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This article contains spoilers for the two-part Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere.
After a particularly tense stand off between cetologist Gillian Taylor and Spock, Kirk offers some friendly correction. “About those colorful metaphors we’ve discussed,” Kirk says, using their term for profanity, “I don’t think you should try using them anymore… for one thing, you haven’t quite got the knack of it.”
It’s hard not to think of that scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home while watching the climax of the premiere episode of the latest Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy. When haughty rich kid Darem Reymi takes on the impossible task of surviving the vacuum of space without a suit, his classmates ask how he’ll pull it off. Reymi answers, “I’m Khionian, bitch.”
The line may have been intended to pump up his peers and get a teen audience excited, and maybe it did. But the line delivery proved that Star Trek still doesn’t have the knack for swearing.
To Bluely Go
“Khionian, bitch,” gets repeated once more in the episode, and it’s not the only instance of profanity in the Starfleet Academy premiere. Holly Hunter’s Captain Nahla Ake and Paul Giamatti’s pirate Nus Braka trade curses at one another with as much gusto as the kids. Which makes a certain amount of sense—Starfleet Academy is a teen drama with a Star Trek backdrop, which requires the show to make certain concessions to the genre.
But Starfleet Academy is hardly alone in embracing what Kirk and Spock called “colorful metaphors.” In fact, it happens fairly often in new Star Trek shows. Admiral Clancy of Picard rebukes the titular captain for his “sheer fucking hubris,” a f-bomb drop proceeded by Tilly and Stamets’ foul-mouthed praise of Starfleet in episode five of Discovery‘s first season. And we can’t even begin to count the times Mariner and her fellow members of the Cerritos delivered bleeped out cuss words in Lower Decks.
Pedants will point out that the entire colorful metaphor conversation in The Voyage Home came up because Spock was shocked to hear Kirk curse so much. Spock’s confusion, Kirk’s explanation that it’s just how people talk in 1984 San Fransisco, and especially Kirk’s awkward usage (“double dumbass on you!”) suggests that when humanity grew out of its infancy, it did away with naughty words at the same time it abandoned racism, sexism, and capitalism.
But even bigger pedants know that swearing has always been part of Star Trek, even on the Original Series, in the final line of “City on the Edge of Forever” (“Let’s get the hell out of here”). And that doesn’t include curses in other languages, such as Picard saying “merde” in the Next Generation episode “The Last Outpost.” It’s not that people stopped cursing before the 24th century. It’s that they used it differently.
Too Familiar Language
Too often, nu-Trek employs cursing as a type of slang, a way to appeal to a modern audience instead of presenting a reality centuries in the future. The phrasing in Starfleet Academy is particularly egregious, as it sounds like something the Juggernaut said in the 2000s, not something a cool kid would say eleven hundred years from now. But the same is true of those early f-bombs. Admiral Clancy uses it to take Picard down a couple of notches, to show that he’s not some beloved, wizened figure, but someone worthy of mockery. Tilly and Stamets swore in order to praise Starfleet, but they did so in the most juvenile way, prescribing awe instead of building it in the viewer.
Taken by itself, these missteps are forgivable. Star Trek has always tried to be of its time (see: TOS miniskirts, TNG’s beige, “Faith of the Heart” in Enterprise) and it hasn’t always worked. We can forgive the pandering if it becomes part of the mythos (miniskirts, beige) or if the cheese finally wins us over (“Faith of the Heart”). But the swearing in nu-Trek is so faux-edgy, so desperate to be taken serious and cool, that we can’t imagine getting used to it.
Of the newest batch of Star Trek shows, Lower Decks is the only one to pull off the swearing. It works there because it fits within the show’s genre. Lower Decks is an adult animation show that functions as much as a parody of Star Trek as it does a series about adventures within the universe. Mariner and Boimler are in Starfleet, yes, but they’re also Star Trek superfans who know as much about the franchise as audience members. For that reason, we allow them to sometimes act like Rick and Morty or Cartman, and to act a little like us viewers than like Kirk and Picard. The cursing belongs there.
Genre Appropriate Cursing
Which is actually good news for Starfleet Academy. The series gets a lot of the Star Trek parts right, including the emphasis on professionals being competent and seeking to understand different cultures. It’s just the Star Trek stuff happens alongside romantic subplots and stories about adolescent insecurities—the sort of things you’d expect from a teen drama.
“I’m Khionian, bitch” will always be a clanger because it sounds like a 50-year-old writing for an 18-year-old. But if Starfleet Academy can keep the cursing within the teen drama realm of the show, and if it can make it sound true to adolescent characters, then Star Trek may yet develop the knack for swearing.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy stream every Thursday on Paramount+.
The post Starfleet Academy Proves Star Trek Still Doesn’t Have the Knack for Swearing appeared first on Den of Geek.
