Spoilers comply with for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars,” which is obtainable on Paramount+ now.
It’s a humorous factor with Starfleet Academy. While the present has typically had me elevating an eyebrow Vulcan-style when making an attempt to compute a few of the story or in-universe developments, by the point the closing credit roll that stuff sometimes winds up not mattering that a lot to me. I believe it is because the larger story and emotional stakes involving our core group of cadets simply work so properly that any nerdy inconsistencies like, say, “why is a dead starship the spot for a training exercise,” or “would they really bring back a lieutenant all the way from Beta Quadrant just to help heal a traumatized group of students” simply change into non-issues.
Such is the case in “The Life of the Stars,” the place we discover Caleb (Sandro Rosta) and the gang nonetheless coping with the tragic occasions which occurred onboard the USS Miyazaki a couple of episodes again, with Zoë Steiner’s Tarima and Kerrice Brooks’ Sam confronting notably tough circumstances. That that is framed round an novice studying of the 1938 Thornton Wilder play Our Town is in the end inappropriate due to how resonant the episode winds up being.
That’s the place Mary Wiseman’s Lt. Sylvia Tilly is available in, previously of Star Trek: Discovery and type of a modified character right here. Or perhaps “matured” is the higher method of placing it? Yes, she’s nonetheless quirky and enjoyable at instances, however she additionally has a more durable edge in a few of her moments with the cadets, notably Tarima, who has returned after her convalescence on Betazed and has been transferred to the Academy and out of the War College. Tarima is confused and hurting after the Miyazaki incident the place she saved the day, however needed to injure herself – and unleash her powers – to take action. She’s additionally all up in her emotions about her relationship with Caleb, and the 2 of them are extra confused than something proper now.
Here’s the a part of this assessment the place I confess that I’m not an skilled on Our Town – not solely am I not an skilled, however I’ve by no means learn it, I’ve by no means seen a manufacturing of it, and my data of it’s fairly minimal. Still, the notion of the “stage manager” being the precise stage supervisor of the theater the place the play is being carried out but additionally a personality in stated play is intriguing, and definitely one can see how the meta facet of the play was of curiosity to episode writers Gaia Violo and Jane Maggs (Violo can be the creator of Starfleet Academy). And that’s what takes us to the Sam and The Doctor a part of the story.
Robert Picardo’s return as his beloved Voyager character on Starfleet Academy has been principally performed for laughs to date – at first look, his eternally irritated however nonetheless lovable hologram doesn’t appear to have modified that a lot from his days with Captain Janeway. But Episode 8 lastly delves a bit deeper into how the primarily immortal Doctor has suffered within the years – moderately, centuries – since he first got here into existence.
And so his reluctance to connect to or take Sam in and accept her request that he mentor her is understandable, even while it’s tough to observe (The Doctor refusing to hold her hand in her darkest hour is a rough moment). He’s protecting himself here, and Sam too – or so he thinks – from the pain of eventually having to lose one other, just as he has lost so many friends and loved ones over the past 800 years. (Yes, even Harry Kim must’ve stung… a bit.) Picardo nails The Doctor’s inner turmoil in these scenes.
So that’s The Doctor as stage manager, and Ake too to a lesser degree, as she too is extremely long-lived. But the thing is, what kind of a life is it when you’re unwilling to connect to anyone or anything, but will only sort of exist from a remote, unattached vantage point? The Doctor finally comes to realize the mistake he’s been making in this regard for God knows how long, just as the cadets back at the Academy – Tarima included – take the first step on a similar path of healing as well.
That Sam’s “death” and “rebirth” don’t have that a lot influence is in the end as a result of this story is The Doctor’s and never Sam’s; no, she will get extra of a “death between commercial breaks” that may’ve occurred on the Sixties present since she’ll presumably be principally unaffected by the occasion. (Unless after all her being raised by The Doctor for 17 years right here adjustments her character in some substantial method. But I’d be stunned if that occurs because the present has solely simply established her.)
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- Tilly, who began as a cadet on Disco, is now instructing cadets. It’s already been touched upon on Discovery, however nonetheless, it’s good to see such continuity within the Trek universe.
- That stated, how precisely does Tilly know Holly Hunter’s Captain Ake? I don’t consider we have now a particular date as to when Ake left Starfleet within the wake of younger Caleb’s disappearance, however we do know she went to Bajor to change into a instructor. It appears doubtless that may’ve been throughout the identical interval that Tilly jumped ahead into the thirty second century onboard the Discovery, and subsequently had her interactions with the Academy… so mainly Tilly wouldn’t actually know Ake from the Academy in any respect, proper?
- The episode of Voyager which featured The Doctor making a holo-family was referred to as “Real Life,” and he did certainly “lose” his holo-daughter in that story.
- Regarding Sam’s planet Kasq… can a planet really be formed like that? Or is it synthetic?
