Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1×01 and 1×02 Review: “Kids These Days” and “Beta Test”

Starfleet is back after a crisis destroyed their vessels, and Starfleet Academy is witness to the rebuilding with a new class of students, some familiar faces, and fun twists on familiar alien races.

The initial marketing for Starfleet Academy left me unsure if I wanted this show–although, conceptually, I’ve wanted to see more Starfleet Academy ever since I was a small child. As a kid, getting a show about people learning to become the savvy, flexible officers on shows I loved like Star Trek: Voyager seemed like an impossible dream. As an aging adult with back pain, the CW-style “giggling on grass together” poster left me a bit leery.

There’s nothing to worry about. Starfleet Academy is made by devoted Trekkies who wanted this show as much as I did when I was ten-years-old, and it’s clearly in good hands.

The show focuses on Caleb Mir, a shockingly good-looking young man who’s been searching for his mother for fifteen years. The Starfleet justice system separated them. I loathe when Starfleet is portrayed as carceral (like with Burnham’s prison sentence on Discovery), but this mistake of injustice is appropriately portrayed as such a miscarriage that it drove Nahla Ake out of Starfleet entirely.

Nahla Ake is our new captain-shaped person, played by Holly Hunter. Her title isn’t actually captain, but she’s in command of the Academy, which is taking place on the U.S.S. Athena, and she has the captain’s chair.

Star Trek has been putting middle-aged women in skintight leather for my delight at least since Michelle Yeoh graced Discovery, and Nahla Ake is another entry into this glorious canon. But where Yeoh gave us a coolly evil chaotic bisexual, Hunter gives us a warm art teacher who hates wearing shoes… and sits like a bisexual. No, seriously, I’ve never seen the captain’s chair treated like a jungle gym.

Nahla feels terrible for the part she played in separating Caleb from his mom. She only returns to Starfleet to help him. She’s a mom without a son, he’s a son without a mom, loving family sparks fly. The two of them have the most adorable mom/baby chemistry, I gotta tell you. He’s twice as tall as she is, but mirrors her body language, which makes him look like a six-foot toddler.

Caleb’s a good hero to follow. Aside from being adorable, he’s got the kind of hero bones that make him jump in to protect classmates from would-be bullies. He immediately endears himself to my darling son Jay-Den Kraag, our resident Klingon, who doesn’t want to be a warrior so much as a doctor. Oh, did I mention I also have mentally adopted a sweet Klingon boy as my son? Because I have.

In fact, all I want to do is adopt these students to be my children–like SAM, our first photonic entity to become a Starfleet officer via the Academy. She’s programmed to be seventeen-years-old in mind, but she’s actually only four months old, which makes her a sweet overeager darling pudding pop of a girl who has no idea how to make friends.

Sorry, this show just got my maternal instincts raving. I’m sure I would have loved it in a saner way when I was student age, but now I’m an old mom lady, and I’m relating to the stern-but-loving teachers who wanna kick young adult butt into shape.

Our teachers are a delight: Whether that’s exobiology teacher the Doctor (from Star Trek: Voyager), who also runs the opera club, beloved Jett Reno with all her sarcasm, or half-Jem’Hadar Lura Thok, who defines tough love.

The first episode is a standard crew-in-space-meets-trouble plot, which I found to be a delightful surprise. I thought the format would feel very different on an Academy-based show. But part of the Academy just so happens to be the U.S.S. Athena, so we can have these space plots with roving pirates just as easily as San Francisco-based drama.

In our pilot, Holly Hunter faces off with avowed Trekkie Paul Giamatti as a “Klingarite” (half-Klingon, half-Tellarite) pirate. Giamatti clearly had the time of his life being a villainous bad boy. He draws inspiration from Ricardo Montalban and doesn’t hold back on his scenery-chewing. Delightfully, he is defeated by being ejected into space, so fingers crossed he’ll be back for evil nonsense soon.

The second episode is what I love best about Trek, though. Boring space diplomacy!

Since the incident that destroyed Starfleet, planet Betazed has been hiding behind a psionic shield. They haven’t been team players for over a century.

A Betazoid delegation shows up at Starfleet Academy to debate their reentry into the galactic club. The Betazoids clearly don’t want to do it.

(Side bar: The Betazed leader uses sign language throughout the episode. I haven’t seen that before on a genre show like this, so it was cool.)

Handsome wee tallboy Caleb forms a bond with gorgeous autism-coded Tarima of Betazed in order for the real diplomacy to happen. Caleb and Tarima have amazing romance vibes, and Tarima has an amazing wardrobe. Caleb’s earnestness convinces her to push her dad toward playing nice. Nahla’s brilliant idea to move Starfleet headquarters to Betazed seals the deal. Doesn’t that sound boring? I love it when Star Trek is boring!

As noted by The Digital Fix, Starfleet Academy is essentially Gen V meets Community (but with a dose of Lower Decks). If you have any reservations about the quality of Starfleet Academy, don’t worry. From the loving set design to the many Star Trek: Prodigy references, you can tell this was made by Trekkies, for Trekkies.

I do have to note that I have problems with CBS. I cancelled my subscription to Paramount+ ages ago and now watch Star Trek at a relative’s house. If you’re politically similar to me, you may not have a way to watch this one. But I do recommend it if you find the opportunity. Maybe this is one we’ll watch later on Blu-ray, one whole season at a time. I can already tell I’ll want to have this show in my collection.

Author: SM Reine

Half-Tellarite SM Reine is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of fantasy. She’s been publishing since 2011 and a nerd since forever.

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