Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
101: Kids These Days 2026 January 15
(First watched 2026-01-15) Some interesting parts, but too much of this felt tropey for me to consider it great. Dude with parent issues getting into trouble but seeing Starfleet Academy as a potential way out is not far from Kelvin James Kirk, or Prime Jack Crusher, and surely many non-Star Trek instances I'm less familiar with. Then first day cadets getting into beefs over stupid shit, to be forced to work together for the common good by the end of the episode... yawn.
The Doctor still seems much the Doctor, not so different many hundreds of years later except perhaps a bit grumpier and more sure of himself.
I've never seen anyone curl up in a captain's char like Captain Chancellor Nala or whatever, but hey, go for it. Her species is a ridiculously long-lived one, but I note she said she was something like 450 years old, which neatly prevents anyone from trying to fit her into events of 22nd-25th century shows.
So the Athena is the academy... but also San Francisco is the academy. I wonder how big they are relative to each other in terms of space and people at a given time? Because having a big part of your eggs in one spacefaring basket seems risky, as the events of this episode would indicate.
As a villain, Paul Giamatti's seems closest to a Strange New Worlds era Harry Mudd. Dangerous but definitely not presenting a more serious air of someone like a Dukat or Khan.
102: Beta Test 2026 January 15
(First watched 2026-01-16) Why are the chancellors of academies such a central part of these interstellar negotiations?
Took me until the episode was over to get the pun of the title. Beta, Betazed.
103: Vitus Reflux 2026 January 22
(First watched 2026-01-22) Wasn't having an enjoyable time for the first half, when (again) everyone was just acting incredibly immature, but there started to be some decent character moments in the second half. Exception: Tig Notaro is fun to watch in any half.
So, something that isn't part of this episode but the series in general and that I don't seem to have written about yet... if this show hasn't had any appreciable time jump since Discovery, then it's only a few years since the problems of the Burn were overcome and the Federation started to piece itself together again. Which means the series started with a flashback to something like 10 years before those problems were solved. So in this time of very limited interstellar travel I wonder what the Federation and Nahla in particular were up to on that planet, and how far exactly was Caleb able to travel around in his life as a mini-fugitive.
104: Vox In Excelso 2026 January 29
(First watched 2026-01-30) OK, now we're getting to a tone I appreciate more. Cadets not being a dick to each other, but still with friction due to their differences, as well as helping each other expand due to their differences.
As a Trek nerd I do quibble with some of the pronunciations which seem to have arbitrarily changed? Like Kahless and Qo'nos now seem to end with an sh sound, and Khitomer now has the accent on the second instead of first syllable? I see Memory Alpha says this is actually something of a return to tradition, following early guidelines for the Klingon language when it was new at the time of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
We learn some of the fate of the Klingon people, with Qo'nos destroyed or heavily damaged and the Klingon people spread out. But I find that kind of hard to buy. A spacefaring people, who have been a spacefaring people for... something like a millennium at the time of the Burn, I'd expect they'd be pretty spread out. At least, enough so that even the loss of Qo'nos couldn't be said to put them near extinction.
The way it dealt with wanting to help a people vs letting them live or die on their own terms... I don't know. In general that is a tough situation. But the solution of "We're willing to accept help if you play pretend so we don't look like we're accepting help" kind of makes them seem like dangerously prideful dopes.
105: Episode name 2026 February 5
(First watched 2026-02-05) The Benjamin Sisko graphic was seen in one of the trailers, but I wasn't expecting it to be the focus of a full episode. One written in part by Trondy Newman, who it also took me an embarrasingly long time to recognize as the professor of the class Sam was trying to get into. It does kind of lock out any good opportunity for a 25th century story that deals with Sisko since it's established that even in the 32nd century his fate is still a matter of mystery and faith, but c'est la vie. Nice to see Cirroc back as mature author Jake, and professor of the weird class was a far-future Dax. That's kind of a big deal, wouldn't be surprised to see her show up again. A smaller DS9 reference, in one of the city shots we see that apparently Quark's as a business is still around.
B-story was just killing some time with the adults, but it was still a pretty fun time.
So five episodes in there are the first two that left me annoyed, the third one which showed promise, and these last two which were really good. So a mixed bag, but a good trajectory.