The first season of Starfleet Academy is off and running to mixed reviews. That said, any series or movie needs to be good enough to withstand internet chatter and all types of criticism.

I had some serious issues with the story in the first episode, and I think the focus they chose missed the biggest opportunity the series had to offer, which was the rebuilding of Starfleet Academy. We never got to see that. Still, I decided to give the next two episodes a chance, since any new series usually rises or falls within its first three episodes. That was also true even back in the 1960s with the original Star Trek featuring Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and Scotty which was trashed by many critics of the time with comments like “disappointingly bizarre” and “astronautical soap opera that suffers from interminable flight drag.” If Gene Roddenberry was anything, he was an optimist. Still, his original series only lasted three seasons before being canceled due to low ratings and high production costs, but it later returned as an animated series, several feature films, and a string of new series.

Looking back, Star Trek’s greatest strength has always been reinvention, from The Next Generation to Deep Space Nine to Strange New Worlds and others, each series is designed to bring in a new generation of fans while embracing Roddenberry’s vision for the time that each new series is produced. Every Star Trek series has faced push back for one reason or another, so Starfleet Academy isn’t unique in that regard. What gets lost in the noise of critical chatter is the real discussion about the story, characters, and overall concept, which is what helps people decide if a series is for them. That’s why I’m looking at the first three episodes together, knowing some people will love it and some will hate it. So, the goal is simply to help you figure out where you land.

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Starfleet Academy stars Holly Hunter as Captain Nahla Ake, the chancellor of the newly reformed school and captain of the USS Athena. The first three episodes focus on themes of empathy, strategy, excellence, and the pursuit of peace and scientific discovery. There’s a quirky earnestness to the series that echoes the early episodes of the original show. At the same time, there’s a high-tech glam that presents a sleek, futuristic world set in the year 3190, which is a step up from how Roddenberry described spraying plastic on crates in the original series to give it a futuristic look. And, yes, I actually went back and rewatched the first three episodes of the original series to make that comparison and dug up some original reviews and interviews related to the 1966 show.

The series opener for Starfleet Academy tells two intertwined stories that intersect while introducing us to Nahla, Caleb Mir, several incoming students, Nahla’s leadership team, and the primary villain Nus Braka. This should have been a slam dunk. So, what went wrong?

Let’s start with a high-level breakdown that includes some light spoilers.

The first episode takes on too much, opening with young Caleb watching his mother Anisha get convicted for helping the pirate Nus Braka steal supplies from a Federation transport, a case overseen by Captain Nahla Ake. Years later, Nahla reunites with Caleb as an adult prisoner and offers him a commuted sentence in exchange for joining the newly reformed Starfleet Academy. The story then shifts to Orientation Day aboard the USS Athena, where the audience is introduced to the new cadets before Braka launches an attack on the ship to take it over.

The second episode is much more tightly constructed, centering on a peace delegation from Betazed that arrives on Earth to meet with Starfleet leadership at the shared campus that houses both the Starfleet War College and Starfleet Academy. The delegation includes the Betazoid president and his two teenage children, and the talks focus on whether to bring down a protective wall separating Betazed and the worlds it protects from the Federation and as well as potential threats. The episode leans into themes of empathy and peace, while developing Caleb’s character through his growing connection with the president’s daughter Tarima whose empathic abilities allow her to see past his bravado to his desire to belong somewhere with people he can trust.

The third episode focuses on the two schools, pitting cadets from the Academy against the War College in a friendly game of Calica, which is essentially a modern version of laser tag that looks like a lot of fun. This is where the series finally starts to relax and enjoy itself, leaning into themes of strategy and teamwork as the Academy cadets try to outsmart their militarized rivals through an escalating series of pranks.

These moments felt spot on and immediately reminded me of MIT’s legendary hacks like putting a police car on top of the dome to planting a giant MIT balloon under the turf to inflate during the the Harvard Yale game just to prove who the smartest kids on the block really were. I’ve worked at MIT for a long time, and I can tell you the writers have clearly modeled Starfleet Academy on MIT in a lot of different ways. The real highlight of the episode is seeing a playful, clever side of Nahla Ake that feels reminiscent of the best moments of James T. Kirk.

Episode 1: When Structure Undermines the Story

The first episode of Starfleet Academy opens with some of its strongest moments, including when Captain Nahla Ake recruits Caleb from the penal colony. This scene works because Caleb’s misdemeanors were not committed in Federation space, and Nahla approach is strategic and sincere. The tension between them feels real with Caleb’s anger and sense of betrayal clashing with Nahla’s genuine concern and feelings of responsibility for what happened to him. The shifting power dynamic between them works beautifully.

The rest of the episode isn’t nearly as strong and should have been split in two with the first half focused on Nahla at the school setting it up and the second could have been a training exercise with the anomaly. Episode one’s biggest problem is that it took forty-one minutes to lead up to the action because it chose to spend too much time lingering on introductions. It also weakens Nahla’s character by making Orientation Day her literal first day on the job, presenting her as a last-minute hire who hasn’t even seen the new campus or met her First Officer or any of her crew. For a position Chancellor at Starfleet Academy this doesn’t feel authentic.

On top of that, the second half of the episode becomes a string of convenient conflicts from Caleb being so sloppy with messages that Braka intercepts them to senior staff being sidelined or injured, leaving the incoming students to save the ship. The final confrontation ends with Braka’s easy escape, which feels wrong since I can’t imagine a reality where an escape pod from a Federation starship can’t be tracked or remotely recalled. Individually these moments might be forgivable, but together they break the illusion of a competent, well-run Starfleet operation, which is absolutely not the way to kick off a new series.

Technology and Worldbuilding

What they do get right is the technology and design. Visually, both the Athena and the land-based Starfleet Academy work really well. The mix of physical production sets and digital effects creates a campus that feels like a futuristic academic setting. The Athena’s sleek, open layout with glass walls and shared spaces actually does feel like a modern research university transported into the Star Trek universe.

A new use of their old tech is the transporter doorway that gives Caleb a haircut and instantly dresses him with a fitted uniform. It follows existing transporter logic and feels like a natural evolution for how it would be used in everyday life. Episodes two and three build on this by introducing phasers with transporter tech that can beam people directly to predesignated locations. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. I also appreciated that they still use lifts and walkways around the ship and campus instead of just relying on teleportation.

The series also leans into horticulture and biotech with plant life that responds to stimuli and aligns with real-world science. To solve a problem, the students develop a growth serum for a plant, and the thought process here is very old school Trek. Finally, we get clearer explanations about the holographic, or photonic, beings like The Doctor and Sam, who can now shift between fully physical and completely transparent states. This explains how they can carry objects, administer medicine, and interact with the physical world and even cast shadows. Finally, it all makes sense, even if it took three episodes to get there.

Episodes 2 and 3 to the Rescue?

The good news is that episodes two and three are much tighter and more confident in their storytelling.

Episode two accomplished a delicate and strategic negotiation with the president of Betazed. As part of that story, the question of “how to repair trust” becomes a central theme to bring Betazed back into the Federation after the Burn, and we also see how the strategic political theme paired with empathy and understanding are made personal through the growing friendship between Tarima, the daughter of the Betazed president, and Caleb, who has been abandoned by just about every person he has ever trusted. These kinds of topics are absolutely core to original Star Trek.

Meanwhile, episode three pits the cadets from Starfleet Academy against the establish cadets at the War College. They are essentially out classed in every way from strategic planning to teamwork and they are facing a no-win scenario with the escalating game of pranks and challenges until Chancellor Ake plants her own seeds to inspire her cadets to think beyond normal solutions to find out-of-the-box answers. It’s essentially a precursor to the type of thinking that Captain Kirk pulled off as a Starfleet Academy cadet when he faced the Kobayashi Maru test.

Critical Hits and Misses

While episode one stumbled hard, episodes two and three recover and give the series a second chance. A lot of online backlash focuses on woke and anti-woke ideology, which doesn’t make much sense since Star Trek has a long history of political themes, aliens, and women in its storytelling. That doesn’t inherently make a story woke or anti-woke. It’s easy to imagine even more aliens and bioengineering would be present in the 32nd century, which is when Starfleet Academy takes place.

I’ll agree that episode one leans in too heavily on aliens and hybrids, which seems to be toned down in episodes two and three. From a performance standpoint for non-human characters, it’s important for studios to remember that people connect most easily with human faces and body language. Too many prosthetics, too much makeup, and too many creatures can limit our emotional engagement with a character.

The other major complaint floating around is about the number of women in the show, and I honestly don’t know what to say. We literally have a 50/50 gender split in the US and the world. In the United States, roughly 50% of teachers are female at the college level. The same is largely true of administrative staff in universities. So, the gender split visually feels normal. It’s what I see every day in the world around me.

I’ve also seen complaints about a gay character and that some of the women are fat. I’m not even sure how to respond to those complaints other than to say that I get people want to watch “Hot Trek.” Heck, that’s a very human reaction, but there are lots of skinny, pretty, and straight people in this series, too. In fact, most of them are Hot Trek characters, especially with the introduction of the Betazoid Tarima, who is super Hot Trek! Also, Nahla Ake is pretty Hot Trek for an older audience. Plus, she does a great job with her role. She’s playful, sharp, and incredibly savvy, intentionally coming off as quirky while mentally creating a strategic takedown list for people in her way.

I was initially annoyed by Lura Thok, the Klingon–Jem’Hadar hybrid, because she felt like she was overacting in episode one and I mean in a big was as if she were compensating for all of the costuming and makeup she had to wear. In the following episodes, she leans more into her Klingon nature, which ends up being both funny and believable for the character.

The educational liaison, Lt. Rork, is by far the weakest character and makes the worst professional judgment call in the series to date. The actress plays her in such a muted, inert way that I found myself genuinely wondering how this character got the job at Starfleet Academy. I know many female faculty members in science and technology, and what we see of Rork in a professional capacity just does not measure up.

Then there’s Jett Reno, who is in a relationship with Lura Thok and it’s a giant nothingburger. I literally don’t care because they don’t play it up, it’s not preachy, and it’s more of a character footnote than anything else. What I really like about Jett Reno is that she’s savvy, well-read, and great at blending science with responsibility in quick, pithy lines that remind me of how Doctor McCoy used to deliver throwaway comments that would absolutely crack me up in the original series.

These are the women getting the most social media flack right now. Some of it is earned from justified complaints about characters like Lt. Rork, who thankfully haven’t reappeared in episodes two and three. It’s not my intention to be overly critical, but that character simply doesn’t work and should be quietly written out and replaced.

Is it Worth Watching?

So, given all of that, is episode 1 of Starfleet Academy worth watching? It depends on what you want out of this series. While the first episode suffers from several structural failures that are hard to overlook, episodes two and three feel on track for who Star Trek is supposed to feel like. Fans who want more continuity, logic, and complex character development will likely find more of what they want as the series develops. It’s just really unfortunate that the first episode did not delivery on the promise of the series, but we have seen bigger stumbles on series openers that proved to still be worth watching. Starfleet Academy is likely to be a love it or hate it show, but you really need to get past that first episode to understand what the series has to offer.

So, Starfleet Academy have you watched it? Was it just episode one? Did you make it through any other episodes. I’m really curious what you thought of them so far because this show is getting so much heat right now. I’d really love to know what worked and what didn’t for you? And will you be tuning in for more?

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