Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

I’ve always loved Star Trek.

Not the diabolical new shit. They’ve been a long-running series of abominations – from JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot in 2009 to the two sequels (Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond), to each series: Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and most recently, Starfleet Academy. (I can’t comment on the animated slop, Lower Decks; I’ve only seen the  pilot, and that was awful. Maybe it improved. Maybe. Maybe we’ll have world peace tomorrow.)

The people in charge of the franchise – JJ Abrams originally, and then Alex Kurtzman – just don’t understand the property. JJ acknowledged that in an interview, where he proclaimed he never got Star Trek. Great choice, then, to have him relaunch the franchise.

He’s a beautiful mimic, but I haven’t seen a single thing he’s done that you would consider original, speak to his voice as a storyteller (lens flares aside), or have lasting pop-cultural impact. His Star Trek movies were generic sci-fi with lots of meaningless action (as opposed to his Star Wars movies, which were generic sci-fi with lots of meaningless action). Take away the branding, and they would’ve had zero commercial and critical impact.

Kurtzman has been no better, if not worse. He has wanted to divorce himself – and his bastard creations – from their predecessors, and has performed a clumsy lobotomy on steroids to dumb down what was already dumb cinematic JJ Trek.

And this isn’t me just being an old guy not liking new shiny things. Star Trek: Enterprise isn’t that good either – it wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be (despite definitively setting up the premise) and, unfortunately, it found it mojo too late, and was cancelled. Star Trek: Voyager could’ve been a great adventure of exploration, attrition and Starfleet’s perfect ideals under constant threat in extreme circumstances, but squanders opportunities to do something truly original in that universe and instead becomes Next Generation Lite.

Both series feel complacent, like the people behind them had gotten too comfortable after the successes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so they grew too formulaic. The amount of times technobabble solves issues in situations you didn’t know it was an option is exhausting.

Voyager and Enterprise still have good episodes, though, and neither are offensive nor do anything that’s a vandalization of that universe (well, nothing major: Voyager vandalizes Q and the Borg, while Enterprise vandalizes the Ferengi and the Borg – the Borg were obviously Rent-a-Villain to try inject tension). If nothing else, they had some great characters, although Enterprise tended to underuse the supporting cast.

As far as the new series go, Alex Kurtzman feels as if he wants to do anything but Trek. To be fair (just a little), he was hamstrung by some rights issues as the cinematic and television rights belonged to two different studios. But his reinterpretation shit in the face of things that didn’t need their face shit in.

Funnily, author Andy Weir (The Martian and Project Hail Mary) recently asserted that all science fiction is inspired by Star Trek … except for modern Trek. He said Kurtzman is a nice guy, but his Trek is terrible.

Then there’s writer/director Roger Avery, who stated on the Joe Rogan Experience that he volunteered his services (because he loves Trek) for the new incarnations, but was dismissed because Kurtzman didn’t want anybody involved beholden to the predecessors.

What sort of stance is that? Seriously?

Rewind to The Next Generation, and it honoured its forebear – as experimental, unsure, and sometimes outright clunky as Star Trek could be sometimes – and incorporated it as a foundation while building its own identity.

I wanted to dislike TNG when it came out because of my loyalty to The Original Series, but as tentative as those first few seasons were, you could see so many great possibilities. Credit to Patrick Stewart, who masterfully anchored that series from the very first episode.

Kurtzman’s latest series, Starfleet Academy – cancelled after two seasons (and, surely, it would’ve been cancelled after one if season two hadn’t already been filmed) – is appalling. It’s not just bad Trek but bad television.

Speaking to the Trek issues, there’s nothing in it that resembles Star Trek. Even the things that are uniquely Star Trek – such as starships, Starfleet and the Federation, Klingons and Betazoids, etc. – don’t resemble Trek. This is nothing new, though. Its predecessors committed the same felonies.

When I was young writer (like over thirty-six years ago) I wanted to create my own Trek series. I’d written Next Gen fanfiction (yes I was, and am, that nerdy), and had ideas about what could happen next (the way I had so many ideas about what could happen next in various pop culture franchises – are you listening, Hollywood!?). But before I wrote anything, I studied the three existing properties – The Original Series, TNG, and DS9. (This was before Voyager and Enterprise).

That meant pulling apart how they functioned. That might seem overkill. But if you’re going to play in that universe’s sandbox, then you need to know how they make castles. You don’t just dismiss it, and then do something entirely different, like reinvent space travel – I mean, who’d be stupid enough to do that?

Here’s the first thing I picked up: the commanding officer in those Trek properties is always a human – naturally. You’d want a human there because audiences want to identify with the protagonist. In Star Trek, that’s infinitely more important because Gene Roddenberry’s vision was to show a human race that had grown up and, naturally, the commanding officer is going to be the best of us – or is at least going to try to be.

Starfleet Academy made their commanding officer, Holly Hunter’s Nahla Ake (what a ridiculous name), a 422-year-old alien/human hybrid. That’s already a terrible choice. You might’ve gotten away with the alien hybrid (if I’m being generous) but by making her so old, you’re disconnecting her from your audience. You’re telling us she’s not one of us.

I can see myself in Kirk, Picard, Sisko (who was my favourite), Janeway, and Archer, despite the differences between me and any one of them. But I can idealise – and idolise – what they stand for, and want to model myself after them. I can’t do that with somebody who’s 422 years old. How do I connect to that?

There’s always a confidante in Trek – in TOS, James Kirk had Bones McCoy; in TNG, Jean-Luc Picard had Guinan (but also would rely on Counsellor Troi); in DS9, Benjamin Sisko had Jadzia Dax; in Voyager Janeway had Tuvok and Chakotay; while Archer’s go-to was Trip.

In Starfleet Academy? Well, Yak’s been around for 422 years, so she knows everything. Why would she need a confidante? In fact, often she’s written as if she has answers and is just waiting for other characters to catch up. As an aside, this totally undermines the narrative impetus of any tension.

This is an important storytelling trope, too – mind you, I didn’t say an important “Trek trope”, but an important “storytelling trope”. We don’t want flawless leads. We want them to try to behave flawlessly, but connect to them when they experience doubt and uncertainty; we like to see the human face behind them as they work through issues. We want this because it’s what we do every day. The use of a confidante provides a sounding board so they can explore their frailties, and we can empathize with them.

Let’s go back to Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer: they’re heroic, and often they find answers, but they’re constantly challenged and will make wrong decisions. Sisko and Archer also made amoral decisions under extreme circumstances. Here’s an easier way to describe them: their behaviour was very human. No so much for Nomore Acne.

Trek will always have some outsider character who’s an observer of human behaviour – in TOS, it’s Spock; in TNG, it’s Data (with cameos from Q); in DS9, it’s primarily Odo, but also Quark. Jump to Voyager, which primarily uses Seven, with support from the Doctor, and Neelix (who did the heavy lifting in early season); and Enterprise, which has T’Paul. In Starfleet Academy? Well, there’re aliens everywhere in the ensemble cast, but they don’t offer much in the way of observation of humans because there are no real humans to observe.

Now you mightn’t think this is that important but as much as Trek is about science fiction, exploration, and space as the final frontier, it’s also a commentary on human behaviour. These outsiders hold a mirror up to the human characters, and in doing so teach us something about ourselves – and not just the good, but also the bad.

The supporting cast in Trek is usually mostly humans. If there are aliens, there’s usually some human connection. Deanna Troi is half human; Worf was fostered by humans; DS9’s Kira is full Bajoran, but spiritual in a way that speaks to how we understand and connect to religion; in Voyager, Seven is human and reconciling what that means. These characters are always dealing with a certain duality – their humanity conflicting with the alienness with the character trying to reconcile how they fit.

As far as I’m aware, Starfleet Academy has one human character in the ensemble: Caleb. And he’s great at everything. The other characters are inexplicably alien without it meaning anything to us. So we don’t get to explore human behaviour through others, how they handle adversity, and how they grow.

Kurtzman and company make narrative choices just because. These choices exist only on a superficial level. Here’s a good example: Gina Yashere plays first officer Lura Thok, who’s half Klingon/half Jem’Hadar.

Some of YouTube’s pop culture’s mafia have remarked that there are no female Jem’Hadar and that they’re genetically engineered, so how do we now have one who’s female? This doesn’t bother me so much. We’re eight-hundred years removed from DS9, so maybe a Jem’Hadar hooked up with a Klingon female and got whatever surgery would allow them to procreate. Or maybe she was genetically engineered from Jem’Hadar as an experiment, or as breeders in an attempt to create hybrids. Or maybe she was a Jem’Hadar experiment some Klingon rescued and fell in love with. (Already, I’ve put more thought into this than Kurtzman has.)

My issue is the character doesn’t exist outside the model of being some super-tough officer. It feels like somebody in some writers room suggested creating the offspring of Star Trek’s two most formidable warrior races. That would create so many possibilities, surely? Well, if it has – if it’s created just one possibility – I’m yet to see it.

She’s a one-dimensional character who runs around barking at people because she’s a drill sergeant. That’s it. Like Kurtzman watched Full Metal Jacket, and thought that they wanted to create a spin on the drill sergeant. But let’s up the ante, and make people scared of her because she’s half Klingon/half Jem’Hadar. Oh, and she’s female! That’s it. That’s the extent of character development. Oooh scary. Cool. Tough. Nothing more.

You know what could’ve been interesting? Allowing Gina Yashere to play a human. She was born in London to Nigerian parents. Wouldn’t it have been interesting if she was exactly that, and you explored her Nigerian heritage? Wouldn’t it have been cool if we had this tough abrasive human first officer who struggled with doubt behind the scenes and the responsibility of rearing Starfleet’s next generation of officers? Who might’ve even brought in some issues from some previous posting that she had to work through as a human? That she had a public façade but was something quite different behind closed doors?

One character is a superficial gimmick, and the other could be interesting. Once character is somebody we couldn’t possibly hope to empathise with, or see ourselves in, and the other we could. One character is one-dimensional, and one offers possibilities.

But that’s Starfleet Academy’s methodology – introducing novelties who have no depth. Hey, let’s have an alien who vomits glitter; let’s have another holographic character who behaves like Mork from Mork and Mindy and reports periodically to Orson; let’s have a Betazoid who’s so infinitely powerful she has to wear an inhibitor so she doesn’t accidentally hurt others, etc. These people are near-impossible to connect to, or root for. Even if they weren’t shallow, they’re also not human.

Now somebody will maybe point out something like Star Wars, which features an array of alien characters and we’re just fine with that. But primarily, we’re investing in humans – Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Amidala, and even Rey, Poe, and Fin in the Sequels (even the Sequels do nothing to truly explore these characters and exploit the possibilities each offered).

These humans are not from Earth, but Star Wars never focuses on their birthplaces as being governors of unhuman behaviours. We know Anakin comes from Tatooine, and that it’s. There aren’t Tatooine rituals that would delineate him from our understanding of his humanity. In fact, we’re compelled to understand his internal conflict, which is something we would all experience in our lives. The same applies to Luke, Han, Obi-Wan, etc. Even Amidala, who comes from about as culturally rich a planet as Star Wars produces for its human characters, still behaves like you and me.

Starfleet Academy makes that impossible.

Currently, it’s rating a 4.4 (out of 10) at IMDb, which is terrible. I’m sure the “vocal minority” will be blamed, although how big a minority had to uninvest to warrant this rating over the majority? Or justify the series cancellation? Or maybe the defence will be that it was just too different, and the fanbase didn’t like that. Well, if shit is different, they’re right. It’s about as different as you can get.

You can do whatever you like in storytelling. There’s this myth if you stray from the formula in these pop culture properties, it antagonises the fanbase. You’ve heard it in things like Star Wars, Ghostbusters, DC’s Snyderverse, etc. Here’s the truth: good storytelling doesn’t crash. That’s Starfleet Academy’s weakness. It’s not good storytelling. I’ve focused on the characters and the construction of that universe, but the plotting is also abysmal.

Compare that to Deep Space Nine which was fundamentally unlike The Original Series and The Next Generation. The story was set on station, rather than a ship. The commanding officer was a widower with a teenage son. A brutal war with the Dominion dominated the series run.

This was nothing like anything we’d seen or expected from Star Trek. And it works because it has compelling characters and storylines.

Benjamin Sisko is a complex, layered man who’s carrying the burden that the Bajorans consider him some prophet, whereas he sees himself as a troubled officer struggling with his grief and trying to be the best single parent he can be. He’s not quite as diplomatic as Picard, and can be as impulsive as Kirk, but sits somewhere between the two. He also only carries the rank of “commander” when the series starts, so he’s not seen as experienced as those two. He has to oversee a station with political significance, while dealing with various races that are not beholden to the Federation. There’s so much there to do with that character.

In the past, I’ve heard that Deep Space Nine was initially unsuccessful, which is a crock of shit. Like TNG, DS9 ran seven seasons. If it was unsuccessful, how did it last? I used to borrow episodes from the video store the moment they came out. The guy who ran the video store, another Trek fan, also loved it. I knew people at the time who loved it. Some might’ve initially resisted its premise, but they quickly became fans.

I won’t go overly into what I wrote thirty-six years ago for my own Trek, but I did have a Ukrainian female captain (I was writing this before Voyager) who commanded an Enterprise forty years after TNG. The Federation were facing a period of destabilisation after the Romulan reunification with Vulcan, which antagonised the Klingon Empire, leading to extremists splintering into a Union that seceded and declared their independence. But, behind the Union, was a new alien threat that would be explored throughout the story’s run, and while they were small in number, they were more evolved and more technologically advanced than humans.

It’ll be a little bit too embarrassing to detail just how much world-building I did, how many episodes I wrote, how much of a bible I compiled, and just how much time I dedicated to it (but, to give you a hint, although I started it before Voyager, I was still working on it well into Voyager’s run, as I made Janeway the Federation President).

And as raw and problematic as my writing could be back then, I would still (to this day) vow it would’ve been much purer Trek than anything this new era has produced.