‘Starfleet Academy’ Gives Its Kids (and Itself) the Grace to Find Their Own Path

We’re two-thirds of the way into Starfleet Academy‘s debut season, and the show is still deeply interested in defining its relationship to the Star Trek that came before it. So far, the show’s tried to prove it can do classic Star Trek ideas, it’s tried to bite its thumb and find its own way, and it’s lovingly honored the shows that came before it and put them on a pedestal. This week, it does something else, and something very befitting of its young heroes: it decides to have a bit of a breakdown and admit some of that pressure to live up to expectations is getting to it, and won’t you just give it a break?

“Ko’Zeine†picks up a month after the events of last week’s episode and means that everyone is still bummed about that whole “so your very first field mission got a kid killed†deal. As the academy prepares to send the students off for a midterm break for “All Worlds Day†(it’s loosely described, but the emphasis on food and family gives Space Thanksgiving vibes), our young heroes are not exactly in a celebratory mood. Caleb’s been ghosting Tarima since her psionic outburst, Genesis is promised a move to the command track of the Academy for her cool head during the Miyazaki crisis, Sam is using the break to go get herself essentially checked into a photonic spa to repair her holographic body, and Jay-den—now openly in a relationship with Kyle—finds himself bending to accommodate his new partner’s trauma over the death of B’Avi, much to the chagrin of the ever-cocky Darem.

Maybe not quite so surprisingly then, that the kids who are seemingly the least affected by all this, Darem and Genesis, become the main stars of the week, when Genesis finds herself alone at the Academy with Caleb, having snuck back away from her family’s holiday and the expectations of her admiral father, and Darem finds himself, uh, traditionally kidnapped by his own people, the Khionians, to be arranged-married to the planet’s future queen a bit earlier than he expected, only for Jay-den to be accidentally dragged into it too.

This is a good thing, as Darem and Genesis haven’t really had a chance to shine as individuals in the show yet. Sure, “Vitus Reflux†touched on a similar idea about their relationships with being the overachievers of the group when they clashed over leading the Calica team, but “Ko’Zeine†is much more interested in poking deeper into their interiority and feelings, in a fun mirror on a similar idea about their reluctant relationships to the legacy and expectations of their parents. We also get to bounce them off the rest of the main group in a fun way too, with Caleb and Jay-den, who’ve already had their own moments in the spotlight to be challenged and overcome things, acting as unlikely mentors and foils to Genesis and Darem’s respective arcs.

They both take very different, very Starfleet Academy paths to this reflection, of course. Genesis shocks Caleb by almost immediately dropping the pretense that she snuck back to the academy to get ahead on studies by engaging him in goofy, daring games, climaxing with them hacking into the Athena‘s bridge so she can sit on the captain’s chair, which one day might be her own if she makes it onto the command track. On Khionia’s matrimonial moon, meanwhile, Darem suddenly has to explain his secret destined path as the prepared king-to-be of his own people to the shock of very confused Jay-den, who has come to know a very different version of the young man than the one expected by both Darem’s family and his impending bride Kaira. It all makes for some fun hijinks and, especially in the case of Jay-den and Darem’s side of things, a chance for them to build on their past relationship beats together (there’s a closeness to the pair that still feels very charged, even with Jay-den happily partnered to Kyle now and Darem literally about to be married off to his future queen).

These are, of course, also pretty mappable onto Starfleet Academy‘s own relationship with Star Trek. In Genesis, you can see the show wrangling with this preconceived idea that it has to match what is expected of a show about Starfleet characters, how these kids should talk, how they dress, or hell, how their chancellor sits in a chair—that everything should be as it came before, and there is one way for someone to perform the act of being a Star Trek character in a Star Trek show. In Darem, you get to see the show be told, through Jay-den, to have confidence in the version of itself it’s found on its own terms, rather than sacrificing that in the name of tradition. It’s a fascinating way to explore what are very relatable ideas to a young audience about the pressure of having to grow up in the shadow of your forebears in a very Star Trek way, in ways the franchise has only occasionally dabbled in before, while also having a conversation with Star Trek‘s greater self, as if the show managed to preemptively brace for the kinds of backlash it’s taken from some areas of Trek audiences.

But if Starfleet Academy just did all this and then took the expected way out to give Genesis and Darem happy endings to these reckonings with their respective mantles—Genesis in the footsteps of her father and the expectations of practically everyone around her at the academy, Darem in service to a duty planned by his parents since he was a kid—as they forge their own paths, it’d be perfectly fine. But where “Ko’Zeine†instead succeeds is by actually giving them imperfect, almost shitty conclusions.

Caught on the bridge by Reno and brought before Chancellor Ake, Genesis has to admit that the reason she wanted to get to the captain’s seat was to try and swipe back her academy application’s letters of recommendation, which she had altered to remove some incredibly slight critical feedback, fearing anything less than perfect would go against the expectations of her father—and she’s punished for that lapse in judgment, even if it’s understood by Chancellor Ake, by losing out on being put in the command track. Darem, meanwhile, is dumped by his new queen-wife after she hears Jay-den’s best man speech at the wedding, realizing that the man he celebrated in that speech is completely different from the boy she grew up with, leaving him to sit with the judgmental eyes of the gathered guests to make him realize that Khionia may no longer be the home to him he thought it was.

Both these characters, and the show itself through them, bared their hearts to us about the expectations they feel and the ways they’ve started cracking trying to live up to them. They didn’t react perfectly to that pressure. Acknowledging how they’ve been feeling didn’t suddenly make those expectations vanish without consequence. And ultimately, it resolves them to find their own paths, knowing that doing so will inevitably have to disappoint someone along the way.

It’s a great lesson to have Darem and Genesis learn, but it’s also a necessary one for Starfleet Academy to learn too. There’s a lot of expectations on it, and it’s never going to satisfy every Star Trek fan ever, whether it’s due to its own faults or because of their preconceived notions about what it and Star Trek at large should be. But at the very least we know that in spite of that, it’s still going to find its own way to honor that path on its own terms.

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