Entertainment
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Finally Released A Good Episode, But Is Anyone Still Watching?
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Like many critics, I felt like Starfleet Academy had a very rocky start, one that presented the show as a broad, lowbrow comedy for juvenile (in both senses of the word) audiences. To my astonishment, the show steadily improved as we warped through Season 1: the vulgar slang (mostly) disappeared, the thin characters fleshed out, and the comedy got minimized. At its worst, early Starfleet Academy felt like Beavis and Butt-Head meets Doctor Who. Now, each adventure feels like one of Voyager’s wackiest episodes, albeit one with the melodrama and fan service turned up to 200 percent.
The most recent episode, “300th Night,” is a new high for the series, in large part because it builds upon the mythology laid down by the very first episode. In this tale, Caleb finds his mother while the Federation finds itself at the mercy of Nus Braka’s deadliest attack yet. All of this is setting up what should be a satisfying season finale of Starfleet Academy next week, but unless that episode can win back the viewers it already lost, this show may be completely doomed.
Mommy Issues? More Like Mommy Subscriptions
The first episode of Starfleet Academy saddled main character Caleb with some seriously sad lore: his mother was unfairly busted by Starfleet, forcing Caleb to grow up on the run from Federation authorities. After he learned that she escaped prison, Caleb used the resources of Starfleet to try to reach out to Mommy Dearest. He never found her, but in “300th Night,” she is located on a planet that is about to be invaded by Nus Braka’s merry band of pirates.
With all of Starfleet being recalled to Betazed, Caleb is forced to steal a shuttle to go to his mother’s rescue. However, most of his fellow space cadets invite themselves along, and the best and brightest youngsters in the galaxy make a rough landing in a real hive of scum and villainy. There, they find Caleb’s mom and more trouble than they can handle, and Chancellor Ake must decide between saving the students she swore to protect and risking an intergalactic incident.
Starfleet Academy At Its Best
I was very hard on early episodes of Starfleet Academy, and for good reason: the show continuously used humor as a crutch, and the humor was often as juvenile as an episode of Jackass. Additionally, the show took big swings when it came to Star Trek lore, but the bad didn’t always connect. For every successful homage to past episodes of Deep Space Nine or Voyager, we’d get something controversial, like an episode revealing that most Klingons in the galaxy died (off-screen, no less) in their sleep, which means their souls went straight to hell (turns out it was not a good day to die).
Recently, however, Starfleet Academy has learned how to walk and sometimes even run without the crutches: most of the humor has been replaced with more dramatic beats, resulting in characters that feel more like serious cadets and less like sparring siblings. The show stopped making huge changes to franchise lore, leaning instead into episodes that follow up on previous adventures from Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The cherry on top of this is that the show seems to have finally learned proper pacing, resulting in tense episodes that are genuinely rewarding to watch.
In my always humble opinion, “300th Night” is the best episode of Starfleet so far. It continues the recent trend of following up on older stories, in this case, carving a new tale out of Voyager’s infamous Omega particle. The episode also reunites Caleb with his mom, deepens his relationship with Tamira, and establishes Nus Braka as one of the most effective villains in Star Trek history. The result is an episode that you can enjoy as a chunk of series mythology, as a character piece for Caleb, or simply as a taut thriller in its own right.
The Talaxian Furfly In The Ointment
Don’t pour that Saurian Brandy too soon, kids: “300th Night” still has a few distracting flaws in it. The first is SAM, whose childlike character recently gained 17 years of life experience, during which the holographic Doctor served as her adoptive father. The previous episode implied that she would be very different, and SAM in “300th Night” says she didn’t like her old self. However, her new self isn’t very different: between giving long, unfunny bits of word salad and screaming half her lines, the new SAM seems inexplicably more annoying than the old one.
SAM’s more annoying moments are a reminder of a depressing fact: while Starfleet Academy is relying less on comedy than ever before, the attempts at humor that we do get are still exceedingly subpar. Other less-than-satisfying comic bits include the return of glitter vomit and Jet Reno getting a few “well, that just happened”-style quips. However, to the show’s credit, these bits of bad comedy are few and far between, and “300th Night” mostly focuses on the high drama of Caleb and his buddies breaking all the rules to make the galaxy’s most unlikely family reunion finally happen.
A Day Late And A Bar Of Latinum Short
As a Starfleet Academy hater from the beginning, I was surprised at the thought that kept bouncing around my head during “300th Night”: “Why the heck did the show wait so long to get so good?” This latest episode builds on plot elements laid down in the first episode, but this most recent adventure is infinitely more polished, led by actors and writers who are infinitely more confident in these characters. At long last, Starfleet Academy has achieved the impossible: it is now a good enough Star Trek show that I don’t mind recommending it to a friend.
However, the show now finds itself in a state of limbo: it hasn’t been renewed beyond Season 2, and big changes at Paramount have made it increasingly likely it will be renewed. This is a bitter irony, but I’m convinced the show would already have been renewed if its early episodes focused more on the dramatic storytelling of “300th Night” and less on broad humor and lame attempts to appeal to young audiences. Now, Starfleet Academy may have finally transformed into a decent Star Trek show, but it won’t live long or prosper because embarrassing early attempts to appeal to new fans continuously drove everyone away.
Too busy chasing new fans to satisfy any of the old ones? That’s Alex Kurtzman at his best, baby.
