Spoilers follow for the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series premiere, “Kids These Days,” and Episode 2, “Beta Test,” both of which are available on Paramount Plus now.
It’s crazy to think that, with Starfleet Academy, we are now on our sixth modern Star Trek television series in less than 10 years. This new age of Alex Kurtzman-led Trek started in 2017 with Star Trek: Discovery, and while there have of course been highs and lows during that period, the one thing we can all hopefully agree on is that Kurtzman has tried to do different things with each show. From the “rebel with a cause” antics of Michael Burnham to the aged Admiral Picard flying around with a band of space pirates to the self-referential animation of the Lower Decks gang, these series have approached Gene Roddenberry’s world from new and varied angles.
And that trend continues with Starfleet Academy, which based on the first two episodes, both of which were directed by Kurtzman, not only gives us exactly what the title promises – a story about a school for prospective Starfleeters – but also what feels like a fresh and fun take on Star Trek itself.
Holly Hunter leads a wide and varied cast as Chancellor Nahla Ake, a once and future Starfleet captain who has been tasked with rebooting the Academy after a century of darkness for the United Federation of Planets in the aftermath of that galactic catastrophe known as The Burn. (Long story.) Reluctant to return to the Command Red uniform, it’s the chance to redeem herself – and the Starfleet of her past – for a misguided decision from years earlier that finally brings her back into the fold. That incident saw her sentencing a woman named Anisha Mir (a guest-starring Tatiana Maslany) to a “rehabilitation camp” as punishment for crimes committed, but with the consequence of the woman being separated from her child, Caleb.
So right off the bat you’ve got Star Trek touching on real-world issues, but the script by series creator Gaia Violo doesn’t actually have all that much to say about this topic beyond “family separation = bad.” Regardless, this is the plot tissue that will no doubt be driving the Ake character throughout the season, as well as the now Academy-age Caleb (Sandro Rosta), who Ake is reunited with in the “present” time – and thus given the chance to redeem the mistake she made all those years earlier.
The first 20 minutes of the hour-and-15-minute pilot are overly concerned with this business, plus some loud, CGI-y action scenes that aren’t terribly interesting. Modern Star Trek often goes big with the visuals and has the money to do so, which can be great under the right circumstances, but if the characters and story aren’t there, it’s in service of nothing. So it’s a great relief when Caleb arrives at Starfleet Academy – or rather, the USS Athena, which is a starship and also part of the Academy facilities – and meets his fellow cadets. For once he gets a shave and a haircut (and perhaps most importantly, one of those spiffy Starfleet-issue uniforms), the character and actor seem to lighten up, as does the show.
There's vibes of Deep Space Nine’s deep bench of players beyond the main cast.The core group of cadets, i.e. our main cast, includes Karim Diané’s Jay-Den Kraag, a young Klingon who – gasp – wants to be a doctor, Kerrice Brooks’ Sam, a hologram who doesn’t quite know how to fit in with organic beings, Bella Shepard’s Genesis Lythe, the daughter of an admiral who seemingly has it all figured out, and George Hawkins’ Darem Reymi, a member of a shape-shifting(-ish) species who’s kind of a dick… except totally isn’t, as it turns out by episode’s end.
There’s a moment early in the episode, when this group all run into each other in a corridor, that made me start to fall for the lot of them. Darem tries to pick a fight with Jay-Den over a pair of space-binoculars the Klingon has dropped, and Caleb gets in the middle of the altercation. It’s fairly standard “first day of school” stuff, but after the situation is resolved and everyone else leaves, Jay-Den tells Caleb, in a very un-Klingon moment, that his mother gave him the binoculars. “She taught me to see the… beauty in things,” he says. You can see him struggling to even say the words, while simultaneously reaching out to this stranger who showed him compassion. And immediately the potential for one of those great, classic Star Trek friendships is born.
And by the way, the resolution to that almost-fight? It comes from Robert Picardo’s The Doctor, who is back from Star Trek: Voyager even though this show is set about 800 years after that beloved 1990s series. (The Doctor’s a hologram, after all.) We don’t get too much yet on what he’s been up to in the intervening eight centuries, but Picardo is fun as ever in his dual job of ship’s medical officer and Academy instructor/babystitter.
Indeed, the cast is chock-full of what appear will be recurring and supporting players, like Gina Yashere’s Lura Thok, the half-Klingon/half-Jem’Hadar/all-hilarious first officer of the Athena, various cadets who are already familiar by the end of Episode 2, and Discovery holdovers like Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno and Oded Fehr’s Admiral Vance. It’s giving off vibes of Deep Space Nine’s deep bench of players beyond the main cast, so here’s hoping the show’s writers can pull off that juggling act, particularly in the shorter seasons of the modern era (Starfleet Academy Season 1 has 10 episodes).
And then there’s Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka, the villain of the first episode whose past is tied to that of Chancellor Ake and Caleb. The actor plays the half-Klingon/half-Tellarite for hoots, and he is a funny and disruptive presence, but I wonder how many episodes he’ll actually get this season. He’s been billed as a recurring character, but I could see too much of Nus becoming a bad thing. Plus, space pirates have never felt big enough to be long-term Star Trek baddies.
As for Hunter, she doesn’t seem terribly comfortable in the role in these first two episodes. Obviously they’re trying for something different here, with the no-shoes, curl up with a good book in the captain’s chair vibe, and I’m here for it. But some of her line readings are a bit rough, and you know what Harrison Ford used to say to George Lucas, master of that other spacefaring epic – “You can type this shit, but you sure can't say it.” Hopefully Hunter, who after all is an Oscar-winning actress, is still just getting used to the role and the whole outer space scene.
As for Episode 2, “Beta Test,” I was glad to see that right off the bat we were given a more grounded (literally) episode that is set entirely in San Francisco at the Academy and delves into the day-to-day lives of our cadets. Sure, there’s a major, galaxy-affecting summit meeting with the representatives of Betazed also taking place, but that’s pretty classic Next Generation-style A/B/C-plot storytelling.
Zoë Steiner, the other core member of our young cast, arrives here as Tarima Sadal, a Betazoid who apparently has great telepathic powers. (Counselor Troi from TNG of course was half-Betazoid.) That said, her greatest power at the moment seems to be the effect that she has on Caleb. Indeed, they make for a fun pairing, and “Beta Test” also seems to indicate that Starfleet Academy is going to be dealing with some of the threads regarding The Burn, and the resolution of The Burn, that Discovery either didn’t want to deal with or didn’t have time to get to. Betazed as the new home of the Federation? Sure, why not!
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