Entertainment
Why Star Trek’s Attempt To Win Over Younger Audiences Is Doomed To Fail
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Starfleet Academy is Star Trek’s newest show, and it is aimed squarely at a younger audience than any live-action franchise show before it. Paramount’s goal with this series is quite simple: while appealing to older fans, they are hoping these young characters and their various onscreen antics will reach Generation Z, effectively growing what has become an older and somewhat stagnant fanbase. Unfortunately, these efforts are doomed for a simple reason: the humor in Starfleet Academy is written by Millennials who are patently terrible at writing for a Zoomer audience.
There has been extensive criticism of the language used in Starfleet Academy because these 32nd-century characters talk exactly like 21st-century Zoomers. Cadets constantly refer to each other as “bruh” and “b*tch,” instructors refer to annoying situations as “dumpster fires,” the digital dean talks about cadets getting hangry, and so on. Such dialogue is completely different than in any previous Trek show, and it’s paired with youth-centric plots about getting drunk, hooking up, and pulling pranks on rival students.
The Failed Defense of Starfleet Academy
Whenever anyone criticizes any of this, defenders will usually dust off one of two different arguments. The first (one even Robert Picardo has used) is that, because these characters are so young, we should expect them to speak and act very differently from the trained and seasoned Starfleet officers we have seen onscreen before. The second defense is that we should respect that Paramount is trying to appeal to a new audience, which is important because the primary Star Trek fandom ain’t getting any younger.
Historically, Starfleet Academy critics like myself have focused on the absurdity of the first defense; for example, it’s fine to have younger characters speak more unprofessionally than their older peers, but that doesn’t explain why these 32nd-century characters inexplicably talk like characters from the 21st century. Today’s Zoomers speak very differently from their parents and other older people, but that doesn’t mean they are dusting off slang from 1,100 years ago. However, it’s well past time we dissect the problem with the second defense: namely, that Paramount is doing all of this to create younger Star Trek fans.
Bursting Fanboys’ Bubble
The essential problem with Starfleet Academy’s writers trying to script Zoomer-style dialogue is that a Millennial-led writing staff will never be able to convincingly write like younger people. Pretty much any attempt to do this results in instant cringe. Unfortunately, most of the worst humor in this new Star Trek show comes from older writers trying to create convincing Zoomer dialogue by badly recycling Millennial humor and calling it a day.
For example, one of the clunkier lines from the first episode of Starfleet Academy is Darem’s “I’m Khionian, b*tch.” Ever ask yourself why this really sounds so out of place coming out of this young actor’s mouth? It’s because this kind of dialogue was popularized by Britney Spears (“it’s Britney, b*tch!”) back in 2007, before most Millennials quoting Britney had gotten their first smartphone.
Star Trek Does The Time Warp (Again)
In the most recent episode of Starfleet Academy, the digital dean, voiced by Stephen Colbert, uses the phrase “morning wood” before chuckling in pleasure at his own penis reference. For context, morning wood jokes were at their (ahem) peak in the ‘90s, with Office Space featuring “the Morningwood Condominiums” and Beavis and Butt-Head featuring an episode called “The Mystery of Morning Wood.” Forget appealing to Zoomers, this gag was written by and for the same Millennials that laughed along with Beavis and Butt-Head, which is likely why that same episode has a bizarre punchline featuring a farting fish.
My point is simple: Starfleet Academy has a writer’s room full of Millennials (including Lower Decks legend Tawny Newsome), and they are trying to appeal to younger viewers by including what Millennials liked when they were younger. That’s why bad guys like Nus Braka speak like ‘90s action villains (“Payback’s a b*tch!”) and the good guys are nerds trying to win prank wars with bullies (it’s basically Revenge Of The Nerds in space). This is why Chancellor Ake is hundreds of years old and often acts like a child: she’s an eternal reminder of the Millennial mantra that adulting is hard, guys!
Star Trek’s Comeback Has Already Failed
This is why Starfleet Academy’s attempt to appeal to younger viewers is ultimately doomed to fail. Actual Zoomers will reject all of this Millennial humor in a heartbeat; in fact, it wasn’t that long ago that Zoomers on TikTok were relentlessly mocking Millennial comedy for being so old and out of touch. Meanwhile, older audiences (like the Millennial-hating Boomers who keep Paramount staples like NCIS on the air) will instantly reject youth humor of any stripe, especially when it involves characters vomiting glitter like a background character in an anime (yes, this really happened!).
As for actual Millennials, most of us are still put off by Starfleet Academy’s humor because it feels completely out of place in Star Trek. Literally no fan my age has ever taken a look at the franchise and decided everything would be much better if it were written by people who thought The Office was the funniest thing ever written. Unfortunately, all the writers of this new spinoff can give us is tired vulgarity and try-hard quirks that might have been funny back before the freakin’ housing crisis.
Paramount may still get the last laugh and attract a legion of young viewers, but that’s unlikely: recently, Starfleet Academy quietly slipped out of the Top 10 rankings on Paramount+. As it turns out, writing that pisses off both older and younger viewers is not the recipe for creating a winning new show. I’d love to point this out to the writing staff, but I dare not; after all, who knows what kind of sick, therapy-coded 30 Rock meme they would slap back with in response?