'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' to end with Season 2

Disappointing, but not entirely surprising.

I think it had a rough start, which might have slowed any chance for it to gain momentum and viewers.

The recent Skydance/Paramount merger probably didn't help. They're probably looking to cut everything that isn't actively bringing in new subscribers, while also trying to identify which shows they can cancel without losing too many customers.

As a life long Trekker, I'm sad about this. SFA wasn't my favorite Trek show but I enjoyed it and found it's ambition refreshing. Same goes with ST:P which I really didn't connect with but appreciated the ambition. I will always maintain that the worst part of Star Trek is the fans but Skydance/Paramount (and the corporate, shareholder value driven hellhole now controlling the arts) is quickly slowly making a case for itself.

I enjoy SFA, but it has a few problems, similar to Discovery - that there is too much focus on one character, even episodes focusing on the rest of the crew (which are great!) are still too focused on overall plot.

Star Trek is supposed to be about the crew, and while it does a much better job than say Discovery, it still falls into the problem of having a specific catered story for one or two specific characters.

Not only this, but that 'specific focus' is hardcore, everything hinges on the story of Caleb, they spend the vast majority of the first two episodes on him, his mother, and the chancellor, and then just... sort of drops it. It's the same problem they had with DISCO, where they focused too much on one character for extended amounts of time, built up a lot of emotion and then just sort of ignored it, before inevitably diving back into it.

And if you really want to say "Yes! It does focus on the rest of the crew!", if you look at TNG, TOS, VOY, etc, they explored all of the deep parts of the different characters over-time, and often in tandem. The limited episode count, the focus on the 'main characters', the need for a 'universe destroying seasonal force' severely hampers that sort of character building, and I know this is possible even with the shorter seasons - go watch Vikings! Incredible, multi-faceted, multi-character story arches, and they had only eleven episodes a season up until the fourth one (and even then, the fourth season is just two seasons stuck together).

Plus, the only character that felt like 'mattered' was Nus Braka, and that's only because Paul Giamatti is one of the greatest actors of all time. What is SFA without him? His story is cleared up practically by the end of the first season, and do we really want a Star Trek where the only interesting character is a guy who is so violently against the federation he will destroy the entire universe because of it?

They wanted to make Star Trek edgy, and dark with DISCO, and that extended to SFA, because what I can only understand from Kurtzman and team, is that "People like Star Trek because its dark" without realizing Star Trek was only dark because of old televisions and less-than-stellar lumens when filming pre-2000s.

There are some incredible, very Star Trek moments, but they only appear when giving moral speeches, not in the actual day-to-day actions of the show.

I say all this, and I am someone who loved watching the show.

Well that's a relief, for some time I thought that the tastes of Trek fans just completely degenerated. Perhaps the recently announced (though with no date yet) season 4 of The Orville will unite us again.