By Chris Snellgrove | Published
When old Star Trek fans started asking if the new spinoff, Starfleet Academyit would ruin the franchise, the younger fans call us alarmists. After all, Trek has changed a lot in the last 60 years, so the fact that the new show had a different setting (the titular academy) and a different target audience (the 18-24 demographic) naturally meant it would be bad. However, since the show has completely destroyed two popular aliens (the Betazoids and the Klingons) in the first four episodes, it’s safe to say that older fans who were skeptical completely confirmed.
It all started in the middle Starfleet AcademyThe second episode (“Beta Test”), which involves our heroes trying to lure the Betazed back to the Federation. This involves the charismatic planet president Emerin Sadal, a deaf man who relies on lip reading and sign language (and spiffy interpreter droids) to communicate. After a generous offer to make Betazed the new home of Starfleet Academy, she decides to join the Federation, and her two children remain; one attends a college, the other attends a Military College.
Bye-Bye, Betazoid Power
Despite the odd writing decision to make the leader of the Betazoids some kind of Trump-like figure who hides the empire behind a psionic wall, the president seems like a likable character, and the deaf actor Anthony Natale does a good job of bringing him to life. The problem, however, is that the Betazoids (started with Star Trek: The Next Generation) were always fully telepathic. In theory, there should be no need for the president to rely on lip reading and sign language because he (like Lwaxana Troi and other full-blooded Betazoids) should be able to read everyone’s mind.
However, Starfleet Academy introduces the Betazed as an empathic race that can only read emotions rather than thoughts. This is very much in line with the skills of Deanna Troi, who served as a ship consultant on both Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E. He was limited to only reading the emotions of others (something Picard often used for tactical purposes) because he was Betazed, and while there were other Betazoids with limited abilities (most notably Lon Suder in Voyager), The Next Generation he made it clear that most of these aliens have telepathic powers similar to Professor X’s.
So, it’s obvious that Starfleet Academy has just changed the main character of one of Star Trek’s most famous aliens, using their collective telepathic abilities for no apparent reason. Some fans frantically tried to come up with theories as to how this happened, such as that everyone lost their psychic powers due to the creation and maintenance of a powerful psionic wall. But none of this is mentioned in the episode, which makes it seem like these writers just did a big retcon that completely changed the main thing that makes Betazoids special.
The Klingons Are Now Dumb and Dumb
In the fourth episode of Starfleet Academy (“Vox in Excelso”), the writers also made some big changes to the Klingons: we find out that the Burn (the event that made almost all the dilithium in the galaxy inactive) destroyed the Klingon homeworld and most of their Empire because these worlds relied on dilithium reactors to power them. The burn caused those reactors to explode, destroying planets and (combined with the Burn causing the stars to explode) left the Klingons as a race facing extinction.
From a lore perspective, there are a number of problems with this; as I have written in detail, the dilithium reactors should not have exploded in the first place. The only reason starships explode is that dilithium was used to keep the matter and antimatter (essential for traveling at finite speeds) apart. When they got together, the ships exploded at the same time.
Putting aside how thin this explanation is, it’s just lazy writing that makes the Klingons look deeply stupid. Even if we accept that dilithium works as an energy source, there are much safer sources such as fusion that do not rely on a resource that is becoming increasingly scarce (remember, the galaxy was running out of dilithium in about 15-20 years. before Burning). It seems like the writers just wanted to echo that Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Worldwhere the Klingon power-generating moon of Praxis exploded because these aggressive aliens were not taking adequate precautions, resulting in a futuristic analog of the Chernobyl disaster.
Star Trek’s Most Popular Race Rots in Hell
In other words, Starfleet Academy decided to turn the unknown Star Trek race into idiots who hadn’t learned their lesson 800 years earlier and were homeless and almost extinct because of their ignorance. Furthermore, their culture believes that you can only get to Klingon heaven if you die in battle. Killing most of these heroes off screen while they are out of battle means that, from the Klingon perspective, the writers just sent most of these aliens to hell!
Now, the most prominent representative of this race is Jay-Den, Starfleet AcademyA Klingon cadet. However, due to the show’s insistence on making every character beautiful and special, he decided unKlingon-like, prefers pacifism and healing over fighting and conquering. He’s soft-hearted, soft-spoken, and (based on the most recent episode) possibly gay, making him unlike any other Klingon ever on Star Trek.
The Soft Side Of… Klingons?
In itself, this is not a problem; both Star Trek: The Next Generation again Star Trek: Deep Space Nine centered around a lot of amazing stories surrounding Worf, a Klingon who was raised by humans and didn’t feel like he fit into this whole superhero culture. Of course, those stories often depended on comparing Worf to other Klingons like his brother or Gowron, both of whom served as an example of the alien race’s values.
Starfleet Academy he just unjustly killed most of the Klingons in the galaxy, which changed their culture (they are now nomadic families where everyone has two fathers), made them look like complete idiots, and left as their token representative someone who is the opposite of traditional Klingons in every way. Jay-Den is an interesting character in some respects, and is played by a talented actor (Karim Diane), but the problem is that he is more than like KINO; that is, Klingon in name only.
Star Trek In Name Only
That’s kind of the problem Starfleet Academy in short: a Star Trek show in name only. They only brought in Betazoids to take away their signature ability, and they brought in Klingons just to kill off most of these heroes and replace them with soyboy-tongued medical students. It obviously begs the question: why bother making a Star Trek series if you’re just going to destroy everything that made that franchise great?
If the writers needed more sentience than phones to tell a certain story, they could have just invented a new race instead of relying on Betazoids. If the writers needed a race to wander through a sad world, they could have created new ones instead of destroying the Klingons. Finally, if they wanted to tell a silly comedy about space cadets that occasionally veers into shallow melodrama, they could did something outside of the Star Trek show.
Paramount Goes Down With The Ship
Starfleet Academy it’s a great series full of talented actors, and some of the creators behind it (especially Tawny Newsome) are equally talented. But the show continues to destroy old stereotypes while ruining legacy characters, all so that Paramount can create a series that might as well have been called “This Is Not Your Father’s Hogwarts.” They own the IP, of course, so these executives have the right to change everything that has ever made Star Trek special.
But, now that the new show is off the Paramount+ streaming charts entirely, executives might finally learn a lesson their screen cadets deserve: if you destroy everything the fandom loves, don’t be surprised if they hate what you’ve created!
