March. 23, 2026
Not even the elite thespian skills of Paul Giamatti as a diabolical alien villain could save Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the show has been cancelled.
The backlash against the show started before the show even launched, on January 15. For longtime fans of the Star Trek universe, the marketing materials instantly tipped the series’ hand that it was about to deliver the CW Network meets Nickelodeon version of Star Trek, with a few expletives tossed in to make the show seem gritty and grounded. Showing the cast of Starfleet Academy cadets laying together in a meadow with blissful smiles on their faces should have been enough to transmit what producer Alex Kurtzman was going for — politically correct, and aggressively didactic, even by Star Trek standards — but some still held out hope that the show wouldn’t be terrible.
The close attention paid to the series’ production quality and special effects did a great job of misdirection, hinting that Starfleet Academy might actually turn out to be decent. Alas, fans were disappointed, and they let Paramount+ know by tapping out and giving the series the ignominious Klingon discommendation cold shoulder.
In fact, an entire YouTube cottage industry sprouted up overnight of channels dedicating weekly hate streams directed at every episode of Starfleet Academy. From the anti-violence Klingon, to the no shoes wearing hippy captain played by Holly Hunter, to the overly quirky hologram mimicking humans, to the occasional Broadway show tune approach to Trek, fans were just not buying what Kurtzman was selling. It’s possible that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Discovery, both of which pushed the boundaries of Trek lore, made Kurtzman overconfident that viewers could take him turning the cultural sermonizing dial up to 11.
But one thing all Star Trek shows of the past adhered to was entertaining the viewer first, and embedding important lessons into the storyline second. Starfleet Academy seemed to flip that dynamic, and in the process, lost its way, and lost the extremely tolerant and normally loyal Star Trek fan base.
Unfortunately, for Paramount+, Kurtzman convinced the network to let him shoot two seasons at once, so the second season is already in the can and will continue the embarrassing franchise folly sometime in the near future. Nevertheless, this definitely isn’t the end of the Star Trek universe, but it may be time to call an end to the Kurtzman version of Star Trek. The reveal of the series’ cancellation was unearthed by Variety earlier today.
Cover via Paramount+
