Starfleet Academy Series Premiere Review

Starfleet Academy

Series Premiere Review

"Kids These Days"

Following a special Star Trek 60th Anniversary Intro, the episode opens with a main character giving a speech, clearly a callback to the 'Space, the Final Frontier' speeches, as well as Una's speech at the beginning of Strange New Worlds eponymous pilot.  We get a little flashback to Caleb Mir as a child that establishes Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti), a half Tellarite-Half Klingon as the bad guy and Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) in a DIS season 3 uniform and badge.  The stardate on screen 853724.6, gives the year of approximately 3177.  Ake delivers starfleet's ruling that Caleb's mother Anisha Mir (Tatiana Maslany) is to be imprisoned, separated from her son.  Ake seems to have very little empathy for the situation at hand.  Nahla mentions Caleb going to Bajor.  Caleb escapes the "facility" by stealing Nahla's badge.  Next we see Caleb (Sandro Rosta) as a young adult with a rap sheet.  After the fight on the prisoner transport Caleb stabilizes the plummeting transport.  The physical controls Caleb uses to fly the ship are very un-32nd century.  The title sequence is extremely short.  It's interesting to see Bajor again, this many years (both in universe an in real life) after it's last appearance on DS9.  After the scene with Nahla and the kids Nahla, now not in Starfleet in approached by Admiral Vance.  Apparently after separating Caleb from his mother and Caleb's escape Nahla resigned from Starfleet.  Vance tells her that Starfleet Academy is reopening, and that he wants to reinstate her commission and make her chancellor of the Academy.  Vance and Nahla both mention that she is half Lanthanite (see Pelia from Strange New Worlds) and that she is about 450 years old.  After some convincing Vance tells her that they found Caleb Mir.  Nahla goes to visit him in a prison colony.  She tells him that she regrets separating him from his mother and that she's been looking for him for 15 years, making the current year 3192.  She gives his an offer: join Starfleet Academy to get his sentence commuted.  She offers to help him find his mother, who broke out of Prison a year ago.  He accepts.  On the shuttle trip to Starfleet Academy Caleb sees a ship and asks if that is taking them to the school.  Nahla answers "that is the school".  The USS Athena NCC-392023, and Academy Class starship.  From certain angles it looks a bit like the USS Discovery.  Arriving the cadets are guided by the voice of the digital Dean of Students (voiced by talk show host Stephen Colbert).  We get nice view of the main atrium.  Nahla is greeted by Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), her first officer, a half Klingon-half Jem'Hadar.  Caleb throws his bag down and refuses to wear a uniform, for this he is disciplined on the spot by Thok.  She addresses the Klingon cadet Jay'den Kraang (Karim Diane) a major in microbiology.  After Kraang and Caleb are dismissed by Thok and given uniforms (and haircuts), they are then given physicals by the USS Voyager NCC-74656's famous EMH (Robert Picardo).  His line when checking the next cadet "Tricorder..." -sigh "medical tricorder" is a callback to his first appearance in the pilot of Star Trek Voyager, when he asked for a tricorder and Kim handed him a standard tricorder instead of a medical tricorder.  On the bridge of the Athena, Lura Thok introduces the captain to her crew they set a course for Earth.  Ake then addresses the crew and cadets and makes a speech to the cadets about being the first Academy class in 120 years.  During her speech we get good views of the "memorial wall" with the names and presumably final ranks of many famous Starfleet officers (read: characters from previous series and movies), with an emphasis on Captain Christopher Pike and Captain Spock (Strange New Worlds, TOS).  The USS Athena is to be a flying classroom.  After her speech they leave dock and go to warp.  On the lower levels we meet SAM (Kerrice Brooks) a holgram and Genesis Lythe, a half-Human half Dar-Sha and the daughter of a Starfleet Admiral (Bella Shepard).  A close call confrontation occurs between Darem Reymi (George Hawkins) a Khionian, Caleb and Kraang, it's broken up by the Doctor, who send them all to Sato Atrium.  It seems Caleb and Kraang have become friends.  As the Athena travels at warp SAM "Series Acclimation Mil", Starfleet Academy's first holographic student, introduces herself to the Doctor (her idol apparently).  The Doctor mentions that about 500 years ago he added an aging program to his matrix (explaining away Robert Picardo's older appearance).  SAM wants the Doctor to be her mento, he is not receptive to the idea, even after she brings up the crews of Voyager and the Protostar.  Caleb hacks a console and attempts to send a message to his mother, but is interrupted by Genesis.  On the bridge an anomaly has been detected not far from their location near the Badlands.  They drop out of warp to scan the area.    The ship is attacked, programmable matter engulfs the ship, leaving it powerless.  They are approached by a ship, the Venari Ral.  As DOT drones repair the damage the cadets help each other and the other injured, including Lura Thok, who was badly injured.  SAM manages to interface with the ship and provide some lights and power.  In a medical classroom the cadets treat Thok, guided by Thok herself.  on the bridge Nahla receives a holocommunication from Nus Braka, he's here for payback, after her sending him to prison 15 years ago.  The cadets listen in as Braka taunts Nahla.  Broca intercepted Caleb's message.  Braka wants the pathway drive from the Athena.  After Braka's message ends Caleb contacts the bridge with a plan to remove the programmable matter.  Meanwhile Thok encourages Krang to continue her treatment.  The other cadets enact a plan to counter the programmable matter.  Darem, who can survive the vacuum of space goes out onto the hull to scan the programmable matter.  Darem gets the frequency, but nearly freezes to death.  With the Doctor's help Genesis manages to save Darem, while SAM and Kraang perform surgery to save Thok's life.  Caleb attempts to get to engineering but is stopped by Braka.  After a fight, and the cadets plan working, the programmable matter is neutralized and Braka's ship is destroyed.  Braka escapes in an escape pod.  Later, the cadets gather to see the ship approach Earth.  The slow cover of Scott Mackenzie's "San Francisco Song" is an interesting choice.  Nahla dresses Caleb down for sending the message the allowed Braka to find them, which could get him expelled.  She allows him to stay with restrictions, because of the initiative he took and saving the ship.  He accepts the second chance.  Nahla reveals that her son was a cadet, he was on a ship that was destroyed in The Burn.

Thoughts

This was not as bad as I was worried it would be, confirming my statement the people should wait until the show comes out before passing judgement, instead of trashing it based on trailers and preview pictures.  The backstory is well established, especially regarding Nahla, Caleb and Braka.  The acting is good so far.  The characters are pretty good so far especially Nahla, Lura Thok, Caleb, Jaden, and The Doctor, as well as the other cadets.  Braka is a little hammy/charicatureish, but that may change as the series progresses and the character gets more fleshed out.  The episode is fairly heavy on fan service (expected for Kurtzman trek), but it's all pretty much done well, fitting the references into the story setting, not just garishly throwing out references just for the hell of it.  The biggest example by far is The Doctor (EMH), with Robert Picardo reprising his role.  The character, however, fits perfectly in this series and this timeframe (as a hologram, he's immortal, and at this point in time, holograms are normal and people treat him as such).  This show is obviously going be heavily character based, more like DS9 in that regard than some other Trek shows (TOS, TNG, VOY, SNW for example).  Time will tell whether Starfleet Academy is able to balance character driven stories with plot and story as well as DS9 did.  The episode does a pretty good job showing the optimism and positivity about future humanity/Earth/the Federation that "old" treks (TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT) and even Lower Decks and SNW gave us.  good job there.  Visually it's ok, I'm not a huge fan of the 32nd century setting, although it is nice that this episode fleshes out that timeframe, giving us looks at both times before and after Discovery S3-S5.  The world building here is good, especially give how little we know about the time period.  The sets are a bit dark, this seems to be a trend in some modern treks, though not nearly as bad here as Picard season 3.  We see the first meetings of our main characters in this episode, and for many of them the beginnings of their friendships/relationships.  One interesting choice was the slow, grandiose cover version of Scott Mackenzie's San Francisco Song (Wear Some Flowers in You Hair) over the scenes of the Athena arriving at Earth and landing in San Francisco.  Overall, this was a pretty good start to a hopefully decent series.  We shall see...