Rebuilding after being torn down by ‘The Burn’, Starfleet and the Federation are getting back on mission, rekindling old alliances, developing new technologies and now ready to re-open Starfleet Academy to raise the next generation of explorers…
Writer: Gaia Violo
Director: Alex Kurtzman
During the desperation and misery of the burn, Captain Nahla Ake handed out justice in the chaos. Pirate and thief Nus Braka gets prison. His accomplice, tempted to follow his lead to survive, is going to a lighter penal colony where her young son Caleb Mir can visit, but with an imprisoned system he’s now a ward of the Federation; a people his mother doesn’t trust. So he runs…
Fifteen years later, Caleb’s searching for his mother and living on the run. Captain Ake is long retired, leaving her post feeling the guilt of splitting families and being part of a broken system. But redemption comes knocking. Earth is feeling comfortable enough to bring Starfleet home, and it’s Academy needs a leader.
Fleet Admiral ‘Charlie’ Vance has picked Ake, someone who’s lived long enough to remember life before the burn. He also gives her a chance to redeem her past sins. Caleb Mir is in custody, ready for release to the Federation, and her chance to let him earn the life he never had as one of the first class of new students while giving them both the chance to put right the sins of their past.
Reluctantly joining a class of fresh faced students from across the galaxy on the training ship Athena, under the watchful eye of a care free Chancellor Ake, Caleb and his fellow cadets learn the hard way that adventure comes at a cost when a face from his past, Nus Braka, lures the Athena into a trap that forces everyone to find a way to work together to get to Earth in one piece.
There’s something interesting about this show. Both in bringing in the new, and capturing the old format. The first ten minutes are all back story, setting up Caleb’s story as a young kid with a lot of action and drama thrown in, then a good old fashioned garden-centric piece of exposition to introduce the Captain of the series. The exact same format of Voyager and DS9. There’s a weird bit of comfortable nostalgia there and really sets the tone for a Captain filled with regrets – and a quick backstory to her being over 400 years old and part of the glory years – and setting up her protege, the boy she failed.
I’m not going to go blow for blow in the episode. But there was a lot of great stuff. As always, a reluctant protagonist is good fun. Caleb coming in with a past that makes him a little hesitant of the Federation and a Captain who knows she should have been better makes a nice start. It kind of mirrors the 2009 introduction of the Kelvin Timeline, with a jaded Kirk and his mentor, with a touch of Dal and Janeway thrown in from Prodigy. Right of the bat, it gives the show and it’s leads a purpose. Ake wants to redeem her catastrophic decisions made during hard times and see’s Caleb as someone she can save. Meanwhile, Caleb has been obsessed with being rekindled with his mother after Starfleet sent her away. But no one know where she is – so we have mystery, purpose and two people tied together until that thread is unravelled.
Much like DS9, Voyager and even the 2009 revival, the show makes a nice effort to introduce, or in one case reintroduce, everyone one by one in a simplistic fashion. The Athena crew are given one by one hello’s from Ake as she meets them for the first time. And the Cadets all get an explainer. We have SAM the awkward new photonic who’s only a few months old, programmed for being 17; Kraag the Klingon healer to yearns for life. We do get some cliche’s. Lythe and Reymi are just obvious teen drama templates. Them popular girl and the jock. Which lets them down a little in the first outing as we can see where it’s all going a mile off. Alas…
On the command side, things are a little bit of a mix. Most of the command crew feel like set dressing. But, it’s a show about cadets, of course they are. Though Gina Yashere as Lura Thok, first officer and pretty much drill sergeant, brings a perfect balance between fearsome shouting into line and comedy – all wrapped up in an intriguing mix of Jem’Hadar and Klingon lineage.
The rest of the plot is all very straight forward and simple. The ship finds a ‘teachable moment’, which is a pirate trap they get stuck into and while chaos ensues, the undisciplined cadets step up to the plate and lead the charge under Ake’s commend. Which is kind of a mix between Janeway;s Mrs Columbo routine and Pella’s humour from Strange New Worlds.
First episodes always have a lot of boxes to tick, and for the most part Academy did well. Some of the dialogue was clunky and a little too cliché in places, particularly in a teen-drama-standard macho showdown between Caleb and ready baked rival Darem Reymi. But for a decently sized cast, everyone was given plenty of time between character moments and within the action to leave the first episode with a grasp of what they’re all about. Weirdly even the regulars carrying over into the show – which so far is Robert Picardo as the Doctor and Oded Fehr as Discovery’s Admiral Vance – felt organically part of the crew rather than reminders of their origins.
In the same vein, despite being a series based within the events Discovery introduced, even with Vance tying the two shows together, it doesn’t feel like it’s come with the baggage of it’s predecessor. The Burn is key to the stories origins but everything you need to know is given plainly and clearly. Plus that setting really adds to the show in a big way. We’ve seen a little bit of this era through Discovery, but the entire universe has been given the reset button. All the pieces are there and the show doesn’t hide that it’s here tp put them all together for a new generation. On screen, that works really well. Off screen, we’ll have to see if the new generation follows…
If it does, Kids These Days feels like there’s something to get out of it. The idea of younger minds having to fix the mess left for them isn’t exactly subtle, but the thought and idea is nice to have behind the series; and putting that front and centre straight away where Discovery made that their origin story helps make sure no one misses the point this time.
There’s a lot of good things to say about the show. From highlights of seeing Ake sprawling out on the big chair playfully tackling the intrusively close Braka during their exchange on the bridge, to the final scene’s of Ake connect with Caleb, to Rufus Wainwright helping bring Star Trek back to San Fransisco. There’s even more good things to say about the production design; the base set alone is magnificent!
And of course, not everything’s perfect. While I don’t see as much of an issue with more modern language and dialogue styles compared to the old stage style, there were one or two lines that were just awkward and a bit jagging. Someones going to massively cringe at the idea of putting ‘hanger’ into a Star Trek script…
But it has something that’s often lacking; energy. The cast brings a lot of life to the story, the sets bring everything to life and it’s we’ll balanced enough between the character and the action. And honestly, it’s a breath of fresh air with a new cast of characters that’s not instantly falling back the current era’s need to keep looking backwards. There are easter eggs aplenty, buyt a new crew, a new era and a whole world to rebuild and explore ahead of them. It’s exactly the shot in the arm the franchise has needed.
EPISODE DISCUSSION & SPOILERS
Highlights
- Despite a list of seven producers in the credits, Academy is the first live action since The Next Generation to credit a sole creator; Gaia Violo.
- While not immediately recognisable, the school announcements all come from comedian Stephen Colbert
- Idiot. Back. Bag. Cadet Master Thok is a great contrast to Ake's style.
All Connected...
Early on, Vance highlights Captain Ake is Lanthanite, a long lived species, and now in her 400’s, worked for Starfleet since before the Burn. Two of her instructors also served in Starfleets glory days. The Doctor was activated in the 24th Century on board Voyager. Jet Reno was a 23rd century engineer displaced by Discovery’s time jump. So the students get the luxury of learning about Starfleet from people who have served in key times.
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