Not My Trek

Disclaimer: I haven’t watched a single full episode of the new Star Trek series. I know what I know about it from X, Youtube, IG and friends that saw it and talked about it.

What little I did see about it in clips on the internet and what I’ve heard about it is enough to make an educated decision though: I am not going to watch it. Because I wouldn’t enjoy it. To establish a frame of reference for my willingness to sit through new iterations of Star Trek:

I’ve watched TOS probably easily 10 times, if not more. This is our base line. I watched TNG at least as many times. Picard remains one one my favourite captains, the whole crew was awesome. Yes, even Wesley Crusher 😉

I watched DS9 countless times. Probably more often then TNG. While I am a Picard boy, Sisko is the MVP. For different reasons, both of them are the best. I struggle to decide between Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks; both bring so much to the role and have such an enormous, massive development arc and impact on the franchise.

VOY, often treated with ridicule and hate among some Trekkies, was a great little jewel if you were willing to sit through stretches of 2-3 odd, bad episodes inbetween. Some episodes of VOY are just pure gold. Deep, full of action, even the occasional comedy episode thrown in. Wonderful Trek television.

Enterprise…was difficult to fall in love with. And it took me 2 or 3 rewatches before I fully learned to appreciate it for what it was. T’pol was not only super hot (come on, let’s face it), she was a lot deeper and profound, than it first looked. But you had to learn to understand that first. Phlox wasn’t only the comic relief character, he was a deeply complex character that carried the moral backbone of the series. Trip….oh Trip….sweet summer child Trip. The Tucker character alone made the series worth watching; his moral compass, his determination, his struggles with things and the perfect example of „What did you expect? Humans are just learning to function out here among all of us!“. Trip was so deeply human, so deeply the best of us and the worst of us at the same time. Even Enterprise, once I’ve learned to appreciate it and see deeper, I rewatched about 8 or 9 times by now.

Discovery was hard. Really hard. The whole concept, fungal networks through spacetime, which require a massively enlarged and imprisoned tardigrade to navigate but once you managed, you could travel everywhere basically instantly…that was a hard pill to swallow. Discovery also was riddled with weird plots and inconsistencies. And Discovery was the first Trek series in which the main goal seems to have been pushing a woke agenda.

I know, I know, Trek has always been progressive. Sure. But it was never so on the nose. It was never thrust upon us with such intension and vigour. We had Dax and the Trill, which could be seen as sort of a „Hey look, there’s trans in Trek!“, long before trans became an actual thing. There was the „interracial“ kiss between Kirk and Uhura. There were gay/lesbian figures. There were relationships between members of completely different races and even procreation between races.

But with Discovery, for the very first time, it felt like the goal was to push it. Like an agenda. At the expense of an actually understandable, relatable story one could follow. I did not manage to finish Discovery. I managed the first 3 seasons, fought myself to somehow watch half of season 4 and then stopped. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

New Worlds was interesting. Somewhere inbetween „Oh god, finally something that deserves the name Trek again.“ and „Ok, we got it with your fucking woke agenda, stop it!“. Not to mention the ridiculous musical episode. I may learn to appreciate New Worlds, who knows. People keep telling me, it has its moments and is quite good. Yet, I feel exactly no pull to watch it again. To be honest, I don’t even think I managed to watch the whole of season 2.

As you can see, I am accustomed to suffering through all things Trek. And I am quite willing to give a lot of things a chance, when it comes to Trek. That should tell you a thing or two about how really rotten Starfleet Academy probably is, if I as a huge fan of the franchise simply refuse to watch it. For a myriad of reasons.

We have a morbidly obese, dumb hologram. We got a Klingon who wears skirts. We got Orion males thin as a straw and weak as a blade of grass, while canonically Orion males were all big, massive, chunky brutes. Apparently the 32nd century can only work if there are mostly female officers. Then again, a lot of them also need to be trans or homosexual or non-binary or at least have to puke red and purple glitter. And let’s not forget the FEMALE Cheron with black and white hair. First of all, Cherons do no longer canonically exist, Bele and Lokai were the last of their kind and they likely destroyed each other and them both having been men somewhat limits the possibility of procreation. Secondly, Cherons do not have hair in the color of their skin, they have brown hair.

Canon, continuity, an instant feeling of „I am home. This is my Trek.“ is important for Star Trek fans. And Starfleet Academy provides none of those. On the contrary: every clip I’ve seen screams „This show has been written and produced by people who have never seen an episode of Star Trek before and their actual goal is to shit on the franchise wherever possible.“.

Your mileage may vary, to each their own. If you watch and enjoy Starfleet Academy, fine. To me, this is not Trek. NuTrek is not my Trek.