Star Trek was designed to endure. From the beginning, it was inclusive — not as a marketing strategy, but because that was the whole point of Roddenberry's future. Multiple races, interspecies politics, a Russian on the bridge during the Cold War, a Black woman as a senior officer in 1966. That wasn't "woke," it was the premise. So when people blame inclusivity for Trek's decline, I feel they're misdiagnosing the problem entirely.
What actually killed it is a lack of vision, poor writing, and management that treated the franchise like IP to be mined rather than a universe to be respected.
I'll admit — Academy grew on me. The characters developed, the acting was good, and when it hit the warfare arcs it found some real weight. But it needed more time to breathe, and it never fully escaped the teen drama gravity well that nobody asked for. I wanted to love it, because I love Star Trek and I'll always give it a chance. But wanting to love something and it earning that love are two different things. That's the frustrating part — you could see what it could have been if they'd trusted the material and given it room to develop.
The timeline fragmentation hasn't helped either. I know there are fans who embrace all the timelines, and more power to them — but for me, it's fractured any sense of a coherent universe. Kelvin timeline, Discovery's jump to the 32nd century, prequels contradicting established canon — at some point you can't even tell what's connected to what anymore. The TOSTNGDS9Voyager era had a coherent forward trajectory. You knew where you stood. That matters, because investment in a fictional universe requires continuity to mean something.
For those of us old enough to remember, there was a stretch after TOS ended and before TMP where there was no active Trek at all. It survived. It came back. But it came back because people with genuine passion and understanding picked it up. That's what it needs again — not more content, but better stewardship.
I honestly don't know what Gene Roddenberry would say about any of this. But I suspect he'd recognize the difference between a show that has something to say and one that's just wearing the uniform.