Star Trek: Starfleet Academy-Season One Pt. One

• Created by Gaia Violo
• Based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry
• January 15, 2026 to Present
• Paramount+

Main Cast

• Chancellor Nahla Ake-Holly Hunter
• Caleb Mir-Sandro Rosta
• Jay-Den Kraag-Karim Diané
• Sam (Series Acclimation Mil)-Kerrice Brooks
• Darem Reymi-George Hawkins
• Genesis Lythe-Bella Shepard
• Tarima Sadal-Zoë Steiner
• The Doctor-Robert Picardo
• Jett Reno-Tig Notaro
• Admiral Charles Vance-Oded Fehr

Recurring Cast

• Starfleet Academy Cadet Master Lura Thok-Gina Yashere
• Nus Braka-Paul Giamatti
• Anisha (Caleb’s mother)-Tatiana Maslany

Guest Cast

• Sylvia Tilly-Mary Wiseman
• Lt. Ya-Becky Quin as a member of a Starfleet bridge crew[13]
• Starfleet Academy’s Digital Dean of Students-voice of Stephen Colbert
• USS Athena computer-voice of Brit Marling

So here we are at the first episode of the first new series of Star Trek’s sixth decade.

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With Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets recovering from The Burn, Starfleet Academy welcomes its first new cadets in over a century.

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Kids These Days

• Directed by Alex Kurtzman
• Written by Gaia Violo
• January 15, 2026

After being on the run since childhood, a brilliant street kid is allowed to join the first new Starfleet Academy class in San Francisco in over a century. That sounds derivative. Or is it cliché?

The first scene or scenes of the first episode of a show can set the tone for any series. Kids These Days establishes that a good chunk of the show will be about Caleb joining Starfleet to look for his mother in a way similar to that of Nurse Chapel (Majel Barret) as implied in What Little Girls Are Made Of? did when it came to Roger Korby (Roger Korby).

One thing that I have often noted about modern Star Trek is the lighting. It’s all dark and smoky and very shadowy in space in contrast to the stuff from Enterprise and before. It becomes a bit distracting. Everything from the planet of the opening scene to the ship to the offices is dark in this pilot episode. I think the series Enterprise struck a fine balance with the ship generally being less illuminated than any Trek set before but not so dim it hinted at a scarcity of bulbs.

That opener features a young boy and his mother facing hard time after being caught up in a scheme to get food with the shows main villain who was doing it for more nefarious purposes. A when separated from his mom who is still at the facility, a young boy named Caleb easily steals some McGuffin and runs away for his mother to go to parts unknown so he can lose contact with her and the show can happen. Why not find and save mommy when she is so close?

Intersecting with Caleb Mir’s (Sandro Rosta) story is the re-founding of Starfleet Academy because The Burn is finally behind them. Much of this episode takes place on the newly commissioned USS Athena meant to act as a training ship but is really a flying high school. The design itself is a cross between Discovery and the Ori vessels seen in the final two seasons of Stargate: SG1.

Much like the first cast of Power Rangers, Caleb is a teen with attitude. A genius level thief whose every crime is directed at finding his mother (Tatiana Maslany). A fine motivation but his imagination is limited and his plans are, well, stupid. His character is difficult to be difficult. Not even a rebel without a cause. More like a rebel without a clue but only when necessary for the plot.

An Academy for a quasi-military organization that dabbles in exploration or an exploratory organization that dabbles in being military would have the best of the best even if they are a-holes. Caleb is a genius level offender (something that gets mentioned a lot) but other than the Academy chancellor feeling guilty and trying to make herself feel better for trying to send Caleb and his mom into custody over stealing food, what qualifies a kid with a long criminal history access to the pinnacle of success in this reality?

On a young adult show the designated-by-producers two most attractive characters are early on designated to hookup at least once if not multiple times between will-they/won’t-they stories even though they have a few ties already. Here it is Caleb and Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard)-a Dar-Sha cadet. What’s the initial romantic connection? Their first interaction in which she basically teases him seems to come down to hormones and nothing else.

It gets into goofy school humor. The humor presented is neither funny nor humorous. While undermining drama and character development. In a very Jetsons-esque moment we see a character shoved through a device that not only immediately cuts their hair but changes their clothing. George would be jealous since there is no worrying about errant mechanical arms.

There is a full-blooded Klingon named Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané). Jayden. His personality is modeled more on Worf (Michael Dorn), son of Mogh, than on Martok (J.G. Hertzler), son of Urthog. Serious to the point of being a pale imitation of Dorn’s performance. He lacks the gregariousness of the off-duty Klingons when we generally saw them post-TOS but acts more like the on duty ones (example Kruge as played by Christopher Lloyd).

Once we get to Starfleet Academy (the ship) Kids These Days is very heavy on trying to show as many different aliens as they possibly can to justify the existence of the makeup department. That would be all fine and dandy if they didn’t receive a lot of CGI assistance for other aliens. I believe the saurian is all CGI as are a few others. The prosthetics on Jay-Den look fake and inauthentic. His forehead has the smoothness of an Easter chocolate bunny. Michael Westmore for TNG designed several different brow ridge designs that as I recall were modeled on whale vertebrae to aid in making them more believable.

I heard an alien from Charon shows up in the episode but I missed it. Considering the last two killed each other in Let This Be Your Last Battlefield I have no idea how other than to destroy the impact of that episode. Though their biology was never detailed, it seems that two males determined to kill each other would reconcile and have any children let alone enough to bring back a species of whom they were the final survivors. Inbreeding might make that hard let alone basic biology.

This has some heavy name dropping of previously seen or mentioned Trek characters. They either pop up on a screen, get talked about by a character, or are a location a particular character must get to. This is especially pronounced when the holographic cadet Sam-Series Acclimation Mil (Kerrice Brooks) tracks down The Doctor (Robert Picardo) to go all fan girl and runs a list of names from previous shows.

Though crafted to look and act like a teenager, Sam has only been active for about four months and is present in the inaugural class of the new academy. You could make a comparison to Data (Brent Spiner) but he had a few years of experience before joining Starfleet. Sam is an overly excited character desperately trying to be everyone’s friend who seeks out The Doctor as a mentor while promptly schooling him that her people prefer to be called ‘photonics’ rather than ‘holograms.’ So is this kid correcting her elders? Having met some of both, he knows the difference between a ‘hologram’ and a ‘photonic’ entity.

I feel kind of bad for Robert Picardo. A fine actor and he does his best with The Doctor but the character is now a punchline. Rather than his or Sam’s characters acting as outside observers of humanity, they are reduced to adding one more source of humor for the show. His love of opera is now used to show him (unintentionally) as a loser since his opera club is shunned by the student body. No room for a callback to Klingon’s love of their opera? Considering Jay-Den wants to be a doctor it would make sense.

Picardo has noticeably aged so they needed to explain it away. How? An aging subroutine. Nothing like an attempt to look more distinguished which would work very well with the character. How fast does he age? And will it include death?

Paul Giamatti, one of the more hyped actors of the show, plays Klingon/Tellarite hybrid Nus Braka. He shows up here when Caleb sends out a random message to his mom in another blind fire effort to find here. This leads Nus Braka who looks to have been conveniently nearby right to him and reveals he is still angry and seeking revenge against Chancellor Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) who avoids sitting in the captain’s chair with authority but chooses instead to sit curled up and barefoot like somebody about to hear/say some juicy gossip.

The USS Athena gets its butt handed to it by torpedoes and programmable matter from a camouflaged ship. Caught completely off guard as it decides to investigate an anomaly in the very dark Badlands near Bajor. The Badlands near Bajor in the past have been portrayed as orangey with flares and such to visually demonstrate it is not someplace you want to ever go. Here it is very rocky and generally not capable of hindering navigation and travel where you can hide your spinny spaceships inside rocks so they can attack an approaching ship that investigating something strange without raising shields. How fragile are Federation ships these days? I recall seeing them taking phaser and torpedo hits without such devastating damage so quickly. A sniff breeze looks like it might be threat now. Explosions are cool but a fragile vehicle makes no sense in comparison to other examples of their construction capabilities.

Can’t forget that silly villain speech. What is an origami chicken? I think episode writer/series creator Gaia Violo thought it sounded cool, but it makes absolutely no sense. Not even at the end does anything the character says pull it together. Given the general tone and humor of the show it would not have been out of place for at the minimum someone to mock it.

But one of the worst things? Nus Braka talks to Chancellor Ake via holographic transmission, walking around the rather open bridge and interacting with the environment. He avoids people and uses steps. How does that make sense? He is not even actually there! Dramatic but nonsensical.

The Athena is supposed to be a school for training purposes, but it’s also a functional Starfleet vessel. So much seems to be so far away from other things. One would think that there would be situations even on a training vessel where a captain might need to get quickly from one station to another in few steps on the bridge but distance was not a concern here. Same goes for the general floor plan. Getting from Point A to B quickly involves slippery corridors and flights of steps-a grand staircase no less.

Caleb hacks (a word that is tossed around a lot in this episode) some technobabble aspect of the matter threatening to engulf the ship. This leads to a fistfight with the quite fit Caleb and the doughy Nus Braka where Nus does a good job of fighting the street urchin that never missed Leg Day. I do not think Sandro Rosta is even wearing the padded undergarment once worn beneath costumes in previous Trek to make the person look more in shape. I have no idea how Nus did not get his butt handed to him in seconds.

Not only is the Athena quite fragile, but so is the enemy ship which after seeing the Athena save itself, did nothing like raise shields or prepare for a counterattack. They just sat there and let themselves be bombarded with photon torpedoes so they could be destroyed and the Athena would be allowed to move on. It’s not like the Athena had gotten off a few lucky shots before it was disabled. The other ship was still in top shape!

After the epic battle is all over and the villain is sent packing a nameless teacher (played by a nameless performer) who originally suggested investigating the anomaly that drew their attention as a teachable moment remarks it was indeed a teachable moment. This after reports of casualties/injuries rolled in and the ship was on the verge of destruction. The comment is totally devoid of any concern for the injured and possibly dead people on that ship.  Where is the compassion of old Star Trek? The concern for the rest of humanity? She certainly didn’t display any of it.

Kids These Days gets a little too jokey at times with character actions or science-fiction aspects presented for a smile or laugh. It is short on logic and depth aiming to be cool over intelligent. Not necessarily an impressive start to a series.

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Beta Test

• Directed by Alex Kurtzman
• Written by Noga Landau and Jane Maggs
• January 15, 2026

Caleb must decide if he belongs at Starfleet Academy. Didn’t he do that in the first episode?

It is time for cadets to pick their classes and start their education. We get assorted snippets of what happens at this horny high school, er, academy. One moment reveals in my opinion what we can expect of Cadet Master Lura Thok (Gina Yashere)-a caricature of a warrior character. She starts shouting at a cadet about death having eyes in the second silly speech of the series that sounds like a parody before the cadet runs off crying. Then again later on in this episode a cadet announces they swallowed their comm badge. Once it was implied that even the best had trouble making it through. Now the bar is so low anyone can make it in.

This cadet scene has the first of many name drops of Beta Test. A brief shot shows the cadet running past a rock that reads ‘Boothby Memorial Park.’ What exactly did a human gardener do to get a park named after him. This is a name that lasted a few centuries. He was personally important to a particular generation, but what was his importance that it transcended centuries? Great real-life leaders have had things named after them but over time those names changed.

Different areas of Starfleet Academy are announced over the intercom. Many of those places appear to be named after characters that have appeared only on screen or been mentioned in a show. Boothby Memorial Park. Kirk Pavilion. Hoshi of Enterprise even gets a location named after her. It’s like there is no history beyond what’s been filmed. It makes things feel so small. With heavy mentions of humpback whales, which I’m guessing is a call back to Star Trek IV, this episode has nothing but reminders of other better Star Trek shows. It relies on nostalgia over using the basic Trek framework as a start to build its own world like DS9 did.

Cut to a scene where our attractive young cast is getting room assignments. Their discussion is not focused on who they share a room with but more on hooking up and whether or not they should do it immediately, the difficulties thereof with roommates, and so forth. This is most certainly a Young Adult show. In the world of Star Trek, which once tried to be about big ideas, it all seems so small.

I’m still feeling bad for Robert Ricardo. He’s there for humor rather than character development or to be a character as well as acting as a reminder that this is a Star Trek show. Lura Thok and Chancellor Ake (Holly Hunter) have a few moments with him and try to back away each time like they were just corner by somebody unlikeable or unpopular. This is what the character and actor have been reduced to being in. There is a callback to Beyond with The Doctor performing an operatic duet with an alien seen in that film. That instance is less a reminder this is Trek and more just digging into the species well.

We finally get to see how Caleb (Sandro Rosta) is going to find his mom (or expects to). He is going to continue to engage in random acts of their favorite word ‘hacking’ that lead directly back to him while Ake uses Starfleet intelligence to go find her when possible sightings occur. She sent the woman up the river for an act of desperation for food at a settlement in a post want/scarcity future. Never gets portrayed as a baddie though.

There is a whole scene about Ake not wearing shoes. Clearly it is going to be a big thing throughout the show. It is a wiffle bat to the head to make the character different. A quirk over a personality trait. It is a random affectation that along with her unwillingness to take an authoritative stance in a command chair undermines the perception of the character as a leader.

The episode story involves getting Betazed back in the Federation so naturally the inexperienced cadets MUST be involved because they are the future. This may be a YA show but handing something in part or in whole to students makes no sense! Worse is how the gap between the two sides, which also creates the obligatory YA series love triangle that extends back further in time than Archie/Betty/Veronica in Archie comics, is resolved.

Tarima Sadal (Zoë Steiner) is the hearing daughter of the deaf Betazed president who uses sign language rather than limited telepathy as the species in the past has been shown to have to talk. Did they lose the power or did episode writers Noga Landau and Jane Maggs only Google ‘Deanna Troi’?

I would venture a guess it is even American sign language. Caleb meets cutie #2 when this genius level offender is trying another idiotic idea to find Goja V where mommy may be. So as coinky dink has it he gets paired with her to be the tour guide so the writers can fast-track their obligatory lust and interpersonal issues that will feed into the whole triangle. Turns out Goja V is a newly formed planet behind Betazed’s psionic protective wall so that is why it is not on Federation maps. What does this feel like Kamino in Star Wars? Tarima accuses Caleb of using her and flies off the handle. Enter the first obstacle to boinking!

Ake makes a point of telling another character how much experience she has and conversely going into moments of how kids are the future and will point away. Which is it? Beyond necessities of plot that is. Consistency in characters is important and she doesn’t have it. You either rely on your experience or the kids are the future and they will get things done. If this were better written it would demonstrate it as a character trait to get out of conversations.

The first scene with the Betazoids should be a welcoming scene and does look like it will be with Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) and the Betazed president exchanging pleasantries at podiums. What it turns into is a debate/negotiation with an audience. Gone is the dinner party scene all the shows had where casual discussion would occur setting up the scenario with maybe a scene of negotiation.

The Betazed delegation is very focused on their post-Burn situation and having guarantees of protection. Not sure of all the details because I drifted away from Discovery after the second season. I do know an alien’s sadness caused it. Did they ever explain why nobody dove into developing Romulan singularity powered ship technology? It still baffles me that ships were never converted to that.

Caleb is supposed to be the cool capable kid with attitude. He also gets covered in self-replicating mucus as one of many jokes that undermine his character. He can overload the computer by having it list every coffee order in its memory but is incapable of slipping in and out of a system unnoticed? Like many characters he acts as needed for the plot rather.

Caleb is unsure if he wants to be in Starfleet even though he made the decision in Kids These Days by agreeing to stay at the end of the episode. At the end. Is this going to be an ongoing aspect of the show/character?  Not a lot of real story happens in this. The big summation of the whole story is that Caleb finally decides to make the first bed he’s ever had. That’s it.

I can’t say I was wowed by Beta Test. I do not have much hope for the show. It speaks of petty and superficial stuff and just gets so boring. It is silly and boring with more wrong than right.

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So far Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has not impressed me. One thing that bothers me is the logic of Caleb joining Starfleet in order to find his mother. Joining Starfleet in order to find someone makes no sense. You are not searching in likely areas but hoping to find somebody by stumbling across them where your job takes you. Thus Ake tasking Starfleet Intelligence with checking leads out is also nonsensical. They have nothing better to do than look for an average citizen?

Dialogue feels too modern. Words like ‘hacking’ feel straight out of today. The future is to have the characters talk a little differently. What needs to be kept in mind is that dialogue needs to be identifiable to the audience yet make sense given that it’s not occurring in the present day. Maybe dump the term hacking since it’s so ubiquitous with life hacks and hacking computers and I’ve got a hack for that.

The problem isn’t that what we got here is so bad. The problem is it’s so mediocre. The characters and the situation present nothing new or original or bold despite what Star Trek affiliated outlets type in their reviews. It has all been seen before in One Tree Hill, 90210, Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, Outer Banks, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, or a loooooooooooooooooooong list of others.

So far these characters are not people you want to spend five minutes in a room with let alone take a short elevator ride. They are superficial or have quirks mistaken by the writers as a personality.

Mentions of previous Star Trek were once a treat to fans. A special moment in a show which was almost a reward. It gave a sense of this fictional world existed beyond what we saw on the screen. Now they are used as nostalgia.

Starfleet Academy is very good looking show with excellent production values, yet it often gets lore wrong or uses it very poorly such as in the first episode when Lura Thok bleeds white. They knew the words ‘ketracel white’ but not what it meant. Neither species of her heritage has white blood. That is not the biggest mistake. 

Events feel inconsequential. Characters are often forgettable. If I hadn’t written anything about either of these episodes, I would be hard-pressed to remember anything about these episodes or the characters involved. They are bland and interchangeable. Everything is surface level about them and borderline cliché.

This is glossy emotional support show entertainment for the current generation. It is a great deal of personal yet minor pain treated as significant. No cries but heavy trauma that wounds someone who largely had it quite easy elsewhere in life.

So far so very bad.