UPDATE: Picardo joins William Shatner at Star Trek’s New York Comic-Con panel on October 10.
Robert Picardo says he knows what killed Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, and it wasn’t the ratings.
The actor, who reprised his Voyager role as The Doctor in the Paramount+ series, tells The Guardian (via The Independent) the show was canceled after Trump aide Stephen Miller and Elon Musk went after it online.
“We did not get a fair shake,” Picardo says. “We were killed in the cradle.”
Paramount+ announced back in March that the Holly Hunter-led series ends with Season 2, which airs next year.
‘Do I Think It’s A Coincidence?’
Miller called a clip from the show “tragic.”
Musk piled on a video of Hunter’s Captain Nahla Ake wearing glasses, posting on X: “Turns out they banned Ozempic and LASIK in the future lol.”
Picardo, 72, connects those posts straight to the cancellation.
“Let’s face it: when someone that high up in the administration and also Elon Musk piled on the same day, do I think it’s a coincidence that the new owners of Paramount cancelled our show the first moment they could have?” he says.
Picardo also addressed the show getting called woke.
“Yes, there was the fact that we had a gay Klingon. Did a lot of people get over-exercised about that? My feeling is, get over yourself!” says Picardo. “There seems to be a movement to drive us back to the 1950s. Star Trek is all about the future, not about returning.”
“If we caught the same flu that Stephen Colbert and the editorial freedom of CBS 60 Minutes caught then we’re in excellent company,” he adds.
William Shatner, 95, also weighed in on Miller’s criticism: “Can you imagine they’re watching TV, criticizing TV. I mean, it’s bizarre!”
“And by the way, what is ‘woke’?” Shatner asked.
No One Was Watching
Here is the problem with blaming two posts on X: the audience was already gone.
Paramount+ never gave an official reason for the cancellation. Variety reported one at the time: low viewership, with none of the show’s first ten episodes ranking on the Nielsen Top 10 streaming charts.
Ten episodes. Zero appearances. The sets were torn down months ago.
Musk and Miller didn’t empty those charts. Viewers did, by not showing up.
Picardo is right about one thing: the new owners canceled the show the first moment they could.
As Cosmic Book News exclusively reported, David Ellison’s Paramount has the hard numbers on the audience Hollywood lost across Marvel, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Star Trek alike.
Our insiders told us in June that Ellison and Mike De Luca are out to save Star Trek by taking the franchise back to what made Wrath of Khan through The Next Generation work. As one source put it, “nostalgia is the new woke.”
That reset is already running. Paramount+ is talking to a lot of writers as Alex Kurtzman’s deal runs out, and everything rides on the new movie: the Goldstein-Daley thriller with all-new characters set further into the future.
And Star Trek just turned 60 with The Wrath of Khan back on theater screens.
Starfleet Academy ends with Season 2 next year. Two posts on X didn’t cancel it. An empty Nielsen chart did.
