Entertainment
Star Trek Fixes Its Spinoff By Ruining Its Brand
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
After hating the first episode of Starfleet Academy and screaming at the second one (did the writers really forget how Betazoids work?!), I found myself inexplicably liking the third episode. This was a script that abandoned any attempt to tell a greater story about Starfleet or the Federation and settled into a surprisingly fun “snobs vs. slobs” style caper, and the episode was all the stronger for it. That was when (not unlike Picard in “All Good Things”) the paradox hit me: Starfleet Academy is at its best when it stops trying to be a Star Trek show and focuses on telling stories in entirely different genres.
The first episode of Starfleet Academy received mixed reviews from longtime Star Trek fans because it couldn’t decide on what kind of show it wanted to be; scenes of broad comedy (including poop jokes and vulgar quips) sat uneasily alongside harrowing starship attacks and inspirational speeches. It felt like the weird lovechild between Lower Decks and Discovery, resulting in enough tonal whiplash to fill a Starbase. The second episode of the new series fared better because it focused on its teen show strengths (like a will they/won’t they relationship between a Betazoid good girl and Starfleet’s newest bad boy), but plodding scenes of Federation politicking dragged the episode down.
Star Trek Unleashes The ’80s
Starfleet Academy’s third episode (“Vitus Reflux”) is its strongest, which is ironic because this is the lowest-stakes episode so far. We don’t get any sad backstories, supervillain introductions, or major changes to Federation lore. Instead, the episode focuses on a prank war between Starfleet Academy and the War College, one which involves everything from competitive laser tag and goofy mascots to a bunch of giant, talking plants straight out of Little Shop of Horrors.
Now, if you had asked me last week if I would enjoy a particularly goofy episode of Starfleet Academy, I would have said no; after all, the first two episodes were at their worst when they were trying to be funny, and much of the show’s early teen drama was very grating. A prank war involves, by necessity, plenty of teen drama and childish humor, so I was fully prepared to hate everything about “Vitus Reflux” from beginning to end. Instead, I enjoyed most of it for a very surprising reason: Starfleet Academy is at its best when it stops trying to be a Star Trek show altogether.
Snobs Vs. Slobs (In Space)
Instead of trying to tell a classic Star Trek story, Starfleet Academy’s third episode embraced the kind of “snobs vs. slobs” storytelling made famous by classic films such as Animal House. In this case, the lovable slobs were played by the latest academy recruits, including a pacifist Klingon, a ditzy hologram, and a juvenile delinquent. The slobs were played by the cadets at the War College who (not unlike their professors) see Starfleet Academy cadets as easy, weak-hearted targets.
Strangely enough, most of Starfleet Academy’s biggest flaws more or less disappear once it stops trying to be a Star Trek show. The broad humor, bad jokes, and casually vulgar language of the first episode, for example, are a big part of why this new spinoff never really felt like The Next Generation or Voyager. But all of that actually gels well (though not perfectly) in an episode that stops trying to be Star Trek and instead does its best to channel Caddyshack.
Star Trek Spinoff Strips Down To The Basics
Weird, vulgar trash talk, for example? That’s obviously out of place on a starship, and such humor really fell flat in the first episode during Nus Braka’s attack. But “Vitus Reflex” lowered the stakes to “my school’s better than your school” and made the villains into rival cadets; in this context, both the foul language and the hot tempers of young people with nothing but pride on the line suddenly made a lot more sense.
The wonderfully simplistic plot reminded me of a phrase frequently used by the excellent podcast The Greatest Generation (you’ll always have a friend of DeSoto in me, boys): “Star Trek is a place.” According to these podcasters, there is no one, archetypal kind of Trek show; instead, there is endless room to tell all kinds of stories within this familiar futuristic setting. This is why The Next Generation could suddenly become a Law & Order episode with “The Measure of a Man” and Deep Space Nine suddenly became a war movie with “The Siege of AR-558.”
Star Trek is a vast universe whose writers can afford to channel different genres and explore other kinds of storytelling. In this third episode, Starfleet Academy tries its hand at a snobs vs. slobs tale, and as someone who absolutely loves such movies, I thought it was great. It’s not a perfect episode because the humor of the adult characters (mostly Holly Hunter’s chancellor) still lands with a resounding thud, but the episode mercifully focuses on the younger characters while giving them the most sympathetic motivation of all: the need to take some arrogant *sshole bullies down a few pegs.
A Show That Finally Found Its Voice
Sadly, Starfleet Academy is unlikely to keep up this momentum, and we all know it’s just a matter of time before the show focuses on more heavy-handed drama wrapped up with lazy inspirational speeches straight out of ChatGPT. But with “Vitus Reflux,” this new spinoff stopped trying to be a serious Star Trek show and just tried to be an ‘80s comedy, and it’s almost shockingly successful in this endeavor. Starfleet Academy has previously suffered from trying to simultaneously be a serious meditation on idealism and a wacky comedy about space cadets; by just embracing its weird teenage hijinks, the show finally found its voice.
That voice is, admittedly, something very different from the classic Star Trek shows of old, but it’s been clear for years that Paramount is desperate to modernize the franchise and tell new kinds of stories. Unfortunately, NuTrek often focused on either grim and grisly storytelling (like early Discovery and Picard) or colorful nostalgia bait (like Strange New Worlds and later Picard). Now, Starfleet Academy has (after a couple of failed episodes) managed to find the sweet spot between action, humor, and originality, and this third episode did something I thought impossible just a week ago: made me finally care about these characters.
After this foray into ‘80s-style snobs vs. slobs comedy, what will happen to everyone’s favorite Starfleet Academy characters? At this point, I’m rooting for a toga party!
