{"id":286555,"date":"2026-02-16T09:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T09:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/286555\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T09:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T09:46:09","slug":"what-everyone-is-getting-wrong-about-star-treks-starfleet-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/286555\/","title":{"rendered":"What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About Star Trek\u2019s Starfleet Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Chris Snellgrove<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t | Published 15 seconds ago\t\t<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The new Star Trek spinoff, Starfleet Academy, has had a controversial launch, and I have been one of its harshest critics; after all, the show\u2019s casual mangling of franchise lore and cringeworthy humor is sometimes downright painful to watch. However, the one criticism that I\u2019ve always found insane is fans hating how the show often focuses on its young cadets learning something about themselves and embracing a hidden power they didn\u2019t realize was there. The reason this critique is so silly is simple: Starfleet Academy is explicitly designed as a Young Adult show, and this kind of storytelling is a major part of the most famous YA literature.<\/p>\n

Season 1 of Starfleet Academy has spent many episodes focusing on specific characters: \u201cKids These Days\u201d is all about Caleb losing his mother and becoming a criminal who seeks redemption (not to mention a surrogate mommy figure) in Starfleet. \u201cBeta Test\u201d focuses on how Betazed princess Tamina builds a new life for herself at the War College, and \u201cVox in Excelso\u201d is about the Klingon Jay-Den making peace with his family and with the cultural heritage that he simultaneously embraces and rejects. Most famously, \u201cSeries Acclimation Mil\u201d focuses on SAM as she studies Benjamin Sisko, all in the hopes of being a better emissary for her holographic race.<\/p>\n

You Can Blame Harry Potter For This<\/p>\n

\"harry<\/p>\n

These kinds of stories aren\u2019t for everyone, and they will be particularly disappointing to fans who want stories with higher stakes. However, Star Trek<\/a> fans who relentlessly dunk on these kinds of stories are missing the point of what Paramount is trying to do: recruit younger fans into the Star Trek family. With Starfleet Academy, they are attempting to do so in the most straightforward way possible: by copying the formula made famous by Harry Potter<\/a> and countless other book franchises aimed at Young Adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ask yourself: beyond the specifics about wands and broomsticks, what is the story of Harry Potter about? It\u2019s about the titular character leading a fairly boring existence until he is plucked out of obscurity and whisked away to a magical academy. There, he learns that he is a special person of important destiny, one who is destined to take on the greatest threat the Wizarding World has ever known.<\/p>\n

May The Odds Be Ever In Paramount\u2019s Favor<\/p>\n

\"hungerThe Hunger Games<\/p>\n

This basic formula plays out again and again in YA literature: The Hunger Games, for example, is about an unassuming young woman who receives special training and taps into abilities that help her take on a fascist dictator. Twilight is about an equally unassuming young woman who falls in love with a vampire, eventually discovering special mental abilities that she uses to save the day before becoming a creature of the night. Oh, and Percy Jackson<\/a> & the Olympians involves the titular everyman character finding out he\u2019s a literal demigod whose training will eventually help him overcome a Titan bent on ruling the world.<\/p>\n

Starfleet Academy<\/a> is doing its own version of this with its cadets: the academy functions a bit like Hogwarts, representing an entirely new world to these traumatized youngsters who grew up during the Burn. There, they all discover that the things that have always made them outcasts are actually special strengths that can help them serve the greater good. Caleb\u2019s lifetime of criminal activity makes him a scrappy and resourceful hero, SAM\u2019s relative lack of life experience gives her fresh insights, Jay-Den\u2019s rejection of Klingon values helps him become a better Starfleet officer, and so on.<\/p>\n

Kids Will Be Kids (Even Chosen Ones)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Does this mean you need to magically like Starfleet Academy\u2019s preferred brand of storytelling? Of course not: by definition, YA literature is aimed at young adults, and many longtime Star Trek fans are very thoroughly middle-aged. Therefore, it\u2019s no great shock that stories designed to appeal to teenagers are often off-putting to older viewers who are unlikely to pick up such books in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Starfleet Academy has been (slowly but surely) getting better at balancing out its YA-centric \u201ceveryone is a special chosen one\u201d storytelling with more serious and ambitious episodes aimed at more discerning viewers. In time, Paramount<\/a> may succeed and, like JK Rowling\u2019s famous books, appeal to fans of all ages. If not, though, this attempt to appeal to bite Harry Potter\u2019s style could backfire, casting \u201cAvada Kedavra\u201d on the franchise and killing Star Trek altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chris Snellgrove | Published 15 seconds ago The new Star Trek spinoff, Starfleet Academy, has had a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,57307,146599,80057,437,70783],"class_list":["post-286555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-star-trek-starfleet-academy","tag-starfleet-academy","tag-the-hunger-games","tag-tv","tag-twilight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}