Summary
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy can feel a little ham-fisted in “The Life of the Stars”, but its SAM and Doctor-focused subplot is excellent stuff.
Evidently not finished with cameos from the broader franchise, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy provides another one in Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars”. But even though the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Sylvia Tilly seems like the biggest deal, it’s 50% of what is very much a tale of two halves. In the Tilly-shaped bit, the survivors of the Miyazaki work through their lingering trauma by being turned into theatre kids, which is a bit ham-fisted for my tastes. But the rest of the episode, focusing on SAM and The Doctor, is genuinely thought-provoking and oddly moving sci-fi. So, it’s a mixed bag.
We’ve already had a cool SAM-focused episode, and this feels like an outgrowth of that, while also building on the surprisingly adult events of the gang’s first unintentionally real away mission. That’s what the Tilly stuff is doing too, but it just feels a bit too self-congratulatory and on-the-nose, with Tarima, Caleb, Genesis, Darem, Jay-Den, and Ocam breaking down the themes and text of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. It’s all full of lit-crit commonplaces and has a very YA vibe to it. I know the whole show does, generally, but it’s really noticeable here.
Our Town Is In Crisis
Tarima has been transferred from the War College to Starfleet Academy full-time after a spell in a coma. She has now been fitted with a new device that dampens her emotions even more effectively, but she’s still smarting about the apology message Caleb sent her at the end of the previous episode. The theatre sessions are for the benefit of everyone, but they’re mostly for Tarima in terms of focus.
And you can understand her point of view. She overloaded her psychic powers to save the day, but now she’s being looked upon with an air of suspicion, and she has been totally divorced from her friends and familiar surroundings. She’s also frustrated by the classes since she recognises pretty much immediately that what Tilly is doing is sneaking a therapy session into a theatre study.
But Tarima’s mostly confused about Caleb. Now she’s around him full-time, she quickly spots the chemistry he shares with Genesis, which was teased in the previous episode. However, Genesis helps a very drunk Tarima to understand that they’re just friends – she should probably tell Caleb; I don’t think he’s sure – and the play allows the whole gang to embrace Tarima and also get a better sense of SAM’s headspace, since she recommended the play in the first place.
SAM Is Beyond Repair
Speaking of SAM, she has been malfunctioning ever since being shot by the Furies, and the chickens come home to roost in that regard here in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 8, when she has the hologram equivalent of a seizure. SAM has been keeping her glitches a secret, so they have steadily worsened to the point that emergency intervention is needed. And that means returning SAM to her home world of Kasq.
In entreating with the Makers, though, Doctor and Nahla are told that SAM is beyond repair. What has happened here is that SAM skipped a childhood, and thus she never learned the everyday emotional bedrock that organic personalities are built on. She never had love and connection; she never developed resilience. And then she was thrust into a deeply organic situation. Her programming hasn’t allowed her to process what she experienced. It’s the hologram version of PTSD.
And there’s really no cure, except for what is essentially a rebirth. But in order to be successful as an envoy among organics, the reborn SAM has to develop as an organic would, which means she needs to be raised by a father to give her an emotional basis to build upon. Enter Doctor. Since time works differently on Kasq, he can raise her there for a period of 17 years, which will only count as a couple of weeks on Earth. After some cajoling, he agrees.
The Doctor Is the Secret Weapon
There are a couple of deep cut references to Star Trek: Voyager here, the most significant of which is Doctor’s loss of his holographic daughter, Belle. Despite that event having occurred 800 years prior, his essentially infinite lifespan makes the loss feel as if it happened yesterday. This is why he has persistently rejected SAM’s attempts to bond with and be mentored by him since she arrived at Starfleet Academy.
Naturally, then, the idea of raising her as his own is terrifying to him, since he’s scared of experiencing the same profound sense of loss again. The Doctor’s conversations with Nahla in this regard, who is also blessed – and indeed cursed – with an exceptionally long life, are the best parts of the episode, paying off a character arc three decades in the making.
In raising SAM from a baby to a teenager, Doctor gets a second chance at what he lost, and she also gets a literal second chance at being an envoy for her people. However, the reborn version will still have two sets of memories – her first 209 days at Starfleet Academy, and 17 years with the Doctor as her father. I’m sure that’ll be interesting once they both get back to Earth.
