A a few episodes ago on Starfleet AcademyChancellor Ake argued that the new generation of cadets do not need to be reminded that they grew up in a challenging moment for the galaxy and in turn must learn to find the light one at a time. This week, however, the cadets FIRM reminded that the world outside their classrooms is a dangerous place—and so is Chancellor Ake.

Star Trek love an episode to shout, “Hey, the kind of things that happen to Star Trek all the time is the it’s really dangerous” sometimes, and “Dali, Layo Ta” because Starfleet AcademyThe response of the beloved troops, as the children from the War College and the academy are taken on their first training mission, is only for things that are too easy.

Starfleet Academy Technically we have been given this type of walking scenario of its premiere episode“Kids These Days,” but that’s less about reminding our young heroes that they have something to lose in a galaxy in the early days of recovery from the extensive retreat Starfleet is in due to the Burn and more about forcing them into a fast friendship in a high-pressure situation. it The week is more about kicking everyone involved in the gut until they remember that even if they do their best and act with the best of intentions, sometimes you lose something—and that something could be your life.

“Come, Let’s Away” opens normally, with two classes of cadets being taken aboard the USS Athena for an attempted salvage and recovery mission aboard a scuppered Starfleet ship, the Miyazaki. Left to rot for more than a century after an experimental engine test went awry, the ship—once home to a Starfleet crew famous enough to get its own comic about its exploits—became a training ground for students to try and successfully restore its systems and an opportunity for the War College and Starfleet Academy to get along more seriously after their whole prank war situation a few weeks ago.

There is still some jockeying between the kids, especially when the away team sees that Caleb, Sam, and Jay-den should be paired with Kyle (with Jay-den being taken. kindness almost last week) and B’Avi, the distressed yoke of the young Vulcan cadet at the War College. But that should be rejected almost immediately if, during the joint exercise, the Miyazaki attacked by a gang of robbers called the Furies. Things go awry just when it seems like the test is going well for the cadets: their commanding officer for the combat mission, Tomov, sacrifices himself to get the kids to safety on the ship’s locked bridge, and with time running out for the Athena to provide assistance, Chancellor Ake is forced to call the Nus Braka for help trying to figure out how to deal with a problem that seems more dangerous than he and the Venari Ral.

The return of Paul Giamatti as Braka for the first time since “Kids These Days” is the epitome of everything “Come, Let’s Away”, as we cut to the growing tension aboard the Miyazaki and Chancellor Ake faced Braka again. Gone is the camp-devouring scene that Giamatti adopted in the premiere, replaced by a calculating, genuinely terrifying presence as he gets up in Ake’s face, endlessly grilling him about what he needs to do to get the cadets in one piece. It was enough of a moral sacrifice, in his eyes, to “work” with him in the first place, but he was forced to accept, in Braka’s more pointed terms, that sacrifices like that had to be made in the imperfect world that Starfleet was growing back into.

And that was the actual teaching moment of this entire episode. Yes, children have a Granted shit time on board Miyazakiand so are the children from this when Tarima decides that she must use her psionic Betazoid ability to their full power to try and communicate with Caleb (and finally, uh, violently pop the heads of all the Furies before they kill all the cadets). But Ake and Vance are faced with having to take a different approach as they try to talk Braka into helping them deal with the Fury situation. Braka repeatedly points out to Ake that he needs to treat him as a concerned citizen of the galaxy instead of someone who is useless in order to do this job, and that he needs to abandon this idea of ​​Starfleet’s vision of cooperation and fall into the mud with him.

Which makes his inevitable turn on to Starfleet an even worse lesson for him. As long as Braka plays Starfleet, they have the defenses taken from a classified outpost to stop the Furies, and all the moral compromises are made to the point where they barely get a win without surviving. The Venari Ral flew off with some dangerous unknown tech from the station, and the kids couldn’t get out of the Miyazaki without some serious sacrifices. Tarima is in critical condition after pushing her psychic abilities, Sam seems to be seriously damaged… and then there’s the case of poor B’Avi who just had her chest cleared, dying to save Caleb just as the Furies headed for the Miyazakibridge

It’s a strangely dark note for Starfleet Academy to leave things at. Of course, people die Star Trek all the time, but it’s a surprisingly bold move for the show to actually kill off one of the cadets (main one or otherwise; so far, it doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of show that’s going there anytime soon), jolting the series out of the comfort zone it’s found itself in so far. Ake and Vance are coolly reminded that while the Federation is slowly establishing itself, they are playing in a very different galactic setting.

More often than not, a Star Trek An episode like this ends with the risks taken and the compromises made really pay off-that even on a road to hell, good intentions are still important for our heroes to show that they are committed to doing the right thing despite their backs against the wall. But instead, here we only see good intentions torn apart to achieve a minimum of life, and even then, that is not even a clean success with one child who died and two in serious conditions.

This is the type of vibration Starfleet AcademyThe first season was lost but it was necessary to prove that the show was able to nail the two Star Trekhigher values and the darker shadows whose ideals are always defended. In the least it’s not surprising, given the strength of the show so far, that it rose to the occasion in its delivery.

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