By Chris Snellgrove | Published
One of the so-called most interesting features of Starfleet Academy that the show focuses on Caleb, a fugitive and lifelong criminal who must now rebuild his life as the Federation’s newest space cadet. It’s a provocative background, and one that has made many fans think that Caleb is completely different from the legends of the franchise. However, it is Trek’s latest attempt to make the main character a “bad guy,” and these attempts have been falling flat since 1995’s first installment. Star Trek: Voyager.
As a franchise, Star Trek has always had bad guys, but they were usually benevolent villains (like Khan in his first appearance) or rugged antiheroes (like Roga Danar). With VoyagerParamount tried the franchise first by making convicted felon and Starfleet salesman Tom Paris a member of the bridge crew. It was a great idea on paper, and the fact that Paris was played by Trek bad boy Robert Duncan McNeil (he played stubborn. Starfleet Academy cadet in The Next Generation) was just the cherry on top. Unfortunately, this actor never reached his potential because of how Voyager was written.
We will stay with Sino (Tom) Paris
The general basis of Voyager that the titular ship is thrown into the middle of the galaxy, and in order to survive, Starfleet officers must team up with Chakotay’s renegade Maquis officers. Paris is someone who was kicked out of Starfleet, worked for a while with the Maquis, and was sent to prison after being caught. Captain Janeway breaks him out of prison to help him track down his former employers, but the god-like creature ends up throwing Voyager and Chakotay’s Maquis into the Delta Quadrant.
All of this is therapy for real tension, and Star Trek bad boy Tom Paris is caught in the middle. As a naive, manipulative womanizer, she is the stark contrast to Captain Janeway’s Starfleet idealism. But he is also such a hot-headed person that he often quarrels with Chakotay, who has been appointed as an officer. In this way, Paris starts out as a person who annoys both of the ranking officers on the ship, so she seemed destined for bad boy antics after that first episode.
However, the Voyager the writers took a page from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s book: they really didn’t want any conflict (especially ongoing conflict) between the main characters, so the Starfleet and Maquis officers began to get along almost immediately. As for Paris, she was almost instantly transformed into someone who wanted to make Space Mama Janeway proud of her piloting skills. All traces of his bad boy story disappeared, and the only things left that set Tom Paris apart were his love of comedy and sleep, making him a dollar store version of William Riker.
New Bad Boy Takes Center Stage
Although you could make an argument that Michael Burnham was the original Star Trek villain a girl (after all, Adoption following his arc through being released, imprisoned, and then captain of Starfleet), the franchise arguably hadn’t tried to create another bad boy until then. Picard. That show introduced Cristobel Rios, a former Starfleet commander whose captain killed innocent androids with mysterious orders; after helping cover up the crime and explaining the captain’s subsequent suicide, Rios was kicked off the ship and began running around the galaxy in a ship made of holographic copies of himself, all with different personalities.
Rios had some Tom Paris aspects to him, like a dark past with Starfleet, but he had more of a bad boy charm. For example, this bearded badass liked to cut cigars and sip vodka, and was happy to announce how rebellious he was to characters like Picard. He was also a bad boy who liked to discuss existentialist philosophy with Picard while they were both busy saving the galaxy.
Sadly, Rios stopped being a bad boy when he started working for Jean-Luc Picard; he previously thought of his former captain as a father figure, and later conveyed those feelings to Picard. After their adventures in Season 1, Rios gave up trying to become a space pirate and became a captain in Starfleet. This was meant to be part of a rewarding arc for the character (look, he made peace with his trauma and got his life back!), but it also meant that the audience didn’t get to enjoy being a sexy rebel for long because all he really wanted to do was make Daddy Picard happy.
Sweet Past Rebel
Now, on Starfleet Academyit also happens: the main character, Caleb, had his mother taken by Starfleet when he was young, and he became a pirate in his lifelong quest to find her. He’s introduced to us as a wild-haired bad boy who isn’t afraid to get dirty, making him seem like a character straight out of your wife’s favorite romance novel. However, Holly Hunter’s character soon enrolls her in Starfleet Academy, where the transporter just gives her a boring uniform and a haircut.
He’s still meant to be the show’s bad boy, but he’s unfortunately written as a role model for the show’s core audience: white teenagers. He thinks he has to wear a uniform, is treated like a no-nonsense teacher, and generally talks about all things Starfleet to Hunter’s character. But the first episode makes it clear that she’ll follow in the footsteps of Paris and Rios by trying to be the perfect Starfleet officer to impress an elderly parent (at one point, she has to remind Hunter’s character that she’s not her mother).
From Rebel to Class Clown
Caleb is the type of character who will become a better man because he wants to be who Hunter’s character sees him to be. That’s a bit ambitious, and we should all be lucky enough to have people in our lane who inspire us to greatness. But all of this quickly evaporates from Caleb’s cool side, and he goes from a cool former fugitive to a classy character with a heart of gold in one scene. day.
Long story short isn’t it? The Star Trek writers have been taking the Freud pill decadesand they keep wasting bad boy characters because it’s not enough to let them be bad. The writers want to rescue these characters, and they’ve collectively decided that the best way to do this is to give these newborns stories of Mom or Dad and turn the old man into the married parent they want to please.
Maternal Issues: The Final Frontier
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Star Trek characters having the kinds of mental problems that people have in real life, so the Mom/Dad stuff is irrelevant. that away. But it’s amazing that this has been the narrative goal of decades of storytelling, and it’s even more amazing that Trek keeps giving us bad guys and then refuses to let them be bad. Like, what’s the point of creating an attractive rebel character when they’re going to be yes whenever they get a chance to please their boss?
Starfleet Academy had the opportunity to do something new and exciting with Caleb’s character, making him someone we haven’t seen in this franchise. However, at the end of the first episode, he stopped being a bad boy and became Zack Morris and Mommy Problems. Instead of spending another few decades making the same mistake as would-be bad guys, I have a simple request for the Star Trek writers: would you just talk to your parents instead of taking your stories out on the audience with this terrible script?
