Starfleet Academy: To Boldly Go Nowhere
Forty years ago, as a young USA Today reporter, I interviewed Leonard Nimoy about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Nimoy was un-Spock-like giddy about the commercial and critical hit he directed and co-starred in. “The biggest laugh,” he said, “came when McCoy says to Kirk about my still mentally addled Spock [Mr. Spock had “died” two films earlier in the classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan], ‘He really has gone where no man has gone before.’ Because if you think about it — how did Dr. McCoy know that this was the line that opened every Star Trek episode?” To which I said, “Maybe that’s the Starfleet credo.” “Good point,” Nimoy said.
The Athena makes no sense. The exterior is a weird black featherlike thing. No one has any idea how large it is. Corridors look like a shopping mall.
I forgot all about the interview for three years, until I watched a scene in the inferior next film, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, directed by William Shatner. In it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are hiding from the brainwashed crew in what resembles the Enterprise lighthouse room, near the statue of an 18th century mariner at the wheel of his ship. At one point, the camera pans down from the mariner to the statue’s plinth and the inscription on it, To boldly go where no man has gone before, as the most famous eight notes of the Star Trek theme play.
My possible small contribution to the legend of Star Trek was more respectful and knowledgeable than anything in the awful Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The show is so caricaturishly woke, it suggests popular X sci-fi commenter Jon del Arroz could be right claiming it crosses the line into based parody. But that would require the slightest degree of Dr. Strangelovian wit, sophistication, and artistry totally missing from the series.
It also denies the fundamental truth about the showmakers. They hate white men so much, they would torch a brilliant franchise they could never create — yet a white man did — before trying to entertain them. Astonishingly, even in the pilot’s crowd scenes, you don’t see a single white male — or a masculine man of any color. This is not inclusion, its exclusion and fanaticism.
Just when Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy got the boot for feminizing Star Wars into oblivion, Star Trek overseer Alex Kurtzman went all the way in with Starfleet Academy. There’s probably no sadder species than male feminists, and Kurtzman fills the shell. He got his start writing-producing Xena, Warrior Princess and learned the wrong lesson. Xena may have advanced the fantasy of “strong women” — beating up stuntmen who in reality would have chopped her head off — her success depended entirely on the Male Gaze, and the smoking hot Lucy Lawless in a skimpy leather outfit.
In Starfleet Academy, all the women but one (Bella Shepard) are homely, overweight, or dykish, and all but one (Kerrice Brooks) — not coincidentally the most likable — are girlbosses, shown putting young men in their place. Of course, most of the male cast members appear tailor made to be dominated by women, especially the weak mixed-race lead, Sandro Rosta, as Caleb.
It’s not entirely his fault that the hack feminist writer kept switching his persona from a laughably tough rebel refusing to wear a uniform (What?) — until forced to do pushups by the fat Klingon cadet mistress — to a teary mama’s boy. Caleb then gets one upped by an ugly butch instructress (Tig Notaro), who quotes Oscar Wilde at him, followed by “I love that dude.”
Thanks to modern Hollywoke alchemy, an unknown inept female screenwriter, Gala Violo, became an heir to the original series’ stable of the finest science-fiction and horror writers of all time: Harlan Ellison (The Twilight Zone), Theodore Sturgeon (The Twilight Zone), Robert Bloch (Psycho), Richard Matheson (I Am Legend), Jerome Bixby (The Twilight Zone). But then, they were all white men so their talent would disqualify them today. Violo’s gender and agenda are far more welcome. And Caleb’s story is the through-line in her mess.
We first meet him as an unconvincing little kid learning about space from his mother. “One day, when we have our own ship” she says, reflecting motherhood lessons nowhere in the universe. Mom is in the service of space pirate Paul Giamatti, earning an Acting 101 paycheck as an over-the-top laughing manic villain.
Enter Starfleet Captain Holly Hunter with the most ridiculous long thick wild hairstyle for a 68-year-old actress — sorry, Federation officer — ever displayed. Captain Holly arrests Pirate Paul, who vents his defiance by spitting. Yes, Starfleet Academy’s version of Khan (“From hell’s heart, I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!”) takes the Moby Dick line literally.
Captain Holly also arrests Caleb’s mom, much to her shame. “Separating children from their parents isn’t exceptional, it’s reprehensible,” she says later. Get it, ICE supporters? The fact that Caleb’s mom was an actual criminal dulls the analogy. In any case, little Caleb gets away from Captain Holly.
We meet him again fifteen years later as a teen rebel (Rosta), and the captive of alien bounty hunters on a spaceship. He tries to escape them by biting one’s ear off — indicating we’re in for a classy show — then engaging in a typical modern fight scene with too close action and too quick cutting rather than actual stunt choreography. In this case, the spaceship crashes and everyone gets knocked out.
Meanwhile, now Teacher Holly gets an offer from a wimpy admiral. We learn she had quit Starfleet because of the pain of separating Caleb from mom, not because she’d let a little kid get away from her team. Wimpy Admiral asks her to become Dean of Starfleet Academy and simultaneously captain of the academy starship, the USS Athena. Then he tells her where Caleb is — the prisoner of another alien race. Captain Holly gets him out on condition he become a Starfleet Academy cadet. Caleb accepts, but rebelliously, and they shuttle to the USS Athena.
And here the bad writing makes way for technological ignorance. When I was a rebellious teen, the Star Trek: Star Fleet Technical Manual was a bestselling book, containing detailed blueprints of the Starship Enterprise. Models of the Enterprise sold by the millions. Because the ship was engineeringly sound, because the makers of the series respected the boys and men in the audience, as did the actors and directors.
The Athena makes no sense. The exterior is a weird black featherlike thing. No one has any idea how large it is. Corridors look like a shopping mall. The bridge is illogically cavernous, making practical function inoperative. Who cares about a bunch of male geeks anyway? All that matters is that the Athena is soon attacked, disabled, and occupied by none other than Pirate Paul Giamatti. He lets Captain Holly have it with a clever line, “Payback’s a bitch.” But she matches his witticism with her own, “Blow it out your ass.”
In fact, all through the humiliating assault that destroyed much of the Athena and possibly killed many aboard her, Captain Holly acts mildly perturbed. It’s up to Caleb and his new cadet friends to save the Athena with a bunch of technobabble solutions. And here’s the irony of ironies. The hero of the occasion is the sole young white male regular (British actor George Hawkins), who not only saves the ship by going out on the hull, he still finds time for shocking heterosexual flirtation with the sole cute white girl. So even when rejecting politically incorrect tradition, Gala Violo and director Kurtzman fall back on it. But not enough to save the show, and boldly go where no man has gone before.
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