The original Star Trek TV series debuted in 1966, so trying to get your head round all the sequels, prequels and timeline-splitting spin-offs can often feel like homework. It was only a matter of time before the venerable sci-fi franchise used a school as a setting. But Starfleet Academy, the latest streaming series, is not some random cosmic polytechnic for aliens to study humanities or vice versa. This is the oft-referenced San Francisco space campus sited right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. With James T Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard on the alumni list, it is basically Hogwarts for wannabe starship captains.
Or at least it used to be. As this newest Trek opens we are in the 32nd century: as far into the future as the franchise has ever gone, boldly or otherwise. (The original 1966 five-year mission for Kirk and co took place in the 23rd century.) The universe is still recovering from the Burn, an all-encompassing cataclysm from 2020’s season three of Star Trek: Discovery that put the kibosh on faster-than-light warp travel. After an extended period of intergalactic isolationism, Starfleet Academy is about to receive its first new intake for over a century. Mega-fan Stephen Colbert is already on board as the school’s PA announcer. All it needs is a new chancellor.
The best candidate is clearly Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter), an ex-Starfleet captain whose half-Lanthanite heritage means she has been around long enough to remember the good old pre-Burn days of 120 years ago. But a fraught opening flashback reveals why the long-lived Ake resigned from her position. Starfleet protocol forced her to separate a young kid called Caleb from his desperate mother (a brief but effective cameo from Tatiana Maslany) because their starving family had fallen in with a bristly gangster called Braka.
This alien ne’er-do-well is played by Paul Giamatti, who has apparently stolen every one of Johnny Depp’s finger rings and then some. His performance is a jangling, spittle-flecked lesson in scenery-chewing that feels like a tribute to the heightened acting of the original 1960s Trek. You immediately crave Braka’s return just so you can work out what exactly is happening with his complicated coiffure, which seems to involve a game of noughts-and-crosses played with hair clippers.
Flash-forward 15 years and Ake is ready to be the new chair of Starfleet Academy, but only if she can do right by Caleb (Sandro Rosta), now a troubled teen who has grown up in various penal institutions. She brings him aboard the USS Athena, a gigantic campus-cum-starship designed to offer both field trip “teachable moments” and breakout spaces for fresh-faced Starfleet cadets.
The feature-length opening episode is a thrilling space voyage where the USS Athena is threatened by a vengeful Braka, forcing Caleb and a grab-bag of self-conscious students – including a young pacifist Klingon (Karim Diané) and an even younger sentient hologram (Kerrice Brooks) – to team up to save the day. It is great fun, not least because Hunter’s free-spirited Ake is unlike any other Trek captain. She casually goes barefoot, favours old-school Two Ronnies specs, and has a habit of folding her legs up into the captain’s chair in a way that feels genuinely transgressive.
Episode two of the opening double-bill is more indicative of how the show will unfold, with the USS Athena parked up in San Francisco so the semester can properly start. Despite being set in the 32nd century, Starfleet Academy cannot resist sending up US campus cliches from countless teen movies. There are stinky male dorms, jocks playing hacky-sack in the quad and vaguely futuristic letterman jackets that wouldn’t seem out of place in an episode of Happy Days.
But in the year of the franchise’s 60th anniversary, Starfleet Academy can be forgiven for celebrating the past. The return of Robert Picardo from 1990s offshoot Star Trek: Voyager as the Doctor – an opera-loving, autonomous hologram turned grumpy teacher – is a haughty delight, and the educational setting, coupled with luxurious episode running times, creates plenty of space for some literal Star Trek history lessons. The result is earnest, formulaic and a little cheesy. In other words: classic Trek.
What differentiates Starfleet Academy is that the headstrong Caleb and his cohort are far more impulsive – and indeed hornier – than the usual Trek crew. The Grange-Hill-with-phasers vibe of a gang of kids testing their boundaries is surprisingly moreish. Clearly the big bad Braka will return later in the season to cause more galactic strife. But in the meantime it’s enough to hope our unvarnished young heroes win a laser tag battle against their uppity rivals at the military college.
• Starfleet Academy airs on Paramount+, with new episodes on Thursdays
