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Here it comes. Predictable. Expected. Familiar. Every time a new episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy lands with the finesse of a freshly laid dog turd on a hot summer sidewalk, there is a very specific sound that echoes across social media.
It’s the high pitched whine of the Excuse Machine powering up.
You know the one.
The show sits at around a 40% audience score on review websites and has crashed out of the Nielsen streaming charts.
So, it begins with a noble declaration that any criticism must be rooted in “racism,” “sexism,” “phobia,” or some other moral failing.
Then, the failure of the show somehow becomes nothing to do with the writing, the characters or the execution. It magically becomes somehow your fault.
If that doesn’t stick, we pivot to the evergreen classic: “review bombing.”
Because obviously, when audiences recoil from a show that feels like it was focus-grouped by Young Communists Of America, doing their hand-capable silent applause so as not to startle their neurodiverse comrades, it cannot possibly be the show’s fault.
No, it must be a coordinated campaign by ”Far Right” online trolls with far too much time and a pathological hatred of fun.
Let’s be blunt. Starfleet Academy is not being sabotaged by shadowy online brigades. It is being sabotaged by its own scripts, it’s own characters, and by itself.
Since Alex Kurtzman took the captain’s chair of modern Star Trek, the franchise has become a masterclass in how to miss the point of something while loudly insisting you understand it better than anyone who came before.
The optimism has been replaced with angst. The moral dilemmas have been replaced with therapy sessions. What was borderline competence porn has been replaced with Journey To The Centre Of The Vibes.
And now we have Starfleet Academy, a show that promised the wonder of exploration but actually delivers a mandatory training session from HR.
The defenders insist the backlash is proof of “toxic fandom.”
The problem with that narrative is that it collapses the moment you examine the show itself. You don’t need to be toxic to notice that the characters feel less like future officers of a utopian interstellar federation and more like rejected archetypes from a streaming teen drama generator.
Take the non-binary Klingon cadet. Klingons, traditionally, are operatic space Vikings who solve problems with honor, bloodwine, and the occasional bat’leth.
In Starfleet Academy, we get a character who seems less interested in glory in battle and more interested in glory on Ru’Paul’s Drag Race.
Where Worf’s deadpan zingers were an essential part of The Next Generation, every other line uttered by this character feels suspiciously like the writers were desperately trying to please a political officer in case their family gets the bill for the bullet.
The issue isn’t their identity; it’s that the writing treats identity as a substitute for personality. There is no fire, no ferocity, no sense of cultural tension beyond the most surface-level gestures. It’s not bold. It’s beige.
Then there’s the hologram girl. A great character concept that could have been fascinating. A sentient projection grappling with existence? That’s prime Trek territory.
Instead, she’s written with a collection of tics and awkward beats that feel less like thoughtful characterization and more like a writer flipping through a checklist labeled “Quirky.”
The performance leans so hard into socially awkward mannerisms that it stops being endearing and starts feeling mechanical. Again, the problem isn’t the concept. It’s that no one seems to know what to do with it beyond mining it for awkward punchlines and Very Important Conversations.
The result is a cast of cadets who don’t feel like the best and brightest of the Federation, unless there has been a new Prime Directive that reads “announce your emotional state every five minutes.”
Meanwhile, the pacing lurches between melodrama and exposition dumps.
Plot threads appear and disappear like someone is spinning a wheel labeled “Conflict of the Week.”
Stakes are declared with solemn music and then deflated within the same episode. It’s less “to boldly go” and more “to mildly drift.”
But no, we’re told, the low audience scores are the result of review bombing and it’s our fault, and it’s not actually made for us anyway so please stop complaining about it.
This is the entertainment industry’s favorite security blanket. When critics and audiences align in their disappointment, the immediate reaction isn’t introspection. It’s accusation.
Surely, the numbers are being manipulated! Surely, the people watching are doing it wrong!
It’s fascinating how “review bombing” is invoked only when the reviews are bad.
When a show gets showered with suspiciously glowing praise minutes after release, that’s just enthusiasm, but when the score plummets because viewers are underwhelmed, it’s a conspiracy.
Yeah. No. Fuck off.
The defenders also love to suggest that anyone who dislikes Starfleet Academy simply hates change. This would carry more weight if the franchise hadn’t changed successfully before.
Star Trek: The Next Generation was once viewed skeptically. It eventually won over audiences with strong writing, compelling characters, and stories that respected the intelligence of viewers. Novelty didn’t save it. Craft did.
Modern Trek, particularly under the stewardship of Kurtzman and whatever the fuck lives in that writers room, often feels like it believes aesthetics and messaging are sufficient substitutes for narrative coherence.
If you drape enough lens flares and swelling strings over a scene, maybe no one will notice that the dialogue sounds like it was assembled from inspirational LinkedIn posts.
The tragedy is that the raw ingredients for something good are there.
A Starfleet Academy setting is rich with possibility: rivalries, ethical dilemmas, cultural clashes, the forging of future legends.
Instead, we get scenes that play like group therapy sessions in uniform. Conflict rarely arises from ideology or principle; it arises from misunderstandings that could be resolved if anyone remembered they are supposed to be Starfleet officers in training, not contestants on a reality TV show.
And yet, to say this aloud is to invite accusations. “Why are you so angry?” they ask, as if disappointment in a once-great franchise is irrational.
“Why can’t you just let people enjoy things?” Because criticism is not a moral failing. It’s engagement. It’s caring enough to say, “This could be better.”
The most exhausting part of the discourse isn’t even the show itself. It’s the reflexive need to pathologize its critics. If you dislike it, you’re not thoughtful; you’re hateful. If you point out wooden dialogue, you’re not discerning; you’re bigoted. If you note the plummeting ratings, you’re not observant; you’re participating in a smear campaign.
Or… and stay with me here… maybe the show is just fucking dogshit?
Maybe audiences can tell when characters are mouthpieces instead of people. Maybe they notice when stakes feel artificial. Maybe they miss the days when Star Trek trusted them to wrestle with complex ideas rather than be lectured in between slow-motion reaction shots.
Starfleet Academy isn’t failing because shadowy online activists are review bombing it into oblivion.
It’s struggling because it confuses representation with characterization, spectacle with substance, and scolding with storytelling.
The galaxy of Trek used to feel vast and hopeful. Now it often feels small and defensive.
The real irony? The original spirit of Trek was about confronting uncomfortable truths and challenging assumptions. If modern Trek truly believed in that legacy, it might start by asking whether the criticism has a point.
Instead, we get the Excuse Machine, humming away at maximum warp, determined to prove that the only thing more predictable than the plot twists is the reaction to them.
And that, perhaps, is the saddest final frontier of all.
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