Say what you want about Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, but it’s a series that’s absolutely determined to strike out on its own path. With its decidedly younger cast, school-based setting, and, if the trailer is anything to go by, fairly frequent relationship drama, it’s definitely not like any other Star Trek series we’ve seen recently. (And that’s before you get to the pair of Hollywood heavy hitters chewing up the scenery at its center.) But while its central premise — detailing how unseasoned cadets are forged into the Starfleet captains and leaders of tomorrow — is certainly compelling, the specifics of its setting are… questionable at best and an outright red flag at worst.
The series takes place in the 32nd century, after the events of Star Trek: Discovery’s final season. This is a controversial decision in and of itself, as Discovery isn’t exactly beloved among a fairly wide swath of the Trek fandom, and the story of the event known as The Burn, which decimated warp travel, fractured the Federation, and essentially ended Starfleet Academy as we know it wasn’t as compelling as the show wanted it to be. (Or nearly as well explained.) Starfleet Academy will follow the first class of cadets to come through the institution in over a century, a concept that may sound interesting on paper but that also somehow feels almost completely disconnected from nearly every Trek story that has come before.
Don’t get me wrong, one of the best things about the rebirth of Trek on streaming is that it’s encouraged the franchise to tell very different sorts of stories. And there’s certainly something to be said for the idea of a series that’s focused on younger characters and lower-stakes stories about personal relationships that don’t necessarily involve a potential galaxy-ending threat. Even the promise of more romance is an exciting one. However, it’s difficult to focus on those stakes when the show must also flesh out a revamped world that still feels largely unfamiliar.
Out of necessity, this Starfleet Academy is going to largely be about creating something new: A fresh future, a reconstituted Federation, and a reimagined Academy that apparently sends its students on real-time ship-based missions even as it’s attempting to teach them theory and ethics. It’s unlikely to connect to many (most?) of the experiences that previous cadets shared, and outside of a few ancillary figures (Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno, Oded Fehr’s Admiral Vance), it’s about an entirely new crop of characters, several of whom hail from species we haven’t met before. There’s not a whole lot for viewers to really hang their excitement on, which is likely why it can feel as though there’s relatively little of it within the larger fandom.