Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

[Thom]

Sounds like everyone behind the scenes need to go back to school.

[mechaninac]

11 minutes ago, Thom said:

Sounds like everyone behind the scenes need to go back to school.

That's where they "learned" to write and produce such dreck...

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I assume 100 monkeys at typewriters could make a better show.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Thom said:

Sounds like everyone behind the scenes need to go back to school.

There's only so much an education in the fine arts can do when the student is completely lacking in talent or simply unwilling to understand the assignment.

And oh boy are Paramount and Alex Kurtzman unwilling to understand the assignment.  Their commitment to making this unasked-for grimdark Trekslop instead of what audiences have clearly said they want is quite something.  I mean, you'd think when the franchise's bottom ten seasons by review score reads like an itemized list of your efforts it'd be time to consider an alternative approach.  Like maybe changing jobs to become a mime.  

Spoiler

The current Bottom 10 TV seasons by score includes all of Discovery, all of Short Treks, the first two seasons of Picard, Strange New Worlds's third season, and Lower Decks's first.

I have little doubt that Starfleet Academy will rescue Lower Decks season one from the #10 spot on that list.  Whether it'll rescue Section 31 from the bottom spot is still an open question...

 

[pengbuzz]

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's actually worse on a second watch.  The writers are really doing a champion job of making this captain look like a complete buffoon.

  Hide contents

> Ship detects tachyon interference (AKA "there's a cloaked ship nearby")
> Doesn't raise shields, ready weapons, or go to yellow/red alert
> 12 incoming projectiles
> Orders a red alert and shields raised, but not evasive action
> Attempts to shoot down a dozen incoming mines with... a single torpedo launcher instead of the dozens of other weapons the ship has?
> Kicks her first officer off the bridge to go babysit
> Ship's being engulfed by programmable matter
> Activate backup holographic comms instead of taking measures to escape?
> Orders ship out of the area
> Told that helm is unresponsive and power is being drained
> Enemy ship pops up behind them
> Orders a "full spread" from the weapons she was just told are subject to a power drain
> Reminded the weapons don't work
> Ship gets grappled
> Orders the ship that she had already been told has lost helm control and which just got immobilized with grappling lines to take emergency evasive action
> Orders all remaining power to forward shields, when the ship is being shot to pieces from behind.
> Finally sends a distress call, wastes time repeating herself for an automated distress call.
> Calls the doctor for a casualty report instead of seeing to the safety of her ship
> Everyone's wearing a personal transporter, but sure let's carry the injured instead of beaming them directly to sickbay that's a great idea.
> Multiple injuries but no "casualties".  Casualties includes injuries you buffoon.  You're CARRYING one of the casualties.  You mean no fatalities.
> Captain asks to be told if/when someone dies.  F***ing WHY?
> Damage control robots can put out little incidental fires but not evacuate the wounded?
> Main power's failing, let's spend precious power taking a 3D conference call from the guy attacking us!

With so many cuts, it's hard to tell if it's the writers or the editors who are making the captain look like the galaxy's least attentive Pakled.

Two words: Captain Feckless.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Two words: Captain Feckless.

No, I'm pretty sure Michael Burnham isn't in this one... 🤔😜

I'm sure the academy curriculum has probably changed a bit since the 2370s when field study was a sophomore year activity, but all things considered if this series is going to work at all it's going to need a fantastically good explanation for why the Starfleet Academy Earth campus's first incoming class in over a century is being immediately thrown into harm's way on a poorly supervised training ship in the badlands instead of... y'know... attending classes at the titular academy.

Having said that, I know it's going to be the dumbest f***ing thing I'll have seen since SNW dressed Chris Myers up like a Power Rangers villain and tried to play it laser straight.

[Dynaman]

On 12/9/2025 at 10:12 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

need a fantastically good explanation for why the Starfleet Academy Earth campus's first incoming class in over a century is being immediately thrown into harm's way on a poorly supervised training ship in the badlands instead of... y'know... attending classes at the titular academy.

To be fair, they don't really need a good explanation - The Motion Picture got away with the Enterprise being the ONLY vessel between the Klingon border and Earth for example.  With as many problems as ST: V had at least it had a better reason for why the Enterprise got sent on that particular mission.

Not that I plan on watching this, I've still not watched the last season or two of Discovery even though I had P+ to watch SNW.

[Seto Kaiba]

31 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

To be fair, they don't really need a good explanation - The Motion Picture got away with the Enterprise being the ONLY vessel between the Klingon border and Earth for example.  With as many problems as ST: V had at least it had a better reason for why the Enterprise got sent on that particular mission.

To be honest, I feel like that example underlines why they need a fantastically good explanation for why the Earth campus's first incoming class have been sent into harm's way on a starship instead of attending classes.

The Motion Picture was the second-lowest rated title behind Final Frontier until Section 31 rolled in and stole the bottom spot, and the whole "the Enterprise is the only ship in range" thing is one of Trek's most-mocked cliches due to ex post facto setting changes in later works.

Spoiler

Though in fairness, the Enterprise being The Only Ship made sense in context at the time The Motion Picture was made... but the setting has evolved considerably since then.

TOS-era Star Trek was extremely vague about the particulars of its broader setting.  The Enterprise was an Earth starship for the show's first 18 episodes until the writers invented the Federation in the season one episode "Arena".  At that time, "Earth Starfleet" was envisioned as a fairly small organization with only 14 or so "Starship-class" starships of the same type as Enterprise.  Seasons two and three implied that Starfleet was a larger organization than that but never showed it and continued on with the premise that Starfleet had two dozen or so ships.

It wasn't until after TAS ended and Franz Joseph published the Star Fleet Technical Manual in 1975 that the Star Trek setting first accommodated the idea that Starfleet was a much larger organization operating several dozen to several hundred starships of multiple classes.  But that ended up non-canonical when Roddenberry and Joseph had a falling out.

So when TMP was made, the official line was still that Starfleet was a smallish organization with several dozen starships to its name spread out across a huge area of space on long term exploration missions... making the premise that the Enterprise was the only ship of sufficient power in the area narratively plausible.  It wouldn't be until Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan that they'd finally introduce another starship class (the Miranda-class USS Reliant), and later titles established the Federation and Starfleet were a lot bigger than previously indicated and always had been... retroactively making the overused "The Only Ship" plot device look sillier.

Starfleet Academy is going to need a fantastically good explanation for why the entire incoming class of cadets were packed onto a starship and sent into harm's way or it's going to get branded an Idiot Plot because there's no obvious contextual explanation for it.  The occasional bit of bad writing was easier to excuse when seasons were twenty-six episodes long, but when you only have ten episodes per season the audience is a LOT less forgiving.  Not to mention that if you launch your series with an Idiot Plot your series is unlikely to recover, as Discovery and Picard both failed to do.

 

31 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Not that I plan on watching this, I've still not watched the last season or two of Discovery even though I had P+ to watch SNW.

I'll probably hoist the ol' jolly roger to see if the first season is worth it... though as you can tell I am not getting my hopes up even a little.

[Thom]

Sounds like they would have been better doing a third season of Star Trek Prodigy instead. Heck, they could have done it live-action too, with the cadets on the second Protostar continuing the Federations explorations after the attack on Utopia Planetia.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 12/13/2025 at 8:59 AM, Thom said:

Sounds like they would have been better doing a third season of Star Trek Prodigy instead. Heck, they could have done it live-action too, with the cadets on the second Protostar continuing the Federations explorations after the attack on Utopia Planetia.

Hm... yeah, a third season of Star Trek: Prodigy would almost certainly get a warmer reception from fans than another season of Discovery's 32nd century grimdark misery, even if it is leaning very heavily on Star Trek: Voyager for audience appeal.  That said, that reception would still be pretty darn frosty considering the second season ended with a descent into the grimdark miserable hopelessness of the Picard era that will dominate the setting for at least the next 17+ in-universe years.  Fans hated it in Picard, so they're not likely to welcome it as part of Prodigy either. 

Now that I think about it, it's a bit odd that Paramount cancelled Prodigy only to essentially introduce a new series with a very similar premise in Starfleet Academy.  In both cases, the story revolves around a bunch of kids who've been in Starfleet barely long enough to ask where the bathroom is being packed onto a training ship and sent into harm's way.

Spoiler

TBH, it kind of feels like the writers of new Trek keep forgetting what Starfleet Academy IS.

It's not some 8-12 week boot camp.  It's a 4+ year university-level educational institution that also functions as Starfleet's officer candidate school.

Wesley Crusher might've gotten to serve as an acting ensign for a year or two because of nepotism, but even he was eventually told to go to the Academy and get the proper education (and then dropped out in his third year).  Dr. Bashir did eight years in the academy.  Four years for the regular Academy training program and four more to get his M.D..  Nog got an accelerated graduation after a bit over two years, but that was in extremis due to the war but also got an indecent amount of on-the-job training from the Deep Space Nine crew.  Pretty much everyone else did the 4 year program.  Even Data.

In Discovery, Michael Burnham never attended the Academy.  She got a field commission through nepotism and somehow nobody bothered to make her actually attend the Academy or receive any formal training even after she was promoted all the way to first officer (all under the same captain who gave her the field commission).  Sylvia Tilly did not finish her Academy studies.  She was given a commission out of the blue without finishing her training for... not committing genocide?  Then she somehow goes on to be an academy instructor despite having only a year or two of practical experience and technical knowledge that's 900 years out of date?  

In Picard, Elnor joined Starfleet in 2400 and was already serving on the Excelsior a year later.  Seven of Nine gets the full Mary Sue treatment and is given a field commission to the rank of Captain by Picard, a commission to the rank of Commander and a first officer post without setting foot at the Academy or having any formal training, and then a field promotion to captain from another captain.

The kids in Prodigy never do get to actually attend the Academy, with Janeway giving them all field commissions out of spite after they only did a few months of prep school.

 

[Dynaman]

So, has anyone watched this yet (and will admit to having done so)?  

I'm not inclined to watch it but if someone here says it was great I'll give it a look.  

Not saying it is bad, but 90210 was all the rage and I had no interest in it.  Same for Survivor or America's Got Talent (when everyone at work was shocked I'd never seen it and to this day I never have)

[Seto Kaiba]

19 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

So, has anyone watched this yet (and will admit to having done so)?  

I'm not inclined to watch it but if someone here says it was great I'll give it a look.  

I was just about to start when I saw this post.

One of my friends watched it earlier, and could only manage damning it by faint praise as "more fun than Discovery".

 

EDIT: The initial batch of reviews and review scores are NOT promising.  This sucker's sitting at a 35% audience score.  That's enough to put it in Trek's bottom 10 titles right off the bat.

Edited January 17 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I was just about to start when I saw this post.

One of my friends watched it earlier, and could only manage damning it by faint praise as "more fun than Discovery".

"More fun than Discovery"?

So are:

- root canals

- kidney stones

- endometriosis

- 1,001 papercuts on your hands in a vinegar factory

- AI video "Carbon Disco" (Star Trek)

- A night time aircraft carrier landing in a storm at sea in 1964 flying an F-4 Phantom II

- accidentally sitting on a cattle prod and triggering the device

- listening to Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz as he recites bad poetry for nine hours straight 

Edited January 17 by pengbuzz

[Dynaman]

Sounds like what I was expecting...

I did watch the first 15 minutes or so of that Section 31 dreck - I'm not even going to bother watching that much of a new Trek show without some good recommendations and that ought to scare the powers that be at Paramount (not me personally, but that so many former Trekkies like myself will no longer make it a point to watch new Trek).

[Dangard Ace]

Watched both episodes.

 

1 was a set up episode.   Almost gave up since the first 1/3 was ...not Star Trek-ky more generic space sci-fi but ploughed on through to give it a chance.   Main student characters are .... hey it's high school in space/san franciso!    

2 had cameos from multiple shows.   Time to rebuild the Federation with hot girl Betazed.  

[rsvictor1976]

I haven't watched Academy yet but I keep seeing negative headlines pop up on my social media feeds. Is the show generally bad or is it one of those, "its bad because of it's woke agenda?" 

[Seto Kaiba]

So... wading into this with my expectations as low as possible.

The new 60th anniversary eyecatch is nice.  I have to wonder why the Cerritos and Protostar didn't make the cut, though.

Spoiler

My first impression is NOT good.

The series starts with an extended flashback to the protagonist's childhood, where the show's Captain apparently sentences his mother to prison for piracy without trial and has him declared a ward of the state.  The pirate ringleader is, for some reason, sentenced at the same time and Paul Giamatti delivers a performance worthy of a Golden Raspberry award as he plays another of NuTrek's trademark utterly irredeemable total arsehole villains.  Some shenanigans ensue involving a teddy bear, the dim-witted Captain gets her commbadge stolen by a small child and used to circumvent security, and we learn that apparently windows don't exist in the future.

There's a timeskip to 15 years later where we see the kid, now grown up, being hauled to a penal colony on a prison transport.  Of course, it's not enough to establish that, so there has to be a needless CG sequence of a floating thingy narrating his rap sheet.  He seems to be wanted on a bunch of worlds including Andoria and Cardassia Prime.  He bites off a guard's ear to get free, breaks down the worst forcefield in the history of the franchise to get to the pilot, and takes control of the prison transport.  

The tech here looks... like... honestly the prison transport looks like it belongs to Archer's era, more than a millennium ago.

Spoiler

Apparently autopilot and remote piloting are lost technologies in this grimdark future of the 32nd century, despite being near-universal technologies nine hundred years earlier.  The prison transport crashes for what is, in the grand scheme of things, no real reason.  The computer cheerily declares "unstable flight path" after the ship has already crashed.

 

We finally get to the opening credits after 14 minutes of agonizing generic slop... and the title card looks like it was thrown together in 20 minutes using GenAI assets.

 

Spoiler

Bajor is apparently somewhere in Latin America.  You can tell because there's a sepia filter over everything like every American movie scene set in Mexico.

As much as he gets around, you'd swear Admiral Vance were the only flag officer in Starfleet at this point.  He pays Nahla a visit on Bajor to call her out of retirement because Starfleet Academy reopened.  She's got bruises on her hands that make it look like she's had recent IVs.  He wants her to be the chancellor of the academy.

Why is it even remotely necessary?  There were eighty Starfleet Academy campuses in 2401.  Apparently there's a war college now too?

 

Honestly, like everything else about 32nd century NuTrek, Starfleet Academy seems to be built around a plot hole.  

Namely, the idea that reopening the Starfleet Academy campus on Earth is in any way significant.

It's the oldest campus, sure.  But it's far from the only one.  There were EIGHTY campuses in 2401 and that number almost certainly went up not down.  There is zero reason for Vance to be recalling an officer who has been out of the service for 15 years and doesn't want to be there to run the reopened San Francisco campus.  There's no real reason to reopen the San Francisco campus at all other than creator provincialism.  But we have to have a protagonist who's playing the martyr, having resigned in "disgrace" over having made a child a ward of the state after his mother was sentenced to a penal colony for piracy and murder (which is incredibly stupid) and Admiral Vance has to kiss her ass to get things rolling.

 

Spoiler

Somehow, despite vocally stating she doesn't want to deal with kids at the academy she's enticed to go look for the one kid who got away 15 years ago?  This writing is just a cliche storm.

 

Also, what is the Discovery-era's fetish with making every protagonist an ex-convict?

OK, no... I can't take this seriously anymore.  

 

Spoiler

So Nahla goes to the prison Caleb tried to break into in order to try to find his mom and... he's dressed like Sub-Zero.  Like WTF.

Yes Nahla, take the handcuffs and muzzle off the violent felon with a history of biting people.  That's a fantastic idea.  

The writing here is just dreadful.  Literally no reason is given for why she's fixated on this dumbass or why she believes he has a "unique mind".  This is just badly thought-out "because the plot demands it" writing.  Apparently Nahla's conscience is SO guilty she's trying to spring this guy from a prison cell he absolutely deserves to be in based on a long criminal history because she feels guilty about having sent his mother to prison for murder.

 

The acting here is absolutely terrible, and the writing might be worse.  I am twenty minutes in and I am ready to stop.  It's not Section 31 bad, but it's getting there.

 

Spoiler

Also, Nahla is f***ing lying to Caleb.  She's spent her retirement working at a Bajoran school.  She has not, by any stretch of the imagination, spent every waking moment of the last 15 years looking for his dumb arse.

The first believable reaction in this entire series is Caleb laughing at Nahla for saying she wants him to join Starfleet Academy as a way to get out of prison.  Even he seems to realize that the idea that his "innocent" mother breaking out of prison and forgetting all about her kid aren't exactly indicators of innocence or being a decent person.

We get a good look at the Athena, the new ship for this series.  It's everything wrong with the design of the Discovery, turned up to 11.  The saucer section looks like a phone's wireless charging pad or an upside-down car cupholder and the rest of the ship is just flat like someone forgot to render the third dimension of it.  The interior looks like an incredibly tacky shopping mall.  Caleb's misbehavior is a vehicle for introducing the Jem'Hadar woman.  How a half-Klingon half-Jem'Hadar even comes to be is a mystery to me since the two species hate each other and the Jem'Hadar don't reproduce biologically or even have a concept of lineage.

Apparently issuing uniforms is more a matter of walking through an arch that vaporizes your hair and clothes now?  Why?

 

Robert Picardo delivers a pretty typical performance as Voyager's EMH.  It's a shame he's wasting his time here.

 

Spoiler

Also, what happened to Starfleet Academy being... y'know... an institution of higher learning for adults?  A cadet who rolls into medical after Caleb is treated for parasites tells the doctor that she swallowed her commbadge like she's f***ing well five years old.

The ship's bridge is MASSIVE, and looks like a phenomenally tacky retro bar from the 70's.  It's even got disco lights.

 

Because Discovery got made fun of for not bothering to name the bridge crew, Starfleet Academy takes the time to have the Captain personally name every bridge officer on taking command so we know that the writers weren't that lazy again.

 

Spoiler

The writers clearly think being quirky will save their terrible work, so Captain Ake spends a minute adjusting her seat after taking command.

 

I have a nasty, nasty feeling that Kerrice Brooks is going to get a lot of hate for her character.  Like Mary Wiseman, she seems to be stuck playing a character who is what can only be described as Hollywood Autistic.  It's overacted in a way that makes her feel less autistic and more developmentally delayed?  Even the Doctor ends up actually fleeing from her due to how obnoxious she is.

 

Spoiler

Potentially justified in the fact that her character is literally meant to be four months old... but being young didn't save Wesley, Kes, or Tilly from being obnoxious.

Via SAM, we learn that the Doctor has aged because around 500 years ago he added an aging program to himself in order to make organic colleagues feel more at ease since he is otherwise an unaging eternal piece of sofware.  They also use him to drop continuity nods to Prodigy.

Security is swiss cheese even by Star Trek standards on the Athena, with Caleb apparently able to send covert transmissions to his mother's secret subspace channel despite having no security authorization whatsoever.

The captain also seemingly feels no urge to actually pay attention to the goings-on on her own ship, and is reading a book on the bridge instead.  She also puts her ship in danger at the first opportunity, dropping out of warp near the badlands to scan something instead of doing her damn job and taking the students to Earth.  This leads to the attack scene that was in the teaser.  It plays out EXACTLY THE SAME, meaning yes the captain really is that incompetent.  She bungled an almost literal milk run, a 15 hour straight line flight to Earth.  Between that and the number of cadets who behave like children a fraction of their ages, I'm beginning to see why Starfleet is in such dire straits.  Recruitment standards have REALLY fallen.

 

Yes, the doctor really doesn't know what the word "casualties" means now.

 

Spoiler

So Caleb's message somehow let the pirates set a trap for the Athena.  Paul Giamatti does some absolutely awful acting to some absolutely awful writing.  At least he seems to grasp the quality (or lack thereof) of the material he's been provided.

One of the other cadets is an Insanely Durable Man who claims to be able to survive pressure differentials up to 7,000 pounds (48 megapascals!) and temperatures as low as -271 degrees C.  For reference, 48 megapascals is more pressure than the ocean floor where the wreck of the RMS Titanic sits and -271 centigrade is not even 3 degrees over absolute zero.  This man is literally more durable than the ship he's on for some reason.

Paul Giamatti's pirate crew look like they wandered in off the set of a Power Rangers episode.

All the effects budget in the world and we had to go all blurry for off-brand Farscape CG makeup?

The Captain has the very Starfleet urge to beam the intruders into space.  That's... Janeway might do that, but I don't think anyone else would.  Any way you shake it, that's still murder bud.

"Do not kill your instructor on day one".  Words to live by.  That's got to be at least second semester curriculum.

Also, medical technology seems to have taken a massive step backwards with tissue regenerators now being incredibly painful for some reason?

The fight scene at the end has enough shakycam to make you think the lead cinematographer was Michael J. Fox.

 

Spoiler

They end with the song "San Francisco" in a valiant but doomed attempt at having a moment.

And of course we have to have the protagonist not really get punished for putting the entire ship and crew in danger and the captain emotionally blackmails him into staying at the academy against his will.

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, rsvictor1976 said:

I haven't watched Academy yet but I keep seeing negative headlines pop up on my social media feeds. Is the show generally bad or is it one of those, "its bad because of it's woke agenda?" 

Oh no, the first episode is bad.  It's worryingly bad.  "We have learned NOTHING from the failure of Star Trek: Discovery or Section 31" bad.

Based on my own experience, I doubt it's culture war BS driving the generous helping of negative reviews.  The writing is atrociously, cringe-inducingly bad.  If they could fix that it might actually be watchable, but as it is it doesn't matter how good (or bad, in the case of Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti) the actors are if they're delivering dialog and following storylines that read like someone asked ChatGPT to write Star Trek in the style of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  The series can't decide if it wants to be serious or funny, and it REALLY needs to pick a lane because it can't do both.

[Roy Focker]

Halfway through the 2nd episode. I guess the show is okay, but I find many of the characters to be annoying. I don't know if they're all bad actors are they just gave them bad characters. Holly Hunter, I know is an award-winning actress, but I can't stand her quirky character. Holly Hunter is one of those god awful I refuse to wear shoes in public people. Many of these characters share the same traits: quirky, awkward and annoying. I'm fine with such characters when there's only one of them by series.

Dialog is way too modern. In less than 10 years this show will be more dated than the original series because of this. I still think the production design looks cheap and figured out the reason they've got CGI droids and aliens in the background. I rather they used the money for more physical sets. One of the main cadets is a blue skinned fish-face alien. His makeup is all CGI, but I guess they don't have the budget to CGI his face all the time, so the Cadet wears a human face hologram?

The logic of this show offends me.  In the 2nd episode a cadet is hauled to his seat at very important diplomatic meeting by security. The cadet's uniform is covered in space snot. How dumb is security? Bringing in a cadet covered in snot isn't a good impression. This is especially stupid when we see them changing cadet's clothes through some sort of a transporter dressing room. Why didn't security stop off there first?

I think this show is trying too hard to connect with the Zoomers. Is that what the current generation is called? I'm no Zoomers but even they should be offended by such pandering. This show has potential and isn't that bad, but I feel it needs a course correction to focus on what works and everybody being the quirky character is not it.

[grogall]

After watching the first two episodes....

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, grogall said:

After watching the first two episodes....

About now, all of us can relate...

 

[derex3592]

On 1/17/2026 at 2:09 PM, pengbuzz said:

About now, all of us can relate...

 

This. Under the advisement of my boss/friend who is a huge Trek fan (of most things), not Sec 31 or Disco, I am avoiding this mess like the plague. In his words "awful, awful, awful, don't watch!" - I told him my advice was to go cleanse his pallet and watch "In The Pale Moonlight" from DS-9 to remind himself what GOOD Trek writing and acting actually looked like! 

Edited January 19 by derex3592

[Seto Kaiba]

Getting ready to watch Starfleet Academy's 2nd episode... pray for me. 🤮

 

Still wanna know where my Cerritos and Protostar are in this new 60th Anniversary eyecatch... maybe the showrunners are just jealous that both shows are jealous that both shows are something fans actually liked.

 

OK, right off the bat... what is with this series and the f***ing piss filter?  Seriously.  First Bajor looked like we were watching it through a used coffee filter and now San Francisco looks like we're seeing it through a pint mug of cheap pilsner.  Like, I realize the visual effects team is probably three unpaid interns and a AI tool but come on.  At least send the interns out to touch grass and maybe see the sun for once... unless they've been in captivity for so long working on Discovery they've devolved into Morlocks.

Spoiler

Y'know how we frame our bold new Captain protagonist as a visionary leader and educator?  Have her deliver a speech full of inane and patronizing general advice that would prompt eye-rolling and noises of disgust from even the laziest teenager.

What happened to Starfleet?  

Before the Kurtzman years, Star Trek treated Starfleet Academy as a not-quite-military college with various postgraduate programs that was designed to take the Best of the Best and turn them into consummate professionals.  The sort of people who didn't need to be told to make their beds or to get to class on time.  The Starfleet Academy series is treating it like high school, full of inept children who need their hands held at every moment.  Like, I don't even like these characters and I'm still offended on their behalf by how patronizing this is.

I will say one thing in its favor.  I do like that they've gone to the trouble to include a decent helping of alien cadets in the academy class even if most of them are minor background characters.  There's one particularly noteworthy blink-and-you'll-miss-it minor detail among them too.  The Ferengi cadet is wearing a skirt, and is likely female... meaning at some point in the intervening millennia their species finally got its sh*t together.  Lots of reused makeup here.  Several of the aliens towards the back are clearly wearing prosthetics that were used for background aliens on Discovery.  The Federation War College apparently has a lot more aliens too, their representative closest to the camera appears to be Romulan.  A Prodigy-style Brikar shows up at one point.  We don't see any Cardassians but there are apparently enough of them to have their own student association.  A singer who belongs to the same species as Natalia from Star Trek: Beyond appears at one point (a rare Kelvin timeline reference).  There's also a Starfleet Exocomp whom the subtitles reveal is named Almond Basket.

Spoiler

Poor Robert Picardo is trying to hard to sell this "funny" dialog about making students look after a container of self-replicating mucus.

We keep cutting back to this stupid f***ing speech.  Holly Hunter's voice is rapidly becoming The Most Annoying Sound.

They are doing one thing right about depicting her as an educator.  They've successfully depicted her as someone who is simultaneously in love with the sound of their own voice and incapable of writing an actual speech anyone might want to listen to.

I'm not gonna criticize the jerkass behavior of Cadet Reymi.  Even Kirk had to deal with a classmate like that... so much so that his fantasy on the Shore Leave planet was a chance to sock him one.  Interrupting a lecture to poke fun at a fellow student... not funny, just annoying.

Spoiler

I'm guessing there's going to be a running theme of every single marginally noteworthy place at the academy being named for a character from prior Trek shows.  The combat training class, which seems to involve nothing more than getting yelled at by the half-Klingon Drill Sergeant Nasty, takes place at the Boothby Memorial Park.  What on Earth did Boothby do to get memorialized like that?  He was just the academy groundskeeper.

 

All that before the OP!  Ugh...

As for the OP itself... this doesn't really say "Star Trek".  It's mostly just watching buildings get built and cherry blossoms blow down hallways.

 

Spoiler

The episode proper starts with the characters getting their room assignments.  They didn't already have those?  They've been to multiple classes already and they had a 15+ hour long-haul warp flight to Earth.  Five'll get you twenty he's rooming with Reymi, since they seem set to be frenemies.  

Yep, that was very predictable the moment it became clear he wasn't rooming with Kraag.

OK, there's a Lower Decks reference.  There's a Starfleet Exocomp just hanging around in the turbolift.  It keeps having to move out of the way because the Doctor apparently still can't read body language despite 900 years of practice and Captain Ake is practically fleeing from him.  

Spoiler

Apparently the Federation is debating where to relocate its seat of government to now that it's growing again.  A bit odd that the only places anyone mentions that are in the running are on Earth, though.  Namibia, Singapore, and Paris are all mentioned... Paris being where it was for almost a thousand years.  

The Betazoids are coming... and our two jerkass male cadets are arguing because they're roommates.  

Oh god, this hideous room is the Chancellor's office?  I assumed this architectural greenscreen nightmare was her quarters.  

There is a brief moment where this series comes dangerously close to being self-aware about how unfunny it is.

Spoiler

Also, how is security this bad?  This isn't some random building on the Presidio... this is the parked primary hull of a Federation starship.  Yet Caleb is apparently hacking the place's computers every couple hours despite having no security privileges whatsoever.  Either the security chief is asleep at the switch or they've just given up on the entire idea of security.  

Speaking of people with nothing to do... Admiral Vance is apparently just bumming around the Academy now.

They're really committed to trying to sell the idea that everyone's just so quirky.  The Chancellor of Starfleet Academy just wanders the campus out of uniform and without shoes.  Even her colleagues look annoyed.

We of course have to have a Discovery character remind us how stupid their plot was before being interrupted by Caleb.  Why bother setting a series at Starfleet Academy if your entire cast save for the annoying girl are characters who firmly believe they're Too Cool for School?  This is worse than boring, it's downright frustrating to watch.  Every class they attend is just a venue for them to act out.

Spoiler

Holograms seem to be a lot less capable in this era than they were 900 year ago in the 24th century.  Caleb is able to circumvent a security hologram warning him he's out of bounds by just asking it to recite coffee orders and the fibbonaci sequence.  These holograms are almost a millennium newer than the Doctor, who would have simply looked at Caleb like he's an idiot (he is) and dragged him back to class by the ear.  It's actually satisfying that two security guards beam in and tackle his dumb ass after a minute.

 

Honestly?  The biggest problem with this episode is that the writers suffered a Critical Research Failure about what Betazoids are.

They seem to have mixed up a combination of traits from the half-Betazoid Deanna Troi and the Ramitisian mediator Riva from TNG "Loud as a Whisper".  Instead of the dark-eyed telepaths who can speak but communicate mainly via telepathy they are in every other series, these Betazoids are light-eyed mute empaths who communicate via sign language.

 

Spoiler

The Betazoid isolationist leader's whole schtick seems to be a pile of ridiculous demands determined to ensure any negotiations would fail... like demanding the authority to veto any future world's application to join the Federation, a bunch of seats on the security council, and a fleet devoted to just protecting his world alone.  It makes for pretty dumb drama... as does the obviously stupid move of having security drag Caleb into the conference while he's covered in frozen alien mucus after getting roughed up by the Academy guards and has both the Doctor and Chancellor scolding him.

 

Actually, another huge problem with this show's logic.  Why are the negotiations for Betazed's reentry into the Federation taking place at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco in front of a class of cadets?  It's not even the right place or audience for it.

Betazed's reentry into the Federation should be something negotiated between the Betazoid delegation and the Federation Council headed up by the Federation President.  Those absolutely critical stakeholders aren't even on this planet.  They're at the Federation Headquarters space station!

 

Spoiler

And of course we're going to trust the complete idiot who can't even manage to slack off properly to handle the Betazoid delegation?

 

I have a feeling that quite a few of the people who worked on this series either never went to college at all, or only went to art school.  The tour of the Academy only seems to visit a coffee shop and the quad between some buildings where the students are reading outdoors, tossing around a ball, playing frisbee and hacky-sack, and generally doing everything you only see in the staged photos for college brochures.

They couldn't even be bothered to make a replicator for the replimat... they just have cups appear on the serving area of a completely modern-looking espresso machine.  That might actually be worse/lazier than Picard using an off-the-shelf 3D printer as the La Sirena's replicator.  No corner left uncut.

 

Spoiler

At least there's a halfway sane explanation for why Caleb can't find the place he's looking for.  It's behind Betazed's telepathic wall and formed post-Burn, so Starfleet simply doesn't know about it because they had no way to see it.

Admiral Vance wastes a perfectly good chance to point out that Starfleet knows what caused the Burn and that it can't happen again... which would probably have been a very tidy way to take the wind out of the isolationist Betazoid president's sails.

The Doctor gets to sing some more opera.

 

Honestly, it feels like it's more rewarding to watch this series for the background continuity nods than the actual story.  At least there it feels like there's some affection for Star Trek as a whole... even if it is entirely superficial.

 

... ok, when your plot is so badly written that your antagonist starts to sound distressingly like the voice of reason, it might be time to reconsider your entire plotline.

Spoiler

The President of Betazed asks some very pointed questions about why Captain Ake quit Starfleet 15 years prior... and then some VERY pointed ones about the nepotism and lowering of standards surrounding Caleb.

So after some fairly weak rationalizations, the plot wraps up with Starfleet seemingly arbitrarily deciding that the Federation will put its next capital on Betazed instead... noting that the entire Federation council and Federation President have been absent this entire time and probably ought to weigh in on that.

This kind of further diminishes the relevance/significance of Starfleet Academy on Earth.  It would've meant something if the Federation had reestablished the capital in Paris as it'd been since the founding, which would have made that Academy campus the de facto flagship campus again.  Now there doesn't really seem to be a reason for it to exist there at all, since there are many other campuses with presumably better staff and conditions than what's available on an Earth that only came out of isolationism two or so years ago.

 

 

This episode is... "better" feels too much like praise.  Let's go with "Less awful". 

It's following a very old Star Trek diplomacy episode formula that's been used since TOS... but it's just not doing it very well because it's not committing to the bit.  It wants to keep drama at arm's length and focus on being "quirky" and "funny" in a very forced and unnatural-feeling way so it ends up in this emotional flip-flop where there are scenes that were meant to be tense and dramatic that are just bland and emotionless because the series keeps trying to shift attention from the drama to a kid in the background who won't stop playing with his zipper to the great dismay of the adults.

[sh9000]

I don't plan on watching the show but this is a nice 60th Anniversary intro before the show.

[Seto Kaiba]

As per NuTrek's usual, there's an absolutely massive gulf between the glowing reviews the professional critics are penning and the much less positive feedback from verified viewers in the audience.

The series is currently sitting no-so-pretty with an audience score of 43 against a critic score of 87.  A Discovery-esque 44 point gap.

The positive reviews from the critics are full of vague praise for the show's "creativity" and "vibe", and the negative reviews have surprisingly little to say about culture war BS and are mainly focused on the issues with the show's writing and to a lesser extent the obnoxiousness of Paul Giamatti and Holly Hunter.  The need to make every character "quirky" comes up surprisingly often.

[pengbuzz]

37 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As per NuTrek's usual, there's an absolutely massive gulf between the glowing reviews the professional critics are penning and the much less positive feedback from verified viewers in the audience.

The series is currently sitting no-so-pretty with an audience score of 43 against a critic score of 87.  A Discovery-esque 44 point gap.

The positive reviews from the critics are full of vague praise for the show's "creativity" and "vibe", and the negative reviews have surprisingly little to say about culture war BS and are mainly focused on the issues with the show's writing and to a lesser extent the obnoxiousness of Paul Giamatti and Holly Hunter.  The need to make every character "quirky" comes up surprisingly often.

Not quite sure if this is Star Trek or a cheap, half-arsed rip-off of Umbrella Academy.

Edited January 20 by pengbuzz

[Big s]

Haven’t seen the show, but some people have posted awkward clips of the captain having a hard time trying to get comfy in a chair. There’s only like two stand these clips last for several minutes. The Riker maneuver clips for all of tng didn’t last that long. Star Fleet really seems to have gotten desperate for recruitment lately 

[derex3592]

Saw this last night, love him or hate him, sounds like he's right on the money with this one....

 

 

[TangledThorns]

I saw a few clips and yikes. Who is the series made for? The people that go to a West Hollywood farmer's market?? 

Anyways, I've dropped out of Star Trek since the Picard series. This crap is also killing my love for the original series and movies. 

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Big s said:

Haven’t seen the show, but some people have posted awkward clips of the captain having a hard time trying to get comfy in a chair. There’s only like two stand these clips last for several minutes. The Riker maneuver clips for all of tng didn’t last that long. Star Fleet really seems to have gotten desperate for recruitment lately 

To be honest, it doesn't actually stand out that much in the series proper.

The reason it doesn't stand out is that the series is trying so hard to sell her character as "quirky" and "eccentric" like her fellow Lanthanite CDR Pelia from Strange New Worlds that the writers have given her multiple annoying habits.  Pelia can get away with it because she's mainly a comic relief character.  Nahla Ake can't, because the series wants us to take her and her position seriously.  So instead her habits just make her come off as unprofessional, rude, and occasionally hypocritical.

 

3 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Saw this last night, love him or hate him, sounds like he's right on the money with this one....

Something something "even a broken clock is right twice a day"...

 

3 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

I saw a few clips and yikes. Who is the series made for? The people that go to a West Hollywood farmer's market?? 

Don't you be hating on my farmer's market folks now. 

Starfleet Academy is being marketed to Gen Z and Gen Alpha.  The show's actual presentation definitely feels like the showrunners don't actually respect those viewers much, if at all.  With the exception of SAM, the cadets are all old enough to be undergrads or grad students but the series resolutely treats them like a pack of unruly grade schoolers.  Caleb's in his early 20's, but his behavior's really childish and the faculty treat him like he's an annoying tween.

[Big s]

5 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Saw this last night, love him or hate him, sounds like he's right on the money with this one....

 

 

I don’t always agree with what he’s got to say, but sometimes a drunken opinion is fun for entertainment, even when I think there are times where he’s too harsh on some projects and not critical enough on others, I just look at as silly opinions rather than serious reviews 

[JB0]

On 1/19/2026 at 4:15 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Also, how is security this bad?  This isn't some random building on the Presidio... this is the parked primary hull of a Federation starship.  Yet Caleb is apparently hacking the place's computers every couple hours despite having no security privileges whatsoever.  Either the security chief is asleep at the switch or they've just given up on the entire idea of security.  

Insert DS9 clip of Worf complaining to Odo about security on DS9 here.
...
Actually, I guess I CAN insert that here.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

34 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Insert DS9 clip of Worf complaining to Odo about security on DS9 here.
...
Actually, I guess I CAN insert that here.

Granted, security in Star Trek is usually a bit of a joke... but it's swiss cheese even by those low standards in Starfleet Academy.

Normally, unauthorized computer access leads to an alarm, to security finding out almost immediately, and subsequently getting busted (e.g. TNG "The Wounded", "The Hunted", DS9 "Civil Defense", "Broken Link").  The Athena's 800 years more advanced than the Enterprise-D or Defiant and Caleb, a cadet with no security clearance to speak of, breaks into the ship's comms to send an unauthorized transmission to his mommy and doesn't even get caught until hours later when pirates attack the ship because of it.  He then proceeds to break into the ship's computers multiple times a day to go AWOL and is only caught hours after the fact.

Even the hologram set up specifically to stop him leaving the campus without permission is defeated with comical ease...

Spoiler

... by the simple expedient of asking it to recite coffee orders.

 

[JB0]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even the hologram set up specifically to stop him leaving the campus without permission is defeated with comical ease...

He's got some of the ol' Kirk DNA in him, with a voice that slips right past input validation and into infinite loops.

 

 

As always, I thank you for hate-watching this so I don't have to.

Edited January 21 by JB0

[Knight26]

The Comedic Lanthenite thing is stupid.  To the best of my knowledge, we have only ever seen two of the species (excluding the background refugees in Generations) before this.  Guinan, who was a serious and relatively no-nonsense immortalish character who was the first to make Q think twice, and who he might have even been afraid of, and Pelia, who is a goofball.  But here is the thing, Pelia is a goofball not because she is a Lanthenite, but because she is played by CAROL FREAKING KANE.  She works great as a comedic character because Carol Kane is a comedian.  Holly Hunter is not; she is a serious dramatic actress (for the most part), so her acting as this goofball character feels beyond forced.  Given that she is a near-immortal instructor/captain, I would expect her character to be played more as a burnt-out retiree who was called back to service and who is sick of all the cadets' BS.

[tekering]

2 hours ago, Knight26 said:

The Comedic Lanthenite thing is stupid.  To the best of my knowledge, we have only ever seen two of the species (excluding the background refugees in Generations) before this.  Guinan, who was a serious and relatively no-nonsense immortalish character who was the first to make Q think twice, and who he might have even been afraid of, and Pelia, who is a goofball. 

Guinan is El-Aurian, as was Dr. Soran... and there was a guy in an episode of DS9, as I recall. 🤔

I don't know what a "Lanthenite" is, as I haven't seen Strange New Worlds. 🤨