Star Trek:  Star Fleet Academy should lean into that premise.

Star Trek technology was always based on dilithium crystals as a power source.  The Burn, was a catastrophic event in which all the dilithium crystals became inert.  All star ships that were deployed lost power, resulting in the deaths of a vast number of Star Fleet personnel.

Star Fleet personnel were always the best of the best, because in a post-scarcity society, people could pursue any career or endeavor that appealed to them.  After The Burn, the best of the best were gone, and their courageous and competent genes were gone too.

A hundred years after The Burn, when Star Fleet is ready to reestablish Star Fleet Academy, all they have left are these theater kids.   

It would make for an interesting Star Trek show if the writers understood that all of the most capable people were lost in The Burn.  Make that the premise.  What would our world look like if all we had left were the DEI hires?

The writers of Star Trek:  Star Fleet Academy seem to think that these people are the best and brightest in our modern world.  They aren’t.  These are theater kids.

I’ve taught something like 3000 students, from 8 year-olds to 18 year-olds, with the vast majority being high school juniors and seniors.  These academy students don’t represent most young adults.  These cadets have been praised and affirmed their entire lives because their parents thought self-esteem was the most important thing.  They think they are special.

The guy in red is from a warrior race, but he wasn’t killed at birth, so he is against war because he can’t do it, and hopes he can find something he can do.

The Black girl is an artificial entity, like a hologram or something, and was programmed to be autistic. or ‘differently-tarded’.  Nobody knows why she was programmed that way.

The other girl is not smart or competent, but since she is sort of pretty, adults let her talk, then pat her on the head.  She hopes that’s enough to get by.

The guy on the right likes to go to the gym because he likes the comradery and hopes nobody notices that he’s gay.

The guy in back, with the red t-shirt, hopes they will let him be in charge because people seem to like him.

These are the kids who didn’t get in to trouble, got along with their parents, but had no direction or ambition.  They didn’t go to college or have a vocation, so lived at home doing part-time jobs until the parents eventually kicked them out.

The show could have worked with that.  After The Burn, this batch of young adults are aimless, so they had nothing better to do than be the first class at the academy.

The staff are just as bad.

Holly Hunter, on the right, is the chancellor of a military academy, and refers to cadets as ‘kids’.  She acts like an elementary school principal.  Why is she wearing glasses a thousand years in the future?  Hunter slurs and mumbles her dialogue so much, I checked to see if the actress had suffered a stroke.

The fat lady in the middle is a genetic anomaly between a synthetic race that can’t reproduce and a strict, militaristic race.  Like somebody managed to breed a mule with a snapping turtle.

I don’t know who the fat, butch, lesbian on the left is, so she may not be critical bridge crew.

It’s a shame that nobody involved in this TV show had any experience with high-functioning young adults, competent instructors, military bearing, or industrial design.

Paramount Plus has the first episode of Star Trek:  Star Fleet Academy on Youtube for free.  After a day, only 91,000 people had watched it.

Disparu, a Youtube media reviewer, has posted a review of that episode.  After a day, it has been watched by 93,000 people, and didn’t cost $10,000,000 to produce.

Watch both and decide which is more entertaining.d