Review by C.J. Bunce
After the first five episodes of this year’s new Star Trek series Starfleet Academy, something seemed to click in. That was five solid episodes in a row from the first season of a Star Trek TV series, typically the hardest climb of each of the live-action series over the 60 years of the franchise. By the end of this week’s tenth episode, that five episodes climbed to eight–eight episodes we might look back on someday as re-watchable, maybe even classics, episodes we might even include when gathering our own best-of franchise lists. It seemed like an impossible task for showrunner Alex Kurtzman to achieve, especially with a series concept that had been proposed and rejected probably more than any other for the franchise. So we went back and looked at all of the series to see if any other freshman series chalked up this kind of success.
First I’ll echo my review of the first two episodes of the series discussed here at borg. Personality, youthful banter, and optimism for an uncertain future took the place of the trademark stilted technobabble and this stretched to the length of the season. This wasn’t so much a launch of all-new concepts, but one that corralled the better ideas and tropes of past start-ups and fit them together smoothly. It is a compelling, exciting, promising vision that didn’t retread on past ideas, unveiling a captain eager to go her own way with a leader of the youths of the series as promising as any that came before. Did we get to see all that much of the classroom day a la Harry Potter and Hogwarts? No. That’s probably a good thing. But viewers did get to marvel at a new Starfleet, a new Federation, and a new Academy, although clearly this wasn’t the place where groundskeeper Ray Walston’s Boothby spun his wisdom onto cadets. When we finally get to the finale, where the cadets are tested not in a fake Kobayashi Maru situation but in an actual battle on a starship with the galaxy at stake, it seems a long way getting from fraternity-esque hazing and competitions with the competing military school in its first episodes. A lot transpires in only ten episodes.
So how does it compare to the other live-action Star Trek series’ first seasons? How many “keepers” were in each first season–how many episodes do you look back on now without a wince or cringe but view it as among the best of the entire series? After revisiting each episode of each series here is where we landed (your own take will likely differ) with some quick, back-of-the-envelope numbers:
- 19 of the 29/30 Original Series episodes
- 11 of 26 Next Generation episodes
- 6 of 20 Deep Space Nine episodes
- 10 of 16 Voyager episodes
- 6 of 26 Enterprise episodes
- 4 of 15 Discovery episodes
- 4 of 10 Picard episodes
- 5 of 10 Strange New Worlds episodes
- 8 of 10 Starfleet Academy episodes
That puts Starfleet Academy far up the list. With only ten episodes per season up against the old days of 16 to 26 or even more in the original series, these days it’s the writers’ charge to maximize their minutes, manage their time to allow for character development, the requisite action, the fan service, and most importantly, the fun.
Similar to Star Trek Voyager’s success at returning to creator Gene Roddenberry’s search for strange new worlds and going where no one had gone before, Starfleet Academy didn’t reach outside the Alpha quadrant to find its newness but looked ahead–far ahead. Holly Hunter’s Captain/Chancellor Nahla Ake, a long-lived human who is also part Lanthanite like Carol Kane’s alien Pelia, did a great many things in part freed by a distant future whose story seemed more relevant and faithful to the franchise’s past than Star Trek Discovery in the same 32nd century era of the future. It asks: How do you fix something so impossibly broken, like the galaxy after The Burn? At the same time the focus on Ake’s regrets with her own deceased boy and her attempts to help the series’ young lead find his mother (Orphan Black and She-Hulk–Attorney at Law’s Tatiana Maslany) provide a personal touch.
Perhaps the only re-hash of past Star Trek’s was Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka, a gross and obnoxious part Klingon, part Tellarite whose overacting mirrored that of Khan and General Chang. Another angry Klingon–but at least the series didn’t reach back to the original crew of the first Enterprise for its characters, or finding lost siblings never before discussed.
Key to the success of the series’ first season is Sandro Rosta as Caleb Mir. Separated from his mother resulting from her own crime, plus Braka and Ake’s contributions, Caleb clearly honed his survival skills to be able to adapt to any situation. So when confronted by peers in a university/military school environment, he was either going to check out or his leadership skills were going to surface. And a charismatic leader he became. But not without some faults to be ironed out in good coming-of-age story fashion. Rosta stepped up to the task and created a new Star Trek hero.
Beyond the two leads, this was a series of two casts: the teachers and the students. Ake’s executive officer, Lura Thok, an exquisitely made-up Jem’Hadar/Klingon played by Gina Yashere, harnessed every great drill sergeant vibe to keep the cadets in line. Her contributions were earlier in the season. Her partner was a face more familiar to Star Trek viewers. That’s Discovery’s Tig Notaro back again as Jett Reno. If you have any doubt as to the extreme coolness factor of Reno, just watch the finale. The best scene of the season finds Reno as acting Captain of the classroom ship Athena, large and in charge, assigning duties to the cadets in the face of impending doom, using every moment as a teaching moment. Two surprises saw the return of recent Star Trek actors, Discovery’s Mary Wiseman as Tilly, and the animated Lower Decks’ star Tawny Newsome in makeup as a new… old… character, Professor Illa Dax, in an episode that was all homage to Deep Space Nine, with guest star Cirroc Lofton as a Jake Sisko hologram. Discovery’s Oded Fehr appeared mainly from afar in holographic form, back again as Admiral Vance–not the typical bossy Federation leader handing down the law, but someone more grounded in the complexities of reality.
Viewers visited the backstory of Karim Diané’s Klingon cadet Jay-Den Kraag, and the brother who sacrificed everything for him to join Starfleet. Then there was George Hawkins as Khionian cadet Darem Reymi, who went home to fulfill his duties as part of an arranged marriage. Even more time was devoted to Kerrice Brooks as SAM, at first a jovial hologram student from a planet full of holograms, fixated on her hero, Robert Picardo’s medical hologram from Voyager who is still around and now a teacher following his stint on the Prodigy animated series. Picardo could be found everywhere chewing up the scenery like a “best of” album from his EMH past. And just when SAM seemed perfect, the writers revisited the conceit of an episode of Voyager, and suddenly the young hologram grew up, returning with Picardo’s EMH as her father. Now she is troubled, but somehow it works, leaving much by way of emotions and drama for the next season. Although the bulk of the stories were about Caleb, three key episode threads focused on Zoë Steiner’s Tarima Sadal as his on and off girlfriend. The downside of her character was giving viewers a strong heroine early in the season who was torn down to become emotionally reliant on Caleb by the finale.
That leaves Bella Shepard as Genesis (no relation to that Genesis), a Dar-sha woman whose life with an admiral father means she not only has an appealing vibe but has the savvy to help save the day when the first crisis arrives. Unfortunately she takes a backseat to the others in their featured episodes. The most we see of her finds her sharing the story with Caleb as they stay at the Academy over a holiday break. She probably has the biggest future in the next season. She has that parallel to Robert Duncan McNeill’s Tom Paris in Voyager, who was far more a rebel with an Admiral as his father.
Everything else about the show screams Star Trek even for the biggest old school Trek loyalist, Trekker or Trekkie. The uniforms look great, especially a return to the Horatio Hornblower maroon naval wool uniform style for the captain from the Shatner crew movies. The officers have a wide variety of costumes, but the grey cadet designs are a nice progression from the look of the cadets in the final episode of Voyager and the later update found in the San Francisco scenes in the J.J. Abrams movies. For good or bad, Kurtzman’s team brings over those blinding lens flares and the overall look still calls back to the local mall Apple store. But the enormity of the set, the design of Ake’s quarters, and the cadet quarters somehow work better now. At first it looked like the digitally created characters, like a (cute) bright red exocomp flitting about and onslaught of drones a la The Jetsons–would be distractions. Ultimately those kinds of bits were disposed of by the back half of the season.
Strange New Worlds is a ton of fun, with so many great characters. But it’s nice to see a Star Trek show succeed on its own, without relying on what made the franchise great in the beginning. Ultimately the first season of Starfleet Academy was a breath of fresh air–a new start, fresh concepts, and young characters there to balance the seriousness of the mission with a sense of humor. It might just take you back to your own first year at college. Let’s hope they can keep it going. All ten first season episodes of Starfleet Academy are now streaming on Paramount+. The second season has already been filmed and is in post-production. It’s expected to air early in 2027.
