To say I did not care for last January’s Star Trek: Section 31 would be an understatement larger than the Alpha Quadrant. I singled it out as the worst film of 2025. This franchise disappointed me again soon after with the mostly disastrous season three of Star Trek: Strange New World, up until then the series I most appreciated of the current Trek era.
Combine that with all the behind-the-scenes chaos surrounding the controversial Skydance Media/Paramount Global merger — that cancelled Stephen Colbert and suggested an impending “less-woke” direction for CBS and Paramount+ programming — and we’re looking at perhaps the bleakest moment for this franchise since the 1969 cancellation of The Original Series.
So, as a long-time fan who grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, I pressed play on my screener of this debut outing of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy with great trepidation and rock bottom expectations. Imagine my surprise to find myself unexpectedly charmed by the premiere and its new cast of characters.
This is not to say Starfleet Academy‘s maiden voyage delivered everything I want in my Trek. The episode didn’t center any allegories that hold a lens up to specific issues we’re facing in the 21st Century, but it did nevertheless find moments that nodded to a struggle its younger audience may identify with as when Holly Hunter’s Captain Nahla Ake said, “Now these kids are inheriting a broken world they did not create but have to clean up.”
Ake is half Lanthanite, the same species as Carol Kane’s Pelia in Strange New Worlds. As one of the few to have actually lived long enough to have experienced The Federation and Starfleet at their zenith, she’s a perfect guide for this post-“Burn” generation of cadets who had never known a life without hardship.
And like Pelia, Ake is a pack rat with a penchant for hoarding retro media and technology. Hunter plays her with an often playful aloofness who starts the series — much like the title character of Star Trek: Picard — carrying guilt over having not done enough to stand up against a Starfleet that failed to live up to its high-minded ideals, driving her to resign her commission and return to civilian life.
The incident that caused Captain Ake to walk away centered around Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta), this series’ main cadet protagonist, and the villainous space pirate Nus Braka portrayed by Paul Giamatti. These two characters also represent the weakest elements of “Kids These Days.” It at least appears that Caleb’s search for his missing mother will be his main season-long storyline, and it’s a mystery in which I’m not remotely invested.
But my bigger issue relates to Nus Braka. As I feared from the show’s trailers, Giamatti is giving a BIG performance here. There’s good scene-chewing villains, like Ricardo Montalban’s titular role in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and then there’s that next level of over-the-top villain like John Travolta’s character in Battlefield Earth. So far, the usually reliable Giamatti is leaning towards the later.
Fortunately, the rest of the cast, faculty and students, make a stronger first impression that often defy the established stereotypes of their species. Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diane) is a pacifist, borderline vegetarian Klingon studying pre-med. SAM (Kerrice Brooks), Starfleet’s first ever photonic-based — or holographic — cadet is both awkward and exuberant. She’s of course not the only holographic character though as Robert Picardo is here reprising his role of The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, now serving as a teacher at the newly reborn Starfleet Academy.
Photo: Brooke Palmer/Paramount+
Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard) is a military brat whose only ever known life on space stations having grown up moving from starbase to starbase with her admiral father. Little is established about the last cadet introduced this week, Darem Raymi (George Hawkins), beyond his belonging to a species that can survive out in space for 8 minutes, which conveniently proves useful right away the first time our cadets are in jeopardy.
But the biggest standout is among the faculty, Gina Yashere’s Lura Thok, a half Klingon and half Jem’Hadar spin on a gym teacher and athletic coach. Ever the disciplinarian, Thok balances out Captain Ake’s more liberal, anything-goes style of teaching, creating a fun good cop/bad cop dynamic.
Another highlight is the USS Athena. One of the more inspired creative decisions was establishing dual campuses for these cadets, the Earth-based campus in San Francisco — Starfleet Academy’s long-established canonical home — and a second campus on board the starship Athena, serving as a mobile training vessel.
I’ve long felt that Deep Space Nine was the last time I really appreciated the design work on a Trek series; after that, the franchise tended to lean towards overly slick chrome styles that felt more focused on function than aesthetics. The main Bridge set of the USS Athena reminds me most of Strange New Worlds‘ reimagined take on the original Enterprise Bridge, but it’s the ship’s exterior that most impressed me with its wing-like warp nacelles that detach so the Athena can dock in San Francisco.
Despite my initial doubts, “Kids These Days” gives me hope Starfleet Academy‘s producers may deliver a refreshingly novel and welcome spin on a franchise that has grown stale of late. And thankfully most of the fan servicey references exist as mere “if you know you know” Easter eggs that don’t overly distract from the current story being told.
It still remains to be seen if the writers are willing to challenge the audience and take risks by exploring themes with political and social commentary critiquing powerful systems in our contemporary world, but this premiere has at least succeeded in setting up enough interesting characters and world-building to stoke my curiosity.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy release Thursdays on Paramount+.
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