Summary
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy combines a personal coming-of-age tale with a stirring love letter to the franchise’s past in “Series Acclimation Mil”. Aside from an ill-advised adult-focused B-plot, it works.
If there has been a persistent complaint about modern Star Trek, it’s that it doesn’t feel very much like Star Trek of old. This accusation has been levelled at Starfleet Academy with great gusto, so it’s probably no surprise that Episode 5, “Series Acclimation Mil”, seems designed to be a deliberate counter to it. It’s a passionate and sincere embrace of the broader franchise, a lovely tribute to Avery Brooks, and an attempt to solve a mystery that fans have been fretting over since the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Whatever did happen to Captain Benjamin Sisko?
This isn’t just fan service. It’s an exploration that doubles as a key part of SAM’s growth as a character, as she, as a photogenic lifeform, finds herself as an emissary just like Sisko was, and is struggling with the best way to fulfill her mandate and understand her own existence. It also touches on a bunch of quintessential YA tropes – a boozy party, anyone? – for good measure, so all in all, an outing that is very on-brand for this show, while also being pretty reverential of Star Trek at large. You’d think that’d be the best of both worlds, but I’m sure people will still hate it, for whatever reason.
Past and Future
The key selling point of this episode is undoubtedly the focus on Sisko and many callbacks to Trek’s past, with a lot of nods to Deep Space Nine and the wider franchise. It even ends with a spoken word coda from Avery Brooks himself, even though he isn’t in the episode since he has retired from acting. Cirroc Lofton does return as an adult version of his son, Jake, though, which is the next best thing.
However, the reason the episode works is that it uses the parallels between Sisko and SAM to tell a story that is fundamentally about SAM, who is essentially a child and is learning how to navigate the responsibilities she has to her people and her own wants and desires as an individual. She sees herself in Sisko, so delving into the mystery of what happened to him is as much a coming-of-age experience as it is an effort to genuinely answer what happened, which is perhaps just as well since, ultimately, “Series Acclimation Mil” doesn’t reveal what happened to Sisko.
However, it does make the argument that the specifics don’t really matter. It creates an environment where the ambiguity is satisfying for the audience to interpret how they wish, and it also means that SAM is able to figure out who she is and begin making her own choices in a way that she feels honours Sisko, which in turn honours Star Trek overall. Everyone’s a winner.
A Little Too Cheerful
My only real gripe with Starfleet Academy Episode 5 is that I think it’s pitched just a little too young. I could do without the on-screen graphics and text overlays. Yes, I know it’s a formal outgrowth of SAM’s persona, but we know what SAM is like without having to lay it on quite this thick.
The fourth-wall-breaking stuff I’m a touch more amenable to, since an effort is made to subvert the trope by revealing down the line who SAM is talking to, and it isn’t a world away from the usual personal logs that open most episodes of most Star Trek shows. I just think Kerrice Brooks does a good enough job of communicating SAM’s personality through her performance that we don’t need all the extra bells and whistles to get that idea across.
Still, there’s a case to be made that some of this stuff is helpful in smoothing out all the necessary exposition, since there’s a fair amount to chew through explaining the history of SAM’s people, their issue with organics, and their intention for her to gain access to the Academy’s “Confronting the Explainable” course in the belief – presumably mistaken – that it’ll simply unravel all the necessary mysteries of organic civilisation. If only things were that easy.
Student Night
While the focus of “Series Acclimation Mil” is firmly on SAM, the other cadets are nonetheless present, and in leaning on them she’s able to find some answers to her more personal questions. The hour does a decent job of threading the needle between being SAM-centric without totally neglecting everyone else. It still can’t quite get away from Caleb’s main character syndrome – his relationship with Tarima takes a major leap here, which is fine, but there’s also a bit about him hacking into SAM’s software that just feels needlessly show-offy; his hacking skills play out like a magical superpower sometimes – but the group dynamic works pretty well overall.
Teens attending a cadet party and getting drunk and boisterous is an obligatory part of any YA coming-of-age story, so I have no issue with the inclusion of that here, and I do enjoy the ongoing conflict between the Academy and War College. I didn’t enjoy how that rivalry extends into an adult-focused B-plot about Nahla helping the War College’s Commander Kelrec rehearse a diplomatic dinner with a visiting alien chancellor, since it’s exceedingly dumb, but you can’t have everything.
Ultimately, the bulk of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 5 works on every level it’s trying to, using the franchise’s past to meaningfully inform its present and, hopefully, its future. If subsequent episodes can really nail that idea, we’ll be well on our way to Starfleet Academy carving out a valuable place for itself in the overall canon.
RELATED:
