“Kids These Days”
Written by: Gaia Violo
Directed by: Alex Kurtzman
“Beta Test”
Written by: Noga Landau & Jane Maggs
Directed by: Alex Kurtzman
We’re back! Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience!!
Annotations for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x01 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/34296905
Annotations for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x02 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/34297028
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It was alright if you like CW tier shows.
Free Coffee in the lounge!
Great show :-)
I am overall positively surprised. First of all. I like the setting. The Burn was one of the greatest ideas in Star Trek history (at least its implications, not its reason. I hope we’ll forget about that lol), as it shows how fragile the Federation truly was. So raising a new generation, based on values from centuries ago but that has lived a very different life, is a very intriguing setup. There’s still some stuff I don’t like about the era (like instant teleportation and that memory nano stuff), but let’s see how it works out. I like that Starfleet continued with a “War Academy” which was super fitting, and I can already smell all the conflicts between the two institutions.
The first episode was kind of so so. I understand that you need all that setup and background info, but I think flashbacks would have worked better. Don’t start with showing us the injustice, but leave us a bit in the dark. I pretty much like all the characters, but again, the first episode was a bit too much exposition on “everybody gets one small scene to show what they got”, only for most of them to blend in the background in the second episode.
The second episode left me a bit confused, as the Betazoids were a bit different from what I remember, but ah well. I found it weird that these official negotiations were fully made in front of a school class, with only one person of each faction involved? Imagine on earth, two leaders in a conflict met, each gave a short speech in front of a school, declared their demands, and then ends the meeting? Feels a bit weird. Also, while I enjoy the shift away from a Earth-centric Starfleet, are Betazoids really so vain that the shift of Starfleet HQ is enough to mitigate all their concerns?
Overall, I like what I see. I hope not every episode will be about Caleb’s mom, or his search, and I really hope we’ll also get a bit of everyday school fun. Weird comparison, but in Harry Potter, I enjoyed the everyday school stuff always more than the actual plot. And give me more of that Klingon (even though his voice modulation sounds really bad).
For now, I’ll just share the thoughts I posted to Mastodon while this instance was still on the Genesis Planet…
Overall, a very strong couple of episodes. The cadets are all interesting enough, though Jay-Den and SAM are outstanding. Caleb is the sort of Rebellious Young Person that can grate on people, but I think the show compensates for that by making him a bit of a punchline. His backstory is also compelling enough (I actually thought his separation from his mother seemed very real), and his motivations are clear.
Nahla Ake is fantastic, and Holly Hunter brings a lot to the role. The character is quirky, but grounded, and you can see that she carries multiple lifetimes of experience.
Paul Giamatti is clearly having the time of his life as Braka. Time will tell whether he remains a cartoonish pirate (which I’d be fine with TBH), or if they’ll give him more to do.
I’ve always loved the post-Burn setting, and I’m looking forward to exploring that status quo. The Betazed stuff is intriguing, and I hope we learn more about this “psionic wall” of theirs.
Also, “Discovery is unavailable because X” is the new “the transporters don’t work because X”.
This show is one part Lower Decks, one part Prodigy, one part Discovery, and a dash of SNW… I dig it. Excited to see where it goes.
I had some concerns going in, but enjoyed them a lot more than I expected. Good to see some familiar faces, especially Vance as he was one of the better Disco s3 additions.
So far I have only watched episode one. First impression: God, why does everything have to be a dystopian nightmare with these people? Second impression: mediocre plot, mostly uninteresting characters, full of Kurtzman-isms. Gotta give it a chance though.
Going into it I wasn’t sure about a school-based Star Trek, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the first two episodes. It helps that the characters are a little older than I thought they were going to be (university instead of high school), but there was also some enjoyable writing in there that kept me interested and made me laugh a few times. Shout out to SAM, I was concerned at first because these fish-out-of-water characters are easy to make annoying but I ended up quite liking her.
I did have a few issues (I still don’t love the burn as a plot device), but overall I’m interested to see what happens in the next episode.
Also, yay Prodigy references!
Welcome back! I enjoyed both these episodes. I don’t like this time period, the post burn Federation. The rebuilding could interesting but it’s not really aspirational and I really could use some aspirational content in my life, vaguely waves at every thing.
I liked it too, but I find rebuilding to be aspirational. Like maybe the most aspirational thing possible.
Rebuilding in the wake of global disaster (and honestly it’s been one after another my whole life) is exactly the kind of inspirational content I think we need right now. 90s Trek was all about “things have been great, it could be better!” and I think our message today really should be “things have sucked for a bit, but how do we recover the greatness we know we’re capable of?”
This, very well put. I’ve been struggling to vocalise why I like this to folks and I think you nailed it.
Its a different message for a different era. And one we need. Too many are looking at the near and potentially bleak future, we need them to realise that hope can still lay beyond that.
Totally! I haven’t loved the post-Burn setting but the way this show is already contextualizing it, and the optimism it’s doing it with is already starting to change my mind.
And it’s even carrying over being the shoes into real life, which is one of the things I love most about Trek and its good to have this out there. There’s some nitpicks, as there always are, but so far I can deal with them, especially if it stays consistent. 🖖
I haven’t loved the post-Burn setting but the way this show is already contextualizing it, and the optimism it’s doing it with is already starting to change my mind.
Same. A lot of that stuff just feels more comfortable with time and I appreciate how Star Trek always pushes it a little bit. People FREAKED OUT with the Klingon changes in TMP/TNG. Then FREAKED OUT that DS9 was on a space station with a “politically correct” captain. Now we think of those things as normal, nostalgic even.
I hadn’t really seen that point of view before but I really like it. Shit has sucked for a while maybe some stories about how cool fixing it would be are what I need.
Anyone remember the show Breaker High?
Na na, nanana hey hey
There was many a memberberry.
At one point I thought that it didn’t look very Trek-y, somehow. Which can be explained of course by the fact that an entire millennium of progress has happened. It should be more surprising that anything does still look familiar. The thing is though that I watch Star Trek for the Trek-iness. The visual familiarity is part of it. I don’t know yet.
Let’s hope episode 3 starts being about more than Caleb’s mum. And science.
At least there was some diplomacy. Although it was weird that they’d negotiate while standing at lecterns surrounded by hundreds of people. Sit down, have a cuppa together, have a conversation, not a debate.
Also, I’m supposed to ship Caleb and his roommate whose name I have forgotten, yes? The way they interact is textbook shipping material. Not to mention They Are Roommates.
Oh also, no Cerritos in the 60th logo sequence hellooooo?
No Protostar either
As an animated Trek fan, that definitely irks, especially as it’s an animated sequence.
I have a suspicion that there’s something about animated design IP rights behind the decision though.
The old owners had decided to jettison animated Star Trek, and some other Paramount+ animated content to make the streamer mainly live action focused. Which, at the time this was announced, seemed very odd because Paramount’s owners were trying to sell the firm to Skydance, which is a major producer of high end animation for streamers.
So, my thought is that Skydance wants its own animation studio to be doing any future animated content for Paramount. There will be exceptions for long running Nickelodeon animation such as SpongeBob, Beavis and Butthead or Dora the Explorer, but relatively recent creations will get short shrift.
Episode 1: with expectations at the bottom of the Mariana Trench (because I watched Discovery), I was not too disappointed by this episode. Was it good? Also no. I think the story is fine in principle, it doesn’t unfold in a believable way, but not the worst we’ve seen in Star Trek. Other than that I was irked by what the captain says at 41:55:
make eh(?) your speed maximum impolt
Really, impolt, you couldn’t do a second take on that?
Episode 2: quite a bit worse, the plot progressed for like 3 minutes in total, and there was a lot of that teen drama that wasn’t interesting or amusing.
Overall felt like these were written by people who know a lot about Star Trek at a very surface level, and have a very TV-idea of what college life is like. I’ll keep watching, for now. Out of franchise loyalty more than actual interest.
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