Entertainment
New Starfleet Academy Episode Takes One Small Step Forward, Then Totally Destroys Star Trek
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Starfleet Academy has been steadily improving as a show, and the latest episode showcases some of that improvement with a fairly compelling Klingon storyline. Unfortunately, the quality of this tale is undermined by the show’s weird penchant for vulgarity and its bizarre destruction of one of the franchise’s most iconic planets. The result is an episode that Charles Dickens (one of Captain Kirk’s favorite authors) might have summed up, “It was the best of Trek, it was the worst of Trek.”
The worst part of this episode (and beware major spoilers from here on, space cadets!) is the revelation that the Klingon homeworld and most of their empire have been destroyed because the Burn made their dilithium reactors blow up. There is so much wrong with this: the Burn doesn’t magically cause dilithium to explode (it only blew up starships because dilithium going inert caused warp core breaches), and it’s bizarre the Klingons would use dilithium as a power source in the first place when rival empires like the Federation figured out how to power planets with fusion nearly a millennium ago.
It Was Not A Good Day To Die
This plot point gets even stupider when you consider that dilithium was becoming really scarce in the galaxy about 15-20 years before the Burn, so aliens (even ones as dumb as the Klingons) relying on it to power every planet in their empire would have switched to an alternative power source long before the Burn somehow blew every planet to smithereens. Like, the Klingons of this show were willing to embrace a triple parent model to save their race; are these writers really suggesting they wouldn’t have simply switched power sources, given that they had up to two decades of warning that dilithium wasn’t sustainable?
On a narrative level, it’s also depressing that Star Trek’s writers felt the need to destroy Qo’noS, one of the most iconic planets in the entire franchise. In this Starfleet Academy episode, the primary reason to do this is seemingly to give a tragic backstory to Jay-Den, the show’s sensitive, pacifist Klingon. This is Trek’s third trip to this well (after giving tragic backstory to Spock by destroying Vulcan and to Picard by destroying Romulus), and I’m getting pretty sick of writers who can’t motivate their characters through anything less than destroying billions of lives and forever altering franchise history.
If you’re a Klingon fan, this plot point is that much more horrifying because these aliens believe that the only way they can get into their version of heaven is to die in battle. Now, we know that the vast majority of them died without a weapon in their hands, meaning that they all went to Klingon hell. Doing this to the franchise’s most famous aliens for any reason would have been downright weird, but doing it just to make the new softboy Klingon seem interesting is downright insulting.
The Dirty Talking Doctor Returns
On an even stupider note, Voyager’s Doctor (the same one who was cracking poop jokes in the first episode) uses the phrase “Speech and debate is not for the chickensh*t;” when a cadet asks if he can talk like that, the cranky hologram cites the privilege of his age and how he has earned the right to talk however he wants to.
That’s a fine sentiment (signed, a professor who sometimes curses in class), but “chicken” has never, ever been used in Star Trek as a synonym for “coward.” So even if we accept that characters in the 32nd century are still using the word “sh*t” (which has been used in the real world for over a thousand years), it’s weird that the Doctor would pair it with “chicken” in a way that was completely at least one century (and quite possibly many centuries) before he was even programmed.
Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That!
The final major problem with this episode is how it hints that Jay-Den, the sensitive Klingon featured in this episode, may be gay. Now, there’s obviously nothing wrong with having a gay character, and a gay Klingon (something we’ve literally never seen before) could provide plenty of narrative opportunities for talented writers to explore.
But as several fans have pointed out on social media, this Klingon is an aspiring healer, so the show is seemingly embracing the “gay male nurse/gay male doctor” stereotype that is very prevalent in modern culture. This is a harmful stereotype that has led to bullying of real-life men in healthcare, and it’s a little weird to see a progressive Star Trek show set in the 32nd century embracing a weird, retrograde stereotype of the 21st century.
Of course, the franchise did the exact same thing with Culber, the gay doctor that Discovery killed off in Season 1. He was resurrected, but his name on Starfleet Academy’s weird memorial wall implies that he somehow died again offscreen. Considering how wholeheartedly Star Trek has embraced the problematic “killing your gays” trope, I can only hope Jay-Den survives his apparent sexual awakening!
Age Gap Discourse Is Without Honor
If you can get past the aforementioned problems, there are some interesting things to enjoy about the latest episode of Starfleet Academy. Holly Hunter’s centuries-old chancellor finally stops spinning in her chair long enough to hook up with her Klingon ex, and (in what feels like a fun throwback to The Original Series) their continued sexual chemistry may be the key to saving the Klingons. You see, the Federation has discovered a replacement for their lost homeworld, but these stubborn aliens would rather die out than receive charity.
Knowing this warrior race as well as she does, the chancellor arranges a kind of mock battle between Starfleet and the Klingons so the latter can feel like they have conquered the world. The whole plot feels like a fun homage to “A Matter of Honor,” the Next Generation episode where Riker learned that assuaging Klingon pride is often a matter of letting them think they’ve won. This episode also deserves credit for a realistic teacher moment in which the chancellor promptly lets Jay-Den think the mock fight between empires was his idea, which boosts his confidence as a student and gets him some brownie points with the Klingons.
A few more things worth mentioning: while the whole “murder most of these aliens and send them straight to hell” plot remains wildly offensive, this Starfleet Academy episode has some interesting insights into Klingon psychology. Plus, the burgeoning friendship between Caleb and Jay-Den is much more effective than I ever imagined, echoing interactions between fan-favorite pairings like Nog and Jake or Tendi and Rutherford.
Time To Activate Your TV’s Cloaking Device
It was also fun to see Starfleet cadets nerding out over honing their debate skills. Oh, and in a “it had to happen eventually” moment, the show’s half-Klingon, half-Jem-hadar master of cadets gets to offer some solid advice to someone rather than just stand around cartoonishly screaming. Unfortunately, this episode sandwiches its better parts between so much offensive, canon-destroying bullsh*t that it’s tough to even see (much less appreciate) what works well.
Last week, I gently praised Starfleet Academy for its snobs vs. slobs prank war episode, hoping that the series was leaning into the college shenanigans that it does well and not the deep Trek lore that it keeps handling so poorly. Unfortunately, this episode is a return to form in the worst possible way: the show wants to use this famous IP to tell sweeping stories of family, friendship, and diaspora, but they are doing so while running the franchise into the ground. Previously, I quoted Captain Kirk in reminding Paramount executives that “risk is part of the game” when it comes to this beloved brand’s storytelling.
I was hoping these creators might “boldly go” and do something that builds a future for the IP while honoring its past, all while quoting the franchise’s most famous character. Since these clearly hate The Original Series so much and clearly don’t care about the fandom, I figured I would send the same message using the cool, measured, and rational language that these millionaires might finally understand: “Making Star Trek is not for the chickensh*t!”
Entertainment
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Entertainment
Star Trek’s First Broadcast Episode Was Very Carefully Chosen, Because It Was Boring
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
These days, Star Trek is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon. But during the development of The Original Series, there was anxiety that the general public wouldn’t really understand Gene Roddenberry’s mashing up Western tropes with a sci-fi setting. Making matters worse was that the original pilot, “The Cage,” had been rejected by NBC for being too brainy. Fortunately, Roddenberry got a chance to shoot another pilot, one which impressed the network enough to order an entire season worth of episodes.
Several episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series had already been shot when the time came for this new show to make its broadcast premiere. The first episode that the general public saw was “The Man Trap,” which featured a shapeshifting monster that was revealed to be an alien salt vampire. This good-but-not-great episode was an odd choice, and it was one that the cast and crew hated. As it turns out, though, this episode was very carefully selected by executives because it served as an inoffensive, relatively straightforward encapsulation of everything Star Trek had to offer.
It’s A Trap!
Most of the information we have about why “The Man Trap” was selected as Star Trek’s first episode comes from the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. Within this impressive reference tome, Robert H. Justman and Herbert F. Solow revealed something surprising: NBC had several other episodes to choose from for the premiere, including “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “Charlie X,” “Mudd’s Women,” “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and “The Naked Time.” All of them had already been shot and were mostly finished, so it was just a matter of figuring out which episode would serve as the best introduction to Star Trek, a heretofore unknown sci-fi series.
“The Man Trap” won out, mostly because the powers that be worried that other episodes would be off-putting to general audiences in some very specific ways. For example, they worried that audiences would find “Charlie X” a story that was “too gentle” because it focused on an adolescent with special powers. This was probably the right call, in retrospect: when Variety gave a negative review of “The Man Trap” (an episode chosen, in part, because of its relative maturity), they declared that Star Trek: The Original Series was “better suited to the Saturday morning kidvid bloc” (ouch!).
A Monster Hit Of An Episode
“The Corbomite Maneuver” was a great potential choice, but this episode’s impressive special effects were still in post-production, and almost all of its action took place on the ship. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” really outlined the premise of the new show, but it was deemed “expository” for general audiences expecting more action and danger. Justman thought “The Naked Time” was a killer introduction to the crew’s personalities, but the network passed, presumably because of how over-the-top (half-naked, swashbuckling Sulu? Oh, my!) that episode gets. “Mudd’s Women,” meanwhile, was deemed too offensive because the plot involved literally selling women to miners.
Through this process of elimination, executives decided that “The Man Trap” was the best intro to Star Trek. It had cool scenes on both the Enterprise and a distant outpost (a strange new world) and featured a straightforward action plot you didn’t have to be a sci-fi aficionado to understand. Finally, it was all about finding and defeating a creepy monster, which offered thrills to audiences of all ages. The network’s choice paid off, and Star Trek: The Original Series became the most popular sci-fi show in television history, even though the cast (including William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) thought “The Man Trap” was the worst possible episode they could have chosen.
All of this is a keen reminder of how much thought and work went into putting Star Trek’s best foot forward. It might be a reminder that Paramount’s current upper leadership needs, as Starfleet Academy hit the ground running with the worst episodes of Season 1. The show got better after that, but it didn’t matter because the prospective audience had already been driven away. As it turns out, today’s execs need to learn something that the network execs of the ‘60s had learned very well: series succeed when you give the audience what they want to see and not what you want to show!
Entertainment
How A Fantasy Box Office Bomb Lost $200 Million In Theaters, And Suddenly Became A Streaming Hit
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
For the last decade as streaming has taken off in homes around the world, it’s become possible for films that lost historical amounts of money in theaters to find success, even if it might be the post-Mystery Science Theater 3000 trend of “so bad it’s good.” That’s why a massive flop, for example say, Morbius, and films that slightly missed the mark like The Fall Guy can turn it around and become a streaming success.
What’s even more impressive is the amazing turnaround of 2013’s Jack the Giant Slayer, which lost Legendary Pictures an alleged $200 million, only to end up topping streaming charts in 2025.
The Classic Fairy Tale With A Twist
Everyone knows the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, the classic fairy tale about selling a horse for magic beans and climbing a beanstalk to find a giant living in the clouds. It’s simple, contains multiple morals, and can be easily adjusted to turn Jack into the villain, but Jack the Giant Slayer instead asks, “What if there was no moral, and instead of one giant, there was an entire army of evil giants?” The movie is the classic story, as you’ve never seen it before, and it almost works.
Nicholas Hoult plays Jack, the young man who finds himself trading his horse to a monk in exchange for beans that he can’t allow to get wet, ever. Like the rules in Gremlins, it’s not long before Jack accidentally gets the beans wet and a beanstalk grows under his house with the princess, Isabell (Eleanor Tomlinson), trapped inside as it grows into the sky. All the king’s men gather to rescue the princess, including Lord Roderick (Stanley Tucci), who, thankfully, Jack the Giant Slayer makes obvious is very evil, very quickly.
It’s up to Jack, Isabell, and the loyal Knight, Elmont (Ewan McGregor) to save the kingdom and stop the invasion of giants led by Roderick and the giant two-headed General Fallon (Bill Nighy). If there’s one thing Jack the Giant Slayer does better than every other adaptation, it’s the third act featuring a full-blown war between humans and giants, with a touch of humor and absurdity. Watching a giant toss a windmill like the glaive from Krull is the perfect amount of off-beat to distract from a surprising amount of body horror in both the giant’s designs and Fallon’s ultimate fate.
A Movie For No One
Jack the Giant Slayer looks too good, and the star-studded cast is having way too much fun for it to be a truly bad movie. The problem is that the pacing is off: it takes a little too long to get to the good stuff, then it feels a little too rushed, and though it is a fun adventure, it’s also, like the source material, simplistic. It’s not like the movie wasn’t watched in theaters; it made $197 million worldwide, which would be a great haul except it cost $185 million to make, and that’s not including the extensive marketing campaign.
The push and pull of director Bryan Singer’s vision of a dark take on the fable, complete with actual people-eating on screen, and the sanitized version that hit theaters, which was still too dark for children, since the film is surprisingly rated PG-13, meant it ended up being a film for no one. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings, of 52 percent from critics and 55 percent from the audience, are proof that the final product is not great, but not bad; it’s a movie that will keep you watching for a few hours and then leave no lasting impression. These days, Lionsgate and Sony wish they’d release a movie that is that well-received, as even Jack the Giant Slayer looks like a masterpiece compared to Borderlands or Kraven the Hunter.
Streaming is the perfect home for Jack the Giant Slayer, and 10 years later, it no longer matters that the movie lost hundreds of millions in theaters. It finally gets to stand on its own as a fun, if unremarkable, fantasy adventure.
This $43 bundle quietly upgrades your entire PC experience
Frederik Andersen, Hurricanes look to shut down Senators in Game 2
