Entertainment
Starfleet Academy’s Only Hero Is The Character It Thinks Is The Villain
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka is Star Trek’s latest Big Bad, and he has done an amazing job of tormenting students and teachers alike on Starfleet Academy. In a previous episode, he feigned helping out Chancellor Ake only to execute his real plan: destroying a starship and then ransacking the starbase it was protecting. The recent episode, “300th Night,” revealed what he stole: the Omega-47 particle, which can be weaponized to destroy subspace and make warp travel impossible.
He wasted no time deploying Omega-47 mines around the entirety of Federation space, essentially trapping everyone within their established borders. The show presents this as the act of a supervillain, one that our cadets must figure out how to stop in order to save the galaxy. However, given that the Federation was researching a superweapon to help them replicate the worst tragedy the future has ever seen, Nus Braka actually comes across as a hero saving everyone from a terrifyingly powerful rogue state.
From Villain To Hero
The special weapon that Nus Braka stole has been known to the Federation for the better part of a millennium. In the Voyager episode “The Omega Directive,” Janeway reveals that all Starfleet captains are required to destroy any trace of Omega particles that they find throughout the galaxy. The reason is simple: when these particles detonate, they destroy subspace, rendering warp and even long-range communications impossible. On top of its raw destructive power, the Starfleet of the 24th century wanted to destroy Omega on sight because it represented an existential risk to interstellar travel.
However, the Starfleet Academy episode “300th Night” revealed that the Starfleet of the 32nd century was secretly studying how to weaponize this particle. They succeeded in creating Omega-47, a synthetic version of this destructive molecule. It’s very easy to weaponize Omega-47, which our heroes found out the hard way when Nus Braka created landmines and deployed them around the entirety of Federation space, trapping all of his enemies in one place without having to so much as fire a shot.
An Omega-Level Threat
Nus Braka’s plan is both bold and effective: in one crazy move, he just managed to threaten the entirety of the Federation. Even better, he did so using the illegal weapons technology they have been secretly developing. All of this is meant to set up a season finale where our heroes save the day, but given what we’ve seen so far, I can’t escape one shocking conclusion: Nus Braka is the real hero here, and Starfleet has been the villain all along.
You can tell Starfleet is the bad guy of this story largely because of the organization’s own hypocrisy. Once upon a time, captains were responsible for destroying the Omega particle on sight simply because it represented a threat to interstellar travel. Destroying these particles meant that ships could continue exploring strange, new worlds. It also meant that alien planets wouldn’t effectively be cut off from the rest of the galaxy by particles whose detonation destroys subspace, making it impossible to warp in or out of an area or even communicate with the people inside.
Starfleet’s Heel Turn, Revealed
Now, the Starfleet of the future has decided they want to have the ability to threaten the rest of the galaxy. Keep in mind that there is no known positive use of Omega particles; they can’t be used as an energy source, which might at least make sense when dilithium has become so scarce. The only function of Omega-47 is to give Starfleet the ability to threaten countless worlds, and that threat comes in the form of replicating the greatest disaster the 32nd century has ever known: the Burn.
In Discovery, we learn about an event known as the Burn that suddenly made most of the dilithium in the galaxy inert. This instantly destroyed any ships with an active warp core (when dilithium goes inert, it can no longer keep matter and antimatter separated) while making interstellar travel significantly more difficult. This event decimated the Federation and made the 32nd century downright hellish for many people. The young characters in Starfleet Academy are rough around the edges in large part because of the Burn: with supply lines nonexistent and energy in short supply, characters like Caleb grew up eating out of dumpsters, something that would have once seemed impossible.
The Future Is Even Worse, Thanks To Starfleet
I mention this to underscore that the Burn was the worst thing to happen to almost everyone in the 32nd century. It ruined lives and led to the rise of evil powers like the Emerald Chain, and all because it was now insanely difficult to travel anywhere at warp speed. Now, we discover that Starfleet has been secretly developing a superweapon that can replicate the effects of the Burn on a smaller, more targeted scale, allowing the Federation to cut any of its enemies off from the rest of known space.
That brings us back to my fairly simple thesis: while this certainly wasn’t the intention of the writers, Starfleet Academy just presented Nus Braka as a hero for using Omega-47 against the Federation. Our protagonists are supposed to be the good guys, but it turns out that Starfleet was secretly developing technology that could help them threaten or outright destroy every planet in the galaxy. Now, the show’s biggest villain just used Omega-47 mines to contain the Federation within their own space, ensuring that no other ships can get in or out while the minefield is still up.
The Federation Is Now A Rogue State
In the real world, other countries take a dim view of rogue nations developing nuclear technology for two simple reasons: 1) they have threatened and harmed other nations before, and 2) they are trying to develop a weapon deadlier than any they have ever had before. If the rest of the galaxy learned about Omega-47, they would view the Federation as a rogue state that just violated all of its lofty ideals so that it could develop a superweapon. A weapon that would do what the various admirals and administrators have been wanting to do since the Burn, which is to make the Federation the most powerful force in the known universe.
This isn’t even the first time something like this has happened; remember, the Genesis Device could be used to destroy all life on a planet, making it the 23rd century Star Trek equivalent of the Death Star. Simply put, Starfleet and the Federation have spent nearly a millennium developing weapons that could threaten the entire galaxy, and Omega-47 is the latest one. By using this weapon against the Federation, Nus Braka may be a villain to our protagonists, but he’s a hero to the rest of the universe because he has done what nobody has been able to do before: save them from Starfleet!
This isn’t what the writers of Starfleet Academy intended, but they just made Nus Braka the secret hero of the series. Just as Michael Burnham had to keep Starfleet from blowing up the Klingon homeworld, somebody had to keep them from weaponizing the greatest threat the Federation has ever encountered. If the writers really want us to root for Starfleet Academy cadets, they need to do something simple: stop portraying Starfleet as a group of amoral control freaks out to threaten the entire galaxy!