JIM TREACHER: Die, Trek, Die.

If you make a show that people want to watch, they’ll watch. If you don’t, they won’t. They’ll even watch fat alien broads if the story is good. You’d think Paramount would’ve gotten that by now.

The producers and actors probably won’t learn a damn thing, though. These days, the trend is for the custodians of these failed franchises to blame the audience.

“You didn’t like the all-female Ghostbusters reboot, fill of pointless dancing and cringeworthy ad-libs? You just hate women!”

“You didn’t see the point of Rose Tico or Vice-Admiral Holdo or any of the other forgettable characters in The Last Jedi? You just hate Asians! And women!”

“You didn’t even bother with The Marvels or Madame Web or Ballerina? Well, guess what?”

The word “woke” has become so overused that I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean anymore, but I do know that diversity, inclusion, and equity are very poor substitutes for good storytelling. You can’t guilt-trip a mass audience into showing up for your shoddy product by calling them bigots.

The original Star Trek, which aired on NBC from 1966 to 1969, lived on throughout the 1970s and ‘80s in reruns, until the movies and the Next Generation showed up, because it was about big ideas. Its writing was so timeless, the show transcended its plywood sets and primary color uniforms. In contrast, as John Nolte writes, Starfleet Academy feels stillborn, “stale the day it was released, like something from 2020 when there were still enough people high on their woke supply to make garbage like this a temporary hit.”