By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 51 seconds ago

Recently, the controversial Star Trek show Starfleet Academy finished its first season, and the online discourse about the show has been endless. Defenders of the series have constantly pointed out that because it took shows like The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine time to achieve greatness, everyone should give Starfleet Academy some grace during its initial shakedown cruise. To this, critics always have a simple response: that because modern seasons are less than half as long as they used to be, Star Trek shows can no longer afford to waste time getting good.

Whether Starfleet Academy gets renewed for Season 3 (Season 2 has already been filmed) may come down to various factors, including streaming numbers and decisions from upper Paramount leadership. Recently, however, it occurred to me that it would be easy for an upcoming series to finally make the divided fandom happy. All Paramount needs to do is give Tawny Newsome’s upcoming Star Trek spinoff a tighter per-episode budget and more episodes per season.

The Office In Space?

If you don’t know, Lower Decks legend and Starfleet Academy writer Tawny Newsome is currently working on a Star Trek show that is supposed to function as a workplace comedy. This unnamed series is set on a vacation planet (not Risa, though). Beyond this and the fact that she wants to set it in the 25th century (so, the Picard era), all we know about the show is that it involves helping the planet join the Federation. Oh, and the original pitch for the show involved some unspecified shenanigans that would somehow broadcast everything our Federation workers are doing to the entire quadrant. 

The series has not yet gotten the green light from Paramount, and it has reportedly evolved (albeit in unknown ways) since the original pitch. Personally, I always thought the “broadcast to the whole quadrant” thing meant they were doing a Star Trek version of The Office. At any rate, Newsome’s workplace comedy show provides the perfect opportunity for NuTrek to boldly go where it has never gone before: 20+ episode seasons, with a more modest budget for each episode.

The Numbers Game

Back in the Golden Age of Star Trek, shows like Voyager had 26-episode seasons, and this offered a number of advantages to the writers. On the most basic level, they had an extended runway: with this many episodes per season, you could flesh out your main characters and even give your side characters extended screentime. Most importantly, having so many episodes each season meant that Paramount could afford to have a few stinkers; the awful quality of early TNG episodes like “Code of Honor,” for example, would ultimately get outweighed by better episodes like “Conspiracy.”

However, the network could only do this because of the cost factor. Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes cost about $1.3 million to produce, which was admittedly a pretty penny back in the day. Now, though, Star Trek: Discovery previously cost about $8 million per episode, and there are persistent rumors that each Starfleet Academy episode costs Paramount $10 million. If that’s true, then it costs almost the same amount to produce one season of Starfleet Academy as it did to produce three seasons of The Next Generation.

That’s bad enough, but three seasons of The Next Generation add up to 78 episodes; meanwhile, one season of Starfleet Academy is only 10 episodes. That’s not enough time to develop every character, which is likely why Genesis never got her own episode like everyone else. Furthermore, short seasons lead to killer ratios: if, say, four of your episodes are stinkers (a very generous estimate for SFA), then 40 percent of your entire season sucks. That’s enough to make fans tune out and possibly seal a show’s fate long before it finally gets good.

NuTrek Goes Old School

What does this bleak numbers game have to do with Tawny Newsome’s Star Trek show? Simple: one of the big reasons that shows like Starfleet Academy are so expensive is because of all the top-notch special effects needed for stories where the entire galaxy is in danger. The crew is always visiting new places (exploring strange new worlds and all that), meeting exotic aliens (seeking out new life), and generally having ambitious adventures that are very expensive to bring to life.

However, if Newsome’s workplace comedy show really is like Star Trek meets The Office, it could potentially be far cheaper to create. Characters could stay in a fixed location, effectively turning almost every episode into a bottle episode. Residents of the vacation planet don’t need to have elaborate makeup; in fact, the show could return to the grand Trek tradition of having aliens who are just humans with something funny on their foreheads. Finally, the show doesn’t have to have legacy characters or other big names; instead, the cast can be comprised of almost entirely unknown actors.

Put it all together, and you have a new Star Trek show that is infinitely cheaper to make than Starfleet Academy. But I’m not suggesting Paramount lower its overall budget; instead, the amount of money they would normally allocate to a NuTrek show should go to creating seasons with at least 20 episodes. This would allow for greater character development and more rewatchability. Best of all, there would be a built-in grace period: even if the show’s first five episodes are awful, fans would forgive that if the next 15 are solid Star Trek.

The Best Of Both Worlds

Realistically, I know this isn’t likely to happen for many reasons, including Alex Kurtzman’s inability to try anything new. But Paramount is currently exploring whether or not to keep Kurtzman around, and new leadership seems eager to shake things up with the franchise. A smaller-budget Star Trek spinoff could be a return to the Golden Age, where classic episodes were created with killer writing and not a small mountain of VFX.

Done right, Tawny Newsome’s show (assuming it gets the green light) could be the best of both worlds: it would give NuTrek fans more show than they can handle while finally making old-school fans happy. Plus, it would give its biggest fans more episodes per season to stream, giving this series the coziness of shows like Voyager. But the only way this can happen is for Paramount to embrace some very unconventional wisdom regarding the budget for each episode: make it low, Number One!

By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 17 seconds ago

Chuck Norris’s death was barely announced by his family on March 21, 2026, before Variety, famous for snubbing fashion and movie icon Brigitte Bardot, decided to take a shot at him. The article, written by William Earl, was published just hours after his death was announced in the news.

The article, titled “Chuck Norris Was a Great Action Star – But Politics May Overshadow His Legacy,” questions the actor’s resume as a cinematic and television tough guy. It indicates that his portrayal of characters such as Colonel James Braddock in Missing in Action, Colonel Scott McCoy in The Delta Force, and Cordell Walker in Walker, Texas Ranger might have been too patriotic in their portrayal of American heroism and justice.

“Given our nation’s divisions in morality, information literacy, and overall sense of morality,” Earl posits, “it’s easier to see Norris’s characters as justification for a fringe conspiracy movement rather than a moral standing.” He defends this perspective by explaining that Norris’s characters are all vigilantes, an idea which “seems less fun” these days because of current events, such as nationwide immigration raids, in which law enforcement agents “are acting like one-man militias.” He seems convinced that they were inspired to these actions by Norris’s iconic persona.

This attack on Norris is unwarranted for a lot of reasons, not in the least of which is Norris’s persona off-screen. He was legendary for being a family man and all-around nice guy, giving a lot of time and energy in addition to donations to causes that helped kids, the hungry, and the poor. He also wrote several books, including a few about fitness and martial arts. He was such a prolific martial arts expert that he created his own style, called Chun Kuk Do. Earl handwaves this all as “Was Norris a brilliant athlete and a top-shelf star?”

He then proceeds to attack his portrayals of heroic Americans for being American. Throughout the article, he is critical of portraying cops and soldiers as heroes. He indicates that the United States is a bad country for going to war against Iran and for the aforementioned immigration initiatives. He denounces Norris’s characters for being proud Americans with strong moral values, calling him “the poster boy for American exceptionalism” and wondering if his work is “dangerous propaganda.”

However, the title of the article gives away the true motive behind it: politics. And the problem isn’t the characters Norris played, it’s the fact that he was a lifelong Republican and an outspoken Christian. He lived a lot of the values he portrayed on-screen, ideas which are not as precious in Hollywood these days because they involve nuclear families, positive masculinity, and judging people by their actions rather than identities. Even the idea of patriotism and pride in our country is viewed with disdain, as the very country that invented Hollywood is often decried for its flaws rather than recognized for its merits.

In our fascist, oppressive, speech-stifling country, William Earl attacked a man hours after his death for playing the wrong type of characters in his movies and representing them in a positive light. That makes him the worst villain in a Chuck Norris story in my book.

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 52 seconds ago

There’s a lot for fans to love about the first trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, more villains, more Spider-Man, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker aging into the lovably downtrodden mess fans love from the comics, and despite the ending of No Way Home, Ned and MJ are back. Zendaya’s MJ is at the center of the one shot from the trailer that I can’t get out of my head. She’s at a party with a guy she’s obviously in a relationship with, played by Ashoka’s Eman Esfandi.

To those who have not read the comics in recent years, it’s a harmless sign that MJ has moved after she forgot about Peter. To me, it was a warning sign that Kevin Feige may be about to pull the ultimate troll move. Eman Esfandi could be playing the greatest villain in Peter Parker’s life: Paul. 

Potential Paul Sighting Sends Fans Into A Panic

Paul doesn’t sound like the name of a villain. He’s not as fearsome-sounding as Green Goblin, Venom, Morlun, or Tombstone. He doesn’t even have a cool costume. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is packed with villains fans have waited years to see, including Boomerang and Scorpion, but none are as pure evil as Paul. 

Brand New Day teasing MJ’s new love interest isn’t a rehash of Tobey Maguire and Kristen Dunst from Spider-Man 2. When Sam Raimi’s film aired, Peter and Mary Jane were happily married in the comics, but today, the pair’s marriage has been shattered for 20 years, and they have been on and off again. Like many Spider-Man fans, I prefer the couple together. Paul’s complete lack of importance as a character, except to be “the guy Mary Jane dates instead of Peter,” made it very difficult to read Amazing Spider-Man for years. He’s a complete nothing of a character. 

Marvel’s Worst Character

If it’s revealed that Eman Esfandi’s character from that one, single shot in the Brand New Day trailer is Paul, then Marvel is purposely trolling every comic book reader who spent years complaining loudly about Paul. Zeb Wells, the talented writer behind the excellent Hellions series, was also the man who forced Paul onto readers. Given his past successes, though, it’s clear that Paul, like the original “Brand New Day” storyline, was a mandate by Marvel editorial to keep Peter Parker in the same place for years. Denied the chance to grow and develop as a character, Peter and the readers were stuck in the equivalent of a One Piece filler arc for years. 

Paul can not join the MCU. We just got rid of him in the comics. MJ is too smart and too well-written a character to waste time with the black hole of charisma that is Paul. Mary Jane is too interesting a character to be burdened by an undeveloped sentient manbun (that’s his one identifying feature). He even let slip her secret identity as the new host of Venom. Paul is the worst. 

Brand New Day is bringing the sad sack perennial put upon version of Peter Parker to the MCU after three movies of Tom Holland playing closer to the first Ultimate Spider-Man version of the character. I have no doubt that the movie is going to be spectacular, and it’ll be another billion-dollar box office hit for the Spider-Man franchise, but if the name “Paul” is uttered by MJ at any moment, I am going to throw my popcorn at the screen. No one, not the paying audience, not comic readers, not Peter and MJ, not even Zeb Wells, should be punished by Marvel editorial’s bizarre decree that Peter can never be happy.