Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (S1 – EPs 1 & 2) Kids These Days & Beta Test

Synopsis: After being on the run since the age of six, following Starfleet’s arrest of his mother and his escape from their custody, 21-year-old Caleb is a brilliant but damaged young man living on the margins of intergalactic society. He is emotionally blackmailed into joining Starfleet Academy by disgraced Captain and newly appointed Head of the Academy, Chancellor Nahla Ake, who also happens to be the Starfleet officer responsible for sentencing Caleb’s mother to fifteen years in a Federation prison.

Review: Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this review, I need to be upfront about my expectations. I went in low. That scepticism wasn’t born of nostalgia or a resistance to change, but of pattern recognition. Recent Star Trek has trained long-term viewers to brace themselves for prestige gloss, hollow moralising, and characters who speak in therapy slogans while institutions quietly escape scrutiny. Starfleet Academy arrives carrying all that baggage, promising renewal while subtly insisting we forget how we got here.

What follows, sadly, does precious little to challenge those instincts. Were there good bits? Sure. But they’re few and far between, offering up a decidedly mixed bag. The series wants credit for interrogating power, trauma, and redemption, yet repeatedly flinches at the precise moment such interrogation might become uncomfortable. Instead, it relies on narrative shortcuts that mistake coercion for opportunity and reframes systemic failure as personal growth, all while wrapping itself in the language of hope.

The Story

“Kids These Days” opens with a roughly twenty-minute prequel designed to foreshadow the events that eventually lead to Caleb being drafted into Starfleet. We begin with a young Caleb and his mother hiding out on a starbase, on the run from the authorities after his mother’s involvement in a heist led by the notorious pirate Nus Braka.

The Starfleet officer overseeing Caleb’s mother’s trial is Captain Nahla Ake. She attempts to console the six-year-old Caleb, assuring him that she will make sure he gets to see his mother again, while also explaining that she intends to send him to a school on Betazed. Caleb, however, proves to be far more streetwise than the situation allows for. He tricks Captain Ake into leaving him alone by claiming he left his teddy bear in the room where his mother was sentenced. The Captain, clearly not among Starfleet’s best and brightest, falls for the ploy, allowing Caleb to escape. He vanishes, not to be seen again for fifteen years.

In the present day, Nahla Ake, who coincidentally shares her name with my neighbour’s poodle, just saying, has been teaching on Betazed while continuing to search for Caleb in her spare time. Her quiet exile ends when Admiral Vance arrives and convinces her to return to Starfleet to take on the role of Chancellor of Starfleet Academy.

Elsewhere, Caleb is finally apprehended by the authorities. Nahla visits him and presents an ultimatum: his only chance of ever finding his mother is to go with her and enrol in Starfleet Academy. Caleb reluctantly agrees, though it’s clear he’s looking for an exit strategy the moment he’s admitted.

During transit, Caleb meets Klingon cadet Jay-Den Kraag, who has joined Starfleet to study medicine. He is a Klingon with a notably gentle disposition, which I’m not entirely sold on. When Caleb hacks the ship’s comms in an attempt to send a message to his mother, the transmission is intercepted by Nus Braka, who has apparently escaped Starfleet custody along with Caleb’s mother.

As the Athena, quite possibly the ugliest starship in the entire fleet, comes to a stop just outside the Badlands for reasons that are never entirely clear, the ship is boarded by Nus Braka himself. He has a bone or two to pick with Captain Nahla, largely because she was the officer on duty when he was taken into custody, though we learn very little beyond that.

With help from several other cadets, who conveniently possess exactly the skill sets required for the situation, Caleb manages to save the ship and force Nus to retreat. By the episode’s close, the Athena arrives at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco, where the cadets are celebrated as the first intake in one hundred and fifty years.

The second episode, “Beta Test,” picks up at the start of a new academic year at the Academy. Caleb is still actively looking for a way out, while simultaneously exploiting Starfleet’s resources in an effort to track down his mother. His relationship with Captain Nahla remains openly insubordinate, in a way that would simply not be tolerated in any real-world institution. Nahla, however, continues to coddle him, at one point excusing his behaviour by remarking that he’s “been having his butt kicked all his life.” I won’t comment further on this, as it is deeply triggering.

While the rest of the cadets settle into Academy life, enthusiastically joining clubs and societies such as Opera Club, Caleb is handed a remarkably plum assignment he has done little to earn: acting as a cultural guide for Tarima Sadal, the daughter of the leader of a Betazoid delegation visiting Starfleet to negotiate terms for Betazed’s return to the United Federation of Planets.

Caleb and Tarima quickly strike up a rapport, complete with a very deliberate romance subtext. The dynamic appears to be an attempt to echo the Riker–Troi relationship from The Next Generation, albeit without the years of shared history that made that pairing work. Nevertheless, this budding romance becomes instrumental to the plot, with Caleb helping Captain Nahla find a way to persuade the Betazoid delegation’s leader to rejoin the Federation. Conveniently, this diplomatic success also produces a fresh lead on the whereabouts of Caleb’s mother.

Overall

So what did I think? Overall, it’s a mixed bag, but the most glaring issue lies with its central character. We’re introduced to a young man whose entire motivation revolves around searching for his mother. She is present at the start of the story and remains the emotional axis throughout, yet there is no mention of a father, or even a father figure, anywhere in the narrative. Why is that? I’m fairly certain not all of us men are irredeemable monsters, and the absence feels less like a deliberate thematic choice and more like a blind spot.

Then there’s the ship. The Athena is ugly. It looks like an overdesigned bottle opener and completely lacks the sleek visual appeal of the Enterprise, Voyager, or any number of other starships from across the Star Trek universe. I hate it. Starfleet vessels used to embody aspiration. This one inspires mild irritation.

The plotting doesn’t fare much better. The opening episode leans heavily on convenient coincidence, most notably the fact that the cadets surrounding Caleb just happen to possess all the specialist skills required to help him execute his plan. These are meant to be trainees at the beginning of their journey, yet they’re already operating with the confidence and competence of seasoned officers. If the point of the show is about learning and growth, this immediately undercuts it. What exactly are they here to learn?

Nahla Ake’s role as Caleb’s mentor is another problem. She oscillates wildly between authority figure and enabler, never settling into a consistent or credible position. This lack of clarity weakens both her character and the institutional framework the show is supposedly examining.

That said, the political framework of the second episode mostly works. I found the back-and-forth between the leader of the Betazoid delegation and Admiral Vance regarding Betazed’s potential return to the Federation genuinely interesting, and at times even enjoyable. Unfortunately, this thread is ultimately undermined by the romance between Caleb and Tarima Sadal, which becomes a convenient narrative lubricant, smoothing over what could have been a far more politically complex and satisfying resolution.

As with much of modern Star Trek, the production values are unquestionably strong. The visual effects and sets are impressive throughout. But strong visuals can’t compensate for muddled storytelling. Across these first two episodes, character motivations are inconsistent, plot mechanics are confused, and emotional beats often feel unearned.

And honestly? If I were Caleb, I’d have walked out of the Academy about ten minutes in. That’s not hyperbole. That’s coming from someone who grew up in and out of care homes and knows exactly how coercion dressed up as opportunity feels.

Starfleet Academy has moments that hint at what it could have been, but it repeatedly struggles to understand the values it claims to represent. Characterisation is muddled, and the series maintains an uneasy relationship with its own ethics. It isn’t a disaster, but it does feel like a missed opportunity. I’ll continue to watch and review, if only in the hope that things improve.