u/Player3333333

I know that criticisms of Academy are hit or miss, and a recent post made a solid point that many of Academy's critiques are poorly made. Still, I think there's more than enough structural problems for an analysis regarding why I, in my own opinion, view Academy as being a show that's just outdated in 2025/2026.

Before getting into that, it's worth noting that Academy's premise is just innately hard to pull-off. You may have noticed that there's a lot of high school dramas around, but fairly few, if any, college dramas. One reason, is that high school has controllable variables. Everyone usually comes from the same neighborhood, characters aren't adults, so adulting can just be ignored, and today there's an end goal vis a vis 'go to college'.

College, on the other hand has none of the above. All of a sudden you have a cohort who can drink legally but probally doesn't have a clue about taking our a mortgage. You can also say goodbye to any common variables. Colleges have a bazillion clubs, even more sports, on top of many discrete departments. Classes are more lecture based, unless they're seminars - only the latter of which are going to be interesting to watch. Professors often don't have close relationships with their students, not to mention that you have graduate students and TAs in the mix as well.

Basically college is incredibly difficult to map out - and that's before jobs, careers, and internships make into the mix. As a result, Trek always mentions the Academy, but is quick not to linger. Wrath of Khan has Academy students being quite heavily involved, but they support the main-cast. Likewise, Nog provides a really good Academy insight, and often provides valuable services (Sisko's desk for example) but again a big part of his character is contrasting him with seasoned officers like O'Brien and he's not single handedly saving the day. In effect, making Academy a university show would be incredibly hard to do, hence the show chose the 'make it a high school' option.

On its own that might not be a problem, but the issue is that Academy just feels outdated. In particular, it takes tropes and storylines from high school dramas that a lot of good dramas (Sex Education and Derry Girls for example) have really moved beyond.

For example, at the most basic level, the series centers around the trope of a young man (Caleb) with a chip on his shoulder being taken under the wing by a maternal figure (Ake), who will mold the young man into a responsible member of society. This is not only one of the most cliche tropes imaginable, but also results in Caleb's character lacking room for growth (ironically). In particular, Caleb 180ing into a Starfleet role model cuts off so many interesting character ideas. For example you could have Caleb just up and leave Starfleet entirely, but continue to work with the organization on his own terms - showing that you don't need a Com-Badge to do good. You could also have him explicitly call out Starfleet for its many flaws or have him openly question the Prime Directive, or point even just point out that Starfleet can often become enmeshed in group-think. You don't have to make him right all the time, but a character who both learns from their school and refuses to fully conform to their institutionalization is something that isn't cliche - and ironically is something that Beckett Mariner did fairly well in Lower Decks as she both cleaned up her act, but also remained skeptical of Star Fleet jingoism.

Then you have the rest of the cast being nearly one for one versions of high school drama tropes. For example, Genesis being obsessed with success is one of the oldest high school drama motivations, and one that doesn't really add much to her character. For example, we never see her considering undermining her friends in the name of getting ahead, or anything else that shows how toxic hyper competitiveness can be - which if anything validates the behavior.

Jay-den really does not do all that much. A pacifist Klingon is a really cool idea, and reminds me of an old post I once saw about how Klingon counsellor could adapt Klingon ideas of battle towards concepts of mindfulness. Heck, having him believe that as a doctor he must reject Klingon tradition only to discover that he can adapt traditions in a new way is peek Star Trek. Yet he never really dives too deep into Klingon philosophy.

SAM is the quirky fish out of water - which often means that quirkiness is substituted for character development.

Tarima being scared of her own power likewise is a fairly standard trope. Personally I think it would have been cool if she was actually alright with her abilities, and more of the story surrounded other characters accepting her.

Reymi comes across as arrogant and pretentious for no good reason. His initial fight with Jayden is just childish - in real life he would have been immediately been lampooned as a petty bully. His fight with Caleb is likewise contrived - in reality both would likely just give each other the cold shoulder. A great example of this 'enemy to friend' done right is O'Brien and Bashir, where at first neither likes each other, but they can act professionally because they are, well, professionals.

Plotwise, we have the classic high school activity tropes, and they all feel a bit stale. Chief amongst them, the fight with the War College feels unnecessary. School rivalries are common, my university had one, and it manifested with the odd joke here and there and a friendly prank every now and then. But making your identity entirely about a school rivalry is just immature at best, and downright childish at worst. What makes the rivalry more annoying is that there's no real stakes involved. We don't know why these two entities would dislike each other, other than because they are just said to be rivals. On the other hand, if the show made it so that the Academy was replacing the War College then that suddenly creates both a reason for the rivalry, makes the intense bickering make more sense, and provides an obvious plot point of 'rather than replace why don't we work together' which is what the show tries to do, but more ham-fistedly.

Bracka is another case of style of substance. He's over-acting, and that can be fine, if it serves a villain's point. The issue is that Bracka doesn't really have that much depth. He hates the Federation, and so concocts a crazy Galaxy ending plan to take them down with a stolen doomsday weapon. No offense, but that's a borderline Saturday morning cartoon level scheme. Like Bracka could easily have been someone who attempts to politically undermine the Federation, or who uses subterfuge to manipulate the Federation into weakening itself.

In addition, the reveal that he was not actually done in by the Federation feels like a cop-out. A really sophisticated show could easily have Bracka have a legitimate point, but be going about it the wrong way. In fact Caleb himself could easily concede that Bracka is right to criticize the Burn era Federation, but instead have Caleb state that he's going to try to walk a middle-path between skepticism of the Federation and blind jingoism.

Finally, the plot itself escalates way too quickly. The show flip flops between high school level antics, the students getting in way over their heads, and 'end of the galaxy level missions'. Part of the reason for this is the shorter seasons, but that's sort of a iffy excuse. Bracka could have a way less ambitious plan - one directly involving the academy (maybe he wants to sabotage the 'future' of the Federation just like they sabotaged his future). Likewise, the show could have focused more on the classroom learning. Once again, this comes down to the same problem mentioned above. For an Academy show you either have to show the really boring lectures and classroom material, or you have to cut that all out, at which point why even set it at the Academy.

In the end, the actors in Academy are doing a good job, but ultimately Academy feels like a show that's really two decades too late - and going forward I really hope that there's more of an effort to make the characters and writing reflect that while college kids are not necessarily Jean Luc Picard, at the Academy you would expect them to also not be Marty McFly or Biff Tanner.

One of the issues with Warno is that its attempt to merge alt history with real life orders of battle make no sense. War, as the dictum goes, is the continuation of politics by other means. Political reality influences military goals and in turn influence military procurement. In the Warnoverse most militaries are woefully underarmed all things considered. The issue is that IRL by the late 1980s most NATO and Pact countries, bar the US and USSR really, were under the assumption that the Cold War was slowing down. The result is that a lot of their militaries were just under armed. The issue is that if MTW does exist, then it should actually be more rather than less pronounced for NATO.

The issue is that realistically NATO should be using their mid 1990s gear, because a lot of that stuff was designed in the 1980s but delayed due to the end of the Cold War. ADATS for the US is one clear example, alongside the avenger. Older tanks, namely the M60s, should all have ERA. Brenus should be the AMX-30 norm. Cobras should be mostly firing Tow 2s. Marksman turrets should be more available - Panzerfaust 3s and AT-4s should be more common, especially the AT-4. Another clear example is the AMRAAM. In the Warnoverse the real threat of a massive Soviet war should have led to AMRAAMs being much more common in the USAF. Heck it is not unrealistic to assume that Germany and Britain buy some as well. Likewise, the Canadians probably would get their Leo 1 upgrade early on, and in fact could plausibly could even get their Leo 2s. Likewise, the Leclerc really would have been accelerated into production, so at the minimum pre-production versions would be around

Now obviously the issue is that adding more modern weapons would dilute the 1980s feeling of the game - however this is not the case for Pact. Pact nations routinely get stuff that makes sense in terms of Pact nations re-arming for war, but makes no sense if realism is induced. For example, the Czech military has more T72Bs than some actual Soviet units. The Soviets have access to R-77s and the entire 27th Division is loaded with stuff that would have been highly unlikely to see any service in 1989, since the USSR was falling apart. The KA-50 is an obvious example, but it’s so infamous that it’s not worth noting really. Meanwhile nearly every second Soviet division seems to have prototypes up the wazoo. The issue is that the prototype to production rations are obviously skewed in Warno. If there is one prototype but fifteen thousand tanks, in Warno that translates to (I am just making up numbers here) to 1 prototype for 12 non prototypes. However not all prototypes are the same. The Berg shipping gun is way out of the timeline. However it makes no sense to restrict Brenus models and Britain arguably should get some early star streaks outside of London home defense.

Meanwhile the USSR gets helmet tracking missiles for its already OP aviation. NATO, on the other hand, has no way to model its highly advanced sensor suite or better night vision devices. Obviously saying NATO is worse than Pact is absurd. Each division on its own merits must be evaluated and some of the top if not the very top divisions are NATO. The issue, is that from a diversity of material perspective, NATO finds itself lacking. Like do we really think that German soldiers would be using the red-eye in the even of a war?

Likewise,

As a result, balancing for NATO really should move away from ‘was it in service in 1989’ to, would it be a balanced addition to the game, would it thematically fit the late 1980s, and would it address a gap that exists.

A clear example is that France could get export tanks, such as the AMX-40, since in the event of a looming war you’d want to upgrade the AMX-30 ASAP. Finally, for a nemesis, it may be worth creating a fully paper division, containing bleeding edge NATO weaponry in the same style as the 27th. I.E, Marder 2s, C package Leopards, maybe even the early production Eurocopter Tiger.

Since the above division would be a bit too busted, a compromise could be made. Take the NATO prototypes that exist, claim they were scaled up to meet the war effort, and then have them shipped out. Ergo the US ADATs, linebacker Bradley, maybe even an M1A2 as the heaviest of all tanks. In the future I might link to a fully MTW order of battle….

https://preview.redd.it/qvo2mfz8wn5h1.png?width=619&format=png&auto=webp&s=9d5b1aa9a9dc7e31347f5955ee6e139e65a5a535

It's wild how the technology in Strangereal has (subtly) advanced over the years. In Ace Combat Zero we really were stuck with early third generation jets as our early options, lasers needed an entire tower to function, or at least the Morgan, and ZOE was still in its infancy. Aerial fortresses were small and barely did any damage.

Flashforward to the 2010s, and fourth generation jets are more common, third gens are barely present in any real numbers, and even some fourth gens such as the Tornado, are gone. Lasers can be mounted onboard the F-15 or SU-33. Aerial fortresses are being just printed out left and right. To compensate the starter jets have all been fourth-gen since AC-6.

Yet somehow, the Phantom and MiG-21 are still around, the A-10 and SU-25 have not been replaced by drones, and we have Vietnam War era carrier aviation.