Starfleet Academy is Both a Product and Victim of Late Stage Capitalism

The toxic Trek fans are really something else. They come in a few different categories but these Trek Bros, and I assure you that most of them are male, all have one thing in common. They are guilty of the same sin they accuse Kurtman era Trek fanatics of committing.

Not positive toxicity. That's definitely pretty much a nonsense term when talking about fanatics, and let us not forget from whence the term fan hails.

The common sin, that is at least accused, is cherry picking. Trek Bros are somewhat mindblowing in their ability to cherry pick, whether it be from Trek past or Trek present. I have seen countless posts using, "I think I swallowed my combadge." as substantive critique of the entirety of writing in Starfleet Academy.

Let me tell you.

I just finished episode 7 of season 1 (finally), and this show has had some excellent writing. Discovery was a godawful mess IMHO, and I only watched two seasons of that. SFA actually has some really excellent work in it, especially as it has progressed. I'm fairly confident that most of the haters didn't even get to episode 3 of the show, let alone 5 where it finally starts to really kick in.

And yet, Trek Bros are not the point of this post.

The public discourse at current around SFA is not the point of this post.

SFA could never have existed without these production techniques or as Jonathan Frakes put it

Perhaps it’s the amount of money it costs to make how beautiful the show is; the level of the production has become this sort of 'shoot to thrill' cinematic phenomenon.

Indeed Commander, that is exactly the only reason that a show as visually brilliant as SFA can exist right now. A lot of us might want a Star Trek that has 50% of the visual glitz to get 2x as many episodes, but that just isn't on offer yet.

In the meantime, what we've gotten is the Kurtman era Trek. I refuse to call it NuTrek (or even worse nuTrek) in the context of this blog post. This period of Trek literally could not exist without prestige television and the streaming model. It's incredibly frustrating, especially for us "old timers" that we don't get 20+ episodes a season, but until the production model changes we just aren't going to get that. Even if it does change, we won't get a live televised show that you had to record on VHS if you wanted to watch it later. Everything about the media product has changed, and that's just baked into all contemporary media. It doesn't make it better or worse inherently, but it's definitely different and for some people different alone can be a problem.

SFA is also a victim of late stage capitalism. The same economic structures that have created contemporary Star Trek in the general shape it exists in have definitely destroyed SFA before it could even get legs. The beast hungers. There is no time to shelter the young. They must emerge fully formed, with fangs and teeth to fight for their own survival in a harsh media ecosystem. A single major mistep in the first few episodes could cost your show its existence. Realistically, virtually no older Trek shows would have survived season one against the current model.

I have more thoughts about this moment of Star Trek.

Here's a sample.

For today though, I just want to recognize that SFA is a really great show for those of us who love a show that's basically Star Trek meets Buffy.