The news broke a few days prior to this writing that STARFLEET ACADEMY will be cancelled after season 2 airs its now series finale. The exact reasoning was on the wall from day one. The post mortem of season 1: failed to make the top ten of Nielsen Ratings. At over ten million US dollars per episode, failing to breach top FIVE spelled doom. That would have to amount to Paramount Plus NUMBER ONE each and every episode.
This does not mean however that SA is over. Season two will air possibly January of 2027 if the trend holds, along with the six episodes of STAR TREK STRANGE NEW WORLDS fifth and final season. The door doesn’t seem to be closed yet for Alex Kurtzman and company as Akiva Goldsman says he’s in repeated talks to green light STAR TREK YEAR ONE which would star Paul Wesley as Captain James T. Kirk and his first year as Captain of the Enterprise. However, Skydance has been silent on the idea. They have previously stated they wanted to take TREK in a new direction of silver screen adventures in a “totally fresh take.”
Fan reaction had been one sided. Most of the critics on social media celebrated the cancellation of SA, some claiming that the “moniker is appropriate as I feel like this show commits SA,” from Nerdrotic. Right wing commentators like Sydney Watson also praised its cancellation. Surprising to me, she seems to be a TREK purist as she rejected Jay’Den as a Klingon character who made no sense. I agreed with her entire scathing review.
SA was perhaps one of the most divisive STAR TREK series of the so called Kurtzman era to date. Audiences who wanted social commentary, contemporary dialogue, a break from classic TREK cadence, were thrilled with what they got. Classic TREK fans, not so much. The claims that STAR TREK never went to where Alex Kurtxman are completely false. STAR TREK was known for pushing boundaries but it had already pushed them in the past.
Episodes like the original’s “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield” tackled racism, THE NEXT GENERATION’s “The Outcast” went head to head with transgenderism and gender ideologies 40 years before it became mainstream. DEEP SPACE NINE took homosexuality to a new level with “Rejoined.” That’s just the first quarter century of STAR TREK!
The difference here was the literal claim from the creators and actors who went to social media to lambast fans. If we don’t like or follow, we are this and that.
The era of this type of militant activism is a tired trope that people are just sick of. It showed with SA failing to reach high enough to sustain it. The sad fact that now even if season 2 were to achieve top five rankings, with season one failing to do so, the show would still be considered a commercial failure.
Choices, and mistakes, were made.
- creatives and actors attacked the fans
- marketing was severely off target
- the substance failed to deliver
- most of the episodes were clearly written by AI as speculated here
The main problem was Alex Kurtzman, himself. When promoting SA, he admitted he didn’t care about STAR TREK. He was focused on appeasing BLM and the NAACP. One movement is dead. The other is a classic civil rights organization with deep roots and doesn’t need appeasing whatsoever. They’ve always championed STAR TREK since the 1970s and they don’t need Alex Kurtzman to shill for them.
Time and time again Kurtzman proved how out of touch he is with the fandom. He refused to listen to what he thought were a “fringe few -ists and -phobes” and now his entire contract is in danger. Facing a potential loss of at least $200 million for the two season series, it would be extremely tough to justify Kurtzman continuing his contract.
The gems that have popped up over the last few years had nothing to do with him. In fact, those he never touched did the best.
STAR TREK LOWER DECKS – produced by Mike McMahon actually had mixed reviews even from those who vocally hated DISCOVERY leaning to the positive side. Cancelled by Alex Kurtzman.
STAR TREK PRODIGY was feared to be something as awful as STAR TREK SCOUTS is right now. But, as it turned out, was actually beloved by many fans including purists. It wasn’t the TREK we knew but at the same time, it was. The show was cancelled TWICE by Alex Kurtzman. The second time was after Netflix bought the broadcast and production rights, the show reached the Netflix top five animated series, and was cancelled by Alex Kurtzman.
STAR TREK PICARD was taken over by the studio. They could not in good conscience allow Kurtzman and Michael Chabbon to continue to defecate all over the character of Jean-Luc Picard. So they fired Chabbon half way through season two and brought in TREK veteran Terry Matalas to clean up the mess. While PICARD was to run three seasons anyway, Matalas took hold of the show in its entirety for the final season, and gave us the arguably best STAR TREK since ENTERPRISE was cancelled in 2005. While imperfect, PICARD season three is celebrated among the best of STAR TREK by many fans.
For bringing in so much success, Matalas was able to start to pitch STAR TREK LEGACY which would’ve starred Jerri Ryan and the “juniors”/new characters introduce in PICARD season three. Instead of going where the money was, for all of Matalas’s hard work, dedication, and love for STAR TREK, he was fired by Alex Kurtzman.
Time after time, one catastrophically bad decision after another and people are still shocked that SA got cancelled. This was a culmination of bad storytelling on top of a failed movie no one wanted, a web series no one cares about, from a studio that cancelled all the money makers to promote the money losers. A Hollywood executive allergic to money? That’s like World Eating Champion Randy Santel becoming allergic to food.
The second season of SA is in post production and will air on Paramount Plus. After that, who knows.
Recent Comments