TL;DR – This is a bit of a rough first episode, but underneath all the mess is a lot of promise.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that airs this series.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Kids These Days Review –

Well, it is a new year, and also it is time for some new Star Trek, well, I say new Star Trek, but the idea of setting a show in Starfleet Academy has been kicking around since at least the 1980s. However, it might have taken forty-odd years to get it going; its time is now, and of course, we must take a look, even though I suspect it is a show that is not pitched to me. But then Star Trek Prodigy was also not pitched to me, and that turned out to be a real gem.  
So, to set the scene, at the end of Star Trek Discovery’s Fifth Season, we discovered that things had stabilised enough in the remnant of the Federation and Starfleet to restart the Starfleet Academy back on Earth. Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) had the tough job of choosing a commandant for the Academy, but he settled on Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter), who left Starfleet because it was not living up to its ideals. However, on its maiden flight from Bajor to Earth, the USS Athena detects an anomaly. She stops to examine this possible teaching opportunity that turns out to be more than they bargained for. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Set-up

I would say that the weakest part of this first episode is all the setup that we must do to get to the heart of the show. Now, I understand this is the first episode, and you have to do a lot of work to get the gears moving. However, it takes twenty minutes of this episode to get to where the series’ main thrust is, and I fear that this will be a barrier because those first twenty minutes are rough. On the one hand, any situation that lets Tatiana Maslany and Paul Giamatti play off each other should be championed. But since you are already dealing with a short character hook to introduce everyone, it creates a fraught foundation for the series to build on. Now, the rest of the episode was a solid introduction to the scenario here, and a place you can build upon, but we probably could have gotten to that point a lot quicker.

Tone

Another area where you can feel them testing out, but for which we have not gotten a good foundation, is the tone of the show. I think it is understandable to say that much of the live-action Star Trek, especially the stuff set during this time period, has been serious, possibly overly so. Star Trek Discovery did start to walk that back in its later seasons, and Strange New Worlds has had a lighter step. You can feel that taking a bigger step here as we are moving towards a more The Original Series vibe, which was unsurprising given that Lower Decks’ Tawny Newsome is in the writer’s room. The strength of this is that it gives the cast room to chew on the scenery, look, you get Paul Giamatti as a Klingon/Tellarite hybrid lambasting that you “Never pick a fight with a Klingarite, kid” at the top of his lungs. But we also get the feeling that we have not homed in on where they want to land with the tone, so it feels a bit disjointed at the moment.  

Production

One area where we know we are in safe hands is the production, because if nothing else [and there is more] the modern Star Trek series has looked and felt stunning, and this is no exception. I loved the design and implementation of the USS Athena. It felt like this was the first ship design in this future era that made the detachable nacelle pylons feel like they were a clear aesthetic choice. It was interesting to see that we have moved away from prosthetic alien heads to digital alien heads in some cases, notably a Saurian, which I am not sure about. However, I was glad to see the era of plasticine-faced Orions in Star Trek is finally over. I am not sure where I stand on the musical score quite yet, as it is a departure from the norm, but I think it just has to grow on me a touch more. But I am not buying the truncated opening credits, and I hope that is just a first episode artefact.      

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Kids These Days? Well, it is not a perfect opening episode. There were issues with structure and pacing all over the place. However, the characters were fun, and there is clearly a good premise here to explore. I will be checking out where they go in the first season because I do see the potential here, and I hope they live up to it. Have you watched Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Kids These Days? Let us know what you thought of the opening episode in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Directed by – Alex Kurtzman
Written by – Gaia Violo
Created by – Gaia Violo
Based On – Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry
Production/Distribution Companies – Secret Hideout, Warm Blood Sunday, Roddenberry Entertainment, CBS Studios & Paramount+
Starring – Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Bella Shepard, Oded Fehr, Gina Yashere, Brit Marling, Stephen Colbert & Robert Picardo
With – Tatiana Maslany, Paul Giamatti, Rebecca Quin & Ken Barnett
And – Michael Brown, Nicole Dickinson, Tricia Black, Avaah Blackwell, Joseph Chiu, Raffa Virago & David Benjamin Tomlinson.