The death of Captain James T. Kirk remains one of the saddest travesties in the history of the Star Trek franchise. Kirk died not in glorious drop-kicking battle, but falling from a bridge---and worse, it happened in Generations, a 1994 crossover with The Next Generation that threw the Original Series crew overboard the same way Data tossed Dr. Crusher. But all is not lost: What if I told you there is another Star Trek movie after that, with Shatner reprising his role as Kirk?
YouTuber Julian Hiti edited together all of the cutscenes from the late-1990s videogames *Starfleet Academy *and Klingon Academy to create a movie you can watch for free—with Shatner front and center. The PC games came on CD-ROM, and featured live-action video scenes that let you choose your character's response to questions. *Starfleet Academy *takes place at space-captain school, where cadet David Forrester (Peter Kluge) struggles to learn how to command his "crew" of fellow cadets. Some of them are tempted to join Vanguard, an insurgent group that wants the Federation to abandon its peace-loving values and wage war with the Klingons. Vanguard's hand is strengthened by mysterious attacks on Federation outposts along the Klingon border. (You can read a a novelization of the game by beloved Trek novelist Diane Carey.) In Klingon Academy, a young Klingon must help get to the bottom of a plan to take over the Klingon Empire while navigating debates over war with the Federation.
The games didn't slay critics—PC Magazine called Starfleet Academy the "biggest disappointment in recent gaming history"—but the number of beloved Trek stars who showed up is nothing short of amazing. Besides Shatner (who enjoys more screen time than you'd expect), you get George Takei as Sulu and Walter Koenig as Chekov. On the Klingon side, Christopher Plummer reprises his role as General Chang from Star Trek VI, and David Warner shows up as Gorkon for a few minutes.
While fan service abounds—you learn how General Chang got his eyepatch in the first sequence—the resulting two-hour "movie" is ... not great. The storylines barely rise to silly soap opera, the acting (apart from the famous guest stars) ranges from wooden to shouty, and the VFX looks even worse than you'd expect from the phrase "1990s videogame." If someone made a crappy TV movie featuring the Original Series crew 20 years ago, it would have been better than this. Hell, many Star Trek fan films top this. Despite the games' segments featuring loose continuity links that help position this as a prequel to Star Trek VI, the *Klingon Academy *footage doesn't mesh well with the Starfleet Academy parts. (Granted, they are different games.)
Die-hard *Star Trek *fans know of many attempts to get a Starfleet Academy TV show or movie off the ground. (The 2009 Star Trek film spends some time in the Academy during its first reel.) The idea of following a group of young pipsqueaks as they learn Federation values and starship mechanics always sounded entertaining—but also like an awful CW show.
This footage, unfortunately, skews more toward that. Aside from the terrible acting (pretty much any scene without a recognizable Trek actors is MST3K-worthy), the go-to storylines amount to "insipid love triangle," "someone neglects their schoolwork," or "young cadet discovers something that all of the competent adults somehow couldn't work." That said, I found even the worst moments of teen drama a guilty pleasure, and the acting improves whenever a star of the Original Series wanders in.
But for all that, you'll find the Starfleet Academy "movie" addictively fun---especially if you can laugh at the many ridiculous moments in which Starfleet Cadets try Serious Drama and end up sounding like 90210 rejects. Shatner, as Kirk, brings his usual gusto to the role and clearly enjoys wandering around greenscreen backgrounds and cheap sets. The nostalgia trip brings everyone back for one last story. (Kirk even helps David figure out how to deal with the famous Kobyashi Maru scenario.) Plus, they dare to mention the Organian Peace Treaty, a plot contrivance Star Trek seems determined to forget.
Maybe most surprisingly, Starfleet Academy wanders down one avenue Star Trek could stand to explore further. Following in the footsteps of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, the game dares to question Starfleet values, including the Prime Directive and emphasis on diplomacy, and consider their shortcomings. What better setting to poke at the roots of Trek ideology than the academy where people study Starfleet's values?
The Star Trek universe, almost from the start, has been bigger than any one show, movie, or narrative. Its vitality hinges on fans adapting and recontextualizing it for their own enjoyment. Given that legacy, Starfleet Academy feels not like an ill-fated video game, but a guilty-pleasure glimpse of an alternate universe—albeit one in which Star Trek failed so horribly that it ended up as a series of direct-to-DVD films. And for those of us who felt horribly cheated by the final adventure of the first, and greatest, James Tiberius Kirk, it feels inexpressibly great to see him back in the fuzzy red-and-white uniform one more time.
