Some Star Trek: Starfleet Academy fans have criticized the show for not staying true to established Star Trek history. While this isn’t always accurate, the recent episode “Come, Let’s Away” included a detail from Star Trek: The Animated Series. Before going on a training mission aboard an abandoned ship, the cadets wore special belts that create a personal life-support field – a feature seen in the 1970s animated version of the show.
Despite a controversial start and a drop in viewership, the series initially found success on streaming platforms. It’s common for Star Trek shows to take time building an audience – The Original Series was canceled due to low ratings, and The Animated Series only came about after a fan protest. Unfortunately, streaming services make it harder for people to stumble upon new shows. Adding to the challenge, some dedicated Star Trek fans are quick to criticize, searching for inconsistencies with established lore. However, Starfleet Academy‘s inclusion of life-support belts from The Animated Series demonstrates that the show doesn’t disregard Star Trek‘s history – it builds upon it and moves the franchise forward.
Why Star Trek: The Animated Series Held a Dubious Place in Canon Until Recently
Let me tell you, moving The Original Series to Friday nights for its third season was a huge mistake – a real kiss of death, honestly. NBC caved to fan mail after season two, but that move essentially guaranteed low ratings, as most young people weren’t home watching TV on a Friday night. It got so bad that Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator, actually left the production! Without his vision, the show definitely lost some steam, but ironically, it really took off when it started airing in syndication. It’s a strange case of a show failing on its original run, but becoming a massive hit later on.
Dedicated fans immediately protested outside NBC, demanding more episodes of the show. Filmation, a studio known for rapidly producing animated content, proposed a reboot, which NBC approved. Remarkably, they also convinced the original cast to return as voice actors. This negative reaction to Starfleet Academy isn’t surprising; similar issues arose even before the new series premiered.
Fans worried the animated series would ruin the original show, but they were pleasantly surprised. While it had some goofy ideas, like special belts that kept people alive, the animation itself was the show’s strength, not its special effects. However, when Gene Roddenberry returned to Star Trek for the movies and The Next Generation, he chose to ignore the animated series, pretending it didn’t officially happen. Later shows, though, started including details from TAS, like Spock’s pet and those life-support belts from Starfleet Academy, showing a change in approach.
How Starfleet Academy Used the Life-Support Belt Concept to Continue to Evolve Star Trek Canon
If today’s dedicated fans had watched the original animated series as it was being made, they probably would have criticized it heavily, just like they scrutinize everything now. In the original Star Trek live-action series, characters sometimes wore spacesuits, a detail seen in a few episodes. However, Filmation, the studio behind the animated series, was known for being able to produce cartoons quickly and cheaply. Redrawing characters in full spacesuits would have been time-consuming and expensive. Instead, the animators found a clever shortcut: they simply changed the color of the characters’ belts and added a glowing yellow outline to suggest they were wearing suits.
Life-support belts were featured in four episodes across the two seasons of The Animated Series, but, like many ideas from that show, they weren’t used again in stories set in the 23rd century. While some technologies did make the jump to other Star Trek series – the holodeck, for example, appeared in a Season 3 episode – the technology used in Starfleet Academy, which takes place over 900 years later, isn’t the same as the original life-support belts.
Although Starfleet Academy doesn’t confirm or deny the existence of these belts in the 23rd century, their inclusion is still a clear reference to TAS. Current Star Trek series often show a great respect for the original show, and sometimes this leads them to focus too much on established details. However, they also use those details to create new stories. Starfleet Academy and other recent series don’t feel bound by strict adherence to canon; instead, they take existing elements – even obscure references like the life-support belt – and build upon them.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy are now available on Paramount+ every Thursday, along with all episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series.
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2026-02-20 01:36