Every cultural moment reveals the fault lines. In our era, those fault lines increasingly appear in the strange ritual known as review bombing: the coordinated effort to swamp films, television shows, books, or games with negative ratings—not because they are poorly made, but because they touch a cultural nerve.
Two recent examples illustrate the phenomenon: Starfleet Academy and Shrinking. Both are thoughtful, well-crafted shows. Both explore themes of accountability, grief, and forgiveness. And both have attracted a wave of online hostility from viewers who have labeled them “woke,” a term that has evolved from a call for cultural awareness.
This is not simply criticism. It is a small but revealing episode in a much larger culture war.
The Moral Spine of Star Trek
Star Trek has always been a moral laboratory. From the original series onward, it asked viewers to imagine a future in which humanity had learned—sometimes painfully—to become a little wiser.
The central arc in Starfleet Academy continues that tradition. A starship captain, Captain-Chancellor Nahla Ake, played by a delightful Holly Hunter, makes a harsh decision: She punishes a woman for a crime and separates her from her child. The punishment is lawful. It is also devastating.
Over time, the captain realizes that she made the wrong call. The cost of the decision—human, moral, and personal—gnaws at her. Ultimately, she resigns her command and later becomes the Academy chancellor, hoping to shape a generation of officers who will avoid repeating her mistake and to try to repair the damage she did to this family.
That story hits a raw nerve because it echoes a real-world debate: The use of family separation as a deterrence strategy in immigration policy. Fiction often works this way. It refracts real dilemmas through narrative distance so we can examine them without immediately retreating to tribal defenses.
But the reaction in some corners of the internet was swift: The most woke Star Trek ever! This is an odd accusation. If moral reflection about power, justice, and compassion qualifies as woke, then the franchise has been guilty for nearly 60 years.
The Brilliance of Shrinking
Meanwhile, at a different corner of television, Shrinking is doing something equally unusual: Telling a story about therapy that largely respects psychology.
The show stars Harrison Ford alongside Jason Segel and Jessica Williams. At its core is the practice of cognitive behavioral therapy, a method built on the idea that our interpretations shape our emotions and that healing can occur through deliberate change.
Yet the show’s real theme is not technique. It is forgiveness.
The central and most powerful storyline asks a nearly impossible question: What does forgiveness look like when the person you must forgive has taken from you something irreplaceable? How can you possibly forgive someone responsible for the death of a beloved family member?
This is not light material for a comedy-drama. But the show handles it with surprising depth. It suggests that forgiveness is not about excusing harm or forgetting pain. It is about refusing to let hatred become the organizing principle of your life. The lesson scales outward. One cannot watch these scenes without thinking of conflicts far beyond the living room—places where the cycle of vengeance has run for generations.
And yet, once again, the show has been dismissed in some online spaces as woke.
The Psychology of Review Bombing
Why do stories about reflection and reconciliation provoke such anger?
From a psychological perspective, review bombing is powered by a form of identity defense. When narratives challenge deeply held beliefs, people may experience a form of cognitive threat. Rather than engaging the argument, it becomes easier to discredit the source.
Forgiveness Essential Reads
Sadly, digital platforms amplify this dynamic instead of helping people bridge the gap. Online rating systems were designed to aggregate opinions about quality. But when political identity enters the equation, those systems transform into signaling mechanisms. A one-star review becomes less about the show and more about declaring allegiance to a cultural tribe.
The Paradox of Woke
The term woke originally meant something quite simple: Being awake to injustice. However, in recent years, it has undergone a remarkable semantic inversion. For some critics, woke has become shorthand for any narrative that asks viewers to empathize with someone outside their tribe.
This is why stories about immigration policy, systemic injustice, or forgiveness trigger such strong reactions. They are perceived not as entertainment but as ideological intrusion. They become “the enemy.”
Yet the deeper paradox is that both Starfleet Academy and Shrinking are fundamentally conservative in the oldest philosophical sense. They argue that moral growth is possible. They suggest that individuals can recognize mistakes, accept responsibility, and attempt to repair the damage.
That is hardly a radical proposition. It is the foundation of ethical civilization.
Why Stories Like These Matter
Narratives have always been one of humanity’s primary tools for moral reasoning. Long before psychology journals and neuroscience labs, we learned about justice, compassion, and redemption through stories shared around the tribe’s fire.
Science fiction has often served this role by projecting present dilemmas into future settings. Psychotherapy dramas do it by dramatizing the internal battles we fight every day.
When audiences attack these stories not because they are poorly told but because they make us uncomfortable, something subtle is lost. We lose one of the few safe spaces where difficult questions can be explored without immediate real-world consequences.
The Hard Work of Healing
The real message that both shows share is disarmingly simple: Healing takes time. And honestly, healing is needed.
In Starfleet Academy, a leader realizes she has caused harm and spends years trying to make amends. In Shrinking, characters wrestle with grief and gradually discover that forgiveness is not weakness but strength. Neither story offers a miracle cure. Both acknowledge that some wounds never fully disappear. But they also insist that trying matters.
The Culture War’s Blind Spot
The culture war thrives on outrage. Outrage attracts clicks, mobilizes tribes, and simplifies complex realities into digestible slogans.
Stories about accountability and forgiveness do the opposite. They complicate things. They ask us to consider that our own side might sometimes be wrong—or that our enemies might still be human. For those committed to permanent outrage, that is intolerable.
A Modest Proposal
There is plenty wrong in the world today. Conflicts rage. Political systems fracture. Entire regions struggle with cycles of retaliation that seem impossible to break. Against that backdrop, television shows may seem trivial.
But stories shape culture in subtle ways. They remind us what kinds of futures we believe are possible. The moral here is not particularly dramatic.
Just this: We can keep trying, social media platforms should do the right thing, begin moderating the profit-and-engagement metric, and offer to promote stories like this one. Not to favor one side or the other, but to urge that the fracture be healed.
Usually, healing happens slowly. Sometimes it does not happen at all. But attacking stories that encourage reflection, accountability, and forgiveness is unlikely to make the world better. If anything, it pushes us further from the very qualities that might help us repair it.
Besides, these are great shows. Give them a chance.