According to a source close to Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, viewership for the streaming series may be far worse than early reports suggested, signaling a troubling trend for the franchise. If accurate, this doesn’t just point to fading interest in an iconic science-fiction brand—it hints at a more decisive rejection of what it has become under Alex Kurtzman’s leadership.
To understand the weight of that claim, it’s worth looking more closely at the numbers.
The Starfleet Academy Reality Check
Speaking on a podcast, YouTuber Mike Stoklasa said, “I heard from my source… The entire first season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, not individual episodes, the entire season total views, about 400,000,” he said. “Not per episode. Cumulatively, the entire series. About 400,000 views. Which is an average of maybe 40,000 views per episode.”
A scene from Starfleet Academy – Paramount+
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It’s worth noting that Starfleet Academy was positioned as a flagship series on Paramount+, with a marketing budget to match. Anyone opening the app should have been aware of the latest entry—yet audiences appear to have chosen almost anything else.
For comparison, the popular YouTube channel Nerdrotic has a Season 1 review that has accumulated around 286,000 views in just over a week—more than seven times the viewership of an average episode of Starfleet Academy. Many smaller YouTube channels regularly surpass 40,000 views without anything close to the budget or production resources of a network series.
Star Trek isn’t a niche brand, but a genre-defining franchise with generations of fans. If these numbers are accurate, the low viewership for Starfleet Academy doesn’t just reflect a single series struggling—it suggests the franchise’s broader dominance may already be slipping away.
The Shift in Star Trek’s Vision
Under Alex Kurtzman’s leadership, Star Trek has grown increasingly divisive. Many fans point out that the original series balanced philosophical debate with adventure, and above all, offered an optimistic vision of the future. Its science-fiction elements, while imaginative, were grounded in logic—making even the most fantastical moments feel believable.
Alex Kurtzman – Wikimedia Commons
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By contrast, more recent series often depict a future weighed down by contemporary social issues. Instead of inviting thoughtful exploration, some viewers feel they’re being lectured to. Starfleet Academy, in particular, appears to lean most heavily into that approach. At the same time, certain storytelling choices push its technology closer to fantasy than science, further distancing it from the grounded tone that once defined the franchise.
With Kurtzman’s contract reportedly set to expire in 2026, some fans are beginning to speculate that Paramount may use the opportunity to place Star Trek in new hands.
Can Star Trek Reclaim Its Legacy?
For the first time in a decade, there are no new Star Trek television series in production. A second season of Starfleet Academy has already been completed and is set for release. At this point, however, it seems unlikely that viewership will grow. With the show already canceled, potential viewers may be hesitant to invest in a series with no future.
Robert Picardo as The Doctor in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Paramount Plus
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The larger question now is whether Star Trek itself is approaching that same uncertainty. While Paramount has the opportunity to place the franchise under new leadership, that alone won’t suffice. What’s needed is a bold, coherent vision—one that can recapture the optimism, intellectual curiosity, and sense of wonder that once defined the Star Trek brand. Without it, even the most loyal fans may find little reason to return.
Are you surprised by the low viewership for Starfleet Academy? Let us know in the comments!
“A second season of Starfleet Academy has already been completed and is set for release.”
This is such a stupid practice, and yet studios keep doing it. You need to wait to see if you have an audience first, otherwise you’re throwing money away on a season that no one is going to watch.
Gotta keep the money-laundering ticking over, I guess.
Feminist, DEI, gay, African-cast shows are garbage. Only the Media loves them. They are the only shows that get showbiz awards, nowadays.
This is so stupid, but this is the future. They’re doing the same to Harry Potter. 😡😡😡
Let’s not forget our newly acquired DEI-Grandmaster of Sci Fi. Nope, not Kurtzman. Or even Tig Nataro or he/his gay romu-klin-dassian or whatever.
Some chick who writes Black Supremacy Fan Fic. Nesmin or something. She/he/ze has ALL dem awardz. Didn’t even have to ax fo dem. Whitey just given ’em away!
Gay journalism like this gets on my tits.
For example, [“it hints at a more decisive rejection of what it has become”].
Was that corporate twat-speak prose spewed out by ChatGayPT? 😡😡😡
The reality is, the “reaction” has been a TOTAL abandonment: global thermonuclear war (soon to be instigated by sycophantic, yet psychotic, AI) would be less effective at reducing the viewing figures for this (gay/trans black-Klingons-prancing-around-in-skirts) Star Trek.
Yeah, it has been pretty clear that no body likes it, everyone hates it. Except for, apparently, my boss who luvs it so much!
Fortunately, the production team ran out of money trying to buy enough latex to do the make up for the fat, gay Gemm-har-har-har (sure, all the latex was for “make up”) that they could only afford to hire a class of retarded kindergarteners to count the number of minutes viewed. Fortunately, for the show runners, the kids don’t know about negative numbers so they were able to stick with a solid “400,000* minutes viewed”.
* the first count for minutes viewed was “dog” so Kurtzman told the kids that “dog” meant 400,000.
STAR TREK and DOCTOR WHO both need a cooling-off period, I’d say at least five years– and then if they can’t be relaunched with competent writers (i.e. no skirt wearing Klingons or gay timelords) both series should be mothballed…
Robert Pic-tardo, Tig No-tardo, and black monsters. What a lineup.
400,000 for the entire season, if true, restores some faith in humanity for me. To pine a fine point about how atrocious these numbers are. What a complete failure this show is. Compare it to Batwoman S3. If you’re commenting on this site, you’ll probably agree that Batwoman was hammered dog shit. By season 3, they had lost half of their S1 audience. Even then, the average per show audience for Batwoman S3 was 470,000. That giant turd of a show drew more in episode than SFA did in it’s entire run. Also, 40,000 per episode, represents 0.05% of Paramount’s entire subscriber base. 99.95% of people who pay for access to this app, could’ve watched it and said, “Nah.” To quote Yoda, “How embarrassing.”
This is why streaming sites need to be prevented from concealing these numbers. Hiding things like this, or otherwise obfuscating them, is a disservice to the fans, the cast and crew, and the shareholders. Like the moron that said She-Hulk was one of D+’s more successful Marvel shows.
There are statements that are all but lies and it shouldn’t be permitted. Shareholders in media companies, in particular, have a vested interest in knowing how many eyeballs each $ of investment is capturing. And then the people who make and greenlight trash shows need to be held accountable. They almost NEVER are. Kennedy held on for a decade over her due-by date. Kurtzman started out expired and it was irresponsible of Paramount to continue to fund his Tumblr quality fiction.
My kid watches a youtube guy named “the Fat Electrician”. We watched his newest episode on an American born, Japanese family Korean War hero that had 868K+ views in the five days after its’ release.
40k is like an average MLB stadium.
Utter irrelevancy.
But, but you guuuuuuyyys! We made it gay-a! And season 2 is gonna be gay as f***k, you guys! Guys? Where are you going? Guuuuyyyysss-a?!
They said it couldn’t be done, but Kurtzman Trek really has gone boldly where no one has gone before. Nor does anyone apparently want to ever go.