Starfleet Academy – Season 1

Well this was a strange one. I was very dubious about the whole concept because it sounded like Paramount was going for the teen angst market and there would be very little actual Star Trek in it. That, thankfully, proved to be wrong. Academy is very much a Star Trek show. And the first season, while patchy, ended up much better than I expected.

The first couple of episodes didn’t work well for me. They seemed to have a required plotline and the characters were just pawns being moved around to achieve those ends. The whole Betazed diplomatic negotiation thing was particularly silly. I was unimpressed by the Venari Ral as bad guys as well. Paul Giamatti chews the scenery magnificently as Nus Braka, but I can’t get my head around an enemy who are simultaneously a bunch of rag-tag pirates and also the technological equals of the Federation. If they can afford ships like that, why don’t they have uniforms? Or at least better clothes.

Then we got the War College, which had me doing a serious double-take. Most people will have been completely oblivious to what was going on here, but anyone who has spent time in the Bay Area will known exactly what subtext was being presented. As we all know, Starfleet Academy is based in San Francisco. It is effectively a university, and their sports teams play in red. The War College is also in the Bay Area, and their sports teams play in Blue. Oh dear. Those friends of mine who went to Berkeley will not be happy.

If this still means nothing to you, imagine that the show was set in England, that the two rival colleges wore dark blue and light blue, and that a rowing contest was a key part of the plot. It is that unsubtle. Someone on the show went to Stanford and wanted to get one over on the old enemy.

Episode 4 made me quite angry. It had the right idea, in that we were told that Klingon culture was important. Caleb’s attempts to be a (non-white) saviour were rightly condemned. But then we had the stupid fake space battle. Everyone on the Federation ships knew it was fake because they were ordered to shoot wide. There is no way that the Klingons would not know that it was fake too. How, exactly, is this respecting Klingon culture? There is no honour in battle unless there is actual risk.

What I would have done is make Klingon ownership of Faan Alpha contingent on Jay-Den winning the debate contest. They would have had to get Caleb sufficiently angry to put up a good fight, but they’d been laying the groundwork for that anyway. That way there would have been real stakes, and Jay-Den would have come out of it a hero.

Oh, by the way, how much did staging that enormous fake space battle cost the Federation? I know this is a post-scarcity universe, but the expenditure on munitions and crew time must have been enormous.

SAM is a lovely character, and the Emergency Holographic Doctor is one of the best things to have come out of Voyager, but I have never been terribly convinced by the idea of holographic beings.

With episode 6 we finally start getting some serious plotting, and real stakes. It almost worked. Except that as soon as it was revealed that the Sargasso was the only starship available to guard the experimental research labs on Starbase J-19 Alpha the nature of Braka’s plan was suddenly blindingly obvious. It was necessary to keep that information from the viewers so that Vance and Ake didn’t look like absolute idiots when they were unable to work it out.

Then we get an interlude episode, and another plot in which the characters appear to be mere pawns. Obviously I’m very happy to see a gay Klingon in a skirt, but both Darem and Jay-Den were badly served by this sloppy episode.

Back to the serious stuff with episode 8. This was probably my favourite of the season. My only complaint is that, if the students were so traumatised by the events in episode 6, why did we see none of it in episode 7?

Finally we had the two-part finale, in which we get the culmination of Venari Ral plotline and Caleb gets re-united with his mom. It was all nicely dramatic, with some proper science, but it did seem to wrap things up very quickly and easily. Part of this is a result of seasons being so short these days. There just isn’t time to develop a proper story arc. And part of it must have been because the Trek team must have been worried that the show would be cancelled after the first season, if not half way through it.

We now know that there will be a second season, but probably only because it has already been shot. And we have to hope that there is no more Trek in development for a while, least Bari Weiss get her filthy hands into the production. I have seen people on social media joking about a all-mirror-universe series, which is probably not far off what she’d force them to produce.

Which is a shame. Academy has a good bunch of characters. Holly Hunter is magnificent as Chancellor Ake. It is great to have Robert Picardo and Tig Notaro back on a regular basis. Tilly’s guest appearance was fabulous. And Admiral Vance actually seems like a proper Admiral, as opposed to the dubious characters who have held that rank in previous series.

Of course, when everything calms down again (if it does), there is always the prospect of a new series. The one I would like to see would have Genesis Lythe as first officer on Captain Boimler’s ship. I’m sure they would hit it off just fine…