Seto Kaiba

They seem to be pursuing a romance angle with the character... which is hard to do with fifty pounds of prosthetics on your face. It's also pretty costly, and they've blown a LOT of the show's cash on sets and heavy prosthetics for minor background characters like the Ferengi and Kelpian cadets. Starfleet Academy's showrunners clearly blew a huge chunk of the show's budget on the enormous and elaborate sets used for the Athena's bridge and Sato Atrium. Given its layout and size, I'm inclined to suspect the Athena's bridge is a redress of the circular Federation Headquarters main hall from Discovery that also served as a courtroom at 23rd century Starfleet Headquarters in Strange New Worlds's second season. It looks to be double or better the size of a normal starship bridge for no practical reason (to the point that Captain Ake has no ready room. The Athena's Sato Atrium appears to even bigger and vastly more complex than Trek's previous biggest interior set, the Deep Space 9 Promenade & Quark's Bar multi-level set. It's much more structurally complex and a LOT more electrified since many walls have rows of built-in flat-panel monitors and almost every surface seems to edge-lit from within using programmable LEDs. There are water features and plants and all manner of other decorative items. After blowing what I'm sure was tens of millions of dollars on this set, they had little choice but to make it as multipurposeful as they could. This overspending is probably also the reason why location shooting for the series was so profoundly half-assed. Starfleet Academy's non-starship spaces like the James T. Kirk Pavilion, the quad, the War College dorms, and the gym all appear to be almost totally unmodified spaces at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario. All they really did was stick some Starfleet signage on various exterior and interior walls and hung a few banners. The academy grounds are just Trillium Park on East Island in Toronto.

Oh, you're thinking of Hallmark movies. The ones that all go "big city business girl with business boyfriend has to go to generic country town where she grew up before moving to the city and falls in love with some guy she just met because he's different from her stuffy big city boyfriend". I wouldn't really say the leads in those are arseholes... they're just regular guys living the 9-5 life instead of making a quaint, folksy living farming christmas trees or whatever in a town so small the annual bake sale determines its continued existence.😅 That's not really Noah Centineo's bag. He's more in the himbo comedy genre.

Slop's on. This week, it's Episode 4 "Vox in Excelso". Apparently it's a Jay-Den Kraag-centric episode... or so the blurb would have us believe. We open on the Athena, back in deep space for... reasons. The series couldn't be bothered to have a ready room set so apparently Captain Ake just throws everyone else off the ship's bridge when she wants to record a log or an address to the students. As per her usual, it's a meandering mess of a speech that reads like a collection of cliches from some form letter graduation speech delivered with all the passion and enthusiasm of someone coming off a high dose of dental anesthetic. Also, does nobody go to class at this academy? The entire time she's talking it's montaging over students doing generic admissions brochure stuff like sitting in common areas with random objects laughing at nothing in particular. The writers are leaning really hard into Kraag being the un-Klingon. He's not Proud Warrior Race guy... he's got some aspects of their culture but he's kind of a coward, he's socially anxious, etc. Starfleet Academy does throw an interesting curveball in that Kraag apparently comes from a three-parent household. He has two fathers and a mother. Not entirely outside the usual for them, given that in the relaunch novels that inspired parts of NuTrek the Klingons were pretty darn LGBTQ-friendly. What is it with the current Star Trek showrunners and trying to kill off the franchise's most iconic aliens? Jar-Jar Abrams tried to kill off the Vulcans in Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Picard tried to kill off the Romulans, and now Starfleet Academy's trying to do in the Klingons. Kraag's memories of home are ALSO subject to the piss filter. What is it with every outdoor space looking like world is being viewed through a pint mug of cheap pilsner? We get a "Master debater" joke. This is how far standards have fallen. 'lil bit of Ho Yay for Darem and Jay-Den? Admiral Vance seems to have forgotten the very basic Klingon cultural tenet that they have no gods. They killed their gods back in their ancient mythohistory. "More trouble than they were worth", as Worf put it. We get to see a few more Federation starships at a distance... USS Capricorn, USS Crimson, USS Horizon, USS Lexington, and USS Riker. If we could only ditch the immaturity and the incredibly dated writing, this episode would be dangerously close to sounding like an actual Star Trek episode.

Unless something awful happened to romcoms while my back was turned, I think that's just the domain of a few specific actors whose films skew more comedy than romance like the ever-cringeworthy Adam Sandler. You can bin most romantic comedy male leads in one of three basic categories: the Himbo, the Shy Guy who isn't really shy in any meaningful sense, and the Humorless Workaholic. Traumatic backstories are usually fodder for the "serious" romance stories, especially fantasy romance stories. Definitely feels to me like Gundam's live action movie is kneecapping itself before it's ever reached the starting line with a terrible set of casting decisions.

Maybe a comic relief secondary character, not a main. Gundam protagonists only really come in a couple flavors: Moody and socially-withdrawn teenager with parental abandonment issues (Amuro, Camille, Banagher, Judau, Uso) Pre-traumatized PTSD enjoyer (Shiro, Domon, Shinn, Seabook, Garrod, Loran, Hathaway, Jona, Suletta) Emotionally dead PTSD donor (Heero, Setsuna, Mikazuki) Doing fine until fate slapped their head and said "This bad boy can fit SO MUCH trauma" (Al, Kou, Kira, Oliver, Bellri) Complete and Utter Sh*thead (Io, Advent Casval, Iria, Machu) Not really a lot of call for comedy there... unless you're Judau.

... an own goal, perhaps. Netflix acquires the distribution rights to the live-action Gundam movie starring the flop queen of 2025 and a guy whose big break outside Netflix romcoms was Black Adam? Big oof. The odds weren't exactly in this film's favor as it was.

Starfleet Security was a division of United Earth (later Federation) Starfleet that, role-wise, were normally depicted as being somewhere between naval infantry and military police in practice. They guarded ships and bases against intruders, escorted and protected VIPs, and investigated criminal activity. They're not soldiers, but they've got that "mildly military" thing going on that all of Starfleet does. You're probably thinking of the MACOs from Enterprise. They were a detachment of soldiers from an elite United Earth military unit that seem to the space version of Army Rangers or a Marine Corps reconnaissance unit. They were on loan to Archer and the NX-01 Enterprise for the duration of the Xindi emergency, but had a separate chain of command that led to all kinds of jurisdiction friction with the ship's Starfleet security chief (Lt. Reed).

The War College being a post-Federation United Earth institution would have made more sense. No such luck, though. The series makes the War College out to be an alternate Academy that may have existed alongside Starfleet Academy as far back as the 28th century, that this is its first year active on Earth alongside Starfleet Academy, and that at least one Starfleet officer in the cast (Lura) graduated from the War College instead of the Academy. To each their own. I had kind of the opposite reaction, though didn't think either set of episodes was great. I do agree that one of the show's main weaknesses is its insistence on treating the freshman cadets like a particularly unruly grade school class instead of the fairly mature and highly professional young adults you'd expect to be attending one of the most exclusive educational institutions in the Federation. The vibe is less "fun shenanigans" as "standards must've slipped".

About the choice of terminology, certainly... but unlike NuTrek's usual fare, I feel like there's actually some method to their madness on this one even if it's a good deal less clever or subtle than Trek's better-woven Aesops. The War College wasn't a thing in Star Trek: Discovery or any other prior Star Trek series or movie and it doesn't make a lick of sense in context for Starfleet to have two separate, rival service academies with radically different educational priorities. That means it was almost certainly created for the series with a specific narrative purpose in mind. The obvious, ham-fisted, explanation being that the War College is meant as a vehicle for examination and deconstruction of the wildly unpopular decision Discovery, Picard, and Prodigy all made to go and sh*t on everything Star Trek stands for by rewriting the Federation and Starfleet as militaristic isolationists. At the very least, it suggests someone at Paramount understands why audiences hated Discovery, Picard, and Section 31. ... and the Star Trek 2009 reboot trilogy, and Picard, and Section 31. If you're watching Star Trek and you're not thinking you're either not watching real Star Trek or there's something wrong with you. This franchise made a name for itself as cerebral sci-fi that taught moral lessons and examined complex social issues through allegorical space adventure.

Officially, all of the NuTrek shows are within the Prime timeline... that includes Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, Prodigy, Section 31, and now Starfleet Academy. From Discovery S2 onward, the showrunners have been backpedaling and drafting excuses/explanations for various anachronisms or inconsistencies. The Discovery S1 Klingon makeup is being treated like a cosmetic inconsistency the same way it was when Klingon makeup evolved in TMP and TNG and a subject for in-jokes (as in LDS). Spock and the unmentioned sister problem is being handled via the Sybok clause. Other inconsistencies were handwaved, like the holo-communicator being a "trendy" bit of tech that Starfleet experimented with on and off and never really worked right until the far future. The bridge windows are being treated mostly as a 23rd century design fad that fell out of fashion later on. etc. etc. I know some fans consider the far future parts of Discovery and so on to be a Bad Future timeline. EDIT: Star Trek's creators have been beefing over how military Starfleet really is since Star Trek II, where Gene Roddenberry and Nicholas Meyer squared off over the topic at length and to Gene's considerable dissatisfaction. (Even Gene himself wasn't always consistent about it. One of the alien species created to be background characters in Star Trek: the Motion Picture - the Arcturians - are said to be a highly militaristic species who reproduce entirely by cloning and who cheerfully provide billions-strong armies for the Federation in wartime.) The War College seems to have been introduced in Starfleet Academy to allow the story to tackle the subject of the Federation's militarism in an unusually direct manner. (In past titles, it was usually the domain of an Insane/Corrupt Admiral or Starfleet officers in wartime reflecting that they did not sign up to be soldiers.)

Maybe you might want to read a bit more carefully? After all, the question being answered was "Why have something as off-brand for Starfleet as a War College?"

No, I'm not overthinking it. I just explained why that real world term they obviously did not bother to look up before using it in the story is wrong. 😉 Then I did a little bit of theorizing about what narrative purpose this never-before-seen-or-mentioned second Starfleet service academy is meant to serve. Back before the Kurtzman years, Star Trek used to have a fairly robust research team whose job it was to prevent issues like that by checking terminology, making sure that science in the series aligned to real world science as much as possible, etc. Their absence is keenly felt in this new Trek era.

... actually, now that I think on it, there's more wrong with it than that. You see, a Service Academy and a War College are NOT two different names for the same thing and the War College in Starfleet Academy isn't a war college. 🤔 A Service Academy is an educational institution that takes in new recruits as officer cadets and provides them with the necessary education and training for future commissioning into the academy's branch of service as a junior officer. Many also provide students with a university-level education ending in a bachelor's degree. A War College is a higher educational institution that trains experienced senior officers (like Major/Lt. Commander and up)for promotion to senior command and flag officer ranks. It offers Master's degree level qualifications. The War College in Starfleet Academy is presented as a rival service academy to Starfleet Academy, training classes of officer cadets... so it's not actually a war college at all. If it were, its students would be people like Lura Thok or Commander Kelrec. Lt. Commanders and up with a decade or so of service in the officer corps being trained for further promotion to Commander, Captain, and the Admiralty. The implication behind the War College appears to be that the Federation decided to change the curriculum for future Starfleet officers after the Burn led to the Federation's collapse and forced Starfleet to switch from focusing on exploration to focusing on defense. Why they felt the need to create a whole separate institution for that is a mystery. You'd think it would be simplest to change the curriculum at the already well-established Starfleet Academy with its dozens of campuses and call it a day. The implication behind that implication seems to be that the showrunners would like us to think of Starfleet Academy as a gentle rebuke of Discovery-era Star Trek's overly militant mindset with Starfleet and Star Trek once again shifting back towards space exploration and diplomacy. I'd guess the intended arc is that the War College is going to continue to be this wrongheaded, paranoid, aggressive antagonist until it's ultimately dissolved in favor of the Starfleet Academy training program.

Okie-dokie, we got a new episode... "Vitus Reflex". Also in Academy relevant news, apparently Kurtzman is personally directing the season two finale (since this series got renewed before it ever aired in Paramount's usual "set huge piles of money on fire and hope it finds an audience" approach. The episode opens on Cadet Reymi recording a personal message for his parents after about three weeks of classes at the Starfleet Academy San Francisco campus. It seems that his parents hold him to absurdly high standards? Apparently they made him promise to be last to sleep and first to wake up? Seems like he's being set up to be Well Done Son guy. I am, I must admit, obscurely pleased that the old tradition persists... light-up props that absolutely DO NOT need to light up in order to be "futuristic". Cadet Reymi's workout earbuds and jump rope have bright green LED illumination. Kinda gross that he's cracking raw quail eggs into his post-workout creatine tho. It is bizarrely disappointing in retrospect that they didn't make the Academy's actual gymnasium look more futuristic. It looks like a completely ordinary school gymnasium right out of the 1990s. The banners are fun though... the War College sports teams are the fighting Mugatos. Apparently the Starfleet Academy mascot is the Lapling, an endangered species known for being harmless. OK, so apparently all of this is in favor of doing a sports episode centered around the rivalry between Starfleet Academy and the Federation War College? Not gonna lie that does not feel like a great starting point for an episode given how forced the whole thing feels. It's less actual "rival schools" and more Dodgeball: a True Underdog Story level banter. It's trying really hard to be funny and it's not really sticking the landing. Colbert as the computer voice Dean of Students really was not a wise decision since he seems to exist solely to dispense mildly cringeworthy dad jokes... and even the characters in-series are starting to notice. Captain Ake asks if the voiceover for what's apparently a Starfleet Academy promotional video (that looks like it was cut together in 20 minutes) is "too stupid". (Colbert's only role seems to be to interject with what's supposed to be funny dialog anytime the writers think the series has gone too long without someone saying some funny line... it's pretty insipid.) OK, real talk time for a second. Did Quentin Tarantino script this? Because the amount of time spent getting Holly Hunter's bare feet into frame is beyond the point where I can write it off as accidental. We're into "probably someone's fetish" territory. (A point I feel is supported by the fact that the conversation veers into a literal discussion of fetishes shortly thereafter.) There's a shot where the cadets are discussing the prank war in what I guess is supposed to be a botany lab, but the room has an obviously green-screened background that looks less like a botany lab and more like a video game subway tunnel from about 15 years ago? Finally Caleb says something that makes me like him. He doesn't want to engage with the tribalist attitude surrounding the prank war or team sports. Sadly, the series undermines that and some earlier respect shown to Kraag when his decision to abstain was respected by depicting the rest of the cadet class as braindead idiots who are too clumsy, too busy flirting, or so dumb they're literally attempting to eat the potting soil. I really feel badly for Kerrice Brooks because the character she's playing WILL draw a lot of criticism for being a very unkind depiction of autism that's closer to a cognitive deficit. Apparently Calica is a game-ified combat simulation "sport" that is essentially a Serious Business version of laser tag. Enough so that a direct comparison is drawn by SAM. Apparently the War College has actual working security with restricted access. Kelrec even takes a shot at Ake for the swiss cheese security at the Academy. (Thok was not kidding about Kelrec's obsession with tea bordering on a fetish.) As soon as I wrote that, the showrunner started channeling the spirit of Quentin Tarantino again with Holly Hunter needing to get her bare feet in frame. Someone on this show has a foot fetish. It's really REALLY blatant. Apparently they didn't have enough of a budget to redress the gymnasium or construct a proper set for the Calica field, so the Calica match is taking place inside the Academy's atrium which has been relit in red and blue. So Lura and Reno are a thing? Weird relationship dynamic, but whatever. It honestly makes more sense than the Dax/Worf one with the free spirit and stick in the mud. This is two extremely cantankerous women with sharp tongues. Talk about a pairing with Statler and Waldorf energy. The Unspoken Plan Guarantee isn't being invoked here, so something will go off the rails. The first actual laugh the series got out of me was how exaggeratedly casual the cadets look watching the absolute havoc unfold at the War College across the quad. Captain Ake's office has a bunch of model starships scattered about including a refit Excelsior-class (Enterprise-B-type), Oberth-class, NX-class, Defiant-class, Intrepid-class, Galaxy-class, and one or two others too small to identify properly. AND AGAIN WITH THE FEET. I need an old priest and a young priest. We need to cast the ghost of Tarantino out of this series! Creepy and intrusive foot fetish aside, this series appears to be slowly improving. Holly Hunter's character is still an eyesore and the writers are still treating the academy more like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-era high school than the incredibly exclusive university or post-graduate education it's supposed to be, and its humor is way too contemporary to not feel immediately dated, but graduating from offensively bad to indifference-inducingly mediocre is a hell of an improvement. If they ditch the dad jokes and maybe start treating these 20-something year old cadets like adults instead of braindead children who need to be told not to eat dirt it could actually be... dare I say... good.

So this one is out now... and it seems like I was right that audiences were going to be asking for Refunds for Silent Hill. Critics are absolutely MURDERING it. It's currently rocking a 15% critic score and 30% audience score on RT. I'm gonna go see it Monday night to see how bad bad really is.