Paramount has been.... threatening or promising, it depends I suppose on your perspective... a Starfleet Academy project for years.
After the debacle of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, there was a draft for the next film to be set at Starfleet Academy before it was decided the original crew needed a proper send off and we got Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Since then, series set at Starfleet Academy have existed in various forms in extended media such as novels and comic books. But has avoided TV or film canon until now.
So we get a TV series called Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Is it's arrival fulfillment of a promise or a threat?
First a word on what we got going on here.
The series is set in the 32nd century, the far-future of the Star Trek franchise where Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets are recovering from the cataclysmic event known as "the Burn" (which decimated warp travel for a century) as we saw starting in season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery.
Setting the show in the 32nd century is a brilliant idea as the Academy is just coming back online after being shuttered for a century. This is a time of growth not just for the new cadets but for the school itself.
The school is a starship, the USS Athena, that docks at the Starfleet Academy campus in San Francisco but can go into space for some actual practical space travellin' experience.
Well, that's some practical stuff. Just who is in this darn thing? Let's find out.
Nahla Ake is Captain of the Athena and Chancellor of the Academy. She is half Lathanite, the long lived alien species we met in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in the form of Chief Engineer Pelia (Carol Kane).
Played by Oscar winner Holly Hunter, Ake is a most unusual leader from what we normally see in Star Trek: mishievous, empathetic, non-conformist. She prefers to go barefoot as much as possible in defiance of the Academy dress code. She also never just sits in a chair. She kicks her legs over the side or drapes herself over a chair upside down. (I wonder if the half of Ake that is NOT Lanthanite is Caitian, the feline species of Dr. T'Ana from Star Trek: Lower Decks.)
FUN FACT: ST:SA brings several things from the animated series Lower Decks and Prodigy into live action canon. The rocky skinned Brikar from Prodigy show up here. And remember the Exocomp from Lower Decks called Peanut Hamper? ST:SA introduces us to Almond Basket.
Ake's 2nd in command on the Athena and her cadet master at the Academy is Lura Thok who is part Klingon, part Jem'Hadar which makes NO sense at all but there she is in all her awesome glory.
Andrea and I were both almost convinced that Lura was played by Jo Martin from Doctor Who but nope. She's Gina Yashere of Bob ❤ Abishola.
Lura Thok is a very bold character, barking orders at her green recruits like the warrior she is but really trying to be more nuanced with her space hippie Captain and her wife, Jett Reno.
YAY! Tig Nataro from Star Trek: Discovery is in this thing and Star Trek can always use more Tig Nataro. Reno teaches temporal mechanics at the Academy which is a sweet deal for an actual time traveller.
Also joining the gang from another Star Trek series is Robert Picardo as the Doctor. OK, it's been 800 years since he went online as the holographic Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager and he still doesn't have a name?
FUN FACT: Picardo being 20+ years older since the end of Voyager is addressed. The Doctor added an aging program to his holomatrix since his not aging was freaking out organic life forms.
One more member of the cast I want to bring up: the Digital Dean whose omnipresent announcements provide a color and texture to Academy life and some humor as well. Which is to be expected as the voice of the Digital Dean is provided by Stephen Colbert.
Because this is a show set a school, we have to have students and this is where the show is really having to work to get me to care or like them.
There are the elitists who think the Captain's chair is some kind of devine destiny or something. At least Type A personality Genesis Lythe knows she has to work hard for this while entitled rich kid Darem Reymi thinks he can bluster is way to a Captain's rank.
There's the overeager, trying too hard to be friendly class nerd SAM (Series Acclimation Mil), a photonic life form programmed to be 17 years old but only brought on line a week ago.
And we have Jay-Den Kraag, a typically grim and dour Klingon who actually is not big on being a warrior but aspires to be a medical officer. He'll put on a Klingon glower if he has to if he needs to make someone stand down but the whole warrior ethos is not really his thing.
And there is the cadet who really tries my patience, Caleb Mir.
To be fair, Caleb has been through some shit. And it is Starfleet's fault and Ake was part of it. As a child, he was seperated from his mother who was found guilty of crimes while working with a space pirate. Now 22, Caleb has spent his entire youth living rough and cycling in and out of various alien prisons. Ake has been trying to find Caleb and save him from this life to atone for her role in him losing his mother.
Caleb Mir is not inclined to listen to or follow Nahla Ake.
Except now he's caught in an alien prison he can't escape from and the penalty for stealing is having his hands cut off. So yeah, maybe he will take up her offer to join Starfleet Academy.
It's taken 3 episodes for him to realize his obstinate loner act ain't working and maybe Nahla Ake is really trying to do right by him. And dammit he's making.... what do you call them? Yeah, right... friends despite himself.
But Caleb Mir is a piece of work and tries my patience.
I guess the writers are looking at some kind of redemption arc and I get that but Mir doesn't make it easy.
FUN FACT: At least one net positive for ST:SA is that the series pisses off Stephen Miller. I hate to bring up the Trump regime in the otherwise safe haven of the Tuesday TV Touchbase but here we go.
Upon seeing ST:SA, Miller took to social media to berate the show for being (you guessed it!) too WOKE what with racial diversity and a woman in charge pushing his Nazi buttons.
Miller's suggestion was that the 94 year old William Shatner should come back and be put in charge of Star Trek.
The one and only time William Shatner was ever in charge of Star Trek was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. 'Nuff said!
Sadly Stephen Miller is not alone in his critique of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. From what I can tell, most of the complaints are clearly manufactured by Chatbots or angry white dude bros with an axe to grind and don't really get what Star Trek is all about.
As for me, I will admit that I feel that I may not be the target demographic for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy but that's OK. I recognize that Star Trek is trying something different here from the standard issue "alien problem of the week" thing we're used to and that is a good thing if we want to keep this franchise alive.
And there's a lot going on that I find genuinely amusing and interesting.
If nothing else, I am intriqued by whatever Holly Hunter's Nahla Ake will do next.
Or the next oddball annoucement from Stephen Colbert's Digital Dean.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, you have my attention. Let's see where this goes.
And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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