Entertainment
Starfleet Academy Stops Playing Around With Standout Episode Perfect For Actual Trekkies
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Starfleet Academy has proven divisive to fans in large part because it is a strange brew: great actors and top-notch special effects mixed with weird characterization and writing straight out of an early aughts boner comedy. Defenders of the show have maintained that everyone just needs to give the series more time to find its space legs, and the latest episode may have effectively proved them right. “Come, Let’s Away” drops the awkward, forced humor of earlier episodes to deliver a tale full of action, romance, and higher stakes than Starfleet Academy has ever had before.
Part of what makes this particular Starfleet Academy episode so effective is the misdirection baked directly into its plot. “Come, Let’s Away” starts out with scenes of our characters hooking up, and it wisely leverages the solid chemistry between Caleb and Tarima before jumping into the main plot: a joint training exercise where Academy and War College cadets must restart a derelict starship. But when those cadets are kidnapped by killer cannibals, Chancellor Ake must turn to her old nemesis, Nus Braka, for help in saving her students’ lives.
Somehow, Star Trek Returned
For Star Trek fans wanting Starfleet Academy to be more like the Golden Age of Star Trek, this is the episode you’ve been waiting for. First of all, it employs tropes and story beats very familiar to The Next Generation: for example, the cadets having to restart an old starship feels a lot like Riker having to get the USS Hathaway working for war games in “Peak Performance.” Speaking of Number One, “Come, Let’s Away” leans into Caleb and Tarima being the new Riker/Troi by giving them an Imzadi-esque mind link and having their shared romantic connection be a major key to resolving this plot.
While some Star Trek fans have enjoyed the show’s often lowbrow humor, I felt that this Starfleet Academy episode was much stronger for ditching the jokes and giving us an episode that plays out like a tense action thriller. From the moment they are captured, it is clear that our heroes are in mortal danger from bad guys (the Furies) who simply don’t play around. This is made abundantly clear when they partially eat a charismatic War College instructor (!) and then shoot his body out of the airlock to send a message to Starfleet.
The New Big Bad Is Finally Scary
The Furies are so dangerous that Chancellor Ake, at the urging of Admiral Vance, requests the help of Nus Braka, a notorious space pirate who has dealt with these foes before. This is definitely a stronger performance from Paul Giamatti than we saw in the first Starfleet Academy episode, and it helps that he is written much better. While his dialogue still has a few rough edges (like when he describes himself as “wanked” and “spanked”), he mostly comes off as genuinely dangerous, and his weirdly intimate interactions with Ake make him seem less like a Scooby-Doo villain and more like a flamboyant Hannibal Lecter.
Nus Braka is actually the personification of this episode’s greatest strengths: that it’s not afraid to raise the stakes by putting likable characters in mortal danger. In addition to offing the fun new War College instructor (and beware some major spoilers from here on out), they also kill B’avi, arguably the most likable of the War College cadets. Thanks to Nus Braka completely outwitting the Federation, his buddies were able to destroy a Starfleet vessel and ransack a starbase, giving this episode a shockingly high body count.
By Their Powers Combined
“Come, Let’s Away” is a far cry from the more carefree adventures of Starfleet Academy, but the grim subject matter also lends the show something it has desperately needed: some narrative weight. Previously, the show’s constant need to undercut tension robbed various episodes of their power, like filling the big, emotional Sisko episode with jokes about flatulence and genitalia. Also, it was tough to take SAM (a fairly solid character in her own right) very seriously in that Sisko episode because she spent most of her time onscreen talking and acting like a deranged TikTok skit come to life.
But SAM really shines in “Come, Let’s Away,” utilizing her powers in a logical way to restore power to a derelict vessel. Tarima uses her powers in a similarly logical way, and once she fully unleashes her abilities to pop some dude’s heads (Scanners-style!), we see how dangerous a Betazed warrior can be. Caleb also shines, both as Tarima’s partner in telepathic crime and as someone more resourceful than the average member of either the Academy or the War College.
The Ensemble Cast Finally Shines
While the plot involved sidelining some of the main characters (Darem and the Doctor mostly do little more than twiddle their thumbs), this episode of Starfleet Academy did a great job of highlighting most of the ensemble cast. The youngsters got to finally stop being quippy cadets and put their training to use in a life-and-death situation, and they all brought unique strengths to the table while working as a team. In this way, this is probably the most traditional Star Trek episode we have seen so far, and to my surprise, it really left me wanting more.
From the beginning, I have been one of Starfleet Academy’s harshest critics, but it’s not because I want the show to fail; the cast is talented, the SFX are beautiful, and the writers (especially Tawny Newsome) are passionate about the franchise. However, episodes are frequently hampered by bad comedy and low-stakes, teenage drama. To make matters worse, the show occasionally makes huge changes to the lore (like making most Klingons extinct in an offscreen event) that inevitably upset old-school Star Trek fans.
However, “Come, Let’s Away” ditches both the forced comedy and the teen drama, and we get to see these young characters deal with the most Star Trek situation of them all: an Away Team mission that goes catastrophically wrong. The characters are competent, the stakes are high, and the new villains are generally loathsome, adding to the show’s own lure rather than (ahem) cannibalizing older lore. Speaking of loathsome, Giamatti’s Nus Braka establishes himself as the guy you love to hate, and the combination of his master manipulation and his casual cruelty has made this former joke of a character as chilling as Gul Dukat ever was.
Is The New Star Trek Series Finally Worth Watching?
Only time will tell if Starfleet Academy can keep up the breathtaking momentum of this episode: Vance promises that capturing Braka is now Starfleet’s highest priority, and I can only imagine Chancellor Ake (who was uncharacteristically subdued for most of this episode) is itching for payback. This (plus Tarima being in critical condition) certainly implies that the rest of the season will be relatively serious, which is a relief to fans like me who have hated the hokey humor. Of course, the show has been wildly uneven from the beginning, so we may very well be back to goofy shenanigans in the very next episode.
Optimistically, though, I want to believe that Starfleet Academy writers have successfully pulled the rug on our expectations, pivoting the show from a goofy YA comedy fest to something more in line with the golden age of Star Trek. This would be a great way to thread the needle of appealing to older and younger fans, and it would even match the general arc of most YA stories (which inevitably pit their young protagonists against serious, seemingly unstoppable foes). If (and it’s admittedly a big if) that happens, Starfleet Academy could do what NuTrek has been failing to do for nearly a decade: bring generations of fans together in their love of the greatest sci-fi franchise ever made.
