Roush Review: ‘Star Trek’ Gets Schooled in ‘Starfleet Academy’

How does a legendary franchise like Star Trek mark its 60th anniversary? By going younger.

Long rumored and finally realized, the latest spinoff introduces a class of literal space cadets in Starfleet Academy, an engaging if at times didactic addition to the canon. “Why does everything have to be a full-on lesson in this place?” rightfully gripes the reformed delinquent Caleb Mir (charismatic standout Sandro Rosta) to the school’s free-spirited Chancellor/Captain Nahla Ake (a merrily mercurial and often barefoot Holly Hunter).

Her reply boils down to: It’s a school, moron. Live, learn, and presumably prosper.

Ake’s tangled history with and sense of responsibility for Caleb, who’s been on his own since childhood thanks to Ake’s actions in the 15-years-earlier prologue, provide one of the more compelling backstories in a series that veers wildly in tone from episode to episode as Academy experiences its own version of a learning curve. The worst episode in the first batch (I’ve seen six) is a mostly lighthearted caper pitting the young recruits of the Academy, which has finally reopened 100 years after the devastating events of “the Burn” — it helps to know your Star Trek: Discovery history — against the arrogant upstarts at the adjoining War College. Their feud is an ongoing irritant, and if you can’t predict that they’ll finally gain some mutual respect when faced with a serious galactic crisis, you must be new to the Trek world.

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Most viewers are likely not newbies, of course, and they’ll enjoy seeing familiar faces like Star Trek: Voyager‘s fussy hologram Doctor (Robert Picardo) and, from Discovery, sardonic engineer Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) and Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr). There are times when the show can feel like a Trek seminar, especially in the fifth episode, when a student takes a deep dive into Deep Space Nine lore.

And what about those students? They’re a mixed bag, with Caleb representing a naturally gifted rebel among clichéd and competitive overachievers, along with a few surprises, most notably the peace-loving Klingon Jay-Den Kragg (Karim Diané), whose sensitive nature belies his upbringing and is explored to great effect in the poignant fourth episode. The most unusual character is baby-faced SAM (Kerrice Brooks) — stands for Series Acclimation Mil (huh?) — a newly formed holographic emissary from a photonic race that isn’t quite sure they can trust the “organics.” Only 200-some days old, her bubbly eagerness is an antidote to jaded Caleb’s anti-authority cynicism, but even he isn’t immune to young-adult puppy love when he meets the telepathic Betazoid Tarima (Zoë Steiner), who gets in his head while stealing his heart.

Not surprisingly, the grown-ups tend to steal the show, especially when depicting the battle of wits between Hunter’s 422-year-old Ake and the equally great Paul Giamatti as her nemesis, the gloating and cackling space pirate Nus Bakra. Back on campus, split between 32nd-century San Francisco and aboard the U.S.S. Athena, the cadets have good reason to quake, and for viewers to revel, whenever Gina Yashere (Bob Hearts Abishola) appears as the ferocious and funny Lura Thok, part-Klingon cadet master and Ake’s No. 1. In one of her more memorable outbursts, she threatens her charges by shouting, “You will pay with blood, sweat, and shame! Why are none of you crying?”

Splendidly produced as are most things in the Trek universe, Academy may not jump to the head of its class, but neither is it an epic fail. There are many worse ways to spend one’s recess from reality.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Series Premiere (two episodes), Thursday, January 15, Paramount+

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