January of 2026, Star Trek fans were introduced to Starfleet Academy. A Beverly Hills 90210 reimagining of Star Trek in the style of Alex Kurtzman's "32 Flavors" approach. Two seasons had been greenlit before the premiere. The show was so unsuccessful that by March, it was announced that the show would be cancelled after season two.
How could this have happened you may be asking yourself? It scored an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and Robert Picardo himself guaranteed that the show was great! The truth is that the show as well as this brand of Trek was doomed to fail. Kurtzman's Section 31 had released the year prior and was considered the worst Star Trek movie in the history of Trek. The premiere of Starfleet Academy was overshadowed by negative comments and a livestream of a toy Spock getting more views than the premiere itself. To make matters worse, each episode cost an estimated $10 million each and even with all that money backing it, it never cracked Nielsen's top 10 streaming originals. Is this just another casualty of the streaming wars, or the inevitable result of mismanaging the Star Trek franchise for a decade?
Specifically, there are a myriad of reasons why Kurtzman Trek failed, but to continue to relist those same reasons over and over again would be exhaustive. Instead, after years of following this and after much thought, I have boiled down all of the reasons into three distinctive failures:
- A distortion of Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision
- Prioritizing that distorted message over the quality of the story
- A rejection of the built-in fanbase in favor of a fanbase that ultimately did not exist
The end result was a devalued, divisive and disconnected franchise that celebrated its 60th anniversary with cancellations and the potential ouster of Alex Kurtzman's Secret Hideout.
Distortion of Roddenberry’s Vision
It all starts with Alex Kurtzman's interpretation of Roddenberry's vision. When he accepted the Saturn Award recently, he said:
“Gene Roddenberry had this lightning bolt of an idea and I think he understood something fundamental about the nature of science fiction and genre storytelling… which is that science fiction is not really about the future, it’s about now. It’s the prism, the looking glass, the magnifying glass through which we examine ourselves, the state of humanity, who we are, what we’re capable of and where we’re going. And it was such a powerful idea that this lasted for 60 years, because each iteration of Star Trek has been interpreted and reinterpreted by people who are so inspired by the message of Star Trek.”
So, he basically interprets Trek, as well as science fiction as a whole, to be a large soap box to establish his current political views. How close is that to Roddenberry's vision? How do we know what Roddenberry's vision for Star Trek was? Because he wrote it down in two Star Trek writing guides. Roddenberry’s actual vision, straight from the guides he personally wrote (TOS 1967 and TNG 1987), is crystal-clear and directly contradicts the “soapbox about now” reinterpretation that Kurtzman described in his Saturn Award speech.
1. Realism and Believability Above Everything Else
This is the single most repeated element in the 1967 TOS guide
“We’ve learned during a full season of making visual science fiction that believability of characters, their actions and reactions, is our greatest need and is the most important angle factor.”
The test he gives every writer:
“Translate it into a real life situation. Or… try it in your mind as a scene in GUNSMOKE, NAKED CITY… Would you believe the people and the scene if it happened there?”
No soap-opera drama on the bridge. Characters must act like competent professionals in a real naval vessel, even when the setting is fantastical. It was so important that he reiterated the idea in his 1987 TNG writers guide, 20 years later.
Roddenberry on Believability
2. Stories About People, Not Gadgets or Preaching
Rule II of the seven ironclad format rules (TOS Guide):
“Tell your story about people, not about science and gadgetry.”
Rule IV is the direct slap at soapbox writing, choosing instead to establish the story first and foremost before interweaving your message into it:
“Then, with that firm foundation established, interweave in it any statement to be made about man, society and so on. Yes, we want you to have something to say, but say it entertainingly as you do on any other show. We don’t need essays, however brilliant.”
You got that, right? He said to "say it entertainingly", in other words, no lectures and no soap boxes. Your lessons must be subtle and interweaved into the story. Not the other way around.
Roddenberry's Seven Rules
He also bans long philosophical exchanges in the script format section:
“We maintain a fast pace… avoid long philosophical exchanges or tedious explanations of equipment.”
3. Optimistic Exploration + “Seek Out New Worlds” as the Actual Mission
The TNG Guide states the ship’s mission in Roddenberry’s own words:
"To expand the body of human knowledge. To provide assistance as required to Earth/Federation colonies, commerce and travelers. To provide for Earth/Federation security. To seek out new life, new civilizations. To provide further understanding of the universe and humanity's place in it. "Who are we? Where have we come from? What are we about? And where are we going?"
4. Entertainment First, Always
Rule I (TOS): “Build your episode on an action-adventure framework. We must reach out, hold and entertain a mass audience of some 20,000,000 people or we simply don’t stay on the air.”
Rule III: Science fiction needs “the same ingredients as any story - including a jeopardy of some type to someone we learn to care about, climactic build, sound motivation…”
That’s the vision and it basically boils down to "tell a good story that will hook millions of viewers". Kurtzman didn’t just reinterpret that vision. He replaced it with something that would have gotten a script rejected by Roddenberry himself. They reinvented Star Trek by getting rid of everything that was unique and intelligent about the show and replaced it with mediocrity and preaching.
Roddenberry had learned from his past experience working on The Lieutenant that storytelling should take precedent over any message you want to send if you want your show to last. There is nothing wrong with having a message, but the key is subtlety. Today, there is no subtlety in Trek because the people in charge of Trek now are simply using the franchise as a platform.
The vision is further distorted by Kurtzman's interpretation of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Roddenberry coined IDIC as a core Vulcan philosophy and he described its meaning in his own words:
“The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity and the ways our differences combine to create meaning and beauty.”
In Roddenberry's (as well as Rick Berman's) Trek, Diversity is celebrated quietly through action and integration, instead of preached or made the central jeopardy. Too many people under Kurtzman's Trek take the phrase in a very literal sense, taking it all the way it to a very illogical conclusion. Roddenberry used IDIC to say, “Look how beautiful the future is when we value all differences and combine them in infinite ways. (And buy these pins!)” Kurtzman’s version says, “Look at all these differences! Let’s make them the story, the conflict, AND the lecture so we can fix today’s problems.” That’s the distortion.
That distortion is then taught to the viewers. The small amount who became fans of the shows (or those who are involved in the shows) then blindly attempt to defend them against "haters" by using the "Star Trek was always woke" argument, since many of them can't tell the difference between progressivism and tired woke tropes.
How NuTrek fans feel about Roddenberry
One would think fans would want to study Roddenberry's true vision to see just how far from that vision Starfleet Academy had swung. I conducted an experiment by posting pages of Roddenberry's Trek guides onto Starfleet Academy Group pages on Facebook. The result was eye-opening:
Some said that Roddenberry was a crappy writer overall:
Some said that Starfleet Academy indeed followed every rule:
Some said that Roddenberry wasn't a deity and that we shouldn't treat the writing guides as bibles:
Or took the idea of realism so literal that they forgot that the realism Roddenberry was talking about was still filtered through a science fiction setting:
Very few in this page agreed that the problem with Starfleet Academy (as well is Kurtzman Trek in general) was that Kurtzman strayed too far away from Roddenberry's vision. That's a problem. We have a whole new generation of Star Trek fans who don't like the original source material or its author but want to fully engage in the fandom. The only aspect they seem to like about it was that they could "fix it" and then use it to advance their own messages and morals. Regardless of that, it seems like only a minority of viewers are actually enjoying the lecture over the story.
Roddenberry was the only one who understood what Trek was supposed to be in its true form. He wrote the original pilots and the writer's guide, as well as a number of episodes. Even after it was cancelled, he championed it over the decades until the studios woke up and realized that reviving the show in some way had potential. He grew over those years and successfully revived Trek in movie form AND in television form.
He was heavily involved in the first two seasons of TNG which were actually vastly popular. The idea that nobody liked the first two seasons is revisionist history. If that were the case, the show would have been cancelled after one season. The truth was that it was already good, and when Rick Berman took over, he continued championing Roddenberry's vision and over time the shows got even better. Did Berman stray from that vision? A little, sure... but certainly not to the extent that Kurtzman has.
Emphasis on the Message Rather Than Story
The distortion of Roddenberry's vision doesn’t just stay on the screen; it gets taught to the viewers. The small handful of fans who actually stuck with these shows (and the people working on them) absorbed the new rulebook: Trek is now a soapbox first and story is now an afterthought. When the message becomes the main theme, you end up with useless characters who use trauma as a superpower: You end up with Mary-Sues and Gary-Sues.
The pattern spans the Kurtzman era: Discovery turned Michael Burnham into a messianic figure. They had a Kelpian whose emotions destroyed the Federation in an event called "The Burn" (can we get a recent Trek writer to please apologize for the burn?). Picard spent whole seasons reliving past traumas that should have been long behind him. I don't know what Section 31 was trying to do with their characters. Starfleet Academy leaned hard into all that coming-of-age crap. None of which follow the rules in Roddenberry's writer guides. He banned “long philosophical exchanges” and “essays, however brilliant”, preferring fast-paced action-adventure without gruesome violence. He wanted stories about believable people in jeopardy.
The ugly long-term effect of this all is that: Weak writing teaches weak thinking. Classic Trek modeled proper debate with Spock and McCoy going at it with logic and humanism. NuTrek gives us emotional outbursts, moral absolutes, and contrived resolutions. So, the fans who defend these shows online mirror exactly what they see on TV: rude pile-ons, hypocritical accusations of bigotry, and zero interest in honest argument. They thrive on the divisiveness because that’s what the show itself celebrates, despite its constant squawk of inclusivity. They preach it until they come up against an idea they disagree with and instead of trying to have a discussion about it, they manufacture "gotcha"/"mic drop" comments that don't really prove anything. They don’t have strong argument skills because the show never showed them how to have one. Instead of learning IDIC as a form of harmonious strength, they learned it as a shield to swing at anyone who dares criticize their writing or distorted message.
It's gotten so convoluted that even people who worked in the franchise can't agree what Star Trek was always about, which creates more confusion:
Mike Okuda: "Star Trek has always been political"
William Shatner: "They never would have allowed political issue storylines to air"
When you prioritize the distorted message over story, you don’t just lose viewers who came for intelligent, optimistic exploration. You train a tiny, immature, tribal audience that mistakes sarcasm in lectures for depth and any pushback of the show for hate. And when that audience isn’t big enough to move the Nielsen needle - no matter how much you spend - well, that leads straight to the third failure.
Rejection of the Built-In Fanbase in Favor of a Fanbase That Ultimately Did Not Exist
From day one, Kurtzman Trek bet big on alienation. They changed the aesthetics (lens flares, darker-grittier tones, Klingorcs). They swapped thoughtful dialogue for modern quippy lines that sounded like they belonged on the CW. Worst of all, some creatives and actors publicly framed any criticism as bigotry or gatekeeping, with Robert Picardo being the latest to attack fans over the failing franchise. Legacy fans who wanted competent storytelling, optimistic exploration, and respect for canon got labeled “toxic”, "trolls" or told they were standing in the way of progress.
Robert Picardo attacking fans and specifically calling one of them out.
This playbook didn’t start with Trek. It seems to originate with the 2016 Ghostbusters remake, where director Paul Feig and the cast dismissed legitimate complaints about tone and writing as a misogynistic backlash against an all-female team. It was the beginning of the idea of blaming the fans for a studio's failure: Create a reboot meant to disrespect the lore and fans of the franchise and then if that reboot flops, blame the old fans for not evolving. Kurtzman Trek copied that template almost beat for beat. Early Discovery and Picard-era responses treated lore concerns or tonal or aesthetic gripes as nostalgia poisoning. Starfleet Academy also leaned on the same “toxic fans” defense once its cancellation was announced. The strategy was to alienate the reliable core audience (the ones who actually tuned in, bought merch, and showed up to conventions) to chase a younger, broader, more “diverse” demographic that would supposedly flock to the franchise once it reflected them.
A Story...
...Told In...
...Three Headlines.
It was a strategy that failed. The replacement fanbase never came in the numbers that matter. Academy never cracked Nielsen’s top 10. Discovery struggled with viewership despite massive marketing. Picard only found its footing in Season 3 when it discovered that member-berries taste excellent to an audience starving for a semblance of actual Star Trek. The built-in base became divided, with some sticking around for certain shows, while others tuned out entirely. Ten years of Kurtzman Trek has actively damaged and devalued the franchise compared to pre-2017. The cultural impact and engagement that classic Trek maintained for decades? It’s been replaced by polarization, cancellations, and franchise fatigue.
And none of this is the fans’ fault. Even the rude ones on any side. This is the fault of a studio and production company that decided to make a bunch of content that the audience couldn't relate to. Pre-Skydance Paramount treated Trek as endless streaming filler to prop up a streaming service that never turned a consistent profit, which is why we got five seasons of most Kurtzman Trek shows including Strange New Worlds, regardless of their viewership (though none of them ever made it to seven seasons). Post-Skydance leadership finally seems focused on actual profitability.
When you reject the people who reliably show up and bet everything on an audience that doesn’t exist, you don’t expand the franchise. You shrink it. You end up with a devalued, divisive, and disconnected franchise that celebrated its 60th anniversary with cancellations and the very real possibility that Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout is finally on the way out.
Kurtzman got rid of what made Trek unique. He jettisoned the realism, the subtlety, and the idea of telling a good story first in preference of creating a series of mediocre shows that offered no insight and no wisdom, because they replaced the deep-thinking philosophical concepts the show once championed, with sophistry.
It’s time for Kurtzman Trek to go and for Star Trek to go back to what actually worked for decades.
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