Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1×04 review: “Vox in Excelso”

Starfleet Academy reminds me that it’s not about having all the answers, but wanting to find a peaceful resolution that protects and respects everyone involved–and being willing to do the work to get there.

After a fun episode of laser tag, Starfleet Academy is back to boring diplomacy–my favorite Star Trek theme.

Learning the fate of Klingons post-Burn is grim. They’ve never recovered fully after the destruction of Qo’Nos, and the remaining Houses are scattershot, clinging to traditions across a broken galaxy.

Jay-Den Kraag has found his way to Starfleet Academy by the encouragement of his brother, who recognized that warriors come in all shapes. His brother wanted Jay-Den to follow his heart toward becoming a healer no matter what the rest of the House wanted for him.

Now Jay-Den is on that path, but it’s a difficult one. He’s the only full Klingon hanging around the Academy, which leaves him battling his legacy and honor alone, even when well-intentioned friends want to help him. He doesn’t think of himself as any kind of warrior, which makes debate team difficult: he even feels undeserving of a battle of words.

His personal crisis arrives at a time of crisis for Klingons at large. Starfleet has found a planet worthy of Klingons, but they won’t take it. Starfleet desperately just wants to give the planet to them because they full-throatedly believe Klingons should exist. Klingons don’t want charity. They are warriors, and they would rather die as warriors than change who they are.

By taking counsel from a half-Klingon elder, Lura Thok, and allowing himself to enter the battle of words, Jay-Den earns his status as a true warrior. Simultaneously, Starfleet Academy chooses to honor Klingons by going through ritual battle, allowing them to earn a new planet like Qo’Nos.

I often criticize Starfleet for being Space Americans, which remains absolutely true. I adore all the Star Trek eras (while also picking it to pieces), and the 90s Star Trek was very much a reflection of neoliberal American naivete, with all its failings.

There remains plenty to criticize about Star Trek, but I don’t really want to criticize it right now.

We are at a moment in time where strong political forces do not want to respect cultures and traditions. They don’t even want them to exist. Our ideological battle in reality is one between “everyone is human and our neighbors” and “one specific group has a God-given right to superiority over everyone else, who must be subjugated or annihilated.”

Star Trek is firmly on the side of believing everyone is our neighbors (and deserving of humanitarian ideals, when they are not necessarily human). By depicting this as a messy, boring diplomatic process, it’s accepting that our good intentions are not enough: we must want this so badly that we will humble ourselves to find a solution that respects everyone’s needs.

Wanting it and working for it is, unfortunately, extremely radical right now.

Starfleet Academy is shining a light of hope on these ideas to remind us what we really want to be as humans, as a nation of plural cultures, while being self-aware enough to recognize we aren’t that thing. Not yet. This imperfect ideology has guided at least as many Americans as the cruel imperial Americans.

If Starfleet is still Space America, then it’s the America that good people continue hoping to form: a more perfect union. We don’t actually know what that looks like. But we want to make it happen anyway.

I’m feeling sad about reality, so Starfleet Academy gave me big emotions this week.

You can tell I’m feeling serious because I didn’t even remark on how adorable it is that Nahla Ake is tiny compared to everyone, that she has a romance with a Klingon twice her height, or that Darem Reymi and Jay-Den absolutely had a very steamy queer moment. Even my inner freak is taking a break to just hug the TV show and be grateful that people care about this, somewhere, as much as I do.

Starfleet Academy season one is streaming weekly on Paramount+.

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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