By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Starfleet Academy is the newest version of Star Trek, and is aimed squarely at a younger audience than any live-action show before it. Paramount’s goal with this series is very simple: while it appeals to older fans, they hope that these young characters and their various on-screen antics will reach Generation Z, effectively growing what has become an older and more established fan base. Unfortunately, these efforts will be destroyed for a simple reason: jokes on Starfleet Academy written by Millennials who are bad at writing for the Zoomer audience.
There has been much criticism of the language used in it Starfleet Academy because these 32nd century characters talk exactly like 21st century Zoomers. Cadets constantly call each other “bruh” and “b*tch,” teachers refer to offensive situations as “dumpster fires,” a digital instructor talks about cadets getting hung up, and so on. Such dialogue is completely different from any previous Trek show, and is accompanied by youth-oriented programs about getting drunk, hooking up, and doing pranks like student rivals.
The Failed Defense of Starfleet Academy
Whenever anyone criticizes any of this, the defenders will usually dust off two different arguments. The first (which has even been used by Robert Picardo) is that, because these characters are so young, we should expect them to speak and act very differently from the trained and experienced Starfleet commanders we’ve seen on screen before. The second defense is that we have to respect that Paramount is trying to appeal to a new audience, which is important because the core Star Trek fandom is not for the young.
Historically, Starfleet Academy critics like myself have focused on the futility of the first defense; for example, it’s fine for younger characters to speak more incoherently than their older peers, but that doesn’t explain why these 32nd century characters speak as incoherently as 21st century characters. Today’s Zoomers speak very differently from their parents and other adults, but that doesn’t mean they’re dusting off the speech of 1,100 years ago. However, it’s too late to separate the problem with the second defense: namely, that Paramount is doing all this to create a younger Star Trek fan base.
Bursting the Fanboy Bubble
An important problem with Starfleet AcademyWriters trying to write Zoomer-style dialogue that Millennial-led writing staffs won’t be able to write as convincingly as young people. Almost any attempt to do this results in being immediately step back. Unfortunately, the worst jokes in this new Star Trek show come from older writers trying to create convincing Zoomer dialogue by badly remaking Millennial jokes and calling it a day.
For example, one of the clunkier lines from the first episode of Starfleet Academy Durem’s “I’m Khionian, b*tch.” Do you ever wonder why exactly this sound is coming out of the mouth of this young actor? It’s because this type of conversation was popularized by Britney Spears (“it’s Britney, b*tch!”) back in 2007before most Millennials cite Britney got their first smartphone.
Star Trek The Time Warp (Again)
In the latest episode of Starfleet Academythe digital dean, voiced by Stephen Colbert, uses the phrase “morning wood” before mocking his penis. In context, morning wood comics were at their peak (ahem) in the ’90s, with Office Location associated with “the Morningwood Condominiums” and Beavis and Butt-Head containing an episode called “The Mystery of Morning Wood.” Forget appealing to Zoomers, this gag was written with the same Millennials laughing along with them Beavis and Butt-Headwhich is probably why that episode has a weird punchline featuring an exploding fish.
My point is simple: Starfleet Academy has a writers room full of Millennials (incl Lower Decks Legend Tawny Newsome), and they’re trying to appeal to younger viewers by featuring what Millennials loved when they were young. That’s why the bad guys like Nus Braka talk like ’90s villains (“Payback’s ab*tch!”) and the good guys are geniuses trying to win battles between pranksters and bullies (basically Revenge Of The Nerds in space). This is why Chancellor Ake is hundreds of years old and often acts like a child: he is an eternal reminder of the thousand-year-old mantra that getting old is hard guys!
Star Trek Returns Has Already Failed
That’s why Starfleet AcademyAn attempt to attract a younger audience will ultimately fail. Real Zoomers will reject all these Millennial jokes in a heartbeat; in fact, it was not that it was a long time ago that Zoomers on TikTok were constantly mocking Millennial jokes about being so old and out of touch. Meanwhile, older audiences (like the Millennial-hating Boomers who keep Paramount staples like NCIS in the air) will immediately reject youth comics of any line, especially if they include characters who clean the glitter as a background character in anime (yes, this really happened!).
As for the actual Millennials, most of us are still depressed Starfleet AcademyFunny because it feels completely out of Star Trek. In fact, no fan of my age has ever looked at a franchise and decided that everything would be better if it was written by thinking people. The office it was the funniest thing ever written. Unfortunately, all the authors of this innovation can give us are tired insults and quirks that may have been funny before housing crisis.
Paramount may still get the last laugh and attract a large new audience, but that’s unlikely: recently, Starfleet Academy quietly slipped out of the top 10 rankings on Paramount+. As it turns out, writing that offends audiences young and old is not a recipe for creating a winning new show. I would like to point this out to the writing staff, but I dare not; after all, who knows what kind of illness, therapy-coded 30 The rock meme would they come back with a slap in the face?
