Starfleet Academy – Further Thoughts

I had a wee Trek binge at the weekend and am now all caught up on Starfleet Academy. Cheeringly, I’m enjoying it more. Partly due to a standout episode and a half, but mostly because it immediately addressed several of the complaints I had after the first three episodes (click here for those exciting first impressions). Pandering to me! I love it.

Some thoughts on the season’s middle eps! (Why are so many 21st cent Trek episode names hard to remember? What happened to the days of The Enemy, The Game, or The Chase? …do not reply For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky, thank you. That was one time.) But, yes, those thoughts:

Vox in Excelso – When the Doctor asked the class where the “with the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured…” speech was from I shouted out the answer. Which tells you far too much about the sort of pupil I was. It’s one of those nice moments where it really doesn’t matter if you get the reference, it doesn’t add any depth to the scene (unlike some other choices later on this season…) but it’s fun if you do get it. (Though Admiral Aaron Satie seems unfamiliar with the concept of incitement to violence, slander, or why you shouldn’t yell fire in a theatre.)

Mostly though, this ep went hard on addressing my “could you give the Klingon student some more notes please?” issue. And not merely notes, but proper good Trek notes about self-actualisation, and moral absolutism, and how culture shapes community and sense of self. Jay’Den’s anger and frustration and hollow sense of loss were superb. Seeing his brother, a trad Klingon, so embrace him with love and support despite his decided non-tradness was heart-warming. And then seeing the only way his father could bring himself to do it, heart-breaking. And getting the Klingon-Jem’Hadar lady’s perspective in her chat with Jai’Den meant another character I really want t have more notes from got more notes. Hurrah!

And the ep added some cool ideas of how Klingon culture actually could work given they’re all “battle! honour! kill your enemies! …wait, who’s actually building these spaceships? …don’t we need science…?” The only Klingon scientist we’ve seen had some serious issues with acceptance in her culture (TNG: Suspicions). But here there’s some nice contextualisation of what battle means, of how it can be framed (the Klingon lawyer in the interminable DS9 episode Rules of Engagement did something similar.)

There are some nice parallels drawn between the Klingon identity here, and the nods we see in The Undiscovered Country. Though these 32nd century Klingons seem to have forgotten the last time they lost their home planet.

Series Acclimation Mil – Easy winner. Because this is a competition. Somehow. It starts like it wants me to switch off from cringe, and it ends with me weeping silent tears of…catharsis? Is that the right word for it? It’s not every day that the spiritual journey of a 200 day old hologram breaks you into tiny pieces.

SAM was the third character that I was very keen to get some depth from. And here it is. Her joy, I imagine, could be annoying. But I find I can’t help but love it. And her connecting with the story of The Sisko and trying to find out what really happened to him, and the idea of it being any or all of the answers offered is the sort unresolved beauty of having faith. You don’t get proof; if you do, it’s not faith any more.

I have questions about why a Bajoran orb was just out there on display where anyone could open it up. And twas a minor annoyance that which orb it was wasn’t named. But I did love how it was never explicit whether or not SAM was having an orb experience. Whether that was really Jake. My response was that it was, that he too had gone to the Celestial Temple, in some form, having inherited some Prophety-ness from his father, and he responded to SAM’s search.

So much of 21st cent Trek I come away feeling. wrapped up in the love of nineties Trek. It always feels like the people making them want to make a meaningful connection between their childhood, and the stories they’re getting to tell in that universe as adults. And this was a love letter to Benjamin Sisko. As someone who considers him the greatest of the Trek characters, often my favourite, it’s an utter joy of an ep.

Come, Let’s Away – I had to watch this one again. I think I must have got distracted during it as my memory was mostly things blow up, Vulcan dude nobly sacrifices himself just like some rando commander did five minutes earlier. And a really long mind scream.

When it comes to Trek doing War Is Hell episodes, you want to go to DS9 for the masterclass. This one takes a little of Nor The Battle Too The Strong, where Jake learns being a civilian reporter in a war zone is not fun, a slice of The of Siege of AR-588 (war is hell, just hell, miserable death hell), and sprinkles it with an exceptionally annoying antagonist. Though I did like his “I fucking well am evil…no, eviller” at the end. Not in an ironic way. In a “I can actually believe this is full on evil and somehow not cartoon-sih but skincrawlngly creepy” kind of way. Which was very well-played.

On the down-side the ep felt a bit sharp on the edges. It wasn’t a swoop of a story but sort of juddered along to a conclusion that was not particularly unexpected. Perfectly decent really, but after the previous two eps I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed.

Ko’Zeine – Live action Trek comedy is a game of roulette where it’s just bullets. It’s bullets all the way down. Are any of them actually funny? Maybe. Somewhere. I love Our Man Bashir but it’s not so much funny as pleasantly amusing at times. And with top-tier character scene where Bashir shot Garak. It offers the fun, yet still gives depth. And then there are Trek holiday episodes. God. That’s a coin flip. Thus not as bad, but jamming these two concepts together pained me. I did not enjoy this episode. I was bored. The Genesis reveal was uninteresting. And obviously occasionally-blue-guy was coming back to Starfleet. Though it was nice that the couple did genuinely love each other and she made him go.

The Life of the Stars – I assume they sent this script to Bob Picardo and underlined a few scenes and then asked if he’d like to come back. Because this had some top-tier The Doctor in it. Did I cry AGAIN? No. But my insides hurt with emotion. It didn’t help that I’m in the midst of a Voyager rewatch and so had seen Real Life like a month ago. The one hiccup in the story is that it’s referencing an episode from 30 years ago – you don’t need to be familiar with the events of Real Life, but it’s less throwaway than most references. And having seen the daughter die really gives his issues connecting to SAM extra punchy pathos. Ye olde Voyager ep was solid, but in that show there was never any further mention of the family he made. Makes sense if he repressed it. And I love the idea that all the Doctor’s memories are like yesterday. Those guys don’t fade and he’s got eight centuries of them. Added angst for immortal lifeform!

And in the…A-plot, I think it’s the A-plot, there is Tilly!! Tilly!!! Which alone makes it worth watching. Her interactions with SAM were embarrassingly uplifting. I should have been cringing, but I was not. Got to work on my cynicism. The kids are all getting therapy due to their PTSD from the shooty-shooty episode. Which is fine. And tricky. Because mental illness is complicated and so is therapy and this is group therapy in a single episode and it Makes Things Better. I think they manage to not completely say “yay, all is fine now” so much as “yay, progress has been made” but it’s a fine line.

Once more, recent watching of Voyager comes to the fore with Extreme Risk where B’Elanna is putting herself at … extreme risk, as her feelings have all gone dead since she found out her found family aka all the Maquis in the Alpha Quadrant got killed by the Dominion. But when you’re making an episodic telly series with ten episodes a season and don’t want the whole thing to be recovering from trauma and you don’t want to whitewash the horror of death and violence and it’s effect on young people encountering it for the first time, then this is a decent enough solution. It’s not ideal, but I like the alternatives less. It’s a great theme! They’re doing a decent job with the restrictions they have! As the Sisko said, I can live with it. Even though I cringed at everyone doing the play scene…to save it for myself I read it less as about therapy and more about honouring SAM.

Plus bonus points for Tarima’s pushback on Tilly’s methods. The “can’t you see what she’s doing?” I cheered at, because I identify hard. But the fact Tilly held her ground and took the argument? I loved that. I have had more than one psychologist in my life, and if they got defensive or backed off at difficult questions, it did not work for me. So respect for Tilly. Also appreciation that she decided dialectical behaviour therapy principle of holding two contradictory ideas at the same time and both are true was pretty important. I’m a massive fan of DBT.

So, two episodes left! And definite upswing for me from those first three eps. Still pleasantly enjoyable, sometimes excellent. And I can’t hate any of the characters. I did try, it didn’t work. I can even remember four of the new people’s names now! That’s half of them! Ah, progress.