Paramount Pictures
“All Trek is Trek” is a phrase used to include even the weaker episodes and movies as one boldly goes through nearly 800 hours of the titular sci-fi classic.
Real fans know that when it isn’t Trek, it really isn’t. Thankfully, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season One is “Trek.”
The Original Series begat the The Original Series films, which begat The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine, with Generations physically locking those eras together.
Then there is the modern era, starting with the Kelvinverse and the Paramount streaming era led by Alex Kurtzman, sharing a visual language with lens flares and the like.
Production similarities aside, what matters, and what is core to true Trekkies, does get lost a bit in the sauce when cranking out so much “product” for the masses.
Starfleet Academy manages to rein in any problems set up by Discovery‘s time jump after the Burn, as that show devolved from being an exciting second modern reboot to a nearly indecipherable and boring series whose most recent highlight ended up being the series finale, mostly based on the fact that it was finally over.
Season 2 of Starfleet Academy and the final season of Strange New Worlds finally pack up the bridge and jam it into cold storage. While we would like to see the Katra transfer from Kurtzman to Lower Decks star (and Starfleet Academy series writer) Tawny Newsome and Starfleet Academy showrunner Noga Landau, it doesn’t look like they will take the conn. Jonathan Frakes and LeVar Burton continued directing and being good stewards for the franchise beyond the The Next Generation years; these creators deserve to do more. Newsome’s Episode 5 writing debut, where she stars as Professor Illa Dax, was one of the most brilliant tie-ins to any previous series put to production, as it served as a love letter to Ben Sisko’s fate at the end of Deep Space Nine.
This episode in particular serves in contrast to whatever late-period Discovery and the ‘film’ Section 31 were trying to achieve.
“Children are our ambassadors to now.” — Chancellor Nahla Ake
The cast of Starfleet Academy really knocks it out of the park. Holly Hunter as the 422-year-old Lanthanite right off the bat bridges the time gap after The Burn. In a lot of positive ways, Starfleet Academy is not a spinoff, but a sixth season of Discovery. Last seen drinking ‘granny’s peach tea’ in Batman v Superman, the Academy Award-winning actor sets a relaxed tone on the bridge, sitting unconventionally in the captain’s chair, sipping on Commander Kelrec’s blend of the hot beverage this time. Kelrec (Raoul Bhaneja) leads the War College at the academy. Post-The Burn, war is now an option for Starfleet.
Big Bad Paul Giamatti as Nus Braka is a fan of Trek and absolutely cements himself as one of the best character actors to play a villain alongside Ricardo Montalbán (Khan) and Christopher Plummer (General Chang). Patton Oswalt also fulfills a lifetime dream to affect this franchise as a Vulcan. One could imagine him improvising all of his lines and having them sound straight from the writers’ room (or better) as Frakes cocks a Vulcan eyebrow toward the set.
Decidedly not a fan of Star Trek, but hilariously deadpan, is fellow comedian Tig Notaro as Jett Reno from Discovery. She and her wife, the Jem’Hadar-Klingon hybrid Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), are a funny couple with two very different styles of teaching the students.
Robert Picardo returns as a much older version of The Doctor (wait, what franchise am I reviewing here?). He chose to make his hologram look the actor’s age just because he could. Pretty clever, and a nice way to tie into the Voyager and The Next Generation era of Trek.
Stephen Colbert is the voice of the snarky computer that you may struggle to hear sometimes over the P.A., but the jokes come through mostly at the students’ expense.
Ahh, the students. This is an Academy show after all. We are introduced to the handsome Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta). The story carries his hero’s journey from orphaned stowaway to reluctant student to hero over the course of the series. He doesn’t want to make friends or join Starfleet, until, of course, he does. He also never has an excuse not to take off his shirt! Carrying on a great Trek tradition, of course.
This ‘Great Hogwarts of the Galaxy’ has a cast of students, and they reveal themselves in a non-derogatory CW teen series manner.
Jay-Den Kraag is a Klingon healer fighting his warrior ancestry.
Tarima Sadal (Zoë Steiner) and Ocam Sadal (Romeo Carere) are Betazed siblings, but Tarima has unusual empathy skills that could be dangerous, so she is forced to wear an inhibitor.
Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard) struggles as a Starfleet nepo baby. Darem Reymi (George Hawkins) has similar goals and expectations set by his wealthy family.
SAM (full designation SAM, or Series Acclimation Mil) is played by Kerrice Brooks. The photonic holographic lifeform from the planet Kasq answers the question, “who is the Data?” on the show.
Rounding out the class are Kyle Jokovic (Dale Whibley) and B’Avi (Alexander Eling), who regularly cross paths with the main crew as they navigate the pressures of training. In Starfleet Academy, their official cadet uniform is unfortunately a red shirt.
Appealing to teens is exactly what Trek should be doing, and they do silly teen dating and competition drama pretty well on Starfleet Academy. This is, at its best points, The Karate Kid with phasers, romance, drama, learning to work as a team, and dudes taking off shirts. Girls glammed out for a night on the town. Everyone is attractive, or attractive to their species.
The aforementioned Episode 5 wasn’t just great for the Deep Space Nine, reference; it also had real heart. The basic pitch is that SAM needs to be rebooted and would lose all of her memory in the process. They return to Kasq, a planet of all-photonic beings, to heal her. It would be a disservice to explain rather than have you experience the episode, but The Doctor, reluctant to adopt SAM as another holographic being because of his own pain, relents as he works through his past issues. The hard reboot gives her a whole lifetime of memories and experience with The Doctor as her adoptive father. This is very sweet, a very Trek answer to the problem at hand, and as with the best Trek, the most humanity is shown by the characters that are the least human. SAM is literally light. This hits Picard Season 3 levels of emotional height.
As far as homages go, at the beginning of the series we get to see the USS Athena (part classroom, part spaceship with wings) depart spacedock and land in San Francisco near the (somehow still surviving) Golden Gate Bridge. They pan over the students—green-skinned Orions, Khionians, Cheronians (the “black and white cookie people” from The Original Series‘ “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”), and a Brikar cadet walking the halls (bringing Prodigy‘s Rok-Tahk species straight into live-action!) watching in awe. As was I.
Undercutting this majestic starship flyby, a church-chorus cover of Scott McKenzie’s “If You’re Going to San Francisco” turns a classic Trek moment into Don Draper’s “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” commercial from Mad Men. What are we doing here? What’s going on?
Ex Astris Scientia
Like Michael Burnham, the audience never felt quite at home in a post-Burn future. Starfleet Academy grounds the series in an educational institution, one we have seen glimpses of and heard stories about in all of Trek. Setting a series here makes sense! This isn’t Discovery in a school uniform, either. This just wraps a warp bubble around all of Kurtzman-era Trek, strange-looking Klingons and all, and drops it at the end of the story.
With slumps and frankly maybe a little too much Discovery-era Trek, Starfleet Academy makes you forget recent misfires and hooks you like the early seasons of Discovery did, with cool new ships and a Mycelial network. Season 1 leaves you wanting more and not wanting the party to end. But it is going to end. Sooner rather than later.
All Trek is Trek, but Trek is best when it remembers its past and adds more to build on for the next refit. Starfleet Academy and Lower Decks were shining examples of what is possible. Strange New Worlds as well, but to a lesser extent, as it is directly using what The Original Series fans are familiar with. Breaking new ground in San Francisco and beyond the stars gave us both a re-watchable entry and also a great way for new folks to start on Andorian cosplay for the next convention.
