Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 3, “Vitus Reflux,” which is available on Paramount+ now.
In our second week of Starfleet Academy (but third episode), we are once again grounded in San Francisco as our young and beautiful go-getters find themselves up against one of the greatest foes imaginable: the jerks from their opposing school.
Or putting it another way, it’s a real Springfield vs. Shelbyville situation, as the Starfleet Academy kids and the War College gang become locked in a game of escalating one-upmanship that can only lead to one thing : some life lessons being learned!
“Vitus Reflux” uses this standard battle-of-the-classes plot – which has a touch of Revenge of the Nerds to it as well – to shine the spotlight on George Hawkins’ Darem Reymi and Bella Shepard’s Genesis Lythe, both of whom piqued my interest last week but didn’t get quite as much to do as Sandro Rosta’s Caleb Mir. And while this episode has plenty of enjoyable moments that also serve to reinforce the different vibe that this show is going for in the Trek pantheon, it’s also an overly long affair that doesn’t quite come together as cleanly as it could have.
Things start off with Darem intensely engaging in his exercise routine while everyone else is asleep in the wee hours of the morning. Well, everyone but Genesis, who is as driven and obsessed with being the best of the best as he is. This, of course, leads to a competition between the two to see who will become captain of the Academy’s elite training squad, but the competition is also coming from within when a trio of War College jerks decide to start pranking our heroes.
That one of those War College kids is a Vulcan, and more specifically a Vulcan creep, is well in keeping with how members of the classic Star Trek race have been used in the past as antagonists, if not actual threats – Sisko’s baseball nemesis, Archer’s back and forths with basically all the Vulcans on Earth, etc. And even though those three main War College kids are nasty, I kinda like them all the same as they represent yet another level of the deep bench of supporting and recurring cast members this show looks to be utilizing.
However, the pranks that they play on Caleb and the rest – and likewise – aren’t as inventive or funny as they could be. Yeah, the impromptu beaming from the locker room is cute, but that’s kind of the high point of the hijinks, while the climactic “giant plants in the dorm rooms” gimmick falls short. Additionally, Holly Hunter’s Chancellor Ake being mixed up in the battle with the War College, but not really being mixed up in the battle with the War College, doesn’t really work. Maybe it’s because I had such a hard time following what she was saying? I don’t know if it was a problem with the sound on the advance screeners Paramount sent out or if it’s just me, but I really was trying (and failing) to parse what Ake was talking about half the time here. (Subtitles don’t work on the screeners either.)
Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno and Gina Yashere’s Lura Thok are a hoot as the instructors who are most hands-on with the kids this week (though I’d like to see Lura actually put to the test in a more serious situation at some point where she can she really show off her roots as a Klingon/Jem’Hadar). And putting Zoë Steiner’s Tarima Sadal in the War College instead of the Starfleet Academy side of things is already bearing fruit; while she and Caleb’s story isn’t center stage here, it still gets some decent pruning and watering. (Great, now I’m using plant metaphors too!)
One question I’ve had about setting some of these episodes in the safety of San Francisco rather than out in space is how the show’s writers will bring in those age-old Star Trek themes that we love so much. But “Vitus Reflux” reminded me that those ideas about self-discovery and humanism and learning to be a better person have nothing to do with strange new worlds or new life and civilizations, but rather are always about what’s going on inside our characters’ hearts. Remember “Family,” that all-time great Next Generation episode where the Enterprise didn’t even leave Earth’s orbit?
And so it goes that Darem and Genesis make their peace eventually, but most notably, Darem faces up to what assholes his parents apparently are. (“You’re either the center of the universe, or you’re nothing.”) The thing is, he’s learning now, through his connection with these people he’s living among who were strangers only three weeks ago, that there’s more to life than being the best of the best. Good for him.
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- Folks have been wondering if this show has ignored the nature of the Betazoids’ powers (are they telepathic or empathic or both?), but this episode seems to add credence to the theory that Tarima’s power regulator might actually be the key to answering what’s going on there.
- Who the heck uses a jump rope while their roommates are sleeping?
- “That was disappointing/underwhelming” …sounds like one of my college instructors.
- Ake screening the Starfleet ad is fun. “Is the voiceover too stupid?”
- I’m really enjoying Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané) as the atypical Klingon. He’s funny!
- “I took a bath for the first time!”
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