (Robert Picardo and Tig Notaro) will have regular roles on the series. Plus, as Frakes points out in the interview, legendary comedy actor Paul Giamatti plays the villain, implying that he will help the show deliver more lighthearted romps than Discovery ever did.
This, more than almost anything else, has given me a bit of hope for Starfleet Academy. Originally, I was nervous this was going to be a cringeworthy “90210 in space” kind of show, and I feared that its attachment to Discovery (a downright controversial show) might prove to be its downfall. But if this series can deliver the kind of humor Lower Decks did, by writers who are clearly lifelong fans of the franchise, then Starfleet Academy might just make the grade for both newer and older fans alike.
