Starfleet Academy: S1E3 – Vitus Reflux

This is definitely a story more aligned to a teen drama-type of narrative with a home team versus arch rival vibe. We’re also introduced to the “sport” of Calica, which is seemingly the team sport of choice (at least between the two academies). Much of the on-campus focus is on Darem and Genesis, both competing to be Team Capatin. The War College cadets kick off the conflict by pranking the Starfleet cadets which, of course must be responded to in-kind.

The story line was mostly focused, but I thought the tryout scene did not fit into the whole Academy aspect – it seemed a little bit over dramatized and the scenery, while I’m sure was reflective of the game, made it very distracting and disconnected from the plot development. There doesn’t seem to be any real skills assessment or training, just an all-out brawl. Nice effects, but the story flow broke a bit for me.

Caleb and Tarimas romance arc is developed a little bit further, again a bit clumsy

The story feels a classic underdog story, a “nerd versus jock” story – which is probably right for this show, but because we know what to expect – conflict, challenge, big battle, come together as a team, appreciate each other, and become stronger together (standard, right?) – I expected this to be a opportunity to better explore the side stories. Instead, we were served with an Ocean’s 11 style caper with DNA stealing, secret handoffs, and oddly placed restrictions (I mean, with the Chancellor’s biometrics, why would they be limited to 60 seconds?). I think Calica could have been dropped entirely and a fully fledged prank war episode might have had a better flow.

I think the conflict here was light at best – and I’m not saying this as a long term Trek fan that only looks backwards, but I see the depth of the conflict not only as the size of the challenge but in the amount and breadth of growth that comes from it. In this episode, the intial conflict doesn’t set the stage for growth, just revenge. The prank war, had the best opportunity to introduce challenges and strengths of the individual versus the team, but was mostly having the cadets be led around by Ake, who did not actually teach a lesson, but baiscally told them the answer. As I mentioned, getting rid of the Calica bits, and adding some points where the cadets could have naturally learned about each others’ strengths and the components of the prank “caper” could have made the victory feel that much sweeter.

I didn’t find myself giving a virtual high-five to my TV when the vines grew out of control in size, because by the time it happened, the win seemed inevitable, and thus, the conflict was less critical.

I am getting more and more concerned about Chancellor Ake – this episode we saw chilled-out combined with irrational screaming, and somehow she was to deliver the cadets an “a-ha” moment due to her insight and brilliance.

It’s sad to say that the cement is slowly hardening on the comic relief angle for Lura. I think this is all she may have left in her character, which makes me sad. Barring “how” we got a Klingon/Jem-Hadar hybrid, to minimize two honour-bound cultures to shouting and one-liners is a let-down. They’ve formally introduced her and Jett Reno as romantic partners, and while that facet is appreciated, it’s not nearly enough to make up for the simplicity of the character – in fact, there was a large missed opportunity to have a sincere moment with her partner.

While Caleb and Tarima’s arc gets explored here a bit, we miss an opporunity to learn more about Tarima – oddly enough it’s progressing a bit too slowly. I get the idea of attraction between the two, but I’d like to see some exploration of the post-Burn Betazeds (and we’re not going to get that from her mascot bro-ther), as well as her personal backstory.

Jay-Den Kraag may have some interesting character developement ahead – he’s a pacificst Klingon that has some kind of personal demons running around inside him. I’m holding my breath on this one that we get to see some real depth in upcoming episodes.

As Genesis said: “Team work makes the dream work” and this episode really tried to focus on the simple concept of learning to work together. First in Calica, we see how some of the core Starfleet “alpha” cadets try and come together as a team – but actually we didn’t. We should have seen something like that but there was just a lot of shooting and nobody really learned anything.

On the other side, there’s the prank war which served to get our protagonists working together towards the same goal, and this part of the story did a bit better in this. While patience and empathy were literally the conveyed messages in the script, I don’t think the cadets exhibited that ideal. This was mainly because through conflict they did not come to the realization of choosing another path instead of revenge, but they simply followed orders – namely the advise from Chancellor Ake.

I felt that the execution of the themes and ideals, along with the story in this episode didn’t really succeed. There was a lot of surface level learning and no real learning from conflict, which was a shame because the premise was simple enough – again even Saved By The Bell seemed to do this with some level of accomplishment (cheesy, but we got the message – Bayside rocks and Valley drools).

If screaming and chaos are your thing, then the first 20 minutes should satisfy – lots of action in the Calica scenes. A prank or two hit well – like the teleporting cadets, but I think we needed to see more of a single arc to really get invested in the episode. I don’t mind following simple sotrylines, but the jumping around without fully developing an arc isn’t for me.

It was sadly one of those episodes I probably won’t look at again – it just wasn’t fun or funny, and it should have been for a prank war episode.