By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 7 seconds ago
One of the most frequent complaints about the new Star Trek spinoff, Starfleet Academy, is that it features very clunky humor that is seriously at odds with the show’s more dramatic elements. As someone who thought the attempts at comedy were the worst parts of the new show, I found myself asking how all these goofy jokes ended up in the series in the first place. Eventually, I realized the grim truth: Starfleet Academy tried to copy the award-winning formula of Lower Decks, but the inclusion of cartoon-style gags drags down what would otherwise be s decent drama.
Lower Decks is, of course, the animated Star Trek spinoff that features a wisecracking group of ensigns, one of whom is voiced by Tawny Newsome. The show proved to be one of the most beloved NuTrek series, ultimately taking home two prestigious Hugo Awards. For those keeping track at home, these were the first Hugo wins for the franchise in decades, with the previous awards being given for the Star Trek: The Next Generation series finale “All Good Things.”
Starfleet Academy: A Live-Action Cartoon
The animated spinoff has generally been a critical hit (it has a 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and is considered one of (if not the) best of the NuTrek shows. Therefore, it makes plenty of sense that Starfleet Academy would want to (ahem) replicate some of what made that animated series so special. Throw in the fact that Beckett Mariner voice actor Tawny Newsome is a writer and producer on Starfleet Academy, and it’s clear that the influence of Lower Decks was downright inevitable.
There’s just one problem: whereas Lower Decks is one of the funniest shows in modern television, most of the jokes in Starfleet Academy fail to stick the landing. This isn’t necessarily due to a lack of talent; Newsome is an amazing writer and creator, and her love of all things Star Trek has always been abundantly clear. Instead, the problem seems to be something more fundamental: the jokes that work for an animated show just don’t work in live-action, and trying to bite Lower Decks’ style is the biggest reason why the humor in the new spinoff keeps falling flat.
Star Trek Is Now A Potty Humor Show
A very early, very jarring example of this is when the holographic Doctor from Voyager is conducting health screenings of new cadets. Suddenly, the show switches to very broad comedy: one cadet complains about having already eaten her communicator, and the Doctor has to remove some nasty critters from main character Caleb’s bowels. By the time this feisty hologram tells the young man, “let me know if anything…moves,” I realized the unthinkable had happened: Paramount brought acting maestro Robert Picardo back to Star Trek just to make freakin’ poop jokes.
Other humor is similarly awful, including the addition of a half-Klingon, half-Jem’hadar cadet master who serves as a cartoonishly clunky caricature. On paper, she is here to shepherd the next generation of Starfleet’s best and brightest on the adventure of a lifetime. In reality, she’s just in Starfleet Academy to be an exceedingly loud, exceedingly dumb drill sergeant, and the show’s writers expect us to laugh at moments (including her punching a comrade on the arm so hard he literally goes flying) that would have been more at home in a Saturday morning cartoon.
Wacky Humor Belongs In Cartoons
That’s the problem, of course: poop jokes and zany physical comedy work well in Lower Decks, where the writers leaned into the animated medium to give us stories that never took themselves too seriously. Starfleet Academy is filled with such wacky moments, including a cadet saying “A**hole One to A**hole Two” to speak to his rival over the communicator. It’s a mildly amusing gag, but it’s also the kind of thing that you’d more expect from Rick and Morty rather than a new Star Trek spinoff.
To state the obvious, Lower Decks works because it is designed as a comedy from the ground up, so its moments of broad humor disappear into the tapestry of countless other jokes. Starfleet Academy includes plenty of that cartoonish humor, but the writers primarily want the show as a whole to be a sweeping, high-stakes emotional drama like Discovery. Unfortunately, all of these poor attempts to make the audience laugh undercut the seriousness of this prestigious drama at every turn.
Starfleet Academy Can’t Pick A Spacelane
For example, it’s clear that the writers of Starfleet Academy’s first episode wanted us to be emotionally moved by the scene with Holly Hunter’s inspirational speech, one she gives while her cadets gawk at a memorial wall of fallen Starfleet heroes. But how can we take that scene when the show also includes a chirpy digital dean joking about “hangry” students? For that matter, how are we supposed to take Nus Braka seriously as the show’s Big Bad when he spends so much onscreen time prancing, mugging, and talking nonsense like time being an origami chicken?
The pain continues with characters calling each other “b*tch” in mock insult and uttering lines like “Guys who die heroically are a big turnoff for me.” The language feels very reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it’s so unlike how Star Trek characters have traditionally spoken that it feels like a cartoon. This would have been right at home in Lower Decks, a show that serves as a deconstructive parody of the franchise; seeing live-action characters say these lines in an otherwise serious, big-budget show is enough to make you cringe at Warp 9!
Just to be clear, Lower Decks is a masterpiece of a show, succeeding as both a loving homage to the franchise and a killer cartoon in its own right. But in an attempt to replicate that show’s success (and, seemingly, out of sheer desperation), notorious executive producer Alex Kurtzman has filled the latest Star Trek spinoff with dialogue straight out of a cartoon. Sadly, Paramount is about to discover a very bitter lesson with Starfleet Academy: when you spend all your time trying too hard to make fans laugh, don’t be surprised when the audience thinks your show is a joke!
