Star Trek Starfleet Academy Premiere Recap: Season 1, Episode 1

Class is in session at “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” with a fresh crop of cadets entering Starfleet’s training school. They’re put to the test right away, too, in Thursday’s series premiere.

The premiere opens with a mom — hi, Tatiana Maslany! — gazing up at the stars with her young son Caleb, dreaming of having a ship and going to Earth one day. She was desperate for food and turned to a space pirate named Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) for help, and now she’s hauled into court, where Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) charges Nus with bringing down a Starfleet vessel and killing the pilot. He’s sentenced to life in a penal colony — and Caleb’s mother is sentenced to a rehab camp, too, which means Caleb will go into Federation foster care. His mom yells at Caleb not to trust them as she’s dragged away, and Nus cackles with delight at the boy’s misery. Nahla tries to comfort the boy, telling him she’ll make sure he sees his mom again… but when she’s not looking, he escapes.   

15 years later, Caleb is all grown up (played by Sandro Rosta) and fighting off guards in a prison transport, trying to find his mother. Nahla is tapped by “Discovery” vet Admiral Vance to oversee the new Starfleet Academy, which is reopening for the first time since the devastation of The Burn. He also lets her know they found Caleb, and she goes to see him, telling him she’s been looking for him since he escaped. He’s angry and blames her for having to survive on the run, but Nahla suggests an alternative: enroll in Starfleet Academy and work off his sentence there. Plus, she tells him his mother escaped from prison a year ago, and she can help him find her. 

Caleb reluctantly agrees, and they arrive at the USS Athena, the massive space station that serves as the school along with the campus in San Francisco. Caleb gets a sharp haircut and starts meeting his fellow students, including a meek Klingon named Kraag (Karim Diane), a bubbly hologram named Sam (Kerrice Brooks), and a spunky admiral’s daughter named Genesis (Bella Shepard). He also snaps to attention when the stern cadet master Lura (Gina Yashere) starts ordering him around. Oh, and there’s a treat for “Voyager” fans: Robert Picardo is back as The Doctor, giving the student health scans as they arrive. (His holographic image looks great.) 

There’s a rich-boy bully in the class, too: Darem (George Hawkins), who taunts Kraag before Caleb sticks up for him. Sam and The Doctor bond over being holograms in an organic world, while Caleb sneaks away to hack into the ship’s computer to look for his mother. He leaves her a plaintive voice message, telling her he’s headed to Earth: “We were gonna see it together, remember?” Genesis catches him, but she promises not to rat him out. Still, he’s not exactly friendly — “You are wound very tight,” she observes — and he tells her he’s not staying long.   

The ship is cruising along to San Francisco when a bunch of red projectiles suddenly smash into the ship, forming a web around it. The web is draining the ship’s power, and an enemy ship materializes and opens fire, causing heavy damage. The cadets run for cover, and Lura is trapped under a huge chunk of debris with a nasty sharp object lodged in her torso. Then they get a transmission from the enemy ship: It’s Nus Braka. “Payback’s a b***h,” he sneers.

He wants the ship’s warp drive so he can sell it, and to add insult to injury, he plays Caleb’s voice message to his mom for the whole ship to hear, which is what led him to Nahla’s ship. (Yep, he remembers the kid from all those years ago.) Nahla asks for 10 minutes to clear out engineering, but that’s not enough time for Starfleet to send help. While Kraag helps Lura remove the sharp object and stitches her up — don’t worry, she bites down on something — Caleb tells Nahla he can get rid of the web if he can get access to the ship’s computer. They’ll need a physical scan of the web, and Darem volunteers to do it, since his species can survive for a while in space without a spacesuit: “I’m Khionian, b***h.” He transforms into a blue-skinned alien and walks out onto the frigid hull, getting the scan just before his body freezes, and Genesis helps pull him back inside to safety with a tractor beam.

Nahla simulates a warp core detonation to trick Nus into transporting away, which gives Caleb a chance to get to the computer and disable the web. Nus returns, though, and teases Caleb about his mom: “It’s a damn shame what happened to her after we broke out of prison.” They engage in hand-to-hand combat until the computer completes its protocol and clears out the web, allowing the Athena to blow Nus’ ship to smithereens. Nus escapes in a shuttle, though. (We had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last we’d see of him.) 

They haven’t even enrolled in their first class yet, but these cadets have already learned plenty as the ship arrives in San Francisco, with the students gazing in awe at the campus and a Rufus Wainwright cover of the ’60s flower-child classic “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” playing in the background. Caleb and Nahla have a heart-to-heart, too, with her dressing him down for endangering the ship by sending that voice message. But he also showed serious leadership skills in getting them out of the mess he created, she admits. She cuts him a deal: He’ll only have to complete 100 hours of labor to work off his sentence… but he’ll have to stay at the Academy, too.

She opens up as well about her own son, who she lost in The Burn. She wishes she would’ve listened to him more and judged him less. (So maybe Caleb is giving her a second chance at motherhood, in a way.) He agrees to stay at the Academy “for now,” and she warns him: “Don’t screw it up.”

Now it’s your turn, Trekkies: Give the premiere a grade in our poll, and beam down to the comments to share your thoughts.