Star Trek’s Best Director Just Explained The Stupidest Thing About Starfleet Academy

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 22 seconds ago

Starfleet Academy has proven especially frustrating for older Star Trek fans because it is a decidedly mixed bag. At times, the show is capable of greatness, delivering well-acted high drama that builds off some of the franchise’s greatest characters and stories. Other times (and far too often in the first half of Season 1), the show is bogged down by comedy that seems as juvenile as it is nonsensical.

Perhaps the greatest example of this is Darem, an alien whose unique physiology means that he vomits glitter like a character straight out of anime. It’s truly bizarre, deeply unfunny “comedy” that left many of us watching to wonder why it was included in the show at all. However, iconic Star Trek actor turned director Jonathan Frakes recently revealed the answer: Starfleet Academy coshowrunner Noga Landau is inexplicably obsessed with glitter.

The Fish Man Cometh

Why was Jonathan Frakes commenting on the glitter vomit in the first place? He recently directed an episode of Starfleet Academy (“300th Night”) that once again featured cadet Darem puking rainbow-colored glitter. In an interview with TrekMovie, they asked the director a fairly straightforward question: “What were your thoughts on glitter vomit?”

Now, Frakes has a well-earned reputation as a straight shooter, which is a good thing. Many directors would have responded to this question with some PR pablum about how this was a great way to reach the young, target audience of Starfleet Academy. However, Frakes gave a very honest reaction to the question, one that indicated he was just as confused as the rest of us.

Star Trek’s Most Embarrassing Moment

After noting “they showed me the glitter vomit from the earlier episode,” he bluntly stated, “it seems absurd.” He then said that the glitter vomit “was minimal” (which is true, it only appeared once, briefly in the episode), but that this weird characteristic of Darem is “established.” Surprisingly, he then revealed why we have glitter vomit in a Star Trek show at all: “Glitter has been a runner with Noga Landau, who’s the showrunner with Kurtzman.”

According to Jonathan Frakes, Landau is effectively obsessed with glitter, and she insisted on adding even more of it to “300th Night.” In addition to having Darem once again puke glitter, Frakes confirmed that “She wanted a lot of glitter in that opening sequence, where I have them walking down the hallway and slow-mo and fast-mo, and they’re about to start partying because they’re done with their school year.” While other directors might have gone along with this without question, veteran Trek icon Frakes couldn’t help but push back against this request.

“I said, really? We’re gonna throw glitter in the hallways?” At this point, Frakes sounds like he had to stop himself from criticizing this creative decision. “So that became a…” he trailed off, before ending his statement with something of a non-sequitur: “She ends all of her emails with me with the glitter.”

Taste The Rainbow

While very insightful, this interview is proof that the answers to our biggest questions are often relatively simple. Why does Darem inexplicably puke glitter like he’s an anime character trying to get featured in a reaction GIF? Simple: one of the showrunners is obsessed with glitter!

This interview also confirms something that cynical critics had long been speculating: that the execs in charge of Starfleet Academy are obsessed with jamming their own ideas into the show, even if they don’t really gel with the franchise. Jonathan Frakes most likely balked at the inclusion of glitter vomit because it doesn’t look or feel like Star Trek in any way. But Noga Landau and especially Alex Kurtzman have decided that Star Trek will be whatever they think it should be, regardless of what suits the franchise or makes the fans happy. 

When (not if) Starfleet Academy gets canceled, mark my words: the people who have been doing their best to drive fans away will now complain that the show died because not enough fans kept watching. Why did longtime fans stop watching the Star Trek show that Paramount vomited all over for a cheap laugh? If you’re genuinely asking that question, congratulations. You now have the intellectual and emotional maturity to write for Alex Kurtzman!