So the last time I had a subscription with Paramount+ it was before the end of the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and well into the dumpster fires that were Picard and Discovery which I had already left burning unwatched by me. And though I liked some of SNW, even the musical episode, it definitely had that Kurtzman touch and as the season wore on, it was getting more and more Kutzmaned and when I chose to end my subscription to Paramount+, not wholly due to this show, but simply to shift my streaming budget to another service I guess, I really don't remember, I wasn't too sad to see it go. When I later read reviews that SNW had gotten even worse as time went on, I felt vindicated in my choice to abandon the bitch out in the cold, dark depths of space. Oh, and don't even get me started on that movie with what's-her-face playing the Terran Emperor and the elite covert ops agency... I knew that'd be a shitshow and all the bad reviews confirmed it.
Meanwhile though, Starfleet Academy started up and from the trailers and initial reviews, you know what?.. It looked like it might be a refreshing change of pace from the Kurtzman conveyor belt of absolute crap of the past 20 years or so...
Well I decided to hop back into Paramount+ last night for the start of a 7-day free trial (and I will be good and cancel before the end of the trial since they want 14 fucking bucks for this shit now, daddy can't afford that!) and watched the first couple episodes. And it's pretty good. Stellar? (To use a pun) Well, no. It is still a Kurtzman production after all. And he even directed the first episode so far. But I think he's either maturing enough to lighten up on his Kurtzman style of fucking things up or he's losing traction for other reasons. (I mean, his shit, aside from being poorly written slop and a trove of other issues, is notoriously "woke" and maybe the new owner of Paramount, Trump buddy David Ellison puts him on a leash to appease the Cheeto King?)
This show has gotten its fair share of lambasting, mostly by fans on social media though. And it was that negativity that was the likely the cause for its cancellation. It'll run for its next season in '27 then that's it. Well, I'll check out these ten episodes at least and we'll see if it stays Kurtzman Light or gets heavier doses of Kurtzman as it goes forward. And maybe I'll creep on over to check out how bad Strange New Worlds actually did get. You know, for shits and giggles.
Oh, and speaking of shits and giggles...
Totally by chance, I promise this was not intended, my free trial runs smack dab over June 14th, originally known as Flag Day but now hailed as Trump's Birthday... and this is the streaming service running coverage of that UFC event at The White House on that day! Ahhh! You know I got to at least check it out to goof on it all. I mean, c'mon, it's the equivalent of a monster truck death match officiated by President Camacho. Oh, that's in Idiocracy, you say? That's not real. And our reality is any better?
EDIT: Now a couple days later, having completed up through episode eight, all I can say is "Wow! I am totally impressed." This really is one of the top five Star Trek series in the whole franchise.
I especially loved episode six "Come, Let's Away" and the most recent, eight "The Life of the Stars." In episode six you have a mix of love interest with the usual sexual/emotional tension complicated by one person's tragic and dark past and the other's Betazed accidental mid-passion mindreading. Battle and pew pew scenes with lots of pretty graphics and things that go boom and Paul Giamatti playing what has to be the most evil mother fucking villain in all Star Trek with his bald-faced dastardly backstabbery bullshit.
Episode eight focuses on my good friend The Doctor who unlike that other resurrected old coot from the way back times (ehem, looking at you Jean-Luc) is subtly different in all the right ways, as you'd expect in an 800 year old holographic being, yet still full of his cheery, loveable (if not slightly erasable) charm. He's tasked with "bringing up baby" in this case SAM who's decompensated greatly not only from the events of episode six, but years of her existence processing experiences without a foundation of memories of being a child. Oh, and the rest of the cadets learn a hard lesson, at the hands of Tilly (yes, THAT Tilly from Disco) about the impermanence of life and learning to live with that, through the device of acting out Wilder's "Our Town."
Now like the kids in "Our Academy," I have to come to terms that there'll be but one more season of this show, which frankly should be pulling down Emmys, and I guess I'll just have to get over it and move on.