Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Review - Mama, I'm Coming Home
A necessary course correction, occasionally bogged down in maternal issues.
From the new 60th-anniversary intro to the use of Star Trek movie font on the opening credits, Starfleet Academy has a clear message to send: we’re course-correcting back to what you know and like. Narratively, this is a show about that, so it’s a good match: the 32nd century in canon follows a massive disaster and universe-changing event, and now Starfleet is trying to get its shit back together, with a new Starfleet Academy. In storyline, the disaster was the Burn, a mass deactivation of most dilithium in the universe, causing every active warp drive to explode. In actuality, the disaster, so to speak, was Star Trek: Discovery, a show that buckled under the expectations of restarting the franchise on TV and made many awkward calls along the way. The franchise has already mostly gotten its shit together, with Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and the third season of Picard, but now it’s literally going back to the worst timeline, and needs to hold our hands a bit at first.
I should note that I have always liked The Rise of Skywalker – it’s not up there with the greats in the Star Wars saga, but a necessary course correction after The Last Jedi ignored or shut down most of its predecessor’s mysteries. Star Trek’s 32nd century needed something similar. Like many Trek fans, I had a moment where I’d have been happy to retcon Discovery out of existence, making its timeline a possible future rather than the actual one. They have not done that, but Starfleet Academy does come back to the things we like about Trek. The aliens are familiar, the character camaraderie’s a nice mix of aggravation and cooperation, and while a college setting – albeit one that’s at least partly on board a starship as well as the Earthbound campus -- necessitates a believable amount of sex and romance, this group of cadets does have a better sense of balancing duty and personal than the Discovery crew ever seemed to.
Now, is there an annoying protagonist willing to break every rule for the sake of love? Why, yes, because what would Trek’s 32nd century be without that? Main protagonist Caleb (Sandro Rosta), who is basically Tom Paris but not white, pines for his momma (Tatiana Maslany) from whom he has been long-separated thanks to Starfleet arresting her for being a pirate’s unwilling accomplice. Like Tom, Caleb gets to choose Starfleet over prison, if he likes. But Starfleet Acadamey has a sweeter deal, as it’s run by Nahla (Holly Hunter), the Starfleet officer who arrested his mother in the first place but feels really, really bad about it. It was during darker times, after all, before Discovery showed up to save the day and cure the Burn. So because she feels super-guilty, she’ll help Caleb find his mother as best she can, so long as he doesn’t screw up her brand new gig as head of the college.
Frankly, the mom storyline is annoying and dumb, but it’s back-burnered for most of the six episodes provided for review. Mom’s fate is heavily tied to Nus Braka, Paul Giamatti’s Tellarite-Klingon hybrid villain, who’s more Harry Mudd than the Borg Queen. Rather than some master of evil, he’s a hustler and a pirate, but since Nahla captured him the first time, he’s also very driven by vindictive hatred. As villains go, he’s more like the nastiest MAGA truck driver (with militia ties) you’ve ever met than Donald Trump. In lesser hands, he’d be tedious, since he monologues a LOT, but this is Giamatti, and because he’s wanted to play a Trek villain since forever, he gives the speechifying his everything, and it is delectable.
He’s also not in it a lot so far. Starfleet Academy really suffers, if anything, from the current distribution model – it could use a 22-episode season to find its footing, rather than a mere 10. The pilot, which throws the lion’s share of the special effects budget at the screen, is all the mommy issues; the second episode is an awkward romance, and starting with the third, it becomes clear they’re going to try to give each of the principals an episode centered on their character. By the time it hits its stride as an actual military college show in space, the season’s more than half over.
Caleb, who looks like fanny-pack era Rocky Maivia Dwayne Johnson, is the least interesting character while he’s embodying trauma, but he gets better as he settles into the program and starts using some of those prison skills for good. He quickly bonds with Jay-Den (Karim Diane), who is Star Trek’s first live-action Klingon nerd, not counting pre-teen Alexander. Yes, he is a proper Klingon; another thing Starfleet Academy is fixing is the unnecessary, pointless changes to alien races, so while Jay-Den may be a science geek, he still looks and talks like Worf. (That one fucked-up future-Ferengi mask from Discovery gets some re-use, though.)
Caleb’s immediate rival is Darem (George Hawkins), a spoiled jock who presents as human but is actually a blue alien who can shape-shift. He’s hot for Genesis (Bella Shepard), an over-achieving admiral’s daughter with alien eyebrows. Side note: even though the Bible surely still exists in this future, isn’t it weird to name your kid a word that’s synonymous with a weapon of mass destruction in the Trek universe? Just asking.
Caleb’s love interest is Tarima (Zoe Steiner), daughter of the Betazoid ambassador. Yes, these two young and pretty actors eventually bang, with some incredibly careful camera angles and side-boobage. Like Enterprise, Starfleet Academy wants to show skin – there’s also a locker-room scene -- but frankly, it is a bit more tonally appropriate here, in a show about 18 year-olds (cast older and looking it) in college.
Ever since Spock, Data, and Seven of Nine have received praise from autistic fans for representing neurodivergence onscreen, every crew has to have at least one nonhuman who sees social-emotional norms as curious; here, it’s S.A.M. (Kerrice Brooks), a Photonic, which is to say a living hologram, like Voyager’s Doctor (Robert Picardo), who also happens to be teaching at Starfleet Academy all these centuries on. He offers continuity to the past shows, while Nahla, who is part-Lanthanite like the long-lived Pelia from Strange New Worlds, can fill in gaps from the preceding half-century she’s been alive.
Mary Wiseman’s Tilly is supposed to show up later but hasn’t yet; Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno has evidently quit Discovery altogether to teach, for another reason I won’t spoil here.
S.A.M., however, serves as an audience surrogate in a different way from the legacy characters, as she’s been sent in part as an emissary to learn more about humans and ascertain if they’re trustworthy, or potential enslavers. Starfleet is just coming off a more hostile, militarized approach, with a war college right next door, that’s ironically run by a complete neurotic whom even Pete Hegseth could intimidate.
My use of the word “emissary” isn’t accidental – the show’s entire fifth episode is a tribute of sorts to Deep Space Nine, with some Marvel-style surprises. No, Avery Brooks isn’t back; you’d have heard by now if he were. But the episode, cowritten by Lower Decks’ Tawny Newsome, is as loaded with Easter eggs as Lower Decks, and features a new role for Newsome in live-action that isn’t Beckett Mariner. Chiwetel Ejiofor, whom I can only assume is as big a fan as Paul Giamatti, performs a key voice-over without ever showing his face on camera.
That much, and some other items throughout, are blatant fan service. Is that a bad thing? The DS9 tribute at least helps to build S.A.M.’s character too, so it’s not wildly out of place, even if it is a bit reminiscent of TNG’s “The Naked Now” (“Hey, remember when another ship named Enterprise found the same thing?”). That’s easier to get away with in a 22-episode season. Without knowing how this one closes, I’m loath to pass final judgment, but so far, this much is clear: it feels like Star Trek again in the future, even if it can’t quite decide WHICH Star Trek to be yet. I do not care about Caleb’s mother at all, but Nus Braka is welcome back any time. TV shows don’t get time to breathe much on streaming, but I’d like to see this get at least one more season to figure it out. These kids are all right; here’s hoping the show does right by them in the end.
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Image credits: Brooke Palmer/Paramount+
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy begins Jan. 15th on Paramount+