The latest Star Trek series to stream on Paramount+, Starfleet Academy, has managed to garner a significant amount of negative press, but I have to ask if it's anywhere near as bad as its detractors would have us believe. After watching the first five episodes to drop, which constitutes half of the first season, my response is a wholehearted 'not really'.
To understand my take on this, I have to put it into the perspective of other streaming Star Trek series and one dreadful made-for-streaming-TV movie. Starfleet Academy is decidedly light years ahead of the dreadful Section 31 movie, and for my money is even superior to the animated Lower Decks series. I still don't understand why the moronic drivel of Lower Decks is so beloved. I still haven't been able to bring myself to watch the entire final season.
At its worst, Starfleet Academy has moments that are equally as cringe-worthy as pretty much all of Lower Decks, and borrows way too much from the silly side of Strange New Worlds, but at the same time, it has shown its ability to bring viewers pleasingly thoughtful fare, especially in the fourth and fifth episodes, which focus on specific characters' paths of self-discovery. In episode four, Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diane), a dispossessed Klingon, gains a sense of belonging, in worlds of both Starfleet and the Klingon Empire. While this at times feels like a re-tread of Worf's journey through Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, an impression bolstered by Diane's performance, which all too often feels like he's trying to channel Michael Dorn's performances as Worf, it is redeemed by the nuance and growth Jay-Den experiences by episode's end.
Speaking of DS9, episode 5 is an artful homage to that series as SAM (Kerrice Brooks) attempts to discover the true fate of Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) at the end of DS9. Although the elder Brooks (no relation to Kerrice) does not appear in the episode, she does share a couple of scenes with Cirroc Loftin, reprising his role as a middle-aged Jake Sisko, who helps her discover, Wizard of Oz style, that the answers she was seeking differed greatly from the truth that she found, which was perhaps inside of her all along.
As the remaining five episodes of Season 1 drop, one can only hope the show will continue along the path of the two most recent ones as it charts its own course, unique from where previous iterations of the franchise have been before. Yes, it feels kind of soapy at times, but it is intended to appeal to a younger generation of viewers, a demographic to whom that type of content would appeal. Let's face it, those of us who came aboard with the original series represent a demographic that will, before too long, be aging out.
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