When Starfleet Academy began airing its first episodes, I happened to be deep into a playthrough of Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. The timing was accidental, but the contrast was impossible to ignore. On one screen I had a universe built on dogma, hierarchy, and the iron weight of institutional purpose. On the other screen I had a Starfleet that behaved like a college orientation program. The difference was so stark that it became a lens through which the entire show revealed its contradictions. One world demanded respect through conviction. The other tried to earn respect through casual aloofness.
Only one of those approaches actually works.
Leadership Looks Like It Just Rolled Out of Bed
Holly Hunter’s character is the clearest example. She wanders around barefoot, she slouches in her chair, and overall she carries herself with the kind of nonchalance you expect from a professor who wants freshmen to think she is cool.
Starfleet Academy wants to present as modern and charming while, at the same time, desperately not signal that its lead characters must necessarily exhibit the kind of rigid authority that demands the kind of respect due the Starfleet institution. When a captain behaves like she is running a creative writing workshop instead of a starship, the entire premise collapses.
Starfleet captains are not meant to function as quirky mentors. Quirkiness or aloofness cuts directly against the gravitas their position demands, especially given the seriousness of the situations Starfleet routinely faces. When you are dealing with telepaths, warlords, and alien cultures with their own sensitivities and expectations, it becomes impossible to justify a leader who broadcasts personal eccentricities instead of projecting discipline and authority.
Diplomacy in the Star Trek universe has always required a performance of seriousness. This is true to reality as well. If you are a leader, then you must project an intellectual and emotional stability so others trust you. You project discipline so others respect you.
Starfleet Academy leans heavily into a generational style. Its Zoomer aesthetic is an attempt to be the cultural currency of the moment. Its "current year" logic mimics Marvel style quips and TikTok style self deprecation because the showrunners believe that this is what the modern audience relates to: characters who refuses to take anything too seriously.
Starfleet cannot survive that treatment. Starfleet is not a daycare center, it is supposed to be a military-like institution. When you think of the backbone of the Federation and the place where people train to pilot starships, negotiate peace treaties, and prevent interstellar disasters, you're certainly not thinking about a hangout comedy with uniforms. That kind of imagery belongs in a parody.
The Rogue Trader Contrast
This becomes even clearer when you compare it to Rogue Trader. The game has you make decisions that are often brutally uncompromising. You are expected to uphold the doctrine and enforce the will of the God-Emperor, all the while embodying the authority of the Imperium in every gesture and every word.
That rigidity produces a tangible respect. Even when the choices you make are harsh, the world around responds to the seriousness with which your character carries himself. Note that this is exactly the kind of respect that Starfleet was trying to induce in the Betazoids in Starfleet Academy and why, even if the writers had written the negotiations as successful, an intelligent audience would never have bought into it because of how absurd that would have been. People do not work that way. You cannot convince people to lay down an entire cultures' worth of experience and principles on the basis of bumper-sticker slogans.
Star Trek was built on aspirational competence. The professionalism exhibited by Kirk, Picard, Sisko, etc. was inspiring. Of course, the characters did not have to be perfect, but they had to be serious about everything they did. So while Starfleet Academy inherits much of the imagery we are familiar with, the show most certainly did not inherit the ethos. And rightfully so; the writers cannot invoke the prestige of Starfleet without the discipline that makes the institution prestigious.
For anyone who grew up with the rigid respectability of the classic Starfleet captains, it is no surprise that fans scoff at an institution now written as if it were a Federation summer camp. A tone like this only reinforces how far the show has drifted from its predecessors. And, as has happened with so many projects aimed at a narrowly-defined "modern audience," that quiet hostility toward longtime viewers will be impossible to miss.
A Show Arguing With Its Own Premise
Ultimately, Starfleet Academy is fighting the very idea of Starfleet. Every time a character shrugs off protocol or a leader acts like a disinterested camp counselor, or the show winks at the audience about what old Trek used to be, all of it communicates the same message:
The writers have no faith in the world they have created.
You cannot claim to steward a cathedral while acting as if faith itself is beneath you. In the same way, it is impossible to respect a captain whose authority rests on protocol when she spends so much of her time undermining it, dismissing it, or wriggling around it. She and her crew want smooth negotiations with an alien species, yet she strolls barefoot around the station while ignoring a direct order to put on shoes. How can anyone be trusted to honor the customs of another culture when she cannot even be bothered to respect her own?
Holly Hunter's character says, "Advocating for social change matters." But didn't someone tell her that putting on shoes matters? And she refused and did what she wanted. So maybe advocating for social change is optional too. Do you see the pattern?
Suffice it to say, younger people do not need characters who pretend not to care. They need characters who care so deeply that it inspires them. Star Trek used to do that. Starfleet Academy does the opposite.
NEXT: The Darth Maul Industrial Complex - How One‑Note Characters Become The Center Of The Galaxy
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I'm sorry you have to go through the agony of watching this tripe for our benefit!
Rogue Trader is fantastic, though! Perhaps the final great official 40k product, now that GW is going straight down the drain.
In a retard woman’s mind you can. This is their idea of rebellion against male norms. Not becoming technically better, exhibiting selfless leadership, nurturing a protege. Nah, they want to flaunt themselves, the existing standards, and prance around barefoot in a military ship like a cunt. That’s what women do with power.
This foolishness is the mantra of the female exec, to producer, to writer, to director, to actress.
We really need to kick them all out and reinstall that glass ceiling. Only this time, a storie or two lower.