'Starfleet Academy’s' 'Deep Space Nine' Tribute - Now With 300% More Pandering

In the latest episode of Starfleet Academy, the writers boldly go where countless reboots have gone before. They fire up the nostalgia cannons, set phasers to “Memberberries,” and hope no one notices the smoke pouring out of the engine room. Episode 5 is a "love letter" to Deep Space Nine (DS9) written in crayon, folded into a paper starship, and launched directly into a wormhole of pandering.

First up, Jake Sisko returns. Sort of. He pops in as a hologram yanked out of his unpublished novel Anslem, which only qualifies as ‘clever’ if your definition of clever is ‘we found this wedged behind a stack of half‑used floor wax bottles and a crate of mismatched broom heads.' Then the characters tour the Sisko Museum, which is less a museum and more a franchise‑approved rummage sale. Every corner is stuffed with DS9 Easter eggs because nothing says bold new storytelling like pointing at props from thirty years ago.

We also get a reimagined Launch Pad bar, complete with a callback to the time Sisko punched a Vulcan. Because when you think of DS9’s moral complexity, you naturally think of bar fights. And then a Professor Illa reveals she is the thirty‑second century host of the Dax symbiont. When she hands Sam a copy of Jake’s novel, the audience is expected to gasp. Instead, we’re left wondering how a Trill symbiont managed to survive longer than a redshirt does after being told to ‘check out that strange noise over there.'

The episode ends with the hologram character Sam sending a heartfelt message to Sisko followed by a voiceover from Avery Brooks about divine love and law. Except Avery Brooks did not film the scene. The show is not honoring him, it is borrowing him like a neighbor borrows your weed-whacker and then claims it was theirs the whole time.

The problem, as I've talked about before, is not subtle. The episode is indicative of what the entire show set out to do: pander. Starfleet Academy does not have a story. At best, they have a scrapbook.

If you are going to pander to DS9 fans, you should at least remember how DS9 began. Benjamin Sisko meets Jean‑Luc Picard. The conversation is colder than a Ferengi’s heart during tax season. Sisko does not like Picard and he makes that abundantly clear. There is no warm glow of TNG nostalgia. No gentle baton handoff. DS9 opens by kicking the past out the nearest airlock.

The characters of DS9 were not designed to be instantly lovable. Odo was grumpy. Quark was sleazy. Kira was shrill. Dax was a know‑it‑all. Garak was unsettling. Bashir was arrogant. The station was a fixer‑upper with a view of a wormhole and a long list of structural violations. DS9 did not beg you to feel good about its contents.

That is what made DS9 exceptional. The show wasn't trying to be the Original Series or TNG with a new coat of paint. The show was genuinely new, genuinely different, and you had to deal with it. And we did deal with it.

The show had the courage to be itself.

Starfleet Academy does not have that courage. Instead of building characters, it raids the franchise attic like a desperate space scavenger looking for spare parts. The entire show is a series of attempts at repurposing and assembling something resembling a story based entirely on browsing the contents of Memory Alpha.

This isn't even a matter of the writers loving DS9. The real problem is that they’re in love with their own performance of loving DS9. They're like that friend who suddenly gets really into your hobby, but it's just so they can wedge themselves into your friend circle. They don’t really share your passions. Instead, they just want the social credit that comes from pretending that they do.

And the performative part of all this is what really grinds my gears. It doesn’t even feel like the writers are talking to DS9 fans. It feels like they’re talking about us, like we’re some abstract life‑form they read about in a field guide. They don’t treat us like viewers. They treat us like animals in an exhibit.

‘Ah yes, the elusive DS9 Fan. Known to enjoy complex storytelling and moral ambiguity. Also responds favorably to bananas.’

So they toss a few bananas into the enclosure (a Jake Sisko here, a Dax there, etc.) and then stand back to see how we react. Do we clap? Do we hoot? Do we perform the expected nostalgia‑rituals for their amusement?

It’s not about respect or understanding. The show is just slop-feed time at the fandom habitat.

Starfleet Academy is like a malfunctioning escape pod trying to chart its own course through space. What's funny is how much it reeks of trying to abstain from the risk of being disliked and that becomes the main reason why it is disliked. The funny thing is, even with all the woke elements it has, I think the real turn-off for audiences was that the show took no risks in trying to genuinely be something new.

I’m old enough know that pandering doesn’t feel flattering. It feels insulting. Humility teaches you that there are parts of yourself you want to outgrow, not have shoved back in your face by people who think they’re doing you a favor. When someone keeps reminding you of the things you used to like, and you can tell they’re only doing it to score points with you, it’s nauseating.

It’s like when you're a child and it's your birthday and you think chocolate cake is the pinnacle of human achievement. But now you know it’s basically a sugar-filled landmine. I’ve moved on. I enjoy a good steak or a fine wine; something with substance and doesn’t come in a sheet pan. But today's pander‑crews roll up like, ‘Hey, remember chocolate cake? Here’s a truckload of it. Just like you loved, remember?’

Yes. And now I want to vomit.

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