Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and the Question of Audience

February 20, 2026

I was going to write a review of the first episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, but there are so many people reviewing every episode and it took me a while to get something together, so I decided I would do something else. This show is getting largely dragged by online reviewers, and in response, the people that really like the show are angry at the people making fun of it. And it once again has me thinking about why.

Let me start by laying out the case on who this show is made for. Its target audience is a combination of:

• Younger to middle age women, probably left-leaning politically and feminist
• The LGBT brigade, especially those that identify as queer
• Non-white people that focus heavily on social justice and racial representation as an important factor in television

The show is very feminine coded, which I would argue is a departure from earlier Star Trek shows like the Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. And let me lay out some points why I say the show is feminine coded.

• The captain, Nahla Ake, is a smaller, quirky, middle-aged woman who belittles any of the more masculine men in the way she interacts with them and does not take interactions seriously.
• Genesis Lythe, one of the students, announces her intention to become a captain in episode one and by episode seven is potentially being moved to a fast track for captain training by Nahla Ake, who recognizes that she is really good and able to lead.
• Caleb Mir is the main, and maybe only straight, male character. He is a prototypical female love interest in that he has a troubled past where he got involved in bad/criminal behavior brought on by past trauma. He is in great shape, young, attractive, highly competent, but needs some guidance from a mother figure in Nahla Ake and serves as a potential love interest for two different young women in the show. He is also searching for his mother.
• Jay-Den is an effeminate, gay Klingon who wears skirts and make-up. He is in a relationship with a man from the war college and his main story seems to be finding himself and who he wants to be which goes against the highly violent, masculine culture of the Klingons. Oh, and he comes from a poly-amorous family with one mother and two fathers.
• Daren Reymi - potentially bi-sexual man who is always talking about wanting to be with women in the show, but shows signs of being interested in Jay-Den constantly. In the most recent episode he marries a woman from his world and they are supposed to take over ruling their people; however, the woman tells him to abdicate his position beside her and allows him to continue in Star Fleet while she takes over as the first woman to rule their people by herself.
• SAM is a quirky, autistic coded hologram girl that is super smart while being clueless in certain circumstances. She has a whole episode dedicated to finding out what happened to Benjamin Sisko and in so doing, learning more about herself and her role as an emissary of her holo-people.
• Almost all of the school leadership is female. Captain Nahla Ake, her first mate and the aggressive, militaristic person, Lura Thok, Jet Rino, and Lt. Rork.

This show focuses heavily on interpersonal relationships, personal growth and discovery, and making moral messages about marginalized people and how they fit into society. Queer, women, non-whites, everything is an allegory for society today, and a critique on modern right-wing societal views.

The harder scifi elements take a back seat. The technology is there to allow the interpersonal stories to flow, doing whatever is needed at the time to allow those plots to move forward. Power scaling of ships, consistency in the technology, logical limitations to help drive plot elements, or adherence to prior established science does not matter. A ship warping into the atmosphere of a planet, that is fine as long as the scene helps the viewer understand where the characters are so we can have a scene to discuss feelings.

Character Breakdown

• Nahla Ake - woman, quirky, promiscuous, leader
• Caleb - male, hot, rebel, mommy's boy
• Jay-Den - male, gay, black
• SAM - woman, quirky, autistic, black
• Darem - male, bully, bi-sexual, white
• Genesis - woman, natural leader, highly competent, interested in multiple men
• Lura Thok - female, lesbian, black, aggressive, bossy, competent, leader
• The Doctor - male, old, curmudgeon, supportive of women leaders, white
• Tarima - female, promiscuous, very powerful to the point she needs an inhibitor, white
• Commander Kelrec - male, masculine, repeatedly emasculated and made a joke
• Jett Reno - female, lesbian, white, sarcastic, condescending towards men, leader

Who Is This Show For?

I want you to think, now that you read through that list of elements of the show, would this show appeal to most straight men? Probably not. The male characters are mostly gay or bisexual and always exploring trauma and growing emotionally while the women are the leaders and the ones who can solve the problems of the day. The female characters are the moral corner stones and characters of action. And if this show is not made to appeal to straight men, why would anyone think that they would show up to watch it. We can look at the promotional material, the interviews with the people making the show and the actors, and even watch the first episode and see that this show is not for us.

If this show is not designed with the straight male in mind, and that is who the earlier series were more targeted towards, I am not including Star Trek Discovery or Strange New Worlds, then it would make sense that they will not show up. And that means that the show needs to pick up more people in the target demographics than it loses in straight men. But what if it does not? What if viewership is low? So low that the show quickly gets canceled, or just not renewed for a third season since season two is basically done being filmed? Who should fans of the show be mad at?

The reality is, the people this show is made for are not likely watching YouTube personalities like Nerdrotic or the Critical Drinker. Even if I grant to someone like Jessie Gender that those YouTube personalities are evil, right-wing fascists and white supremacists, the target audience would not be watching them or swayed by their content. Straight men might be, and there is an argument that those men are review-bombing the show which then deters people from the target demographics from watching the show in the first place, especially when there is a toxic discourse online between different camps of fans, but I have another theory. The people in those target demographics aren't really into a Star Trek show. Not in the numbers needed to make Starfleet Academy a hit. If someone like a Jessie Gender, or other fans of the show, are going to be mad at someone, be mad at your side of the aisle for not supporting this show.

The Larger Pattern

This show was never meant for me, or Nerdrotic, or the Critical Drinker. And those guys, and straight men who were fans of Star Trek, have been voicing their displeasure in the direction of Star Trek for a long time. The mocking of this show would be much less harsh if we had a Star Trek show we loved so much that we were watching it in droves. I totally understand that the people in charge of the franchise want to branch out and try new things aimed at other people. But we are not getting those other shows.

Star Trek Discovery was injected with all of the same stuff that Starfleet Academy is, just to a lesser extent and with more of a focus on the exploration and action. And the first episode of Strange New Worlds had Captain Pike stand by while a woman kicked all the butt. The bridge crew was all female other than Pike and Spock. And it finished with Pike making a speech while footage of January 6th played in the background as images of terrible points in human history. I am not supporting what happened that day, but that made it clearly political and showed conservatives as uniquely bad, while not acknowledging the destruction during the 2020 BLM riots. Strange New Worlds introduced singing and dancing Klingons.

Men have seen this done with Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Willow, Doctor Who, Wheel of Time, The Witcher, Indiana Jones, Fallout and games like Dragon Age: Veilguard. One of the more recent additions to this is a remake of the Burbs.

Final Thoughts

You want to be mad at someone, be mad at the people this show was meant for not showing up in the numbers needed to keep it going. Women showed up for Barbie and Bridgerton, and plenty of other shows when they wanted. Be mad at the people making the show for making one that costs so much that the low viewership doesn't justify continuing. But why be mad at the people, men and women, who have yet another Star Trek show in a line of Star Trek shows that they don't want to watch, who are left wondering when or if they will get another Star Trek show they will want to watch again.