I have tried to love NuTrek (NT), starting with Discovery (Disco) in 2017. I lasted three seasons (didn’t quite finish season 3) and tuned in for a handful of later episodes. I watched more of Strange New Worlds (SNW), though the degradation of Spock, played by the perfectly cast Ethan Peck, turned me off. Nothing against Nurse Chapel, but Spock's lovelorn pining over a character he largely ignored in ST:TOS is not quite welcome. Neither is Nu-Kirk, played by the vampire guy from the Diaries show on CW.

SNW doesn’t understand Spock, retconning him as an autistic, socially non-functional Vulcan for laughs, rather than a man who intentionally suppresses and denies his emotions to balance his Vulcan and human natures, which sometimes leads to humor.

Lower Decks is harmless fanfiction. Prodigy, I liked. I refuse to watch Section 31 but am jealous of Michelle Yeoh’s alleged $15 million paycheck.

Because of the mess that is NuTrek, I have been rewatching Star Trek. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can make a financial commitment to Paramount, which yanked Trek off Netflix amidst their warfare over Warner Brothers.

I watched until Starfleet Academy episode 7 or 8 (my Paramount free trial expired).

I truly feel NT: SA is the final middle finger to Trek fans. Paramount is under new management, the infamous Ellison billionaires, who might be friends of the Orange Man. The Ellisons signaled a new anti-woke mandate, which might spell bad news for Alex Kurtzman, who has overseen Trek for the past decade. Kurtzman’s contract expires in 2026; all signs point to an abrupt end. This might explain Kurtzman’s rush to get out NT: SA season 2, which has already completed filming.

My thoughts about NT: SA are many. The color palette, that orange-y hue common in fantasy and SF. The lens flares are gone, but the unexplainable technology distracts. The teleporter is now a door, and it can change your clothes. Okay. It’s the 32nd century. Then why are there people in rudimentary wheelchairs, and why is an alien telepathic race using 21st-century sign language?

Never mind the fart jokes, the aggressively annoying holographic person, twenty-first-century Zoomer lingo, girlboss, and the sartorially feminized Klingon raised in a polycule with two dads, one of whom abandoned him. As I pointed out in the Harry Potter article, Zoomers are indifferent to everything. Starfleet Academy, like The Acolyte, is made for Zoomers but fails to understand them. Starfleet Academy episode one declared, "And the children shall lead.” But there lies the problem. Zoomers are not leading. They’re lost. They need guidance and optimism, not exploitation of their nihilism and apathy. Trek could’ve shown them the world as it could be, except Starfleet Academy gives them nothing except fart jokes, glitter barfs, polycules, and prank wars.

And what else…

NT: SA has debased the Dax symbiont, whose lifespan was 500 years and who was already 300 years old by the time Jadzia inherited it in ST: DS9, which took place 800 years prior to NT: SA. Translation: The Dax symbiont shouldn’t be in Starfleet Academy. And no, it’s not a new symbiont named Dax; it is the Dax of Curzon, Jadzia, and Ezri. And no, it’s not okay for them to extend the life of the symbiont in-universe. Leave canon alone.

This disregard of the Dax symbiont shows either indifference to canon or arrogance of the showrunners. If the former, well, no surprise. If the latter, sigh. See also the reappearance of the Cheronians, a long-lived group who killed themselves off in a civil war driven by racial animus. The defense of their appearance? Well, they were spacefaring; surely some of them were off-planet when their people self-annihilated.

Sure, but that’s not the point.

They were shown to self-destruct to emphasize the message of Trek: get over your racial differences or die.

Why bring them back unless it’s meant to mock the fans? Look, Trek wasn’t woke, you say? Here are the black-and-white folks. Doesn’t get more on the nose than this.

But at least Starfleet Academy left Benjamin Sisko alone. Sort of. Phew!

Not much happens in NT: SA. Just kids these days doing things like playing videogames, i.e., flying spaceships, pulling pranks, and engaging in coitus.

No philosophical discussion about anything. No attempt to explore strange new worlds and civilizations. All the aliens feel human. It used to be Klingons; now it’s the black Klingons, who wear artificial braids and have dreadlocks (Klingons, including Worf, have straight to loosely curled hair).

I’m not saying a Klingon polygamous marriage doesn’t make sense—it does when you think about it. But NuTrek isn’t concerned about exploring what that means in a Klingon context or why that works for a hypermasculine warrior culture. Rather, it cares about normalizing a specific modern morality—Jay-Den’s family is polyandrous; get over it, sort of deal.

Keep in mind that the aliens in Trek exist to explore human concepts, ideals, beliefs, and cultural practices, however controversial. The alienness (to traditional human values) is precisely what makes the philosophical ideas worth exploring. Trek, a classic liberal franchise, believes in debate, discussion, and interrogation of ideas.

If something is controversial, then let’s talk about it and understand why.

I sometimes don’t know if it’s incompetence or arrogance that drives the modern showrunners. It might be both. I do believe that Disco and SNW showrunners wanted to make good shows. Well, Disco anyway. Its incipience coincided with Trump, and it descended into wokism as resistance, which often gets in the way of good storytelling. It couldn’t recover, even after it jumped into the 32nd century to avoid stepping on canon’s toes. We still ended up with Stacey Abrams's cameo and self-congratulatory they/them representations. SNW came with the promise of respecting the fans but always felt cynical, like it resented what respecting the fans meant, and went about half-invested before giving up altogether in favor of what it really wanted to be—musical theater.

The musical theater kids are in charge!

But what can you say about Starfleet Academy? If Section 31 was all-out mockery, then NT:SA is the final FU to Trek, a wasted swarm of apathy and passive aggressiveness whose only intent is to pwn the fans.

We’re shitting on Trek because we can.

A middle finger goodbye to NuTrek, long overdue.

The Word of Y’Neshu: Heart of the Ijeya.

Jordan is an educator, a teacher with a master’s in English; he’s a preacher and a martial artist.

Hello Ebonscapers!

Welcome to a brand-new venture from Ebonscape Productions.

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I am your host, Mel, author of the Civilization fantasy novel, currently available where books are sold. If you’re a fan of other world fantasies, adventure, mysticism and imaginative worldbuilding, then The Civilization, by me, K.M. Mckenzie will be everything you will love.

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