If Star Wars is dead to me, Star Trek is dead and forgotten. I was a fan of the original series when I could watch it on independent channels during its syndication, which in hindsight was far more effective at popularizing it than its broadcast run. I saw The Motion Picture in the theater, but only on the second attempt – the first showing I went to was sold out, so I watched The Black Hole instead. Talk about a contrast!
The Next Generation was okay, and often frustrating, and by the time Deep Space Nine came along, I had warmly embraced Babylon 5 instead.
All of which is to say I am not a superfan by any means, but well within the target audience of any new Star Trek production. It also means that – contra woke “journalists” – I’m neither a dudebro, nor a tourist, but go way back and should be an easy sell for a good show. I mean, I did see the “reboot” movies though they wasn’t to my taste.
By the way, I find the notion that older Star Trek fans could be dudebros fascinating, because it is so colossally ignorant. If you were a Star Trek fan in the 1980s, the “live long and prosper” hand sign was a secret signal, and giving it in the wrong company got you shoved into a locker. It wasn’t like football players were discussing episodes while knocking out reps at the gym.
When The Thing Is No Longer The Thing
Future generations will perhaps wonder how it was that people who formerly shared favorite moments from old shows and challenged each other to trivia contests ultimately become philosophers studying ontological questions.
Star Wars The Acolyte brought this question to the forefront, because while it had lightsabers and Jedi costumes, it was in no way thematically related to the film franchise that started in 1977. The same is even more true of Star Trek, which while I was busy doing more important things like clipping my toenails or sorting my sock drawer, decided to completely destroy the setting right down to the concept of warp speed. Talk about a “hard reboot!”
All of which is to say: the show currently streaming on Paramount is in no way recognizable as Star Trek. It is Glee in space.
Jocks vs Theater Kids
This realization didn’t occur to me until episode 3, which I am watching vicariously thanks to Disparu, a man with an apparently limitless pain threshold regarding bad entertainment. The first two episodes were completely incoherent, and I may have things to say another time about how storytelling itself is dead, but watching the show play out, it was painfully obvious that there was exactly the same dynamic at play. The Academy kids are creative, full of feminine energy, and also welcoming to homosexuals. The War College is masculine, believes in order, hierarchy, and wearing shoes when on duty.
Seriously, what the actual hell is up with the barefoot captain?
Anyhow, that’s the framework the writers are using. Some are noting Harry Potter similarities, and while I am no authority (my wife and kids read the books, loved the movies, I tried to ignore them), there is quite a bit of magic being used to push the plot along. However, Hogwarts’s was still a very hierarchical institution, steeped in tradition. Unlike Starfleet Academy, the faculty knew how to dress appropriately and sit up straight.
Just as with Glee, Starfeet Academy features a lean, sardonic lesbian teacher, in this case played by Tig Notaro in place of Glee’s Jane Lynch. Her uniform even looks like a track suit.
The parallels in terms of characters are uncanny, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. All that’s missing are the cheerleader uniforms for the girlbosses.
Now some will ask: “You actually watched Glee? Are you gay or something?”
No, I am not. However, I have a wife and three daughters who love musicals, and I’m as into them as any straight man can be. The first season was actually quite funny, a sendup of public school dysfunction. When it became all about the gays, we turned it off. And then of course a large percentage of the cast came to a bad end. I wonder if that will be the case here. Probably not, as I doubt Starfleet Academy will get a fraction of Glee’s audience.
The Path Untaken
The concept of showing young, independent minds molded into future leaders is a timeless one. It varies with each generation, but the fundamentals are the same. As John Houseman memorably put it in 1973’s The Paper Chase: “You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush; you leave thinking like a lawyer.”
It resonates because each generation experiences it anew. All that changes is the setting. The Paper Chase, while excellent, feels very dated. It uses wall phones and typewriters, and of course Harvard Law School is now a woke joke. But the story it tells is timeless.
Starfleet Academy could have shown a modern audience – and I use that term unironically – what that passage from adolescence to adulthood can look like. I have been told that the best book of my Man of Destiny series is the second because one of the plot lines is the decision of a young, talented pilot to join the military with war looming. His adjustment from being an Outer Rim scout to a junior officer is not an easy one, and it resonated with many of my Air Force colleagues, who felt I captured it perfectly.
This should not be a surprise, because I was at one time an Army officer candidate, so I was writing what I know. I was one of those who washed out, and the experience was an important one. Contemporary Hollywood writers have none of those experiences to draw on. They have never attended a school where orientation begins with “look to your left; look to your right. One of you will be gone by spring.” Colleges no longer filter people; they coddle them, so even though they may have fancy degrees, so do 95% of the people who show up. They write what they know.
A series about Starfleet Academy that emphasizes its elite nature should have washed out the first student by now. Oh, you swallowed your badge? Goodbye.
That’s why the parallel to Glee is so clear. Glee is set in a public high school, where expulsion is next to impossible. If you’re a hopeless dolt, the school must accommodate you. The faculty are likewise free to be as unprofessional as they want, because they can’t be fired. The hierarchy is unimportant.
But in the old Star Trek, there was hierarchy and discipline, an understanding that small things become big things. Slovenly dress means poor attention to detail, and in the hostile environment of space, there is no room for error. In Starfleet Academy, screwups and incompetence are just lovable quirks, and hierarchy is bad.
While the They Live spirit shades aren’t really needed here, I must note that the show leans heavily into Maoist dogma about old things being bad, tradition being evil, and children should instruct their elders. There is very much a Cultural Revolution theme going on, which – given when the original series was airing – was the complete antithesis of the show. Gene Roddenberry would be frankly horrified that his brand was used for Communist agitprop. Roddenberry was a Cold War liberal, and rightly despised Communism, and the Cultural Revolution was one of its most bloody and heinous episodes. More proof, if you need it, that Starfleet Academy is not Star Trek.
***
English (US) · 