The Real Threat to Star Trek Isn’t Kurtzman—It’s Clickbait Culture.

As clickbait negativity drowns out genuine discussion, a misleading picture of a failing Star Trek era threatens to sway decision‑makers and harm the franchise more than any creative stumble.

I am troubled by several aspects of the current zeitgeist surrounding the Star Trek franchise. Here at Cereal Creatures, we’ve examined the various points of view regarding Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the latest entry in the 60‑year‑old behemoth. However, the vitriol and discourse have evolved beyond criticism and opinion into a genre all their own, especially on social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. My own YouTube feed serves up two or three new videos a day, each railing against Starfleet Academy. The alternative—favorable coverage or general episode reviews—is few and far between. The algorithm is doing what it does best: serving up the controversial and negative. But the algorithm isn’t creating these videos. Much like comic books and so many other pop‑culture arenas, conservative and right‑wing voices—most of whom are not Star Trek fans but are simply jumping on a bandwagon for clicks—are flooding the zone.

To someone who doesn’t follow the ins and outs of Trek, it can easily look like all modern Star Trek is terrible, no one watches it, it’s “nothing but woke,” and the whole thing should’ve been canceled yesterday. That’s the illusion clickbait thrives on. And the real danger is that this manufactured narrative starts to feel like truth—especially to decision‑makers who only see the loudest voices. When that happens, the entire fandom pays the price.

Similarly, I get what feels like a daily video from “insiders” claiming that Star Trek showrunner Alex Kurtzman has been, might be, could be, or hasn’t yet been fired. It’s all very reminiscent of the saying “a broken clock is right twice a day.” I’m the first to admit that the current regime running the franchise has made mistake after mistake. There have been good things—a lot of them—however, and that’s what I’m considering in this post.

Throwing everything away and starting over with Star Trek is a bad idea. Despite the missteps and numerous canon‑bending (and outright canon‑breaking) choices, a tremendous amount of new lore has been introduced since the 2017 debut of Star Trek: Discovery. For every bad part (Spock has a secret sister), there’s a good one (Star Trek: Picard Season 3). I don’t want all of that flushed down the head as “Legends,” the way Star Wars handled its continuity years ago. I don’t want Roddenberry canon and Berman canon and Kurtzman canon. Even if you have to squint in places for it to make sense, it still holds together. Even the J.J. Abrams films fit, thanks to the Nimoy‑Spock connection. I don’t want to lose that.

I also have to wonder if the order of the shows is part of the problem. The continuous worship of The Original Series—first in Discovery and then in Strange New Worlds—ignited the ire we still see nearly a decade later. Star Trek was always about moving forward, from TOS to Voyager. Only after two decades of 24th‑century stories did it make sense to take another path with Enterprise. And to the credit of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, they didn’t just create another series set aboard a Kirk‑era ship. Instead, they took a whole new premise—and a timeframe we hadn’t seen before—to tell a new story in the Star Trek universe.

Discovery should’ve started in the 32nd century—not trying to resurrect TOS, but in a format that was too foreign to any Star Trek that had come before it. Picard should have been Season 3 from the beginning. Launching with the nostalgia and time period fans wanted would have allowed room to revisit other places and characters from the Berman era while introducing new characters like Raffi and Elnor.

Then Strange New Worlds could have arrived—still delivering those memberberries—but taking us to an era we hadn’t yet explored. Imagine a Strange New Worlds built around the crew we met in “The Cage,” paired with an aesthetic that actually looks like it belongs to that era.

Starfleet Academy could then follow, introducing something new while continuing from Discovery—but without feeling like it’s stepping on or replacing what fans really want: a return to the 25th century (Star Trek: Legacy).

Another misstep in the modern format is the reluctance to use the structural strengths of the classic era. Not only do these shows shy away from Jerry Goldsmith‑inspired opening credits and episode titles, but each series seems to resist the ship‑and‑ensemble format. Burnham is the star, but she’s only the XO (and after five seasons I still don’t know the names of the bridge crew). Picard isn’t in Starfleet and is surrounded by a band of misfits you’ve never heard of. Half of Pike’s crew will eventually be Kirk’s, and most of “The Cage” crew is forgotten. The ship is a school. And so on.

Despite the missteps and growing pains, episodes like this remind me why Star Trek endures: it always pushes forward, always challenges its characters, and always believes the future can be better than the present. If Starfleet Academy keeps building on this momentum, it might just find the hopeful, aspirational voice that has defined Trek for nearly sixty years.