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lightofdaye) wrote2026-01-19 11:42 pm
lightofdaye) wrote2026-01-19 11:42 pm
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Star Trek: Starfleet Academy S1E1&E2 (Spoilers)
The first two episodes of a new series dropped last week on Paramount Plus.
Spun off from Discovery it features a new class of students entering Starfleet Academy in the 32nd century. The Academy taking place both on the San Francisco campus and a ship the USS Athena.
1x1:Kids these days
It starts in basically the bad old days of the post burn Starfleet pre-Discovery fixing everything. And our Captain separating a mother and child and the child going on the run. fifteen years later, said Captain, who resigned after than incident, is assigned to be head of the academy. At that same time that child is arrested after a life of crime, so the captain gets him out out of guilt and gets him to go to the academy.
The big academy ship is going from starfleet headquarters to earth. We meet the cadets. Said criminal. a pacifist klingon, an admiral's daughter who's lived on ships and starbases her whole life. A tilly like awkward Hologram girl and an asshole bully. (who's looks human like but is the first of some alien species that can survive vacuum)
oh and the emh is the cmo of the ship and the prodigy cast get an explicit reference and name drop. There's a memorial wall that has lot of names and end ranks of past crew. According to TVtropes a good chunk of them never made far past their end rank of the shows (apart from Harry Kim who ended up an Admiral)
The ship is ambushed en route. The main cast cadets rally to save the day. They get to earth and the starship lands to make up the campus building.
I've got a lot of petty complaints about the concept and a few other things. I'd have been fine with the main cast just being... regular cadets not some criminal who doesn't want to be there but it so talented etc has a link to the captain etc. A few too many aliens with weird powers. (aforementioned vacuum capable cadet.) and I still don't like the aesthetic of the 32nd century ships. but nothing too drastic. It was a perfectly fine start.
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1x2: Beta Test
So Betazad's not rejoined the Federation yet and has been blocking off a big chunk of space with its psychic powers... somehow. But they have a youth organisation that wants to rejoin the Federation. So their president is making a show of coming over and demanding massive concessions in negotiations to rejoin.
Caleb meets the president's daughter romantic hijinks and disagreements ensue. He finds out his mother was in betazed space. They get Betazed onboard by promising the Capital of the Federation will be on Betazed rather than Paris, Earth. The End.
It doesn't feel like an episode than naturally fits an Academy show, it feels like an episode for an adult focused show that's had the academy forced into it. The Academy bits aren't bad. There are Brikar and exocomps floating around and the EMH and Jett Reno teaching wacky classes but so far they're window dressing.
And anyone who isn't Caleb and to a lesser extent the bully got a mandatory couple of lines. The problem is Genesis and Sam and Jay-Den are as interesting if not moreso than Caleb's plot. So I hope we get more of the ensemble as the show goes on. This one was about reiterating Caleb's whole... thing.
I also hope the Klingon/Jem Hadar lady gets more to her than being a Klingon/Jem Hadar.
It's fine but I don't like it as much as I want to like it. They've established an ensemble and I want to use them but the 10 episode season format and the number of characters don't make me hopeful
Spun off from Discovery it features a new class of students entering Starfleet Academy in the 32nd century. The Academy taking place both on the San Francisco campus and a ship the USS Athena.
1x1:Kids these days
It starts in basically the bad old days of the post burn Starfleet pre-Discovery fixing everything. And our Captain separating a mother and child and the child going on the run. fifteen years later, said Captain, who resigned after than incident, is assigned to be head of the academy. At that same time that child is arrested after a life of crime, so the captain gets him out out of guilt and gets him to go to the academy.
The big academy ship is going from starfleet headquarters to earth. We meet the cadets. Said criminal. a pacifist klingon, an admiral's daughter who's lived on ships and starbases her whole life. A tilly like awkward Hologram girl and an asshole bully. (who's looks human like but is the first of some alien species that can survive vacuum)
oh and the emh is the cmo of the ship and the prodigy cast get an explicit reference and name drop. There's a memorial wall that has lot of names and end ranks of past crew. According to TVtropes a good chunk of them never made far past their end rank of the shows (apart from Harry Kim who ended up an Admiral)
The ship is ambushed en route. The main cast cadets rally to save the day. They get to earth and the starship lands to make up the campus building.
I've got a lot of petty complaints about the concept and a few other things. I'd have been fine with the main cast just being... regular cadets not some criminal who doesn't want to be there but it so talented etc has a link to the captain etc. A few too many aliens with weird powers. (aforementioned vacuum capable cadet.) and I still don't like the aesthetic of the 32nd century ships. but nothing too drastic. It was a perfectly fine start.
-
1x2: Beta Test
So Betazad's not rejoined the Federation yet and has been blocking off a big chunk of space with its psychic powers... somehow. But they have a youth organisation that wants to rejoin the Federation. So their president is making a show of coming over and demanding massive concessions in negotiations to rejoin.
Caleb meets the president's daughter romantic hijinks and disagreements ensue. He finds out his mother was in betazed space. They get Betazed onboard by promising the Capital of the Federation will be on Betazed rather than Paris, Earth. The End.
It doesn't feel like an episode than naturally fits an Academy show, it feels like an episode for an adult focused show that's had the academy forced into it. The Academy bits aren't bad. There are Brikar and exocomps floating around and the EMH and Jett Reno teaching wacky classes but so far they're window dressing.
And anyone who isn't Caleb and to a lesser extent the bully got a mandatory couple of lines. The problem is Genesis and Sam and Jay-Den are as interesting if not moreso than Caleb's plot. So I hope we get more of the ensemble as the show goes on. This one was about reiterating Caleb's whole... thing.
I also hope the Klingon/Jem Hadar lady gets more to her than being a Klingon/Jem Hadar.
It's fine but I don't like it as much as I want to like it. They've established an ensemble and I want to use them but the 10 episode season format and the number of characters don't make me hopeful