March 23, 2026

IT’S A MERCY KILLING: Divisive Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Canceled After Two Seasons.

So much for Paramount+‘s Gen Z Star Trek show.

The streamer has decided to end Star Trek: Starfleet Academy after season two.

Starfleet Academy had recently finished airing its debut season. Paramount+ had (rather optimistically, as it turned out) already ordered a second season, which recently wrapped production.

Starfleet Academy has been a polarizing entry in the Trek canon. Many critics have celebrated the show for focusing on a younger generation and its coming-of-age themes. On social media, the show has been a frequent target of mockery from those who claim the show is too “woke.”

On Rotten Tomatoes, the show had an 87 percent positive critics score, but a dismal 51 percent audience score.

The show also never managed to chart among Nielsen’s weekly top 10 streaming lists for viewership.

Funny, ten days ago, Engadget ran with the hottest of hot takes about the show: Starfleet Academy is the best first season of a Star Trek show ever.

The first season of a TV show is a tricky thing. It has to convince people to watch it and justify the show’s existence to the network (or streaming service) execs. It has to deal with actors and writers who may not have fully dialed into the characters and world yet. There are some shows with absolutely stellar first seasons — Stranger Things, Veronica Mars and Ted Lasso are a few — but many other hit shows stumbled out of the gate, like The Office and Supernatural.

Star Trek is not immune to this phenomenon. The Original Series had a decent first season, with classic episodes like “The City on the Edge of Forever.” But the next four shows all have rather weak beginnings, with even fan-favorite The Next Generation stumbling badly with episodes like “Code of Honor.” That show picked up in season three, beginning a trend called “Growing the Beard,” in reference to how Commander Riker’s new beard coincided with the uptick in quality.

“The Original Series had a decent first season.” What a way to dismiss all of the worldbuilding by Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon that set the stage for everything that followed over the next sixty years: The giant faster-than-light starship performing gunboat diplomacy at the edge of the known galaxy. The heroic young captain modeled after Horatio Hornblower. The stoic half-human, half-alien science officer. The crusty doctor and chief engineer. Once Gene Coon joined midseason, he fleshed out the series’ backstory, creating the “United Federation of Planets” as a futuristic substitute for the USA, and crafted the show’s most-popular bad guys, the Klingons. Heck, even Ricardo Montalban showed up in the first season, a decade and a half before replaying his role as the big baddy in the movie that saved the franchise, and gave Star Trek a new lease on life for the next four decades.

But hey, it’s no Starfleet Academy.

Exit quote:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HAHA, TRUMP SUCKERS THEM AGAIN:

From Democrats’ shutdown theater to a PR coup for ICE.

Posted at 8:11 pm by Glenn Reynolds

A SOLUTION SO SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE THAT DEMS WILL NEVER ALLOW IT:

Posted at 6:23 pm by Stephen Green

HUH: Survey finds Gen Z is the most alcohol‑averse generation. “The report, which surveyed drinking habits among Americans, found that Gen-Z is the most alcohol-averse generation, with 53% reporting they don’t drink. Gen-Z’s choice to put the bottle down was followed by Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, with 47% of both generations opting out.”

Those numbers seem high.

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green

FRAUD AND THEFT, ALL THE WAY DOWN:

Posted at 3:55 pm by Stephen Green

DO WE WANT CAMERAS IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM? A prof at U. of Houston argues we should welcome it. I’m not so sure, as society doesn’t seem to have improved the more we record one another, and I bristle at the surveillance state. But I am sure that if colleges hadn’t squandered so much public trust, nobody would be asking for this.

Posted at 3:42 pm by Robert Shibley

YOU DON’T SAY: Ads Are Popping Up on the Fridge and It Isn’t Going Over Well.

Walking into his kitchen, Tim Yoder recoiled at a message on his refrigerator door: “Shop Samsung water filters.”

Yoder, a supply-chain manager in Chicago, owns a Samsung Electronics Family Hub fridge. He paid $1,400 for an appliance that came with a 32-inch screen on the door that allows him to control other Samsung gadgets, pull up recipes or stream music.

But since last fall, it’s been intermittently serving up ads, part of a pilot program being tested on some of Samsung’s smart fridges sold in the U.S. The response? Not warm.

“I guess this is another place for somebody to shove an ad in your face,” said the 47-year-old Yoder, recalling the first time he noticed one.

Americans have learned to live with ads on smartphones and other devices as a necessary trade-off of connectivity. They’ve also gotten used to growing intrusions in the physical world, where everything from bathroom stalls to taxicab seats have become fair game for marketers. But the kitchen remained largely off-limits.

If you don’t want ads on a thing, don’t buy a thing with a screen and connectivity.

Exit question: Who needs a fridge that streams music? I can’t imagine the audio quality is any good. It’s also just one more damn thing on an expensive appliance that might break.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

CBS REPORTER WHO RESIGNED OVER BARI WEISS JOINS LEFT-WING PROPAGANDA OUTLET:

As you can see, MacFarlane has found his natural home after leaving CBS. He can now rest assured that no one in top management will influence his reporting by demanding that he shape his political reporting.

See? Bari Weiss really IS destroying CBS News. Without nonpartisan, totally fair and unbiased reporting from excellent journalists like Scott MacFarlane, how will CBS News viewers learn about how Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler?

Or Barry Goldwater.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll