Nolte: ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Bombing on Paramount+

The truly unwatchable Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is bombing even on Paramount+, its own streaming home.

For context, this news comes from a site called Collider, which loved Starfleet Academy, and gave it a “near-perfect 9/10” review score. [all emphasis original]

“Starfleet Academy is the best example of what Star Trek can and should be doing in this modern era — effortlessly inclusive, compelling, and innovative,” wrote the site.

Except Collider also wrote:

At the time of writing, just three days after the premiere of Episode 3, Starfleet Academy has been ousted from the current Paramount+ streaming charts in the U.S. This is made even more damning when considering the lack of brand-new content providing competition for Starfleet Academy.

Instead, Paramount+ subscribers are choosing to watch reruns of Criminal Minds, Everybody Loves Raymond, Spongebob, and NCIS over a brand-new Star Trek series that enjoyed a ton of publicity and glowing reviews from critics.

This reminds me of when Solo: A Star Wars Movie (2018) bombed. Until then, the idea of a Star Wars movie bombing at the box office seemed impossible. Even those stillborn prequels raked in the money. Solo’s box office defeat was a wake-up call for Disney and Lucasfilm, and that’s when the studio stopped releasing feature films, when the plan had been for two movies a year. You see, a Star Wars movie bombing was a sure sign the fans had lost interest, and Star Wars fans losing interest had been unheard of going back more than 40 years.

Likewise, plenty of lousy Star Trek shows have managed to attract an audience. Like Star Wars, the Star Trek fan base is willing to put up with a lot to get their fix. Starfleet Academy’s failure is, at least from where I sit, the biggest bomb in Hollywood history. In addition to one of the most beloved brands in pop culture history failing to chart on its own streaming service, it’s much-celebrated “free premiere” was virtually ignored on the largest and most accessible platform on the planet: YouTube.

As of this writing, after 12 days of free release, only 238,000 people have watched it. What’s more, its like-to-dislike ratio is a devastating 8.6K to 30K.

To express confidence in the show, Paramount announced Starfleet Academy would be renewed for a second season even before the premiere of the first season. We’ll see if this sticks.

Starfleet Academy is so bad that people are not even bothering to hate-watch it.

John Nolte’ s first and last novel Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.