One cannot help but admire the economy of a good internet meme. In a single image, split down the middle like a poorly edited diplomatic incident, we are presented with two visions of Star Trek captaincy. On the left, Avery Brooks as Captain Benjamin Sisko of Deep Space Nine, seated in the command chair of the USS Defiant as if it were carved from the very bedrock of moral authority: upright, resolute, the weight of a station, a war, and a prophecy resting on his shoulders without so much as a slouch. On the right, Holly Hunter as Captain Nahla Ake in Star Trek's newest offering; Starfleet Academy, sprawled in her chair with the languid abandon of someone who has just discovered that the replicator does a decent margarita and the Klingons can wait. The caption, one presumes, writes itself: 'Then vs. Now.' It is a cruel juxtaposition, but cruelty, when wielded with precision, can be the kindest form of criticism.
The meme, circulating like a subversive pamphlet in the darker corners of X, captures in one glance what volumes of earnest fan discourse have laboured to express: that somewhere between the 20th century and the 21st, Star Trek lost its posture. It stopped standing to attention and started lounging. The culprit, if we must name one - and naming culprits is half the pleasure of cultural decline - is Alex Kurtzman, the producer whose name now adorns the franchise like a corporate sponsor on a once-pristine starship hull. Kurtzman, a man whose chief qualification for stewardship of Gene Roddenberry’s legacy appears to be that he once wrote a Transformers script that made money, has presided over what we might charitably call the 'Devolution Era'. Under his watchful mediocrity, Star Trek has mutated from thoughtful exploration of the human (and Vulcan, and Klingon) condition into a garish light show punctuated by therapeutic weeping and explosions that obey no known laws of physics.
"Classic Trek" - let us define it, for the benefit of younger readers who think "classic" means anything made before the advent of lens flares - was built on sturdier stuff, albeit made on shakier sets. The Original Series boldly dared to smuggle allegory past the network censors; Asians and black women in positions of authority, the first interracial kiss on network television between Kirk & Uhura in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren", and Kirk himself - shirt torn gloriously askew - wrestling with gods on distant planets while quietly asking whether America’s adventures in Vietnam were quite so noble.
The Next Generation gave us Jean-Luc Picard, a captain who could quote Shakespeare while negotiating peace with the Sheliak, embodying the Enlightenment ideal that reason might yet prevail. Voyager - helmed by Trek's first female lead in Captain Katheryn Janeway - and Enterprise had their inconsistencies, but even they still retained a certain dignity of purpose. And then there was Deep Space Nine, the underrated jewel in the Trek crown, the series that proved Star Trek could sustain moral complexity over seven seasons without once resorting to a character sobbing in a Jeffries tube. DS9 dared to examine occupation, collaboration, faith, and the cost of victory. Its social commentary was woven into the narrative fabric rather than stapled on like a diversity badge. The Bajoran struggle mirrored real-world post-colonial traumas without ever needing to spell out the parallel in bold captions. The Ferengi episodes dissected capitalism with a sharpness that would make a modern showrunner reach for the smelling salts.
At the centre of it all stood Benjamin Sisko - black, widowed, a single father raising his son Jake amid the ruins of utopia after the loss of his wife to the ruthless, homogenized, confirmatively-obsessed Borg at the Battle of Wolf 359. Here was diversity done authentically: not announced with fanfare, but embodied in the very soul of a man who commanded respect because he rolled up his sleeves and earned it, flaw by painful flaw. Sisko was no perfect avatar; he was a prophet who doubted, a commander who bent the rules, a father who worried his son might prefer writing to warp cores, but ultimately let him choose his own path. In the season 6 episode; "In the Pale Moonlight," arguably the finest hour ever of televised Star Trek, Sisko conspires with the amoral Garak to fake evidence that will bring the Romulans into the Dominion War. "So, I will learn to live with it...Because I can live with it...I CAN live with it." he says at episode’s end, staring into the void of his own reflection. The line lands like a phaser set to kill because we have watched a good man compromise his soul for a greater good. It is Shakespearean in its tragic nuance, and it trusts the audience to grapple with the ambiguity itself, rather than spoon-feeding a TED Talk on ethics.
Compare this to Kurtzman-Trek, where moral dilemmas are resolved by group hugs and where every third scene features someone whispering, "I’m scared," as though fear were a novel emotional state in deep space. Combat, once a tense ballet of shields and tactics - think Sisko manoeuvring the Defiant like a pugilist in a bar brawl - has become a Michael Bay fever dream of meaningless detonations. Practical effects, those glorious models and miniatures that gave the ships tangible weight, have been replaced by weightless CGI that looks expensive and feels cheap. One longs for the days when a starship felt like a vessel you could walk around, not a screensaver.
The nadir - or so we hoped - arrived yesterday with the premiere of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, a series that asks the question no one was asking: what if Hogwarts were in space, but with more hormones and fewer rules of magic? Set in the 32nd century (because nothing says "fresh ideas" like leaping another thousand years forward), it follows a gaggle of cadets navigating friendships, rivalries and, inevitably, first loves while a mysterious threat looms. Early notices suggest it is less a successor to Roddenberry than a spiritual cousin to Riverdale in zero gravity. Holly Hunter, an actress of genuine gravitas, is reportedly wasted as a captain who barks at teenagers in a manner more suited to a boot camp than the enlightened Federation. The dialogue, from what leaks out, veers between cringe-inducing slang and on-the-nose sermonising. One reviewer called it "horny high-school spinoff"; another, more charitable, praised the production values while mourning the absence of anything resembling Star Trek’s traditional philosophical spine.
The backlash has been swift and, in certain quarters, gleeful. YouTube’s more combative critics have declared it "abysmal," "dreadful," a final betrayal of the franchise. Even milder voices detect tonal whiplash: the show cannot decide whether it is a teen soap, a prestige drama, or a desperate bid for the TikTok demographic. Where Classic Trek smuggled progressive ideas beneath the surface, Kurtzman-Trek broadcasts them like red alert klaxons, as though subtlety were a war crime. The result is not enlightenment but exhaustion. One suspects Kurtzman himself does not quite grasp what he has inherited. He approaches Star Trek the way a tourist approaches the Louvre: eager to snap selfies in front of the Mona Lisa but vaguely aware he is missing the point. The franchise, once a forum for grown-up questions about war, identity, and the final frontier, has become a delivery system for contemporary talking points, delivered with the subtlety of a photon torpedo.
And so we return to that meme: Sisko in his chair, Hunter in hers. The image is funny because it is true. Command once meant bearing the weight of the unbearable with dignity. Now it means kicking back, cracking wise, and hoping the algorithm notices. Somewhere, Gene Roddenberry is probably polishing his spectacles and wondering how the future managed to arrive both too soon and not soon enough. Live long and prosper? On current form, one fears the franchise may do neither.