Entertainment
Starfleet Academy Mangled Star Trek's Most Important Quote About Freedom, Just Like ChatGPT Would Have
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The second scene of Starfleet Academy’s latest episode attempted to honor Star Trek: The Next Generation by having the holographic Doctor quote Aaron Satie, the famous in-universe judge that Picard quoted during “The Drumhead.” Presumably, this bit of nostalgia was meant to honor the Golden Age of Star Trek, thus reassuring skeptical fans that this wildly different spinoff hasn’t forgotten its creative roots.
Unfortunately, they failed. Not only does the Doctor omit a huge chunk of the quote, but he later insults a student in a way that shows he doesn’t actually believe any of the words he’s saying.
First, some context: in the TNG episode “The Drumhead,” an admiral is brought onboard to help the Enterprise investigate whether an explosion was the result of sabotage. She is the daughter of a famous Starfleet judge, and she is so determined to follow in her famous father’s footsteps that she is suspicious of everyone, eventually going so far as to publicly put Captain Picard on the stand for questioning. There, Picard shames and humbles her by quoting her father (Judge Aaron Satie), claiming these are “some words I’ve known since I was a schoolboy.”
Star Trek Is Playing Its Greatest Hits
The words in question are as follows:
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” – Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Picard went on to note that Judge Satie’s words functioned “as wisdom and warning” because “the first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we are all damaged.” He was basically calling out Admiral Satie for turning an unnecessary investigation (it turns out the explosion was an accident) into a drumhead trial where she could needlessly try to punish innocent people, including a young ensign who turned out to secretly have Romulan parentage.
In the most recent episode of Starfleet Academy, the Doctor is in charge of hosting a debate competition named after the late, great Judge Aaron Satie, and he quotes the same words to his students that Picard once quoted to Satie’s own daughter. There’s just one problem: he omits a large part of the quote. In the episode as originally released on Paramount+, he goes from saying the word “forbidden” to the word “us,” leaving out the phrase “the first freedom denied” and the word “chains.”
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, us all.” – The Doctor on Starfleet Academy
Most Starfleet Academy fans who noticed this error assumed that it was a sound editing error, mostly because it seems like there was a pause where the word “chains” could be said before the word “us.” Such an editing mistake would be a major screw-up on the producers’ fault because it ruins what is supposed to be this big, fan service nod to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Plus, with how expensive NuTrek is (Discovery and Strange New Worlds episodes each cost between $7-$10 million to produce), it’s wild to think such a blatant sound error got past the editors of Paramount+’s biggest new show.
Pushing The Buttons On Every Older Trek Fan
Of course, even if the error was just omitting the word “chains,” that means the Doctor still screwed up the quote. Even if he had said “chains,” he would have still left out another part of the quote: “the first freedom denied.” That may sound like nitpicking, but why would the Starfleet Academy writers go out of their way to quote one of the most famous lines and scenes in Star Trek: The Next Generation if they are just going to screw it up?
Judging from the rest of the scene, however, I may be giving those writers too much credit. At one point, to shock the class (and, presumably, the audience), the Doctor declares that “speech and debate is not for the chickensh*t,” causing a bespectacled student (seriously, why do so many people in the 32nd century still wear glasses?) to ask if the haughty hologram is allowed to talk like that.
Do The Writers Need Their Vision Checked?
At this, the Doctor wheels on the poor kid, telling him that “I have existed longer than your entire lineage… I have earned the right to speak as I see fit. One day, you too may earn that same privilege.” When the cadet groans, the Doctor wraps up their sidebar conversation by saying, “But alas, that day is not today.”
It’s meant to be a funny moment, par for the course in a show that can never go very long without dropping a clunky punchline. But in trying to make the audience laugh (and justify the Doctor’s weirdly archaic vulgarity), the Starfleet Academy writers reveal that they don’t understand (or maybe just don’t care) anything about the iconic words he was just quoting.
You see, the quote emphasizes how societies lose their essential freedoms when “the first speech” is “censured” and how this is “the first link” in a chain that binds us all. But in trying to make an example of the cadet who asked about his vulgar language, the Doctor tells him that speaking however one “sees fit” is a right the Doctor “earned” through old age. It’s a “privilege” that the young man “may earn” only with the passage of time.
The Doctor Took The Hippocratic Oath
So, what is it, Doc? Do you believe, as Judge Satie said, that all speech should be protected because as soon as we prevent someone from speaking their mind, we collectively imprison everyone’s thoughts and feelings? Or do you believe that only older people get to speak their mind and that these young whipper snappers need to shut up and earn the right to speak as they see fit?
Again, this may seem like nitpicking, but this scene is practically a microcosm of everything wrong with Starfleet Academy. It sabotages a beloved legacy character (The Doctor) by turning him into a foul-mouthed hypocrite who can’t keep up with what he said only moments ago. This all happened because the writers screwed up an homage to Star Trek: The Next Generation, completely ruining an iconic quote while demonstrating their ignorance as to what it even means.
As a fan of the franchise since the ‘80s (yes, Next Generation was my first series), I really want to like Starfleet Academy, and I guess I should be grateful the writers are trying so hard to jam in references from that era of the franchise. But what’s the point if they are going to screw up an important quote like this from beginning to end? Sorry, Paramount: this is a Star Trek show in name only, and older fans are beyond sick of you trying to sell us a generic sci-fi comedy that only makes gestures towards better series that the writers (if there are any) can never (and apparently will never) truly understand.
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.
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