By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Right now, Starfleet Academy is in a very weird place. The show was canceled almost immediately after Season 1 ended, and the most likely reason is that it just didn’t have enough viewers to justify a renewal. However, Season 2 has already been filmed, meaning that we are (unless the network Batgirls the thing) likely to see more adventures of these controversial cadets. That means that Paramount can’t really say anything definitive about why the show ended for fear of diminishing the audience even further. For that same reason, none of the powers that be at Star Trek can say anything even remotely critical about it.
Or can they? Recently, Strange New Worlds showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso gave an interview explaining what fans could look forward to with this show’s fourth season. This mostly concerned character development and just how much work went into the dreaded muppet episode. However, they also went out of their way to emphasize how this season wasn’t going to have its own “Big Bad.” Goldsman elaborated that this meant nothing like the Gorn or the Vezda, but these guys were never Big Bads in the traditional sense of the term. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this sounded like a different reassurance altogether: that SNW would be nothing like Starfleet Academy!
Big Bad Or Just A Big Bite?
In a recent interview with Polygon, Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman said that Strange New Worlds Season 4 is going to have more of an episodic, Original Series style of storytelling. That means no “Big Bad” whose story would take multiple episodes to complete, like the Gorn in the first two seasons and the Vezda in Season 3. However, these guys weren’t Big Bads as we know the term. The Gorn made a couple of scary appearances in Season 1 and were part of a Season 2 cliffhanger, but they weren’t an ongoing concern. Similarly, the Vezda appeared in only two Season 3 episodes, where they showed the ability to possess various bodies.
Both the Gorn and the Vezda are faceless bad guys. Like, the Gorn are presented as Star Trek’s version of the xenomorphs, and they are scary because they are unknowable. The Vezda, meanwhile, are quite literally faceless, having to take over others’ bodies to give themselves a properly corporeal form. The term “Big Bad” was coined by Buffy the Vampire Slayer writers to refer to the dominant villain of each season. Big Bads included demons like Mayor Wilkins, former allies like Angelus and Dark Willow, occasional gods like Glory, and so on. These villains usually had at least half a season of development and served as big personalities for our heroes to consistently bounce off of.
Star Trek’s Latest Big Bad
What does this have to do with Starfleet Academy? Strange New Worlds didn’t have Buffy-style Big Bads: the Gorn and the Vezda were minor parts of their respective seasons, and they aren’t exactly villains for our heroes to bounce off of. The Gorn don’t talk, and the Vezda can only hop into others’ bodies to spout vaguely threatening comments about evil. But there was a recent Star Trek show with a larger-than-life villain whose oversized personality dominated the entire season. In Starfleet Academy, Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka appears in half of Season 1, including an explosive entrance in the first episode and an extremely memorable bow in the last episode.
Nus Braka cast a long shadow over Starfleet Academy’s entire first season. He’s part of Caleb’s dark origin story and has an outsized effect on the cadet’s development. He outwits the cadets and their mentors, managing to blow up a Starfleet vessel and steal classified research with which he used to threaten the entire Federation. While I personally thought Giamatti gave a great performance, the fact remains that if you don’t like his character, you’re probably not going to like the show because he’s just in it so much.
Big Bads? Zero. Muppets? One
That brings us back to Akiva Goldsman’s comments to Polygon about Strange New Worlds Season 4 having no Big Bads. Because the show never really had proper, Buffy-style Big Bads, my theory is that the showrunner was quietly distancing his own show from Starfleet Academy. His comment is a way of saying that SNW didn’t go all-in on a single villain, so you don’t have to worry about an overused enemy driving you away. That is, of course, part of the show’s episodic charm: as with earlier shows like The Original Series and The Next Generation, the sheer variety of stories means that even if you hate one episode, you may love the next.
So, call me a conspiracy theorist if you must (just don’t make me wear one of those neck bugs from “Conspiracy”), but Akiva Goldsman’s comments about no Big Bads in Strange New Worlds Season 4 seem like a coded way of saying “don’t worry, it won’t be like Starfleet Academy.” That might upset some fans who would prefer more solidarity between shows and showrunners. But to anyone who hated SFA (especially if they hated it because of Nus Braka), this might be just enough reassurance for them to tune into Strange New Worlds when it premieres July 23rd on Paramount+.
