'Star Trek' Technical Artist Claims "Negative Review Bombing" Of 'Starfleet Academy' Will Ice Trek For The Next Decade
Star Trek technical artist Christopher Cushman claims that so-called “negative review bombing” of Starfleet Academy will result in the entire franchise being put on ice for at least the next decade.
Cushman shared his thoughts while quoting an article penned by Janet Nance. Specifically, he pointed to a portion of the article that cites a Chat GPT analysis claiming that a potential Star Trek: Legacy show will not come to fruition due to negative reactions to Starfleet Academy.
Nance writes, “One smart fan even asked an artificial intelligence bot if intentionally killing Starfleet Academy would somehow perversely encourage Paramount to finally decide to produce the series concept that fans have been clamoring for — in vain — for the last few years since the series finale of Star Trek: Picard, known as Star Trek: Legacy.”
The analysis says that a Legacy show becomes “less likely” and Star Trek will enter a “cooling-off period” with executives growing “wary of the audience.”
Cushman reacted to this writing, “Negative review bombing of Academy likely to end the possibility of shows like Legacy as well put Trek into 10-15 years of hiatus… Honestly with much of the negative rhetoric coming out before the airing of the first episode based on the trailer and stills if Trek fails fans will have an equal share in that outcome.”
“My past criticism has always been vocal about the destruction of TOS storylines… Academy is 1000 years in the future and poses little to no risk to that continuity… if you hate it don’t watch!
Ironically, the show does not appear to be gaining much viewership. Even when the show releases new episodes to Paramount+ it doesn’t even chart on the streaming service’s own top 10 list.
On top of that, the show’s two episode premiere failed to chart on the Nielsen top 10 list during the week it debuted. It failed to attain 343 million minutes viewed.
This was no surprise as the show has failed to chart on Luminate’s weekly charts. For the week of February 6-12 that covers the release of the show’s fifth and sixth episodes, the show is nowhere to be found and had less than 287.8 million minutes viewed.
Additionally, the show has seen the number of ratings per episode on IMDb decline likely indicating that viewership for the show has declined as well. The show received 5,200 reviews on episode 1. The sixth and most recently released episode has only managed to garner 1,500 reviews. That’s a decline of over 70%.
Furthermore, Paramount’s new owners, Larry Ellison and Skydance Media have indicated they will align both the film and TV sides of Star Trek with a new vision. Co-Chair of Paramount Pictures and Chair of Paramount Television Dana Goldberg shared, “Star Trek is absolutely a priority, and it’s a priority across the company. We’re not going to be siloed off so that there’s a conversation happening about television and another conversation’ about the films.”
She also said, “We’re going to make sure those conversations are happening together so that we can do what’s best for the brand as a whole.”
As for what those plans are, Deadline’s Justin Kroll shared that the company hired Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley to write, produce, and direct a film that is “a completely new take on the Star Trek universe and not connected to any previous or current television series, movie or prior movie development projects.”
Finally, blaming fans for Alex Kurtzman and his ilk for making an abomination of a television show ignores the fact that it is Kurtzman and his ilk who have the responsibility to create content that is entertaining, coherent, and respectful to the lore. Fans are not obligated to watch subpar shows just because it comes branded with Star Trek. This is just a lazy deflection from where the true blame lies: Alex Kurtzman and the decisions he’s made with Star Trek.
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I’m getting sick and tired of hearing the term “review bombing”. It’s clearly a shield for badly written projects, that have Wokeness in it.
AI chatbots aren't actually intelligent. They just scrape the web and put undue weight behind access media and reddit opinions.
As both of those two sources are either willfully blind to the truth or complicit in covering it up, neither is going to have an accurate take on this.
Fans don't want Star Trek to die. They want BAD Star Trek to die and be replaced by GOOD Star Trek. It's not difficult to understand unless you're working in bad faith as those "sources" are.
Remember kids, AI is just the same model we've been using for years with computers: inputs and outputs. Garbage in equals garbage out.