Starfleet Academy

Rating: ★★½

Season 1

So Starfleet Academy is in the post-Burn timeline? Unfortunate. I think almost all of the work done to establish this setting is poor. The central idea is poorly executed and the post-Burn context is an excuse to run New Frontier original-series-style adventures that reuse old plot beats & races.

I don't understand why it takes so long to Star Trek in the first episode. I don't understand why we have to spend so much time setting up this kid. I would die for an in media res, but this is def to set his mom up as a characteristic JJ mystery box, isn't it? There's gonna be some big mom mystery.

So I'm at basically the half way point of the movie long episode one and we've established maybe 4 characters in a set of scenes that has included like two time jumps and a huge amount of totally unnecessary shit. Could have started the show when she walks on to the space ship for day one...

The thing about front-loading all of this is: I don't care about these people yet so I'm bored. Her speech is pointless because it is undercut by all the stuff earlier and no there's no mystery or engagement in these first two characters, who are presumably pivotal.

All this backstory story, which could have been established later when we care about the characters and are engaged with them, is totally unnecessary at this point and doesn't inform any of the characterization from the moment they step on the ship, when they start acting like different characters.

Like this kid had, like a week ago, bit the ear off a random security guard. It's heavily implied in story, costume, and framing, that he's basically gone feral. Around 20m of screen time later he's giving little speeches about bullying? Wild to have that much screen time and fail to establish him.

The thing about JJ's and Discovery's shitty mystery box framework is that it exerts this gravity on the story. If everything is bent around it you end up with these spatterings of interesting characters that you don't have time to explore deeply or keep consistent. They all bend to the mystery...

Ex: Is this security guard interesting? You can only explore so deeply, then he must be transformed to serve the mystery because that's the only thing that matters so now nothing that's been established matters he's a klingon sleeper agent and is he dealing with bone trauma, can't go deep only wide

And they can't even use fan service right. Like... why set a scene on Bajor and do... nothing with it? I don't think there are any Bajorens. There's none of their very characteristic architecture? What's the point? What are we doing here?

And it already suffers from Discovery's inability to integrate action. Already seeing that we get action scenes and we get talking scenes and rarely do the action scenes do meaningful things for the plot or characters. Well let's see what else they've got in this thing...

I just can't get over the opening that's clearly intended to paint this kid as a sort of escape artist yet the main action is him entirely fucking up and failing an escape. Can't just do speeches! What they do on screen matters friends!

Holly Hunter, immortal space hippie is such a weird pitch. It never stops being noticeably out of place. She's doing well w/the material she's given, but given a moment to take the role seriously, apparently the for the first time here, there's a glimpse of like, a more interesting version of this.

It's amazing how badly new Trek injures itself by not taking itself seriously. It's ironic the comedy cartoon is the best new Trek because it takes the premise and universe seriously even if it's doing jokes. The rest undercuts it's foundations and cheepens itself. When it doesn't it does better.

Episode 1

So glad everyone in the Federation has picked up the affectation of using glasses.

I'm sorry... It's 44 minutes into this season of TV and they're already blowing up the ship? The impatience of the new Trek writers with even any of their own premises is insane to me.

Will the writer of the dialog in this show start to take their job or characters seriously any time soon?

An hour and 20 minutes that basically is null. There's nothing of narrative value here. A set of inconsistent character arcs. And why must the screen be constantly filled with tiny robots? A 20 or 40 minute episode could have accomplished more, better. Truly cursed by excessive budget.

Episode 2

Is episode 2 opening with a speech adapted from Jordan Peterson?!?

Someone tell Kurtzman that he can just hold a shot on a person. Some of these unsteady close ups make me feel a little carsick.

About half way through episode 2. These should be tighter, shorter. Also sort of remarkable how much better it would have been to just start the show basically here. That first episode is a waste of time in almost every respect. At least this episode feels like it is interested in the premise.

Would Starfleet actually walk its' candidates in the Academy out into the rain and yell at them in formation? Do Starfleet officers even march? Like, Yelling At Marines is generally about breaking down their individuality and subsuming them to a commander but is that how Starfleet officers work?

Starfleet is a military, no doubt about this (making it even weirder that there's now some sort of rival "war college") but most of the things the traditional-to-film type of military training does isn't very reflective of the goals of an org like Starfleet?