By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 33 seconds ago

Starfleet Academy is the latest Star Trek spinoff, and it has proven to be particularly controversial among older fans who are annoyed by how different this young adult show is compared to classic Trek, like The Original Series and The Next Generation. These fans have largely forecasted doom for the new show, with many believing this could be the nail in the coffin for the best sci-fi IP ever made. But the haters have been proven wrong: according to the latest numbers, Starfleet Academy has significantly more viewers than both Strange New Worlds and Picard!

This information comes to us courtesy of Ted Linheart, who keeps track of streaming numbers on his popular substack (Ted On TV). According to him, the first two episodes of Starfleet Academy earned 2.1 million views in the show’s first eight days on Paramount+. This is notably higher than the full season average of views for Strange New Worlds Season 3 and Picard Season 3, each of which averaged 1.3 million views.

A Surprise Star Trek Hit

Obviously, there are some mitigating factors here; for example, Starfleet Academy almost certainly got a bump in views from the first episode because everyone (from NuTrek haters to franchise loyalists) tuned in to see what the new Star Trek show is all about. Time will tell whether the new show can keep up the momentum or if it fizzles out (for example, poor viewership for episode 3 could easily drop this average). Speaking of fizzling out, the third seasons of Strange New Worlds and Picard both had fewer views than previous ones (SNW Season 3 rapidly dropped out of Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming list, for example, and never returned). 

On the face of it, however, Starfleet Academy is a bigger hit out of the gate than more established shows like Strange New Worlds and Picard. This is particularly notable because those two shows were created partially as a response to the shortcomings of Discovery: Strange New Worlds is an episodic tribute to The Original Series, for example, while Picard is explicitly a revival of The Next Generation. NuTrek faced resistance from older fans almost right away because Discovery was so different from what they expected, so Picard and SNW were both created to echo the Golden Age of Star Trek.

The Last Thing Anyone Expected Audiences To Love

Judging from these streaming numbers, though, general audiences crave something new from Star Trek rather than something familiar. After all, Strange New Worlds has steadily introduced familiar characters like Kirk and Scotty in an effort to make the show even more like The Original Series, and Picard’s final season was a straight-up revival of The Next Generation. Nonetheless, these NuTrek shows averaged fewer viewers by season than the first two episodes of Starfleet Academy, a show that swapped out veteran officers for a bunch of quirky, foul-mouthed cadets.

This would tentatively prove that Paramount’s major gamble with this new Star Trek show is paying off. Many (myself included) wondered how effective it would be to target younger viewers, which is a demographic that NuTrek has historically had trouble really appealing to. Nonetheless, the network went for it with a show that centers on teenage characters who are obsessed with things like rebelling against authority, winning epic prank wars, and (what else?) getting laid.

Audience Verdict: The Kids Are Alright

The early success of Starfleet Academy seems to indicate that Paramount’s strategy is working and that the new show is generating more views than (on average) recent seasons of shows that have tried (more or less) to tell the kinds of Star Trek stories that older fans will relate to. This leads to a juicy paradox that I alluded to in my review of Starfleet Academy’s newest episode: the new spinoff has veered hard and fast away from standard franchise tropes, replacing them with modern dialogue, lowbrow humor, and youth-centric storylines. The result is completely different from anything Trek has done before, but these streaming numbers reveal that overhauling the franchise may be a good thing.

Paramount is desperate to get more viewers for their original shows, and that desperation has only become keener in the wake of the Skydance merger and the studio’s multiple failed attempts to buy out Warner Bros. Starfleet Academy is different from any Trek that has come before it, but that may not matter in the short-term if it gains enough views to keep the executives happy. In the long term, though, only time will tell if Paramount alienating its oldest fans in the name of attracting new ones will save Star Trek or set its phasers to kill while targeting the entire franchise.