Entertainment
Is The New Star Trek Spinoff About To Redeem Its Worst Character?
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
While many Star Trek fans dislike various characters in Starfleet Academy, the one they hate the most isn’t one of the main characters. Like members of the early Discovery bridge crew, she has a name, but almost nobody watching actually knows it. To them, she’s mostly “the girl who ate her comm badge.”
This character (who is actually named Pickford) has only appeared in three episodes so far, and she’s always in the background, being generally useless. So useless, in fact, that you might find yourself wondering why the writers put such a stupid character in their prestige sci-fi show. Now, some Star Trek fans have a compelling theory about Pickford: that her stupidity is just an act, and she’s secretly a spy for Nus Braka!
The Woman Who Knew Too Little
In the very first episode of Starfleet Academy (“Kids These Days”), Pickford stood out in the worst possible way, nervously admitting to the Doctor that she had swallowed her comm badge. Critics pointed to this as an example of the new show having the kind of broad comedy more suitable to a Saturday morning cartoon than a new Star Trek show. After all, this was a character training to be the best of the best, but she appeared to have the wits and intelligence of a toddler in her first appearance.
She doesn’t acquit herself very well later, either: in that premiere episode, she has a full-on meltdown after Nus Braka’s pirate attack. Later, she’s rude to the holographic SAM, and in the most recent episode (“Come, Let’s Away”), she had another panic attack in a tense situation and had to be escorted off the bridge. So far, Pickford has revealed herself to be rude, stupid, and completely useless in almost any situation, prompting a growing number of Star Trek fans to ask why she was put in the show in the first place.
A Secret Spy?
Apart from just being annoying, the biggest issue with Pickford is that she doesn’t seem to be Starfleet material. Sure, she’s in the academy and wears the uniform, but she seems to have none of the emotional and mental discipline you’d expect from a future Starfleet officer. This is in direct contrast to Starfleet Academy‘s Big Bad Nus Braka, who presents himself as a goofy joke (complete with cackling monologues about time being an origami chicken) but is secretly hypercompetent.
That competence was on full display in “Come, Let’s Away,” an episode where Starfleet asks for his help in defeating nefarious villains known as the Furies. Braka pretends to cooperate, but he manipulates the situation to his advantage and has his flunkies destroy a Starfleet vessel. Later, he disables and ransacks an entire Starbase, which is quite the accomplishment; sure, the Klingons in Discovery took out a base, but now, a simple space pirate was able to obtain the same accomplishment as one of the fiercest space empires the galaxy has ever known.
In “Come, Let’s Away,” this is presented as evidence that Nus Braka is a criminal genius, but some fans aren’t buying it. A growing number of viewers believe that the only way this skeezy pirate is able to so consistently outwit the smartest people in the quadrant is because he has someone on the inside, feeding him information. The primary suspect, surprisingly enough, is the girl who fed herself a comm badge!
Hiding In Plain Sight
Why do people think Nus Braka has a spy within Starfleet? For one thing, he has shown up whenever Chancellor Ake takes her students into space; this was explained in the first episode (he tracked Caleb’s transmission), but in the second episode, he seems to know enough about the Furies and their plan to coordinate an attack that destroyed a Starfleet ship and crippled a Starbase. He was likely coordinating with the Furies and possibly with his spy, which might be why he attacked a Starbase that focuses on researching (as Nelrec says) “classified things.”
Obviously, there are many characters that could be potential spies for Nus Braka: Genesis is still very mysterious and seems to share the space pirate’s Daddy issues. Nelrec is continually disillusioned by working with Starfleet, so he might very well team up with Chancellor Ake’s biggest enemy. Heck, even the Doctor may have become disillusioned enough (or just reprogrammed) to change sides, and since multiple versions of this character exist in the galaxy, Braka might have even replaced the Voyager Doctor with a copy loyal to him.
However, I agree with the fans who think Pickford is a secret spy: antics like swallowing her comm badge are a great way to ensure that nobody thinks she is smart enough to be a double agent. Plus, her frequent meltdowns could just be a convenient way to take her out of the action. For example, she could have easily communicated with Nus Braka in “Come, Let’s Away” after being escorted from the bridge, transmitting to the pirate once she is in her quarters and away from prying eyes and ears.
Is Starfleet Academy About To Redeem Its Worst Character?
There is no definitive proof that Nus Braka has a spy, and he may very well just be the criminal mastermind he presents himself as. But now that the Federation has placed him at the top of their Most Wanted list, it stands to reason we’ll see more of this villain going forward. Honestly, it would be downright shocking if we don’t get some big reveals in the season finale, and a secret spy update would be the biggest reveal of them all.
Right now, all my latinum is on Pickford, if only because it would be such a delightful heel turn: how cool would it be if the dumbest, most incompetent cadet turns out to be the biggest traitor since Seska? This would redeem Starfleet Academy’s throwaway character in the most unexpected way and give us a new villain to hate. If nothing else, she and Nus Braka could have an earnest, onscreen debate about the most pressing question in the galaxy: what tastes better, a comm badge or an origami chicken?