Like any young child thrown into the world to find independence for the first time in college, Starfleet Academy it has a lot on its shoulders. It is something new Star Trek show, and that always comes with a lot of expectations. The first of the inevitable class celebrations Star Trek60th anniversary year. And, in many ways, the succession of the legacy itself in the series that, from time to time with some controversy, dominated. Star Trekthe nature of television as fiction, Star Trek: Discovery.
Again, thank you Adoptionhis bold choice in the middle—a leap from pre-realism A journey is more forward in the franchise’s timeline than any show that came before it—on the edge of the frontier in ways that all enduring franchises should seek. This is nothing new A star A traveling exhibition; it’s an opportunity the new Star Trekan opportunity to engage with new ideas, beauty, stories, and developments that push that Star Trek it is and can be beyond the echoes of its past triumphs.
But again, like any young child thrown into the world to find its first freedom—Starfleet Academy it is not the most important thing to worry about what other people expect of it. With the kind of reckless confidence befitting its junior class of the next generation of Starfleet officers, School it’s a show that knows what it wants to be, that knows it’s going to ruffle some of the feathers of the older generation, and still have a little fun.
Set casually during the events of the back part of Star Trek: Discovery late 32nd century, Starfleet Academy following the re-establishment of the titular center after a catastrophic galactic event called “The Burn,” the unplanned inertia of all active dilithium, leading to the unexpected explosion of warp cores throughout the known galaxy, killing an innumerable number of people and effectively making FTL travel across the galaxy in the worst possible way.
While Adoption itself explored some of the effects of Burn in its third season and beyond—as well as solving its mysterious causes—Starfleet Academy he is very interested in exploring what the universe, and its power systems like the Federation, look like as they slowly begin to rebuild 120 years after the disaster.
It does this through the eyes of a group of anchor characters, brought together by the re-opening of the Academy in the first class of students who will attend the holy institution since the time of the burning. At the top level, there’s the show’s chief executive, Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter, playing the role of the devil), a long-lived Lanthanite—the same kind of humanoid as Carol Kane’s Pelia. Strange New Worlds—who returns to Starfleet after years away as the school’s chancellor and captain of a school ship based on the USS. Athena.
As someone who has been around for a long time to see the rise of the Federation before it was burned, its disintegration and near-annihilation after it, and now a major figure in its return to the galactic stage, he leads an old guard that combines familiar and new faces, such as Gina Yashere’s comically shouty Cadet Master Lura Thok (one of the many interesting combinations. A journey species in the show, Jem’Hadar/Klingon), AdoptionTig Notaro returns as engineer and professor Jett Reno (one of several guests from that show, including Oded Fehr’s Admiral Vance), and Robert Picardo reprises his role as. Voyager‘s Emergency Medical Hologram, the head of the school’s medical course (and happily hitting every beat from his time as a doctor as best he can, including singing opera).
But while they play a big role in the show—and they’re made better as characters unlike them Adoptionhis broad approach to his great staff-Starfleet AcademyThe primary lens is a minority of its new students. Chief among them is Sandro Rosta’s Caleb Mir, a villain whose search for his missing mother links him to Ake’s past and the closest thing the show has to a villain, Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka (who, like Hunter, is clearly having a good time, whether he’s chewing the sweet spot or chewing everywhere.” a genuinely dangerous threat).
Mir’s joined by Karim Diané as Jay-Den Kraag, the only Klingon student among the school’s new roster; George Hawkins as Jockish good boy Darem Reymi, often paired with Bella Shepard’s Genesis Lythe, as two young aliens from new species (Khionians and Dar-Sha, respectively) who have high family expectations during their time at school; and Kerrice Brooks as the powerful Acclimation series Mil (or Sam, to his new friends), a holographic messenger from his creators who learns whether natural life is worth their world of sentient beings to reunite with.
It’s up to these kids not just to navigate the normal struggles of life as adults—juggling their studies and hormones in equal measure as they push and pull their various responsibilities and expectations from their elders—but to help. Starfleet Academy answer an important question: given the opportunity to rebuild what Starfleet and the Federation at large can be in the galaxy from almost the ground up, should the future Star Trek In this far, far away era of the franchise, what is it starting to look like?
The response that begins to appear throughout the first six episodes of the first season provided for review, is a work in progress, as are its young readers. Starfleet School is the only rival for the popularity of The Prodigy again Ground floor—full of youthful energy that will attract others Star Trek followers and deeply anger others. Although it’s not a comedy obviously Lower Decks (although it counts Tawny Newsome among its producers and writers), it’s a fun-loving show with lots of dumb teenagers doing dumb little things all the time.
There are a lot of things that cadets get up to that aren’t really police stuff, like getting busted in a bar, playing pranks on others, getting into emotional highs because of an unprovoked disagreement, or figuring out who’s in charge. On that note, while the show has a “first” romance between Caleb and fellow student Tarima Sadal, a Betazoid played by Zoë Steiner, it’s also where the series explores a lot of well-constructed crime Adoptionyour exploration of LGBTQ characters.
While Lower Decks can protect itself from Trekkie obsession by matching its shenanigans with sincere, nerdy adoration Star Trek broadly, Starfleet Academy it embraces a different kind of integrity that is evident in all its forms: even in dark and uncertain times, these are happy people, exploring who they are and who they want to be, and the negatives that come with that journey of self-discovery.
Everything is old Star Trek ideas—curiosity about the world and the people around it, messages of diversity and community in the face of division—are grounded in vision and focused on the stories of young actors who, metatextually or otherwise, have yet to truly deal with its long legacy. Star Trek it was before they arrived.
Starfleet Academy it doesn’t always do so gracefully—there’s an awkward fumbling where its simple, modern tone meets preconceived notions of decorum Star Trek characters and arguably restarted forms of “unreal A journey” arguments that were troubling Adoption in all its operations. But Starfleet School it takes this tone and that aforementioned sincerity and level of confidence that it’s worth the occasional road trip to get to know, and love, the slow growth of these characters.
But while that youth-driven fun is key Starfleet Academyheart, and its stakes are huge on a very small scale (while the show lends itself more to emotions Adoptionit’s not more difficult than it would be in that series because the entire galaxy isn’t threatened every week), that doesn’t mean the show has a very important and normal curiosity. Star Trek fare and its place in its history.
After the first dust settles on establishing its own sub-group, the few episodes given are about perpetuating the current status quo. Star Trek the whole world forward as the Federation begins to rebuild in earnest, engaging with the wider organizations that see it Starfleet AcademyThe young heroes begin to reckon with a bigger world that isn’t all fun and games. These are kids training to be Starfleet officers, and sometimes that means politics and conflict come in to see if they can succeed, and Starfleet Academy it does an excellent job of balancing the tension between its simple stories and its immersion in the stories at hand.
There is real meat here for a long time A journey fans are not willing to participate Starfleet Academyperspective, in both how the series begins to deal with the Burn and its aftermath—in a way Adoption so much that it stopped doing after its third season—and what it really means for this show and its characters, so far removed from the stories and characters of a large part of the franchise, to engage with them as historical moments before them, and how they can continue to have an impact. Star Trek as it charts a new scenario in this far future setting.
While Starfleet Academy it is about charging a new way and its ideas Star Trek by using its young characters, it has never been about doing so at the expense of ignoring where the series has been before (without going into details, one episode in particular concentrates this encounter in such a way that it stands out not only as the first participant of one of the best TV moments of 2026, but as one of the best episodes of TV. Star Trek we had it a few years ago).
That’s what makes the series so easy to forgive for its occasional awkward stumbles. After all, as its students, they are still trying to figure out what it is and what it could be—and they do so while trying to respect that. Star Trek it has already endured and challenged itself for the past 60 years. There is no more fitting series to be launched for this special anniversary than this: Starfleet Academy he clearly has a great passion for what came before it, and how that history will shape this next generation. But it also likes Star Trek enough to keep trying to push it forward, too, and keep its legacy humble as it looks hopefully into the next 60 years beyond.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premieres on Paramount+ January 15.
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