Star Trek: Starfleet Academy: promises and first loves on the final frontier

Thirty-second century. One hundred and twenty years after a catastrophic event shattered the United Federation of Planets, reducing it to an archipelago of isolated and distrustful worlds, the Starfleet Academy finally reopens its doors on the historic San Francisco campus. It's a return with strong symbolic value: for the first time in over a century, a new class of cadets is preparing to embark on the path that forged legends like Kirk and Spock, yet aware of inheriting a universe much more fragile and hostile than that faced by such predecessors.

Overseeing this delicate new beginning is Captain Nahla Ake, commanding the USS Athena, a starship that also serves as a mobile Academy. Half-Lanthanite, Ake has lived long enough to remember the Federation in its heyday, before the collapse. An eccentric and unorthodox figure, she curls up in the command chair as if it were her living room sofa, embodying a leadership far from Starfleet's classic austerity.

The most problematic recruitment is that of Caleb Mir, a young human and an old acquaintance of the Captain. Separated from his mother Anisha fifteen years prior due to a decision made by Ake herself, Caleb agrees to attend the Academy only on one condition: that the Captain help him find the woman, who has been missing for years. A rebellious hacker with strong engineering skills, the boy will have to come to terms with his past and learn to integrate with the other cadets.

Between Earth and space, anything can happen

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy opens with a voice-over by Ake, introducing the context of this new branch of the historic franchise, now available on Paramount+ with its first two episodes. A project that aims to expand the canons of a saga that has always been rather "buttoned-up" in its modus operandi, attempting here to speak to new generations through young protagonists, still in training, and dynamics that openly look to the high-school narrative, albeit translated into a peculiar sci-fi context. A choice that risks raising eyebrows among purists, but which on paper offers as much potential as evident pitfalls.

The first episode dedicates ample space to building the conflicted relationship between Caleb and Ake: a predictable dynamic in structure, but made effective by the performances. Holly Hunter, an Oscar-winning actress, is simply irresistible in the role, blending a playful and almost absent-minded verve with a deep wisdom matured through centuries of experience and pain. Her Ake is a layered figure, marked by past choices and determined to atone by guiding this new generation of "explorers" towards a better future.

To infinity and beyond?

The narrative universe draws heavily from the heritage created by Gene Roddenberry and subsequently expanded by Alex Kurtzman, here executive producer: Klingons, Khionians, Betazoids, new species like the Dar-Sha, and even holographic beings populate a melting pot still to be explored. It's too early to understand how this richness will be exploited over the ten planned episodes, but already in the first, a threat is introduced that quickly plunges the viewer into the heart of the action. A sustained start that leaves little room for acclimatization, postponed to a more reflective second episode, dedicated to outlining future relational dynamics.

The main problem is that the attention seems to focus excessively on Caleb, with the risk of relegating the other cadets to mere supporting characters and making the storyline related to the search for his mother too central. Embodying the possible villain of the season is an unrecognizable Paul Giamatti as Nus Braka, a Klingon-Tellarite hybrid and ruthless pirate leading the Venari Ral, a legion at war with the Federation. Braka shares a complex past with Ake and possesses crucial information about Anisha.