4.4/10
87%
51%
66%
53%
I had just finished watching the season finale of season one of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and sat down to write out my review only to be met with the news that Paramount will be dropping the show at the end of season two.
I can’t say I am surprised.
The new owners of Paramount really just don’t seem to “get” or care about Star Trek. They announced there wouldn’t be a Star Trek 4 set in the Kelvin timeline, refuse to greenlight Star Trek: Legacy despite massive support from fans and while they have said another reboot movie will be going ahead, we’ve not been told of any new TV series that will be launching. So now we’re left in a Trek Limbo after season 4 and 5 of Strange New Worlds airs.
But that’s not what this review is about! Here I’d like to chat about Starfleet Academy season one.
Starfleet Promo Hit A Nerve With Me
When they first dropped the promotional pictures for Academy I was worried. I mean really worried!
It reminded me of a photo shoot from Beverly Hills 90210 or One Tree Hill — an overly cute, teenified show that had no place existing in the Star Trek universe.
It looked like it was going to be a soppy rehash of every high school drama with just with a space twist.
How wrong I was!
What Is Star Trek: Starfleet Academy About?
At its heart, Academy is about finding friends and finding yourself.
We follow a young Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta – Snitches Get Stiches 2021) and his mother, Anisha (Tatiana Maslany – Orphan Black 2013-2017, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law 2022), as they try to survive in a post-burn galaxy.
Anisha is arrested for assisting in the theft of a shuttle which led to the death of its pilot and is sentenced to prison alongside Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti – Saving Private Ryan 1998, Billions 2016-2023), meanwhile Caleb is made a ward of The Federation on the orders of Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter – Broadcast News 1987, The Piano 1993, Saving Grace 2007-2010.
Even at a young age, Caleb is resourceful and escapes from the Starfleet facility and spends the next 15-or-so years bouncing from place to place racking up criminal charges.
Caleb’s main talents lie in computer hacking and it’s this that sees him imprisoned on Toroth where Ake appears and gives him a choice: serve his full sentence or join the newly re-formed Starfleet Academy.
Mir has little choice so joins the first year of cadets made up of a vastly different group of people who ordinarily wouldn’t even give each other the time of day. During the season they will have to learn to put their differences aside, cooperate and, most importantly, trust each other as Nus Braka reappears and threatens to destroy the Federation and billions of people within its borders.
Star Trek Starfleet Academy Characters
We’ve already covered Caleb Mir, but Academy is more of an ensemble show rather than a traditional “lead” male/female pairing.
Other characters include:
Nala Ake
After Anisha was sent to prison and Caleb escaped, Ake was go guilt-ridden she resigned her Starfleet commission until she was approached by Admiral Vance to head the re-formed Academy. She was hesitant at first but saw it as an opportunity to help Caleb and make up for her past mistakes.
Ake is half-Human, half-Lanthanite and as a result she has an increased life span and with that comes a long history – Vance said it took him several hours to read through her Starfleet records.
Lura Thok
Thok (Gina Yashere – Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) 2001) is half-Klingon half-Jem’Hadar and serves as the Cadet Master at the Academy. Her role is to train the cadets in combat and make sure they stay out of trouble (something that is quite difficult!). She also serves as an advisor to Ake, balancing Ake’s more impulsive tendencies.
While seemingly gruff, Thok has a soft-spot for her cadets and wants to seem them to reach their maximum potential — even if that does mean assigning them pushishments such as latrine duty or vomit monitor.
Jett Reno
Viewers of Star Trek: Discovery will be familiar with Reno (Tig Notaro – Transparent 2014-19, Star Trek: Discovery 2019-24) as she was rescued by the ship back in the 23rd Century.
Travelling with Discovery into the future of 3189, Reno is an accomplished engineer who is putting her skills to use teaching the cadets.
While her manner is quite acerbic and she comes across as aloof and uncaring, as the season progresses we see that she does care for the students and her partner, Lura Thok, and at the end of the season steps up to save Ake, Anisha and The Federation with her cadet’s help.
The Doctor
The Doctor (Robert Picardo – Innerspace 1987, China Beach 1988-91, Star Trek: Voyager 1995-2001) is a 900 year old hologram and serves as a mentor to the cadets at the Academy and as the Chief Medical Officer.
The Doctor is responsible for rounding out the cadet’s academic schedule which includes getting the cadets to look after some weird goo in xenobiology class, debating each other and putting on operas.
Despite his obvious connection with SAM — they’re both holographic beings after all — The Doctor is very standoffish with her to the point of avoiding her entirely.
It turns out that she reminds him of the daughter he created, a memory he has to confront when SAM becomes gravely ill after a training mission is ambushed.
Genesis Lythe
Lythe (Bella Shepard – A girl named Jo 2018-19, Two Sides 2021) is the daughter of an as-yet unnamed Starfleet admiral and as a result pushes herself extremely hard to be the best at everything which often puts her at odds with her classmates.
It turns out that in her reference letters to the Academy, Lythe altered the statements to remove portions that said she was motivated out of fear of not being good enough and didn’t put enough faith in her own abilities because she thought that would block her application.
While she is fiercely competitive, often going head-to-head with Darem Reymi, Genesis is also fiercely loyal and will fight for her friends and her ideals.
Darem Reymi
Reymi (George Hawkins – Boiling Point 2021) is a Khionian and the first of his race to join Starfleet.
Darem initially comes off as aloof and that he’s better than everyone else but this is just a cover for his deep seated insecurities due to incessant pressure from his parents.
Wanting to impress his parents, Reymi tries to excell at every subject which often puts him in direct competition with Genesis Lythe. After he fails to win the captaincy of the Academy’s Calica team, Reymi begins to soften and the others begin to understand his attitude when it’s revealed that his parents have been ignoring his messages due to their dissatisfaction with his progress at the academy.
Jay-Den Kragg
Kragg (Karim Diane – One of Us Is Lying 2021-22) is a Klingon with a twist — he doesn’t want to be a warrior, he wants to be a healer.
Jay-Den’s brother Thar encouraged him to pursue his love of medicine after finding a transmitter announcing the re-opening of Starfleet academy.
After Thar is killed in a fight at a market, Jay-Den’s father tries to initiate him as a warrior but Jay-Den cannot go through with their family ritual. Later Jay-Den’s mother and two fathers leave Jay-Den on a planet which he initially takes as abandonment but later realises it was his family’s way of encouraging him joining the Academy.
Kragg also forms an unlikely relationship with Kyle, a student at The War College (a rival school), much to Darem’s annoyance.
SAM (Series Acclimation Mil)
SAM (Kerrice Brooks – Feeling Randy 2024) is a hologram from the planet Kasq. Kasq is a world of photonic beings and they created SAM to enter the Academy in order to learn more about the Federation, its values and its members.
The first iteration of SAM was quite childlike, as she hadn’t been given any memories or experiences, so everything at the Academy was a new experience for her — even having a bath (which was her being transported into a pond but she’s fascinated all the same!)
After being injured during an attack on the USS Miyazaki, SAM returns to Kasq along with The Doctor. Because of the lack of pre-existing memories, SAM was unable to process the trauma of the attack and this led to her holographic matrix shutting down.
Because time flows differently on Kasq, The Doctor was able to help SAM’s makers recreate her and give her childhood experiences that would help her cope with the emotional experiences she would experience at the Academy — a full childhood is experienced by SAM and The Doctor in just a few weeks.
The led to the new iteration of SAM having two sets of memories – those of the original SAM unit and those of her current unit, one that considers The Doctor her father.
This sometimes puts her at odds with her fellow cadets as sometimes they still see her as the original SAM and not who she has become.
Tarima Sadal
Sadal (Zoë Steiner – Significant Others 2022) is a Betaziod and because of her strong abilities needs to wear an inhibitor to protect the people around her from her telepathic powers.
Sadal was originally attending The War College and she struck up a relationship with Caleb despite the two schools being bitter rivals.
During the attack on the USS Miyazaki, Tarmia removed her inhibitor and used her telepathic abilities to kill all of the boarders, the effort of which left her in a coma.
After healing she returns to Earth where she was transferred (against her wishes) from The War College to Starfleet Academy. Sadal initially found it difficult to fit in, struggling with the aftermath of the events on the USS Miyazaki and her feelings towards Caleb.
Starfleet Academy Season One Storyline
Unlike previous Star Trek shows such as The Next Generation and Voyager, Starfleet Academy contains story arcs the run across the entire 10 episodes of the first season.
The main story arc is Caleb’s search for his mother which reaches a resolution in the final two episodes.
The rest of the stories serve as showcases for each of the main cadet’s backstories: we have Jay-Den and his brother’s relationship, Darem’s betrothal, and SAM’s recovery on Kasq for example.
Interspersed with this is some “typical” high school/college drama such as the rivalry between students and the rivalry between The Academy and The War College – often with humorous outcomes.
And this is all set over the backdrop of the threat that is Nus Braka.
While he is sparsely used, when he is present Braka is certainly one of the most memorable and threatening villains in the Star Trek universe.
The unhinged nature of his character (played brilliantly by a scenery chewing Giamatti) means that you never quite know what his plans are, and whether he means what he says.
This is offset by the almost serene Ake who always seems faintly amused at Braka’s antics despite the danger that they pose.
The season culminates in a two-part episode that shows that Braka’s previous attack on the USS Miyazaki was merely a cover and he was stealing an element known as “Omega-47”.
The Omega molecule was first mentioned in the Star Trek: Voyager season four episode “The Omega Directive”. The Omega molecule is a highly unstable element that has the capability of rupturing subspace making warp drive impossible and just one molecule could destroy subspace for several light years.
Because of the potential the the Omega Molecule holds, The Federation were working on trying to create a stable version that could be used as a virtually unlimited power source. This version is known as “Omega-47”.
With Omega-47 in hand, Braka creates hundreds of mines that he places around Federation space, completely cutting them off from the rest of the galaxy. Any ship crossing the mine field would set them off, destroying subspace and making warp travel impossible, killing billions in the process — an event that happened during “The Burn” (mentioned in Star Trek: Discovery) and that the galaxy was only just recovering from.
The only ship capable of halting Braka and taking down the mine field is the USS Athena, Starfleet Academy’s training ship, crewed by the cadets under the command of Reno.
The cadets need to put their differences aside and work as a team in order to save Ake, Caleb’s mother Anisha and the entire Federation!
My Thoughts On Starfleet Academy Season One
As I mentioned above, I was initially a bit worried that they’d dumbed down Starfleet Academy in order to reach a teenage audience and this wasn’t the case at all.
While there are some obvious plot points aimed at a more youthful audience such as the will-they won’t-they relationship between Caleb and Tarima, the storylines and characters embody everything that Star Trek stands for.
The series is quite dark in terms of themes and while they might not delve as deeply into some of the more sordid plot points such as how Caleb managed to survive for 15 years on his own, Ake and the Federation’s actions towards his mother and Braka’s backstory, the episodes are still impactful and full of emotion.
I will be the first to hold my hand up and say “I was wrong about Starfleet Academy” and it’s definitely worth people’s time and attention.
Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people online don’t share that sentiment with review bombing and hateful posts spreading before the first episode had even aired. This, coupled with less-than-stellar ratings (despite a healthy rating on Rotten Tomatoes) has led to the unfortunate early cancellation of the show.
It’s also concerning that in the wake of Paramount’s sale to Skydance, the new owners don’t seem to understand the impact and reach that Star Trek has with its fans and a wider audience and I’m concerned that Starfleet Academy‘s cancellation is a sign of things to come for the franchise which doesn’t bode well.
While I am happy that we will get one more season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy it’s a shame that we won’t get a full 5+ seasons in order to follow the cadets as they grow into officers and take on challenges that the galaxy throws at them.
Watch this if you want something to make you feel hope during these dark times — just make sure to have some tissues handy as it gets emotional in places. You have been warned!
