Changing Young Minds

It took me a while but I finally got around to finishing Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s first season. I checked in with the show after its premiere and found that it was interesting, but it struggled to balance its larger cast against its desire to build up its main character, Caleb Mir. It did feel like there were the bones of a good show here, but the writers needed to get their head wrapped around the story, setting, and characters and figure out what they really wanted. A lot of shows have this same struggle, and given time and care a decent show can grow to be great once it gets its feet under it. It just needs more than a season to really find itself.

The good news is that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was already renewed for a second season before the first season even aired, meaning we’ll get a second round of episodes with a more developed, and more confident, show. Unfortunately the show was also just recently cancelled by Paramount before the first season even finished airing, so that second season will also act as its finale, whether the showrunners could create an ending for the series or not. And once this show, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, finish airing their last batches of episodes, we’ll be at a point where no new Star TrekOriginally conceived as "Wagon Train in Space", Star Trek was released during the height of the Hollywood Western film and TV boom. While the concept CBS originally asked for had a western vibe, it was the smart, intellectual stories set in a future utopia of science and exploration that proved vital to the series' long impact on popular culture. is in development at all. From a glut of shows to suddenly nothing in the blink of an eye.

Not that I think this show worked as the primary source of Star Trek on the air. As a spin-off of Star Trek: Discovery, this series was set in the far future of the Federation, distant to any other project that was currently on the air. Star Trek: Discovery ended its run a while ago, and no other series was in development for this time period, so even doing crossovers or continuing storylines between shows was hard. That meant that we had one series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, functionally in the early days of the Federation, and one at the very end of its known history so far, and it made for split focus, split storytelling, and a lot of wasted potential.

I think “wasted potential” is a great way to describe this series because it never really felt like this show quite understood the story it was trying to tell. Is this supposed to be a series about the cadets at Starfleet Academy? The series only focuses on about six cadets and largely ignores the rest of the school. We don’t see the cadets in classes very often. We barely learn anyone outside of this core group, outside a couple of recurring teachers. More often than not the setting of Starfleet Academy is ignored so we can have, functionally, Star Trek: Starfleet Babies. The same Star Trek stories you know, just with a much younger cast.

Take the overarching plot of this season as an example. We’re introduced to Nux Braka, the central villain of the piece. A criminal entrepreneur, Braka has a serious grudge against the Federation. He worked with Caleb’s mother, Anisha, and because of Braka’s actions on a smuggling run, both he and Anisha were sent to prison while Caleb became a ward of the Federation… before running away and living on his own. Braka makes appearances through the season before stealing key Federation tech, later setting up a trap to wall off the whole of the Federation with mines before planning to explode them all, trapping the Federation in its sector forever.

This isn’t a bad plotline, per se, but it’s a weird fit for a show about Starfleet Academy, even with the character connections to Caleb. This is the kind of emergency situation that Picard and the crew of the Enterprise D would have handled over the course of a two-part season finale-season premiere arc. Instead the D-squad of cadets are the ones set to handle it all because the writers forced the situation so that only the cadets were available to do so. It’s lazy writing when just about any other crew would be better trained, and better able, to handle the situation.

That’s because this show isn’t really about Starfleet Academy, despite that being in the name. It’s really The Adventures of Caleb Mir, and it’s really not shy about it. Caleb is the focus on every major plotline in the series. Sure, other characters get their due, and there’s plenty of B-plot storytelling going on, but Caleb is always there, front and center, getting a plotline of his own with one of the other characters each week. It’s an ensemble show, but despite that the series still puts most of the focus on Caleb because… well, I’m not actually certain why.

Honestly, Caleb isn’t that interesting. He’s a runaway kid with a chip on his shoulder that is forced to go to a school and, while there, finds the family he never expected. It’s a story that’s been told, over and over, for decades. Centuries, even. Putting it in a futuristic school doesn’t change the fact that this is well-trod ground. Caleb finding himself is a character arc that works, sure, but the series doesn’t have anything interesting to say about him outside, “he just needed a family.” That’s bad character work to go along with the lazy writing.

In fact, having Caleb at Starfleet Academy does nothing for this character. He’s a Marty Stu, super capable in any situation he’s put into. Caleb going to school should mean that he’s there to learn something, but the season never actually illustrates, even once, Caleb learning anything from the teachers or his classes. He comes in already fully formed and more technically savvy than your average Starfleet commander, so what is the actual point of him being at school. He knows enough that he could teach at the academy, not take classes at it.

Caleb is the kind of character that, in a different era, would have ended up in the Maquis, working as a commander in their fleet. He’s designed to be a rebel, someone fighting against the system, leading others while he fights his own demons. He’s a poor fit for the academy, as well as for all the other characters he interacts with. The other characters on the show are meant for the academy, and they sit it well, learning and growing and connecting, but Caleb sticks out and doesn’t work, and because he’s forced to be the main character the season never really finds itself the way it should.

In fairness this could all resolve itself by the end of the first season. Without spoiling anything major, Caleb gets a kind of closure and realizes he’s meant to be in Starfleet. This could lead to the ensemble being more of an ensemble now that Caleb’s main storylines are over. But this show is a lot like Star Trek: Discovery and on that show even after the lead character, Michael Burham, got her closure and tied up her first main storyline, the series never stopped being about her. Every season the show found some new problem that only Michael could fix, and then the rest of the cast had to follow along behind her while they barely got any focus or development.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is at least better than Star Trek: Discovery in that one regard. The rest of the cast are great and they get plenty of time to shine in their B-plots or while hanging around Caleb. It would just be nice if this ensemble show could actually focus truly on its ensemble. It should be a show about the academy, since that’s in its name, without always feeling the need to be about “something more”. A show set at the school could be good if the writers would just let it happen. Maybe we’ll get that in the second season, but I doubt it.

And with the second season also being its last, I also doubt there’s time for the show to find itself. Series need time to get their footing. Most Star Trek shows back in the day needed a season or two to find themselves and finally get good. Studios were willing to give the shows their time to develop. Streaming killed that, and the pressure to make something good, fast, on a big budget, effectively killed this show. Over time Star Trek: Starfleet Academy might have eventually become really good. The bones are there (if only the show would start ignoring Caleb once in a while).

Now it’s too late for the show to develop into something people actually want to watch. We can only hang out for another season and then say goodbye before, probably, forgetting this series existed at all.