As a franchise, Star Trek is surprisingly vast and varied. Long ago, it was that quirky 60s show that was super woke and spoke at length and without much subtlety about politics and society. Then it went off the air for quite some time, only to return as an equally oddball series of spin-offs that doubled, tripled, and often quadrupled down on the values of the original.
Since that time, Trek has dipped and soared from one decade to the next. Some of the films are rotten, some are all-time bangers, and that goes for the shows, too. But one things has been consistent: Star Trek has endured. It hasn't always been the biggest draw or a massive mainstream favorite, but it has rarely left the public conscious for too long.
Part of that is because there's so much of Star Trek out there. No matter your chosen format, you're bound to find something that will appeal to you. Be that games, books, movies, animated outings, or the beloved TV series. It is a franchise that thrives on its malleable nature. You can insert almost any kind of story into its mythology and it will somehow fit, no matter how ludicrous the setting.
Likewise, if you find yourself a complete purist, the original works exist in superb DVD and Blu-ray box sets, and they even gave the Next Generation crew one more outing in the nostalgia-heavy Picard reboot.
Why does this matter? Well, it appears some of the loud minorities online have taken it upon themselves to declare what, exactly, Star Trek is meant to be. Clearly this series, with its progressive politics and optimistic view of future generations, is not it.
They're hilariously wrong, of course. These are the complaints of people who've probably consumed, but never watched Star Trek.
That's because Starfleet Academy is the Trekkiest that Trek has been in quite some time. Especially when it gets silly, which it does often and with great relish. It plays like a mixture between the wildest optimism of the original series and the most conceptually bonkers parts of Next Generation, and somehow it just works.
The setting is even further into the far future. A cosmic calamity called The Burn has wiped out pretty much everything we knew about the universe, and Starfleet is still picking up pieces of what it once was. Back on Earth, a new academy seeks to become a bastion of what Starfleet stood for in the years before it all came crashing down. But to do that, they need a new direction.
Enter Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter), all of 400 years old and coming to terms with the numerous bad choices she has made during the warring years after The Burn. She's to lead the school and the new ship, Athena, which serves as the main campus.
Her closest protege is the runaway youth Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta), who Starfleet forcibly separated from his mother as a youth. Mir and Ake share a bitter past, but also a shared dislike for authority that gives them a shared sense of purpose in a new Federation that struggles to establish itself.
Others, like the give-peace-a-chance Klingon Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané), holographic entity Sam (Kerrice Brooks), rival Darem Reymi (George Hawkins), Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard), and potential love interest Tarima Sadal (Zoë Steiner) soon join the group. Their individual journeys form the spine of the first season, where we learn just how much the universe has changed in the hundreds of years since we last saw it.
As with any Trek, the core group of characters make or break the show, and it's clear within minutes that these ones are keepers. Rosta and Hunter have wonderful chemistry together, and Hunter brings a delightfully chaotic energy to the captain's chair we haven't seen in ages. Elsewhere, Brooks proves the beating heart of the show as Sam, a holographic creation designed to learn from humanity by experiencing the horror years of college firsthand. Her interactions are a hoot, especially with series fave Robert Picardo, returning as The Doctor.
Paul Giamatti deserves a whole helping of praise as well. His turn as the series villain Nuz Braka is the kind of wonderfully hammy and fun chaos we've come to expect from this franchise. From the first episode onwards, it's clear that whenever he's on screen, you know you're bound to have a good time. There's a bit early in the show where Giamatti's Braka delivers one of the greatest sign-offs in Trek history that is so perfectly absurd it left me gasping for air.
Despite the college-bound setting, Starfleet Academy is thankfully still packed with wonder and moments of great love for the unknown. An early arrival back to Earth, complete with a perfectly tender and cheesy needle drop, is surprisingly touching. It reminds us that Trek, above all, is an optimistic story. Often it is unbearably naive with that optimism, but that's why we love it.
If there are complaints, they're almost entirely to do with modern realities of the streaming format. Star Trek is a series that needs space to breathe. It can't tell an effective story in a linear format with only a handful of episodes. To its credit, Starfleet Academy leans on the story-of-the-week format harder than previous shows, but it still rushes when it should linger.
In an ideal world, this would be a 20-episodes-plus season, and then at least three more like it. The series and characters aren't fully formed yet, and they won't be until they're given a the chance to discover themselves. It took Next Generation an entire season to get good, and lord knows it still produced some stinkers even at the best of times.
But even so, Starfleet Academy is a brave new world entirely worth exploring. It is funny, smart, full of heart, and so unafraid to be itself that it feels right at home in the franchise. It encapsulates all the best parts of Star Trek, and some of the bad sides as well. And while it won't be for everyone, it is still Trek, through and through.
