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The newest series entry in the Star Trek franchise, Starfleet Academy got its cancelation announced yesterday to cheers from the quarters that despised the program and tears from those who adored it. If you populate or have visited the SF and Trek communities online then it’s no news flash that the series prompted some intense feelings with many going on extended ‘explainer’ videos dissecting the show’s faults, failures, and lack of respect for the ‘good’ Trek that had preceded it. This was a discourse that I did not participate in and avoided consuming whenever possible. Not because I had any particularly strong love or any emotion for the show but because such emotionally driven tirades are tiresome and not worth the energy to even briefly consider them.
Star Trek to me has always first and foremost been the original series produced and broadcast in the 60s, a very different time from today in nearly every major way. Next Generation presented a new crew and several seasons where I enjoyed the program but also several seasons where it was tedious, tiresome, and quite preachy. Deep Space Nine had some interesting ideas and characters and I watched a few episodes here and there, but it failed to fully hook me as a viewer. Voyage? God, that was stuff I simply could not swallow with the exception of a couple of episodes I watched out of loyalty to my friend that had written them, I abandoned the series after the third episode. The next series, Enterprise I abandoned after the pilot as it was quite clear to me that the creatives behind that project had a very different vision for how SF and Trek in particular should be written than myself.
Discovery tempted me back with some very interesting casting choices and there was much I found intriguing about its set up – I have never been one overly concerned with ‘canon’ for a series that was never designed to have it — but ultimately I lost interest and the series just slipped out of my viewing habits. Without a deep devoted sense of nostalgia Picard failed to keep me engaged (pun very much intended) and again after a few episodes it slipped away.
Strange New Worlds is a very different story. The first ‘new Trek‘ series that gave me the feeling of that original series, even as they took their own quite large liberties with the supposed canon. Not only did i follow the show and watch every, admittedly too few, episode, I purchased the first two seasons on physical media.
So, with that background established I watched Starfleet Academy with an open but wary mind and heart, hoping for a new Trek that I could be a fan of. Sadly, Starfleet Academy prompted in me the worst reaction any film or television program can generate in the viewer, apathy. There is no worse reaction that indifference.
The series did not repel or offend me, even as it offered up recycled ideas from some of the previous programs that I certainly did not like, but neither did it engage me. None of the characters hooked me with an interest to know them any better, the situation didn’t pull me in, and the cast choices were at best a distraction. I did not avoid episodes but other programming kept displacing it as my sweetie-wife and I decided on which things to watch for our evening’s entertainment. The news of its cancelation brought no disappointment only a sense of acknowledgement. At the time of this writing, we hadn’t finished the first season and last night we made the decision to not finish. It wasn’t out of animosity, the program didn’t provoke enough to generate such a response but simply a recognition that we didn’t care enough to keep at it.
I am sorry for those who did find a connection with this series, it is always a bitter blow when the forces at networks remove from the offerings the thing that spoke to you. To those who are celebrating its demise, really? Is that the best use of your brief and valuable time on the planet, taking joy in even the minor suffering of others? There are better things to do, go do them.
