Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Review

When the first poster images for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy were released, fans immediately raised concerns about what seemed, at first glance, like a CW-style, teeny-bopper version of a beloved franchise. Six of the show’s series regulars, all new recruits, all conventionally attractive, entangled in the grass, in an image uncomfortably close to promotional material for Riverdale and the like.

It’s hard to fault creator Gaia Violo or showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau for marketing not under their purview. But, though it is a fun enough time, and it certainly does read as verifiable Trek, it doesn’t exactly beat those allegations. In the first six episodes of the show’s ten-episode first season, teenage cadets get embroiled in petty interpersonal drama, saccharine romantic entanglements and noxiously optimistic team-building exercises where even the most selfish of young men learn the power of teamwork.

But the show also boasts a solid grasp of what made The Original Series so special, especially when that optimism is pointed towards sociopolitical progress. Several episodes feature storylines of cross-cultural, cross-species philosophizing that would be right at home in the franchise’s best seasons. Academy Chancellor Nahla Aké (the always luminous Holly Hunter) is an exceptional addition to the Mount Rushmore of Starfleet Captains that have led previous iterations. There’s a lot to love here.

Starfleet Academy is Spiritually Right at Home, But Lacking Enough Compelling Characters

Curiously, the show’s beginnings are remarkably similar to Discovery. Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) is cut from the same rebellious cloth as Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham. A young man on the perpetual run after being forcibly separated from his mother, Anisha (Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany), Caleb is brash, arrogant and wildly brilliant. He’s like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting except with massive arms.

Aké, feeling guilty of her hand in Caleb and Anisha’s separation fifteen years prior, offers him a deal: in exchange for a commuted sentence on the planet Toroth, he has to join the academy. Aké even promises to help him track down Anisha, who hasn’t been seen nor heard from in years. Caleb reluctantly agrees, and follows her to San Francisco, where the new academy has been re-built and is being commissioned for the first time in over 150 years, an absence perpetuated by the long-term political effects of “The Burn” from Discovery.

Aké herself seems torn to be here, at least at first. Having resigned from her post “in disgrace,” she has to be begged to return by Starfleet Commander-in-Chief Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr, reprising his role from Discovery). But, once there, she seems right at home. Hunter is the show’s unquestionable star, even if the show is more about Caleb’s journey than hers. Her Aké is an unconventional, perpetually barefoot and lounging bohemian. Like Voyager‘s Captain Janeway, she is sardonic and confident, but she exudes her own warmth and a charming predilection for physical media like real books and phonograph records. Part Lanthanite, the 300+ year old exudes wisdom and earned joy.

Starfleet Academy in the 32nd century is taught both on the ground in the bay and aboard the U.S.S. Athena, a gloriously designed ship where students can try out missions in the field. Aké’s number one is Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), part Klingon, part Jem’Hadar and partner to Jett Reno (Tig Notaro, also reprising her role from Discovery). Kurtzman has shown his affinity for casting comedians in his shows, and Yashere is a true delight as the brazenly funny disciplinarian with a self-deprecating streak.

Kurtzman has also brought back Robert Picardo as The Doctor, the acerbic, endlessly witty hologram from Voyager. At the academy now, The Doctor serves as the Chief Medical Officer, the head of the Opera Club and the debate class professor, and it is a real gift to see him chewing scenery with the same aplomb that he became known for.

Starfleet Academy‘s Side Characters are More Interesting Than Its Main Cast

Less interesting are the core members of the Academy cast, which is a real problem when you’re trying to build a show around the personal and career growth of a group of six. Rosta is pleasant enough to watch, but his compatriots, at least in the show’s early goings, could use some faster fleshing out. Karim Diané plays Jay-Den Kraag, a Klingon whose preference for healing, peace and scientific inquiry makes him an automatic outlier from his house, but the actor is a bit stiff and awkward in delivery. Caleb’s main frenemy is Darem Reymi (George Hawkins), of the new species Khionian, who is bulky and alpha but otherwise not different enough from the series’ lead.

Despite its bevy of queer and ethnically diverse representation, Starfleet Academy wants for more boundary-pushing narratives and challenging questions of ethics.

Genesis (Bella Shepard), of another new species, the Dar-Sha, the daughter of an admiral who is determined and endlessly flirtatious, but she doesn’t have much else to show, either. More fun is Kerrice Brooks as SAM, aka Series Acclimation Mil, the first ever hologram cadet in Starfleet history. Brooks’ portrayal probably hews too close to the foot-in-mouth behavior of Mary Wiseman’s Sylvia Tilly from Discovery, but it is tantalizing to see how a photonic, as they prefer to be called, operates in this environment. That said, and with great respect for Stephen Colbert, I wouldn’t mind doing away with his computer system, an exceedingly silly, summer camp style PA announcer.

Kurtzman and Landau seem pulled between wanting to service the ethos of the Trek franchise and the nuts and bolts of a school-set comedy in the vein of The Sex Life of College Girls. The premise of the show has a neighboring “War College” which houses, well, militaristic cadets more interested in battle. But the interaction between these residents too often feels like something ripped from Harry Potter in the way the different colored-houses duke it out for social supremacy. That said, learning about the inner workings of this corner of the Trek universe, previously unexplored, is a pretty good time.

Kurtzman knows that the best Trek is fought amidst the stars, and the series works well when it puts its characters, young and old alike, in situations which test the bounds of their abilities and the limits of their empathy. This is still Trek, but it lacks the political panache of its forebears. Despite its bevy of queer and ethnically diverse representation, Starfleet Academy wants for more boundary-pushing narratives and challenging questions of ethics. It’s nice that the effects are as good as they are, but much of what’s being explored here has already been done better (and in funnier ways) in Lower Decks. If Violo, Kurtzman and Landau want to go where no Trek has gone before, they ought to consider what makes these characters so different, because there’s only so far the nostalgia of seeing The Doctor again will get you.