I have watched only the first episode of the new Starfleet Academy show and as the comic suggests, I like the hook, the characters and the actors. What I don’t like is pretty much every word of dialog written for them to say. When the incredible Paul Giamatti launched into a wild speech comparing time to an origami chicken I nearly shut the show off. I finished the episode though and while I intend to continue watching for at least a few more episodes I have to say I am dissapointed by the desicion to use so much modern language and current idioms.
There are two main arguments I am seeing people make when they try to defend the show. The first is that Starfleet Academy is not for Mike Krahulik, the nearly 50 year old Star Trek Fan. It is written for a new and younger audience and I need to fucking accept that. This is just a polite way of saying you think kids are stupid and when I see someone use it I know they don’t have kids of their own.
As someone who does have kids, I can tell you that they are not stupid and they would also like to watch cool, interesting shows that don’t treat them like idiots. I guarantee that the script for this show sounds the way it does because some executive told them that the grubby teens whose attention they are so desperate for, will be watching Tik Tok on their phone and you need to say “bitch” every few minutes just so they will look up. This is one way of doing it but I am here to tell you that if you actually make something compelling they won’t just look up, they will put the phone down. Think about it this way, most of us who love Star Trek today got into it as kids. I was the same age my youngest son is when I started watching Next Gen. I loved it and Picard didn’t answer his communicator by saying “Waaaaassssssuuuuup” and Riker never called Deanna Troi “all that and a bag of chips”.
As a father of a 15 and a 21 year old, believe me when I say I have watched a lot of kids shows. The good ones are clever and funny. Shows like the Clone Wars, SpongeBob, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Adventure Time, The Amazing World of Gumball are all examples of “Children’s shows” we have watched here that are actually well written and don’t treat kids like fucking idiots. The idea that in order to reach a younger audience you have to write garbage isn’t just wrong, it's insulting.
The other argument I see is that people upset about the dialog are simply taking Star Trek too seriously. This argument is harder for me to counter. It’s like watching a person with a bowl full of diarrhea shoving sloppy spoonfuls of wet shit into their mouth and telling me I care too much about food. I guess I can’t argue with a person who doesn’t care what they consume. To me this isn’t an argument but a confession. So much energy has gone into the visual design of the 32nd century, I guess I just wish the same amount of thought had been put into the way people speak and behave. Fuck me right?
Listen, Star Trek first episodes are hard. Encounter at Farpoint is not great. I honestly didn’t get into Deep Space Nine until around the third season. These shows need time to find their voice and get into a groove. I love Star Trek and the idea of a school that is also a ship is legitimately awesome. I am going to keep watching and hoping that they are given the time and freedom needed to make good Trek.
-Gabe Out
