Summary
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy delivers a solid first half of a two-part finale in “300th Night”, finally reuniting Caleb with his wayward mother.
It’s probably best to think of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 9 as the first half of a two-part finale, since “300th Night” certainly has that feel about it. School’s out. The Academy freshmen are due to graduate, and they plan to travel to Betazed with the rest of the fleet to see in the official designation of the planet as the Federation’s new capital. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, as it happens, quite a lot. Nus Braka’s earlier raid of the experimental weapons facility turns out to have been the first step of a larger plan to completely destabilise the Federation, and at the same time, Caleb finally tracks down his mother’s location. Since he’s impulsive at the best of times, and especially when it comes to this particular issue, he and several other cadets go rogue to find her, causing all kinds of tangential issues and, naturally, reaching major turning points in their own arcs and relationship dynamics.
Going Rogue
The idea of Caleb as a character has always been a little anti-Star Trek, since he began the series vehemently opposing Starfleet – for justifiable reasons – and has continually resisted authority ever since. Most versions of Trek have a captain as a protagonist to avoid this kind of conflict, since it’s generally understood that the morally evolved and ethically flexible Federation are “the good guys”, and their mandate of exploration is well-intentioned. I bring this up because the whole point of this episode is these chickens coming home to roost for Caleb specifically.
It’s very much a Trek trope for the crew to go rogue, ignore orders, and get embroiled in some dangerous local dispute, but there’s an additional quality to this version of it because it’s basically Caleb’s final boss encounter on the long road to realising that the Federation – and all the regimentation and teamwork it entails – aren’t as bad as he has been continually insisting. His mother, Anisha, embodies his reservations even more vehemently than he does, so his big late-season task, outside of ensuring he stays alive, is also realizing that his beloved mother is wrong and they need to turn to Starfleet for help.
Nothing wrong with this, of course, but it doesn’t work as well as it might for two reasons. One is that Caleb has been learning this same lesson repeatedly all season, to basically the same result every time. The other is that we haven’t seen Anisha since the premiere, so Caleb’s relationship with her has been a lot of one-sided pining rather than anything substantial. We know her viewpoint is out of date, and she unfortunately doesn’t have much of a character beyond “badass; doesn’t like the Federation much”.
With A Little Help From My Friends
Some of the above bleeds into the character dynamics. Caleb trying to swerve help from his pals is predictable, but it does lead to some nice character moments when SAM insists on helping him track Anisha down, and then on accompanying him, to be joined soon after by Darem and Genesis. For some reason, Jay-Den, who has just welcomed his friends into House Kraag through a very serious and sacred ritual, doesn’t accompany them, and neither does Tarima, though they both later stow away on the Athena to get involved down the line.
This does, admittedly, create a tighter dynamic around Caleb and Anisha, since she doesn’t know he’s with Starfleet and wants him to escape with her, and Caleb has to try and justify that decision even though it’s obviously the wrong one. He tries to put his friends off the best way he knows how, by eviscerating their most essential characters, which is a classic self-defence move for damaged loner archetypes that, again, would work better if he hadn’t been doing the same thing all season and repeatedly failing to commit to it. I did really like a new and improved SAM cutting his rant off with a hug and saying, “You’re so full of sh*t,” though.
Ticking Clock
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy builds macro tension in Episode 9 by letting the threat of Nus Braka loom over all of this. The Federation is taking emergency measures, and no Starfleet vessel is allowed outside of Federation space until the Venari Ral threat has been dealt with. Typically, Caleb found Anisha on Ukeck, a planet outside of Federation Space on the cusp of being annexed by the Venari Ral. The timing literally couldn’t be worse.
This creates the two-pronged structure of Caleb, Darem, Genesis, and SAM trying to get Anisha off-world while Nahla, Jett, and the Doctor try to rescue the kids. The mirroring of Caleb and Nahla both being maverick rule-breakers is very deliberate, since we’re building on the idea of Caleb being trapped between two masters: his biological anti-establishment mother, and his wayward but ultimately straight-and-narrow surrogate.
This dynamic manifests very obviously at the end, when Caleb and the others manage to transport a wounded Anisha to the Athena, which is now, thanks to Nus’s machinations, cut off from the rest of the fleet. Anisha is shocked to discover that she’s aboard a Starfleet vessel, and even more so to be confronted with the woman whom she doubtlessly blames for the majority of her ills, but they’re going to have to work together to save the day. Should be fun.
