Starfleet Academy review: "It may feel a little different to what we're used to, but this is Star Trek through and through"

It's fair to say that Star Trek is in a slightly strange place right now.

The 60-year-old sci-fi franchise was relaunched in 2017 with Discovery, the first in a barrage of new shows that have vastly broadened the parameters of what Star Trek can be. Many of these series have been good – notably the third season of Picard, the consistently wonderful Lower Decks, and most of Strange New Worlds – but there have been a few bumps in the road of late too.

Strange New Worlds will be ending, probably next year, with a truncated fifth run; the long-planned Section 31 series was reduced to a single – terrible – movie; and there are some indications that Paramount perhaps sees Trek as more of a potentially lucrative big-screen franchise than an ongoing TV universe.

So, a somewhat turbulent time to launch a brand new show, especially one as singular as Starfleet Academy. Set in the 32nd century – the largely-unexplored far future of the Trek timeline – the 10-episode run follows a large cast of students and teachers as they get to grips with life at the titular school. Yes, this is Star Trek reinvented as a YA drama complete with hot-blooded romances, teen rivalries, and teachable moments for its characters.

You can see the value in this. The core Star Trek fandom is – and this includes your withered husk of a reviewer – getting older. We're used to Star Trek being about diplomatic missions and people talking earnestly in board rooms. Starfleet Academy does this sort of thing too, but it leans harder on its fresh-faced cast getting into scrapes and butting heads with the teachers at Space Hogwarts. To its credit, this is a sincere attempt to bring younger viewers into the fold.

At the same time, it's also a deeply fannish show, one replete with Easter eggs, crossover characters (Robert Picardo's hologram Doctor from Voyager, Tig Notaro's Jett Reno from Discovery, both superb), and some effective expansions of the franchise's wider lore. This is not your father's Star Trek… but it's not not that, either.

Class is in session

The pilot episode, 'Kids These Days,' focuses on our two core protagonists. Representing the adults is Holly Hunter's Captain Nahla Ake, a long-lived alien who lived through the glory days of the Federation and has weathered its slide into disrepair. Taking on the job of Chancellor at the academy, she immediately sets out to make amends for a past mistake by persuading rebellious loner and petty criminal Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) to sign up.

He grudgingly does so and quickly bonds with shy Klingon cadet Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané) while also sparking up a rivalry with the cocky Darem Reymi (George Hawkins). Also along for the ride are the naive hologram Sam (Kerrice Brooks), and Genesis (Bella Shepard), an admiral's daughter keen to make her own mark on the galaxy.

It's a good pilot, with Hunter an immediately compelling presence. Ake offers something a little different to predecessors like Kirk, Picard, and Janeway. She's naturally cheerful and irreverent, prone to curling up in the Captain's chair, but there's also a world-weariness bubbling beneath the surface. She also has a recurring enemy in the form of the villainous Nus Braka – confirmed Deep Space 9 super-fan Paul Giamatti giving a gleefully sleazy performance.

After this, though, the show takes a while to settle into a comfortable groove, especially when it comes to Mir. Sandro Rosta is a fine actor, and by the end of the six episodes released for review, we were firmly on team Caleb, but it takes a minute to get there. He's meant to be a young, impetuous rogue, with a personal mission that sometimes clashes with his Starfleet training, but for the first few hours he mainly comes off as a self-absorbed jerk and less interesting than the people around him.

Growing pains

This is especially notable in episodes two and three, which lean heavily into the space school aspect and which introduce a rival and more overtly militaristic academy. The tone here is lighter and funnier than we've generally seen before in live-action Trek, and the stakes are consciously lower. That's fine, but the gags often aren't quite sharp enough, and the characters haven't yet won our hearts. It doesn't help that these are long episodes, teeming with subplots.

Happily, these are just growing pains. The pieces all click into place with the show's terrific fourth, fifth, and sixth instalments. Episode five in particular is wild – smartly connecting one character to the wider mythology in a way that will leave fans' jaws on the floor. In these episodes the show strikes a better balance of schooling and space adventuring, really honing in on who these people are and why we should care about them.

It’s also worth noting just how good this thing looks. The academy set is the largest ever built for a Trek production and it really shows. The brief glimpses of the scrappy new Federation in Discovery always felt vague and underpopulated, but every scene here is teeming with aliens and humans existing in a tangibly real environment. It's more than a little bizarre that, compared to the massively budgeted Stranger Things 5, which spent much of its time placing actors against CGI backdrops of variable quality, Starfleet Academy is notably the better-looking show.

Despite some initial misgivings and the general air of uncertainty around Trek's long-term future, these opening episodes are strong enough to suggest that 2026 will be a vintage year for boldly going. By the midpoint of Starfleet Academy's debut season – a second is already in production – all of our lingering doubts had been erased. This show may feel a little different to what we're used to, but this is Star Trek through and through, and the possibilities for where it might go next seem endless.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is streaming on Paramount Plus from January 15. For more, check out our guide to the best new TV shows and the best shows on Paramount Plus.