Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

[TangledThorns]

STAR TREK: Glee ? lol

[Thom]

Yeah, I don't have much faith in them being able to pull it off. I like that they have Holly Hunter and Dadmiral, but right now that is not enough. 

I'll give it a look, but if it is too STD() then I'll pass. 

[lechuck]

My biggest gripe with this show, is that we have to contend with the established DSC backdrop stupidity of humans/earth having dropped out of the Federation. 

It is so galling to me that something humanity fought and stood for all of previous Star Trek was wiped out in a single episode because of "we don't have warp drive!". 

[Thom]

19 minutes ago, lechuck said:

My biggest gripe with this show, is that we have to contend with the established DSC backdrop stupidity of humans/earth having dropped out of the Federation. 

It is so galling to me that something humanity fought and stood for all of previous Star Trek was wiped out in a single episode because of "we don't have warp drive!". 

Most everything else about the Burn was shyte, but having Earth no longer be a part of the Federation was (IMO) a nice twist. And something I could see happening, esp after the destruction of most of Starfleet and any other facility using dilithium in their power generation. Earth, being the 'heart' of the Federation could have been hardest hit and taken the longest to recover in the post-dilithium universe. 

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, lechuck said:

My biggest gripe with this show, is that we have to contend with the established DSC backdrop stupidity of humans/earth having dropped out of the Federation. 

It is so galling to me that something humanity fought and stood for all of previous Star Trek was wiped out in a single episode because of "we don't have warp drive!". 

You're not alone there. 

That Starfleet Academy is another unasked-for spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery is likely to make the series a hard sell for a lot of Star Trek fans.  

You'd think Discovery's status as the fandom's un-favorite and the lowest-rated Star Trek series of all time would given the network pause for thought even before their first spinoff of the series, Section 31, crashed and burned so hard it became the worst-reviewed Star Trek title of all time.  Kurtzman keeps doubling down on his bad idea as if he hopes that if he just keeps pushing fans will come around and like it.

Spoiler

Fun fact: If you compile a list of the ten worst-rated (by audience score) Star Trek seasons and movies, Star Trek: Discovery and its spinoffs account for six of the ten lowest-rated titles in the franchise.

Discovery seasons 2-5 all made the list (accounting for 6th, 7th, 2nd, and 3rd place respectively), as did Short Treks season 1 (8th), and Section 31 (1st).  The other four stinkers to make the list are The Final Frontier (4th), Picard season 2 (5th), The Motion Picture (9th), and Insurrection (10th).  

A dishonorable mention goes out to 11th place winner Star Trek: Discovery season 1.

 

 

4 hours ago, Thom said:

Most everything else about the Burn was shyte, but having Earth no longer be a part of the Federation was (IMO) a nice twist. And something I could see happening, esp after the destruction of most of Starfleet and any other facility using dilithium in their power generation. Earth, being the 'heart' of the Federation could have been hardest hit and taken the longest to recover in the post-dilithium universe. 

That's the thing... it wasn't.  Earth's role in the story is basically getting sh*t on for hoarding dilithium after the Burn and going isolationist because they assumed the Burn was an attack.

[Thom]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

...

That's the thing... it wasn't.  Earth's role in the story is basically getting sh*t on for hoarding dilithium after the Burn and going isolationist because they assumed the Burn was an attack.

Goes to show how well that show stuck (stunk) with me... And see, my idea was already better than anything STD() came up with! 

But the truth remains that 900 years is a loooong time. Even half of that. Nothing stays the same, so an isolationist Earth coming about after the catastrophe of the Burn is not an impossibility.

And I think it would have been better if the Burn had been an attack, but then there are so many things about the Burn that are just silly anyway.

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, Thom said:

Goes to show how well that show stuck (stunk) with me... And see, my idea was already better than anything STD() came up with! 

But the truth remains that 900 years is a loooong time. Even half of that. Nothing stays the same, so an isolationist Earth coming about after the catastrophe of the Burn is not an impossibility.

Granted, 900 years is a very long time indeed (for Humans) and things can change a lot in such a substantial period.

That doesn't mean that what they did made sense, though.  One of the many reasons fans hated it was that it didn't make sense in context or out. 😆

Trying to launch a new story off a springboard made of pure idiocy and character shilling is probably not the best idea.  

 

8 minutes ago, Thom said:

And I think it would have been better if the Burn had been an attack, but then there are so many things about the Burn that are just silly anyway.

Literally everything about the Burn is stupid. 

That's why, when the idea was originally pitched back in 2006 as the premise for a stand-alone animated series called Star Trek: Final Frontier it got no farther than a handful of rough story treatments and some concept art before CBS said "No thank you".  Kurtzman et. al. actually managed to make the bad idea behind Final Frontier worse.

[Thom]

13 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

...

Literally everything about the Burn is stupid. 

That's why, when the idea was originally pitched back in 2006 as the premise for a stand-alone animated series called Star Trek: Final Frontier it got no farther than a handful of rough story treatments and some concept art before CBS said "No thank you".  Kurtzman et. al. actually managed to make the bad idea behind Final Frontier worse.

I like the Burn when it was an attack. Your enemy finds a way to turn all of your ships into bombs and goes for it, heralding a millennia of upheaval and darkness. Perfect. But then they took the meat out of it for some sap story of misunderstanding and happenstance. STD() had some good story ideas, but no good follow-through.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Thom said:

I like the Burn when it was an attack. Your enemy finds a way to turn all of your ships into bombs and goes for it, heralding a millennia of upheaval and darkness. Perfect. But then they took the meat out of it for some sap story of misunderstanding and happenstance. STD() had some good story ideas, but no good follow-through.

Sounds like the unproduced Star Trek: Final Frontier would have been right up your alley then.

Spoiler

In that, the event analogous to the Burn was a surprise attack with omega particles that destroyed subspace in across large parts of the galaxy in the mid-25th century and made warp drives unusable.  The event started a war between the Romulans and Federation that saw Qo'nos annexed, Andoria destroyed, and the Federation split in two by ruined tracts of subspace.

The idea probably would have worked a lot better if it'd been set closer to the 24th century shows.  There were just too many issues with trying it as far into the future as they did to the level that it became a certifiable Idiot Plot.

 

I have to wonder what Starfleet Academy will do to justify its 32nd century setting besides being grim and boring and throwing a bunch of familiar 24th century enemy species into the background as Federation members.  The writers seem to have forgotten that technology advanced a lot even in the 2370s of Voyager and Deep Space Nine.  Voyager's doctor is teaching at the Academy, despite being a first-generation EMH whose software has been obsolete for 818 years.

That's like going to a history class today and finding out your instructor is Geoffrey of Monmouth.  Or someone from the 24th century rolling up to a computer science class to find the instructor is f***ing Clippy.  (As much as I love Robert Picardo and his role as the Doctor... there are so many problems with the idea in this series.)

Edited July 28 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

  Or someone from the 24th century rolling up to a computer science class to find the instructor is f***ing Clippy. 

Don't get me started on THAT little b@$7@rd.

I'd sooner see Badgey make a return.

Edited July 28 by pengbuzz

[lechuck]

On 7/28/2025 at 2:42 AM, Thom said:

Goes to show how well that show stuck (stunk) with me... And see, my idea was already better than anything STD() came up with! 

But the truth remains that 900 years is a loooong time. Even half of that. Nothing stays the same, so an isolationist Earth coming about after the catastrophe of the Burn is not an impossibility.

And I think it would have been better if the Burn had been an attack, but then there are so many things about the Burn that are just silly anyway.

Certainly not an impossibility, but this is Star Trek we are talking about, it is all about positive portrayal and message. 

The whole decaying organisation or failed state type of story telling is another one of those that floated around for years with Star Trek. I was never fond of this idea being explored, But it's one thing creating this depressing backdrop, it's another when you on top take the whole point of Star Trek – namely us humans – and portray them as crappy entitled beings with stupid infighting in their solar system that they are completely incapable of resolving themselves (what happened to 900 years of Federation experience?) all because it's not "easy riding" any longer. That might be a reflection of our current human society, but I want to see a reflection of how we can be much better. 

It would have been way more interesting to see humans still embracing the Federation, still being the explorers wanting to understand the universe and still being there to help others as much as they can. Exploring the human condition (what makes these 32nd century humans go on?) despite the current hardships and adversities of the Burn would have made for excellent stories. Instead we got very lazy and thoughtless writing, all for the sensationalism of making everything even more depressing and dark.

[Thom]

1 hour ago, lechuck said:

Certainly not an impossibility, but this is Star Trek we are talking about, it is all about positive portrayal and message. 

The whole decaying organisation or failed state type of story telling is another one of those that floated around for years with Star Trek. I was never fond of this idea being explored, But it's one thing creating this depressing backdrop, it's another when you on top take the whole point of Star Trek – namely us humans – and portray them as crappy entitled beings with stupid infighting in their solar system that they are completely incapable of resolving themselves (what happened to 900 years of Federation experience?) all because it's not "easy riding" any longer. That might be a reflection of our current human society, but I want to see a reflection of how we can be much better. 

It would have been way more interesting to see humans still embracing the Federation, still being the explorers wanting to understand the universe and still being there to help others as much as they can. Exploring the human condition (what makes these 32nd century humans go on?) despite the current hardships and adversities of the Burn would have made for excellent stories. Instead we got very lazy and thoughtless writing, all for the sensationalism of making everything even more depressing and dark.

I saw it as the Federation going through a Dark Age. A thousand years is a long time for anything to stay stable, much less in existence. If they had done it right, it could have been a very good and hopeful story of the 'light of reason' brushing aside the dark and the beginning of a new Age. Instead, we just got some pretty crappy stories.

[Seto Kaiba]

29 minutes ago, Thom said:

I saw it as the Federation going through a Dark Age. A thousand years is a long time for anything to stay stable, much less in existence. If they had done it right, it could have been a very good and hopeful story of the 'light of reason' brushing aside the dark and the beginning of a new Age. Instead, we just got some pretty crappy stories.

It probably could have been reworked as a good and hopeful story about the triumph of reason over fear, but only in a very different sort of Star Trek series.

One of the (main) reasons it fell so flat with audiences was that the bleak and miserable 32nd century future after the Burn really wasn't all that different from the bleak and miserable 23rd century future Discovery had already spent two seasons showing us.  The year on the calendar changed significantly, but little else did.  Discovery's crew were miserable bastards who hated themselves and each other, the galaxy was still damned and doomed at the hands of alien warlords from TOS-era species, and the whole thing was one massive idiot plot (The Burn) built on a string of plot holes and continuity errors and orbited by a string of smaller idiot plots.

It could have worked if it'd been done with a crew that had... y'know... actually believed in and embodied the Federation's ideals.  Discovery's crew seemed to be no more than dimly aware that the Federation even had ideals, and certainly couldn't name them if you asked.

Spoiler

It would probably also have been a good idea to set it many hundreds of years earlier too... instead of inexplicably having the entire galaxy still using millennium-old warp drives instead of any of the newer and more advanced FTL drives introduced as far back as 800 years earlier, inexplicably acting like dilithium is required to make a warp drive when one of the major powers had been making them without dilithium for 800-900 years, or trying to make a century-old unsolved mystery out of a major disaster that occurred in an era when building a time window was a common practical lesson in high school science classes and a trained engineer could cobble one together out of 900 year old electronics and literal kitchen utensils.  

 

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It probably could have been reworked as a good and hopeful story about the triumph of reason over fear, but only in a very different sort of Star Trek series.

One of the (main) reasons it fell so flat with audiences was that the bleak and miserable 32nd century future after the Burn really wasn't all that different from the bleak and miserable 23rd century future Discovery had already spent two seasons showing us.  The year on the calendar changed significantly, but little else did.  Discovery's crew were miserable bastards who hated themselves and each other, the galaxy was still damned and doomed at the hands of alien warlords from TOS-era species, and the whole thing was one massive idiot plot (The Burn) built on a string of plot holes and continuity errors and orbited by a string of smaller idiot plots.

It could have worked if it'd been done with a crew that had... y'know... actually believed in and embodied the Federation's ideals.  Discovery's crew seemed to be no more than dimly aware that the Federation even had ideals, and certainly couldn't name them if you asked.

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It would probably also have been a good idea to set it many hundreds of years earlier too... instead of inexplicably having the entire galaxy still using millennium-old warp drives instead of any of the newer and more advanced FTL drives introduced as far back as 800 years earlier, inexplicably acting like dilithium is required to make a warp drive when one of the major powers had been making them without dilithium for 800-900 years, or trying to make a century-old unsolved mystery out of a major disaster that occurred in an era when building a time window was a common practical lesson in high school science classes and a trained engineer could cobble one together out of 900 year old electronics and literal kitchen utensils.  

 

To SNW's credit: they portray a much more optimistic and brighter universe; hard to believe SNW and DISC inhabited the same continuity. O.o

[Seto Kaiba]

14 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

To SNW's credit: they portray a much more optimistic and brighter universe; hard to believe SNW and DISC inhabited the same continuity. O.o

It really is.  It's even harder to believe Strange New Worlds is literally a spinoff of Discovery.

If Starfleet Academy follows on from Discovery's tone and themes, it'll be nigh unwatchable.  If it takes after Strange New Worlds it might actually be worth giving a look.  The "good vibes" and optimistic outlook are essential for it to feel like Star Trek.

Edited August 2 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It really is.  It's even harder to believe Strange New Worlds is literally a spinoff of Discovery.

If Starfleet Academy follows on from Discovery's tone and themes, it'll be nigh unwatchable.  If it takes after Strange New Worlds it might actually be worth giving a look.  The "good vibes" and optimistic outlook are essential for it to feel like Star Trek.

Yeah, I may tease you about SNW and all, but at the end of the day, I'll take it hands and feet over DiscoveryofDoom.