Class Dismissed – Starfleet Academy Cancelled

Source: https://trekmovie.com/2026/03/23/breaking-starfleet-academy-to-end-with-season-2-but-paramount-confirms-commitment-to-star-trek/

Starfleet Academy – featuring WWE Superstar Becky Lynch – has been cancelled. People will blame various things; I blame Becky. She’s the Baby Flair of Star Trek – everything that goes wrong is her fault.

Back in my day, you cancelled a series after its first season failed and it didn’t get a second. Nowadays, you cancel a series after its first season failed, but still air the second season because it’s already in the can and you need to recoup some of those funds… cue the snide grin of Kevin Nash on WCW Thunder commentary duties clearly not giving a fuck, which is what I’d imagine Paramount management must feel like at the moment, for better or worse.

Look, I haven’t seen the show, so I’m largely ambivalent in regards to its cancellation. I do know that it hasn’t garnered the viewership numbers and sometimes, yeah, it takes a while for a series to find its footing with an audience. More often than not, a series gets a season at most before higher ups decide to close up shop. It’s the sad reality of things. And I know that fans will see this as a victory for the grifters who were ragging on this thing for a lot of what I perceive to be “bad faith” reasons and wanted this off the air. Well, yeah, that could be the case… but those folks are never going to get what they want, which is a show that appeals to them because whatever they think Star Trek actually is, it is certainly not what they want, which is… I don’t know what they want.

As for me… like I said, haven’t seen the show. Had no real interest in the show due to its YA setting. Clips certainly didn’t inspire much confidence and was not enough of a push to say “Yes, I will subscribe to Paramount Plus and watch this series that doesn’t interest me despite the Star Trek brand.” Because I am one of those folks who does not slavishly consume all Star Trek. You’ll have those folks around who will watch everything and like everything because of their blind devotion to a brand and will support whatever hapless endeavor no matter what, which is every bit as toxic as raging hate boners of sitting through something you clearly do not like and feel the need to let the world know you hate this thing on a regular basis.

Really, you should be more like me; in that on the 31st day of every month, you let the world know that you haven’t watch the hit Section 31 streaming movie starring Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh because it amuses you, puts a smile on your face, and lets the world know that you HAVEN’T wasted your time with something you know you’re going to hate. More people need to NOT watch stuff in order to send the right message. People hate-watching stuff in droves? Pfft, who gives a shit? They’re still watching, they’re still giving you viewership. What do it matter if they’re calling this show the drizzling shits? I’ve seen worse show get extended for multiple years and when I sit down to watch some of these things, I often wonder why because this is just awful.

So while I’m neither thrilled nor saddened by Academy’s cancellation, there is a part of me that can’t help but feel a pan of disappointment whenever a Star Trek thing gets binned regardless of whether I like it or not. I’m also a bit concerned as to where this franchise is headed once all the remaining SNW and SFA episodes have aired – Strange New Worlds has one full ten-episode season as well as an abbreviated fifth season. There are different pitches that have been proposed; a Year One follow-up on Kirk and company, a sequel series to Enterprise (which would actually kinda, sorta intrigue me), and of course, an adaptation of the hit Xbox 360 game, Star Trek Legacy… oh wait.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind it if Star Trek went on hibernation for a few years while the people in charge figure out where they want to go with it. Something about absence making the heart grow fonder or some sentimental crap like that. Truth be told, there’s a lot of legacy franchises that could be best served going into extended hibernation for the foreseeable future. Maybe fill the void with something else, some original IP that did what came before, but with a new spin that makes it unique.

We talk about these things taking big swings and yet none is able to take the biggest swing of all; creating something truly new and unique that speaks to the current generation and not just feeding off the rotting corpses of what came before. That’s the only real “big swing” I want to see Hollywood take. Otherwise, you may as well just give up and let AI do the scriptwriting for you. Considering the output that I’ve seen as of late, it might actually be a step up.

In any event, that’s the state of Star Trek as it is now. They’ve got stuff to put on the air, which fans should be grateful that they are when they could easily can everything and take a tax writeoff; similar to that Batgirl movie that was made and promptly shitcanned. Where it goes from here… who knows? I guess we’ll have to see what’s out there. Engage… or something.

Lap.

Review #1299 – Tetris X (PSX)

Oh lookie… it’s another Tetris game from Japan on Playstation… and that’s about all I’ve got on that front unless I can somehow get that Cardcaptor Sakura variant that costs a billion dollars or something.

On the bright side, Review #1300 is on Friday and it won’t cover a Tetris game.

WCW Monday Nitro (March 25th, 1996) – A Giant Cluster-MEH

Tonight, WCW World Champion Ric Flair (with Arn Anderson) defends his title against THE GIANT (with Kevin Sullivan)… but don’t get too excited, kids. This one ends in a schmozz where Arn Anderson hits Giant with a chair and Giant thinks Sullivan did it and he gets the guzzle. Giant would eventually win the title a month later, but in the meantime… well…

I’ll be honest; this Nitro didn’t do much for me. Macho Man got a win over Fit Finlay, Konnan retained his US title over the masked man known only as Mister JL, and Sting and Luger retained their tag titles over the AMERICAN MALES, but the matches were just kinda, sorta “meh.” Honestly, the Saturday Night show that they were hyping up – featuring a Finley/Bobby Eaton match – sounds more exciting than the Nitro show that was put up against RAW, which featured *checks notes* Shawn Michaels defeating Leif Cassidy, Hunter Hearst Helmsley defeating Aldo Montoya, and the main event of Ahmed Johnson and Owen Hart going to a double DQ finish.

Fucking riveting television.

Next.

War Of The Worlds (2025) Is Fucking Horrible

War Of The Worlds is fucking horrible.

No, I’m not talking about the original HG Wells novel. That’s a classic. No, I am not talking about the 2005 adaptation with Tom Cruise. Not what I would call a classic, but it had its moments. Nor am I talking about the Asylum equivalent, which I’m sure is about as high-brow as all the other Asylum films that have come and gone ’round these parts.

No, we’re talking about the Ice Cube starring vehicle that escaped the Amazon mines last year. Shot during the prevailing circumstances of 2020 when everyone was stuck at home and we had to make due with our own limited means, this new take on the novel involves lots of webcam footage, lots of screenshots of social media platforms, and also most prominent of all, endless Amazon product placement. And this was sitting somewhere in the Amazon warehouses until someone found it and decided to put up on Prime Video. And somehow I sat down and watched this thing.

And it sucks.

Everything is terrible. The acting is beyond atrocious, with bit players giving off listless, almost life-draining performances while the major characters are… well, I guess they’re happy to be getting paid and are only willing to do just the barest bare minimum of the bare minimum of effort one is willing to put into a work in order to justify whatever pay they earned from their participation. The editing is awful; everyone is doing Zoom calls, facecams, we get capture footage of people’s phones and social media. And whenever we have special effects of the invaders, they look like the cheapest of the cheapest cheap end of the old Lucasfilm table scraps that were abandoned long after the Phantom Menace wrapped production. And while we’re at it, let’s pump in every social platform under the sun and make sure it gets facetime. Let’s pump in Amazon’s presence. The product placement is dreadful and I hate it.

Some people have a tendency to call some of these bad movies “so bad it’s good.” In that you can find things to poke fun of and that’s usually where the entertainment comes from. And if a film can do that for you, then that makes it entertaining in a way that wasn’t intended by the filmmakers, but that’s on them. And granted, I’ve seen my share of bad films that I could poke fun of or at least draw out some morbid entertainment value out… but when it comes to this… thing that Amazon dared call a movie, there’s no entertainment to be found here. This was probably the closest I ever came to hate watching a product because it took about five minutes to hate this film and I willed myself through the rest of it, just so I can say that it sucked.

This is an example of a movie that deserved to be shelved and filed as a tax write-off. There is no redeemable quality to be found in this movie. There is no reason for it to exist, much less be released for consumption. Everyone involved in this piece of crap should be made to take a long, hard walk off a high clifftop and land headfirst into the pavement below to destroy whatever defective brain matter possessed these people to make this film in the first place. And no, I’m not being harsh in saying that. If anything, that’s being fucking kind.

However, if you want me to say something nice about this movie… yeah, sorry, I can’t do it. I just can’t. This may very well challenge Ready To Rumble as the absolute worst movie in human history. It’s neck in neck. I’m on the fence as to which one I actively hate worse.

Every so often, someone will ask what it would take for me to give the Paul Feig Ghostbusters a watch since it’s going to be a decade old and I still haven’t watched it.

To quote a legendary and disgraced wrestling promoter…

No chance in Hell.

And you’ve got War Of The Worlds 2025 to thank for that.

Fuck this movie.

They’re Having The Rematch At The Pearly Gates

Courtesy of BingeSociety Youtube channel, from The Way Of The Dragon (a.k.a. Return Of The Dragon), perhaps one of the most famous fight scenes in cinema history as the late great Bruce Lee takes on the late great Chuck Norris.

Other people can have their Chuck Norris Facts or share the Walker: Texas Ranger memories or his many, many Cannon-helmed action films, but to me, this is peak Norris… even if he ended up losing the fight.

R.I.P Chuck.

THE BITE COMMENTARIES #15 – Star Trek Through Apathy

Star Trek is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The original series first aired in 1966 and has been on a roller coaster ride of sorts since that time, having seen multiple motion pictures, feature films, and animated projects under its belt. It has ridden the wave of fan support that produced a multitude of side material such as novels, comic books, interactive games, action figures, starship models, and other things. And it currently has a hit show on the Paramount+ streaming service. It should be a great time for Star Trek.

“Oh, but here comes crusty old Dave to rant and rave about how the current product sucks and how he misses the old days.”

Well, you’re half right. I do miss the old days when I actually looked forward to new Star Trek shows and movies. You’re kinda wrong about the show sucking, though. I’ve yet to see Starfleet Academy – never been big on young adult fare and me being a not-young adult anymore doesn’t help matters either – but I’ve heard generally favorable things from those who have. It’s hard to be invested in a franchise whose future seems to be in a state of flux, what with all the rumors surrounding ownerships and mergers. Will there even be new Star Trek after this current crop ends? Should there even be new Star Trek at this point?

Continue reading “THE BITE COMMENTARIES #15 – Star Trek Through Apathy”

Review #1297 – Aerofighters Assault (Nintendo 64)

I’m doing you a solid of sorts by putting this one up early. Next Friday’s though… tough one.

Star Soldier did a solid by sticking with what worked for the series. Aerofighters, on the other hand, went in a different direction… and effectively killed the series. Yes, they called the recent one a reunion, but it’s more like a revival of a long dormant brand that probably should have stayed dead if I’m being honest… but, hey, the more nostalgia you can dig out of mothballs, the better… allegedly.

Anyway, there may or may not be one more N64 game before we close out the month depending on how things turn out over the weekend. Honestly, I’ve been under the weather as of late and also there are other issues at work. I am hoping that things work out where we’ll have some sort of stream as scheduled, but if not, I’ll cook up something else in the interim and move the live show for another time.