'Starfleet Academy' isn't for everybody, but 'Star Trek' still is (Did 'Star Trek' jump the targ?)

"Star Trek," a fan frontier, with voyages spanning multiple series. Its 60-year mission has explored humanity's potential and a hopeful future. But with the newest string of shows, has "Star Trek" boldly gone off the rails?

Even if it has, the ideals that hold up "Star Trek" require longtime fans to make room for the newest series.

This article is based on an episode of "Meet Me Here," KUOW's arts and culture podcast, which features veteran journalist Essex Porter and Soundside host Libby Denkmann. Listen to the full episode below or on your favorite podcast app.

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" may have gone down as one of the most popular TV shows in history, but it had a rough start when it first aired in 1987.

Jonathan Frakes, the actor who played William T. Riker on the show, has been open about how "unnerving" it was to attend "Star Trek" conventions in those early days, when original series devotees would only accept Captain James T. Kirk on the Enterprise.

"I didn't have any idea that the show is so skeptically received because of the loyalty of the fans of the original series," Frakes once told the CBC.

Ever since watching "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as a kid, I have been a fan, and have also loved "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager," and even "Enterprise" (which gets more palatable if you skip the intro song). The show's humanist ideals, promoting reason, optimism, and the Vulcan philosophy of infinite diversity in infinite combinations were perhaps more influential during my formative years than anything else. But as Jean-Luc Picard became my captain, other fans weren't having it.

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"They didn't want us to succeed. They didn't want to like us," Frakes said.

Yet now, with a fresh slate of "Star Trek" series — such as "Discovery" and "Starfleet Academy" — I find that I am the one skeptical of the next generation. Canon seems to be ignored, sci-fi has been switched out with melodrama (like, a lot of melodrama). Some fans now distinguish this new era as "NuTrek." The divide for me was so great, I had to ask: Has "Star Trek" jumped the shark... er... targ?

As I lose sleep over why "Star Trek" suddenly feels like it belongs between reruns of "One Tree Hill" and "The Vampire Diaries," I keep coming back to this thought: If longtime fans truly cherish what "Star Trek" stands for, then they must make room for "NuTrek."

'Star Trek' vs. 'NuTrek'

Hardcore fans may already understand this, despite harsh online discourse about the new shows.

"Shari is a big 'Star Trek: Discovery' fan, and I have my mixed opinions about it," fan Richard Castro said. "There is good and bad about it, but we still get along just fine."

Castro said his friend Shari could be considered the captain of their monthly "Star Trek" fan meet-up group in Tacoma, called Ready for Raktajino (Klingon coffee). There are also "Star Trek" fan meet-ups in Seattle, and a Klingon-speaking group in Bellevue.

After a 12-year drought of "Star Trek" shows, "Discovery" arrived in 2017 and was initially greeted by immense fan enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was short-lived, however. "Discovery" traded sci-fi philosophy for tearful speeches, ensemble crews for long-form storylines. It divided fans*. We can call this "the burn." Fans felt burned, like an explosion that ripped through "Star Trek" fandom, stranding fans from each other across a divide many couldn't cross.

"We're always going to have our opinions on what our favorite 'Trek' is, and episodes that we don't care about," Castro said, noting that such disagreements have always been among fans.

Personally, he was never passionate about "Star Trek: Voyager."

"There was just something about 'Voyager' that, even though I still think they had plenty of good to great episodes, I just don't think it met my expectations of what I thought 'Voyager' was going to be," he said.

RELATED: 'Star Trek: Picard' soars by embracing the legacy of 'The Next Generation'

After "Discovery" came "Strange New Worlds," which was more well-received. "Starfleet Academy" arrived in 2026, seemingly prompting a wider fan divide over departures from canon and glitter vomit (an alien student actually vomits glitter).

With "Starfleet Academy," "Star Trek" has set a course for another tone shift: the young adult market.

"It's always good to have a fresh perspective," Castro said of his Tacoma "Star Trek" fan group. "We had a newcomer to the last [meet-up] and he wanted to talk about 'Academy,' and we were like, 'Sure!' I watched it, and there are positives and negatives about the show. I probably liked it more than I thought I would. So, that's a good sign."

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Longtime fans Libby Denkmann, host of KUOW's Sounside, and veteran journalist Essex Porter have also accepted modern "Star Trek." Porter named his daughter after "Voyager" Captain Kathryn Janeway. He has been watching "Star Trek" since the 1960s, when he first saw it as a kid on a military base in Okinawa, Japan. Today, his favorite series is "Discovery."

"I love all of 'Star Trek,' and the fact that they are still making my favorite show 60 years later, I don't judge them very harshly," Porter said.

Denkmann grew up in the 1990s, watching "Star Trek" with her family. She argued the shows culturally fit the decades in which they aired. Since then, however, a lot has happened: 9/11, the Iraq War, a global pandemic, social evolution.

"I don't think 'Star Trek' jumped the shark. I think the world jumped the shark," Denkmann said.

"Starfleet Academy" arrived after the pandemic uniquely disrupted young lives. Generation Alpha, often noted as an anxious generation, has been raised online where social media continuously warps reality and minds. This young-adult series may be for a generation where dedicating an entire episode to a theater class for feelings makes sense.

While "Star Trek" previously explored humanity among the stars, perhaps today's "Star Trek" is apt for exploring mental health.

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"Star Trek" has to be for everybody, for all types of fans, just as the ideals of the federation were also for diverse species. It's OK not to like "Starfleet Academy." It's also OK to embrace it. If it helps, consider the show to be in yet another alternate universe. In the mirror universe, people are evil and have beards. In the "Academy" universe, people don't wear shoes. And seriously, we can all agree that Jett Reno is pretty amazing, right?

It's OK to make friends with Quark and not embrace the Ferengi's stance on commerce or gender roles. You can respect a Bajoran's right to believe and worship as they please, and hold a different opinion yourself. And all of us can always fast-forward through that theme song for "Enterprise."

*Glossing over certain fan arguments against "Star Trek: Discovery" and other new shows based on culture war sensationalism and bigotry that, let's be honest, is mostly found on X, the garbage scow of the internet.