An interesting new take on Trek includes some characters you already know.
Holly Hunter plays Captain Nahla Ake, the new commandant of the newly reopened Starfleet Academy. Credit: Paramout+
Holly Hunter plays Captain Nahla Ake, the new commandant of the newly reopened Starfleet Academy. Credit: Paramout+
Today is a good day to watch television. That’s because the first two episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy hit the Paramount+ streaming service, becoming the newest addition to the long-running Star Trek franchise. It’s set in the late 32nd century, 120 years after the burn that ended all warp travel, and with it, most of Starfleet in the process. Now that warp travel is once again possible—you’ll have to watch Discovery’s final three seasons for more on that—the Federation is putting itself back together, and that includes reopening Starfleet Academy.
That means this show is about young people in space, like Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta), who was separated from his mother by Starfleet as a child, 15 years earlier. Mir and his mother, played by Tatiana Maslany, were traveling with a pirate—Nus Braka, played by a scenery-chewing Paul Giamatti—who killed a Federation officer while stealing food for them. The first episode opens on Braka and the Mirs being apprehended by Starfleet. Despite her misgivings, Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) carries out her order to separate mother and child. She’s to go to a rehabilitation colony, he’s to become a ward of the Federation and go to school on Bajor.
At least that’s the plan until he escapes a few minutes later. Then we jump forward 15 years. Ake is teaching on Bajor, having retired from the Federation, ashamed of what she’d done. Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) shows up and asks her to become commandant at the newly reopened academy in San Francisco; for the past few decades, new recruits have been trained instead by the War College. But Starfleet needs explorers now, and having a rival school means they can show up at some point to challenge some of the show’s protagonists to a Parrises Squares tournament.
Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) is a Klingon-Tellerite pirate. I think we’re going to see more of him this season.
Credit: Paramount+
Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) is a Klingon-Tellerite pirate. I think we’re going to see more of him this season. Credit: Paramount+
Ake accepts the job, and to atone for her mistake in separating Mir from his mother, she pressgangs him into the Academy as a new recruit. Oh, she’s also a Lanthanite (technically a human-lanthanite hybrid), and 422 years old, which means she remembers working for the pre-burn Federation. She isn’t the only academy instructor with pre-burn experience in Starfleet. Jett Reno (Tig Notaro), who came to the 32nd century with Discovery, teaches the cadets physics. And the Doctor (Robert Picardo) is chief medical officer.
I had hoped this would be the result of a deep cut to “The Living Witness,” an episode of Voyager set in the 29th century where a copy of the Doctor is restored in a museum in the Delta Quadrant. At the end of that episode, that Doctor sets off for Earth, and having him show up would be a nice bit of closure; instead, he probably perished in the burn, which just makes me sad. As chief medical officer, the Doctor is apparently constantly monitoring the cadets’ biosigns—he breaks up an incipient fight after detecting students with elevated excitatory neurotransmitters. That seems more than a little invasive to me, although later he gets a taste of his own medicine from Starfleet’s first holographic cadet, SAM (Kerrice Brooks).
I’ve got a bit of a problem with Cadet Master Commander Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), who is a female Klingon-Jem’Hadar hybrid.
Lura Thok (Gina Yashere) and Jett Reno (Tig Notaro).
Credit: Paramount+
Lura Thok (Gina Yashere) and Jett Reno (Tig Notaro). Credit: Paramount+
Obviously, a female Jem’Hadar must be canon, because it’s right there on screen, and that’s how Trek canon works. But the Founders bred the Jem’Hadar in tanks, and they lived short, dangerous lives as warriors. What use would sex organs or sexual reproduction be to a species genetically engineered to do a specific job by a race of contemptuous changelings that treat their minions as little more than tools.
That’s the trouble with head canon—the writers go and put something on the TV show that contradicts your clever idea, and you either deal with it or get annoyed. I’ll get over it, because I rather enjoy the hyperaggressive Thok and the way she harangues the cadets.
If you’re just looking for more Next Generation/Deep Space 9/Voyager-era trek, or a few more seasons of Lower Decks, you’re going to be left unfulfilled by Starfleet Academy. The aesthetic is much shinier; the floors are glossy black, not neutral, bland carpet. The characters swear at each other. But EPS conduits still explode, and because the academy has the USS Athena—a starship that, from above, looks a lot like the new comm badges—there should still be plenty of good old exploration going on while the cadets learn their life lessons. And Easter eggs, too, like the Cheronian cadet or an exocomp, although you’ll need to turn on subtitles to get the callback with that one.
Diplomacy is taking place.
Credit: Paramount+
Diplomacy is taking place. Credit: Paramount+
If the first two episodes are much to go by, we can expect some young adult drama—love triangles, bros facing off against each other—set to a backdrop of the Federation rebuilding itself and trying to reimpose its post-scarcity order on what has become a more chaotic galaxy. That won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, but I’m curious to see where it goes.
Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.
