Starfleet Academy - It's Happening

Episode three of Starfleet Academy is… fine. Just about.

After a weak opener and a surprisingly decent second episode that at least tried to tell a recognisably Trek story, this one feels like a step back. It’s competently made, occasionally mildly fun, but empty.

The whole Starfleet Academy vs War College war-games setup, complete with pranks and rivalry, isn’t a terrible premise. I get why they want to establish this rivalry early, since it’s clearly going to matter later in the season. The problem is that you can see every beat coming a mile off. The brash, head-first Darem, contrasted with the calmer, more strategic Genesis. (I had to look up their names, I’ll get there.) The underdogs falling behind, then turning it around once they stop charging and start thinking. None of this is interrogated or subverted. It’s just executed. I kept waiting for something sharper in the writing to emerge, and it never did.

That predictability wouldn’t be fatal if the episode had something to say, but it doesn’t. The rivalry never becomes philosophical or ethical. It never meaningfully contrasts Starfleet values with War College pragmatism. It’s just two schools sniping at each other until Ake delivers a Jeff Winger speech and we’re done.

There are also some sloppy writing moments that really stood out to me as someone who dabbles in writing myself. A throwaway anecdote about students being transported onto Alcatraz and it “taking all afternoon to get them down” makes no sense in a universe with transporters, especially when the prank was literally transporting them there. I know it’s a small line, but this is exactly the kind of internal logic slip I sweat over in my own writing. When I catch something like that, something that would never survive a second draft of my own work, it signals a lack of care. I expect more from a Star Trek writers room.

Character work continues to feel rushed. Relationships are treated as deeper than they plausibly are at this point in the series, particularly the ongoing Tarima and Caleb romance, which keeps leaning on emotional weight it hasn’t earned yet. Their interactions here feel like mid-season material when, in reality, they barely know each other. When characters talk about “all we’ve been through,” it rings hollow because, frankly, it hasn’t been much.

There is a fun sequence where the Academy cadets finally get one over on the War College, and a teamwork montage that has some energy. The hologram character, Sam, is also finally allowed to visibly be a hologram, which I appreciated, since that aspect of her had been oddly underplayed so far. Even then, the show still hasn’t quite worked out what that actually means for her behaviour or identity.

Also, for a show set in Starfleet Academy, the world itself feels oddly static. Despite the impressive sets, background extras, and scale, the story feels strangely narrow, as if only our core group and the War College cadets exist. You never quite get the sense of the wider academy ticking away around them, of a living institution that doesn’t pause just because these characters are having a moment. For a setting like this, that absence is noticeable.

Overall, episode three isn’t terrible. It’s just thin. An hour-long episode built around pranks and a training exercise, with no deeper thematic hook. Episode two suggested this series might have something to offer. Episode three mostly coasts.