Starfleet Academy is such a fascinating trainwreck of a show. Even the people who want to pretend they like it can only muster the damning praise of comparing it to the worst episodes across all of Star Trek. Hundreds of episodes and a couple dozen hours worth of movies and the strongest comparison they can make is to the episodes everyone almost universally agrees aren't as good as other episodes. And the worst episodes in question were often made while struggling with slashed budgets, or tight deadlines, or an inexperienced guest director.
The TNG episode with the Space Irish was goofy as fuck, for instance, but you know what it had going for it? The cast was still doing their best with bad material. Even early on, during the very rough first few seasons, TNG was trying to ensure that these characters were presented in a way that was respectable and likable and interesting.
Worf and Picard and Riker all get to have some amusing moments that do not denigrate their characters, even if the premise is kinda dumb. There's still a plot there, also. The second colony of all clones who are desperately fighting a losing battle with their own deteriorating genetics is rock solid sci-fi. The idea of cloning people against their will because their colony has become so desperate for new genetic material introduces a nice moral dilemma too. It's definitely tinged with Gene Roddenberry's barely restrained horniness at the end, but even if it's not the best, it works.
Its dumb, but because you've got good characters being played by competent actors, it still works. It's even a little charming in hindsight because they were still in the process of figuring out how to develop and modernize Star Trek in the 90s. Good actors playing characters people like, just with a not-so-great plot.
And then we have Starfleet Academy, which not only has a terrible premise built off of STD's horrendously stupid "Burn" incident, but has a cast of terrible actors, playing terrible characters, and every single episode fucking sucks. The budget and production quality is higher than any other Star Trek show, but it's all in service of a story with no redeeming qualities. They can't even come up with mildly interesting sci-fi plots to carry the cast.
What's worse, the show is so far up its own ass that it is written like the audience will love and become attached to these characters after the first episode. They gave us a plot where the characters did stuff and expressed emotions, so that means that we are supposed to adore these characters now. They expect us to get invested in roided out bad boy, klingon femboy, learning disability hologram, tough girl, other guy (also gay, I think), the multiple gay teachers, and Holly Hunter having history's longest stroke while her spine turns to jelly, requiring her to slump herself over the nearest piece of furniture in ever scene. What are they going to do? Talk about their feelings. Every episode is just angsty characters talking about how they feel ways about stuff. That's it.
100mil+ budget, massive sets, full costume, prosthetics, and VFX departments working ungodly hours so some shitty actors can badly portray a whole cast of gay, emotional teens, and then tell you that "Star Trek has always been like this!" when even the worst episodes Star Trek ever aired weren't even this bad.
