It sounds like Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will be inundated with fan service

The newest era of Star Trek has been a mixed bag. It's had its highs, like with the current franchise star series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and its lows, like the recently concluded series Star Trek: Discovery. It's had some ups and downs in between, with series like Lower Decks and Picard, but mostly the franchise hasn't maintained the same level of consistency from show to show as it did in the 1980s and 1990s.

One of the main reasons this has happened has been due to the over-abundance of living in the past. Some would call this nostalgia, or accuse the series of being out of ideas, but many call it for what it is; fan service. For those out of the loop, fan service largely sees creators adding popular past plot points to a new story to curry favor with the audience.

It can work when done sparingly, but for many, the recent run of Sar Trek shows has just been one giant act of fan service. We're hoping that Star Trek can finally move beyond the pillars of the past, and let Star Trek: Starfleet Academy breathe on its own, but recent comments have us worried.

Alex Kurtzman told Inde Wire recently that Star Trek has to use fan service in a way that makes sense. Considering this is the same man who gave Spock a sister and made the most advanced ship in Starfleet history, a ship that's hundreds of years more advanced than anything it shares space within the 24th or the 31st century, yeah, it's clear Kurtzman's opinion on fan service doesn't pass the smell test. He goes on to explain how he views the use of fan service;

""I think typically fan service can be very annoying. If you do it wrong and you’re sort of tipping your hat to it, but you’re not actually giving it any depth, it actually feels weirdly like it achieves the opposite of what you’re intending to do. So you really need to come up with a very strong reason to do it.""

As this was a quote about why the Breen were "necessary" to the story in Star Trek: Discovery's final season, it's fair to say that Kurtzman has a unique opinion about what is and isn't necessary. Many felt the Breen were very unnecessary to the story of Discovery's final season, and were just shoe-horned into the show as a connection to a better show (Deep Space Nine). Therein lies the issue with fan service.

The addition of the Breen didn't add anything to the story and the revelations ended up hurting the perception of the alien race. It didn't help things and only served to anger long-time fans. If Kurtzman is going to continue to shoe-horn fan service into shows, maybe it's time to find someone new to lead things.