Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season Finale Review: One Doozy of a Final Exam

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much online chatter over a potential typo in a title.

Maybe that’s why Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 Episode 10, the first season finale, was dubbed “Rubincon,” a close-but-not-exact callback to Julius Caesar’s crossing. It got people talking and speculating.

And there’s a lot to talk about. From Training Mission Hermes XIX to Rubin particles and the color that strontium burns, the season finale is one learning opportunity after another. Way to stick the pedagogical landing.

On the individual level, this is the crucible in which the cadets will discover who they are and what they value.

In the commandeered, televised Atrium, Braka seeks to educate the universe on the Federation’s sins in as public a forum as possible.

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And on Athena’s bridge, Reno takes every opportunity to make the cadets work for their survival.

Best. Teacher. Ever.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, “Rubincom”

The key message of the finale is—as it often is in Star Trek narratives—communication.

The issue with communication is that it is a two-way operation. It doesn’t matter how loud you transmit; if there’s no reception, communication doesn’t happen.

Ake’s first attempt to communicate with Anisha is met with crazed rejection. Even when she tries to tell the grieving mother that Caleb’s alive, Anisha is incapable of acknowledging or believing her.

It takes Caleb’s testimonial to the good the Academy has done for him to crack Anisha’s shell of defensive deafness.

She’ll probably never be able to truly reconcile that the organization that tore her child from her saved his life, but every day she spends with him gets her closer.

Anisha Mir’s Moment

As misguided and psychotic as Nus Braka is, he pivots like a pro.

He clearly had Ake’s trial planned out from the beginning, but he had no idea Anisha Mir would be with Ake when he caught up to the Athena’s saucer.

Making Anisha judge is a last-minute choice and a risky one since she hates Braka nearly as much as she hates Ake. Clearly, she’s far from impartial. But that makes for good viewing, doesn’t it?

Ake: Tell me what you want from me.

Anisha: I want you to have no shelter from this. I want you to feel it every day, like the cold or hunger or a broken bone. I want it there when you close your eyes. I want it there when you’re laughing, when you’re drinking. I want it there when you are grieving. You’re four hundred something years old now, and for the rest of your life, I want you to close your eyes and see me. That is the only way I get justice. The only way I get to dance on your grave.

Perhaps the reason Ake can’t reach Anisha is that Anisha has never felt heard herself. The trial gives her that chance to air her grievances. Although Ake knows them, it’s the act of speaking them that frees Anisha.

Like Jay-Den realizing that The Doctor’s seemingly nonsensical ramblings are actually meaningful messages, Anisha’s moment to vent gives Ake a common lexicon to use.

The Cost of Growing Up

Ake is able to find the key to Anisha’s emotional lock by telling her about the pilot whom Braka murdered when he and Anisha boarded the Federation supply ship.

And she also pieces together Braka’s ravings to paint a more likely account of what happened to him as a child.

“You were a little kid when it happened. You still see everything through the eyes of that kid. You never grew up, and it got us right here. So the question I’d ask to all these people watching: Is this the person you want to follow into the future? An angry child with his finger on the trigger? Whose entire worldview is based on a lie?” — Nahla Ake

Framed as a man trapped in a child’s impotent rage, Braka’s previous unhinged appearances start to make a lot more sense. No less unhinged and dangerously impulsive, but definitely explainable.

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It’s incredibly satisfying when Braka’s own words form the basis of Ake’s rebuttal to his account of how the Federation had wronged him.

Foisted by his own dramatic petard, the descriptive edge on his executioner’s blade is turned against him to deadly effect.

I also love that his description of his childhood pastimes explains his hair. Tic-tac-toe as a fashion statement. What won’t those crazy Klingarites try?

In contrast, Caleb, who was an actual child when Braka crashed into his life, demonstrates exactly how much he’s grown and learned since being forced to leave the prison camp for the halls of academia.

Caleb’s Choice

It would’ve been so easy to revert back to the child Anisha lost, to fit into the memory she had of him, to run away and resume their fugitive lifestyle.

But the community Caleb found among the cadets has become a part of him, too, a part he likes and values.

“They all live for something bigger than themselves. And when that gets hard, we look to Nahla. She believed in me, Mom. She’s never given up on us. She believes that we can make a difference. She listens. I know what happened 16 years ago, and she’s the one who taught me I can’t stay there forever. I can be a part of this world without forgetting where I come from. Without forgetting you. And that’s Starfleet. They know what they stand for.”

— Caleb Mir

And that defines the difference between the two men in the conflict. Both are highly capable, charismatic personalities, but their paths diverge in their motivations and visions.

Where Braka weaponizes his skills to wreak havoc in the name of past wrongs rooted in childhood trauma, Caleb faces his own and puts his abilities to work for the greater good, inspired by the friends he made and supported by the Academy.

In the end, it isn’t a question of choosing Ake over Anisha, or Starfleet over his past. Caleb chooses a path that can encompass it all.

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Making the Grade

Truth be told, I was tempted to rate this finale as a 5/5, but there were two stylistic overreaches in the final moments.

First, Caleb’s log entry would’ve worked better if there had been a bookend in the premiere to tie it together.

Maybe a subspace message to Anisha, or a message from Anisha to the young Caleb. Maybe a log entry from Ake from before she resigned or on the day she did.

After an impressive number of episodes that had stopped relying on teenage tropes to the point I hadn’t mentioned 90210 or Saved By the Bell in MONTHS, I was suddenly and jarringly reminded of the Sincerely Yours voiceover from The Breakfast Club.

After all, in the simplest terms and by the most convenient definitions, aren’t our SFA cadets a Brain, an Athlete, a Basketcase, a Princess, and a Criminal? #Kidding #ButSeriously

Show Your Work

My other peeve is the admittedly cute yearbook baby photo entries in the closing credits.

If you’re going to include the entire cast, at least do the math for the stardates the respective characters would’ve graduated in, instead of boilerplate slapping everyone into the Class of 3196. Tsk, lazy.

I predict all the same people obsessing over the first “n” in “Rubincon” will be giving those pages serious side-eye.

All in all, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 found decent footing by the end and finished strong.

Yes, there remains a tendency to lean into Ake as the central character, but it’s counterbalanced by the clear decentralization of the narratives.

As Trek, it’s respectful of the franchise’s tenets, inclusive of modern considerations, and full of canonical Easter Eggs.

The cast is strong, the production value solid, and the writing generally on point. Most of all, it’s entertaining.

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Notes for Season 2: Needs more Thok and Reno and less awkward teenage mushy stuff. And if we don’t at least glimpse a Talaxian Furfly, I’m going to be writing a sternly worded letter of complaint.

Over to you, Fanatics!

How did the finale land for you? Are you ready to enroll for another year/season? Who needs more on-screen time and who needs to hit the (cold) showers?

Transmit your thoughts to our comments section below. Hailing frequencies open!

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy streams on Paramount+.

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