Star Trek Social Club

TNG's naysayers in the 80's were upset they weren't going to get to see more of their favorite characters. Imagine being told now in 2026 that they're gonna reboot Friends with none of the original actors. It almost doesn't make sense because the six friends WERE the show; just make another sitcom. And the first two seasons of TNG were pretty bad; in 1989 it was pretty easy for those naysayers to say told ya so.

The thing is, TNG had a solid premise, which was broadly the same premise as the proven original series. There were glimmers of greatness, diamonds in the rough, like Picard proving in court that Data is a person. It just had to exhaust obsolete old plots and executive producers and find its footing as its own show; by season 4 they had made some of the best television ever broadcast.

ENT had a different problem. It was the fifth series made in the franchise, fans were used to meeting new crews in new situations by now. But ENT came out and told us it "wasn't our father's Star Trek." For the first two seasons, the show was just titled "Enterprise" and not "Star Trek: Enterprise." It eschewed the traditional orchestral intro music for a pop ballad with vocals. And...the show's values are worse. I think I just convinced myself that they set it as a prequel so they had an excuse to make the crew worse people. Archer would definitely have killed the Gorn. Could you imagine on TNG Geordi and Worf sitting around in a damaged shuttlecraft drinking whiskey and discussing how hot Troi's ass is? That happened on ENT. Not only did they bring on another hyperintelligent but emotionally stunted hot chick with huge tits in a catsuit having learned the wrong lesson from Seven of Nine, but the entire crew spent at least some time in their skivvies, often rubbing baby oil on each other.

So ENT declared an intent to return the franchise to its classic premise after DS9 and Voyager in one hand, while masturbating half erect in with the other. Trek fans who watched the show for Kirk refusing to kill the Gorn, or offering his hand to the Klingon Captain on Genesis, or...list two Picard speeches here. Weren't going to get it from Enterprise. You'd get Hoshi holding her tits in her hands though.

TNG had naysayers before it launched, who were proved wrong. ENT started out with the audience on board and lost people along the way.

So now we arrive at the present and they're canceling Starfleet Academy. Trekkies seem torn into two factions about this:

There's the diversity fetishists who are angry that a demographic list show was canceled. I remember once upon a time how, gay people for example, would ask to see more realistic, positive, nuanced gay characters in media and not just Straight Female Protagonist's Flamboyantly Gay Friend. Now there is media made to pander to that audience, and it boils down to "there's a woman and a gay and a brown and a fat and an autistic and a..." Elsewhere on Lemmy there was a thread about how mecha anime tended to feature gay characters and about half of the thread was like "What? GAY? WHERE?!?! I want to see gay!" Them. The people who do not care if there's a story or not, they just want to have the colors of the pride flag listed out loud.

Then there's the folks who liked old Star Trek. Who remember Starfleet Academy depicted as a prestigious military academy that expected excellence in all fields out of their students. Wrath of Kahn opens up with Lieutenant Saavik being taught a lesson about facing death at Starfleet Academy. As a cadet, Wesley Crusher is involved in a fatal accident flying a banned maneuver and a cover-up about said accident, and he receives a strong dressing down, not only about the importance of following regulations but about integrity. The graduates of Starfleet Academy are not only extremely capable military officers, technicians that can operate and maintain the highly advanced systems of a starship, are adept at combat at any scale from hand to hand to theater naval engagement, they're accomplished athletes, published scientists, many are classically trained musicians, they spend their free time playing 3D chess, cosplaying as Sherlock Holmes and putting on stage plays.

And then here comes the new TV show where a fat young woman walks up to Robert Picardo and sheepishly admits to having swallowed her combadge, and he replies "What, already?!" and you think "Oh, this is a show made by retards, about retards, for retards."