Starfleet Academy series (spoilers)

[Crazedwraith]

double post for the new episode. *heavy spoilers, it's a spoiler thread*

Episode 5 is a love letter to Ben Sisko. Lots of good character work and fun stuff in this one. SAM's first focus story. Her bosses/creators are dicks though.

Written by and guest starring Tawny Newsome, writing yourself in as Dax... that's fanservice too far for me. Plus in Disco, a trill symbiote of similar age was dying of old age, so I didn't expect Dax to be still around.

OTOH, getting Cirroc Lofton back as Jake was amazing and very well integrated. Definitely liked his sequences.

I should have more to say about this. Oh the visual styling... someone liked Ms Marvel's style I guess?

And the Doctor. Poor guy, he's not dealing well with the centuries of loss. I hope this gets more exploration as the series goes on.

And I don't often say this but there's doesn't seem to be heterosexual explanation for Jay-Den and Kyle. Kyle's clearly into him. So gay love triangle with Jay-Den/Darem/Kyle? That's cool. I hope it's intentional and will be followed up on.

Don't really care about Caleb/betazed princess but at least it's moving forward.

I was expecting the ambassador thing with kerec to be an elaborate prank/set up but nothing doing. Didn't really like the B Plot of feel it was necessary to be honest.

Overall, this one was fun and aside from glitter vomit not nearly as Lower Decky as I expected.

[bilateralrope]

This episode we have the consequences of the prank war. Including War College cadets using parts of the Athena. While the previous episode had the Athena in space, without any mention of it.

Anyone else get the feeling that episodes were aired out of order ?

[Crazedwraith]

This episode we have the consequences of the prank war. Including War College cadets using parts of the Athena. While the previous episode had the Athena in space, without any mention of it.

Anyone else get the feeling that episodes were aired out of order ?

Could be. Or bad script editing/proofing. Or the bits they weren't co-habitting weren't on Athena.

[Dalton]

Series Acclimation Mil got me right in the pylons.

[Dalton]

This episode we have the consequences of the prank war. Including War College cadets using parts of the Athena. While the previous episode had the Athena in space, without any mention of it.

Anyone else get the feeling that episodes were aired out of order ?

The core of the ship was designed to take off and land at will, and easily enough time passed for it to return to San Francisco.

[bilateralrope]

Did everyone forget that holodecks can be used for training ?

[Crazedwraith]

Did everyone forget that holodecks can be used for training ?

Huh... Well... well then the episode couldn't happen? I can't actually recall them using holodecks much in the 32nd century. Did they use them in Disco's quarters a bit in Disco

the War College might also prefer live fire exercise for traditional reasons though it seems odd to use if for cadet's first go in that case.

Aside from that it seemed a dark, effective episode. A decent tense situation for the away team of cadets, and good two hander between Akhe and Braka. It played out like a typical episode might except Braka ends up being one step ahead of the game.

Although, considering the Venari ral disabled that ship instantly I'm not sure why it was deterring six others from attacking a starbase. Maybe it's defenses weakened by using the sonic canon (in space).

Still lots of trauma and potential stuff for the cadets to grow on. Caleb seeing people sacrifice for him. Kyle seeing his friend die. SAM maybe traumatised by taking damage for the first time. (does she have a mobile emitter, a red dwarf style holobee, she's self-generating somehow.) Tarima being in a coma again Caleb and her brother.

Lots of stuff to work with.

[Crazedwraith]

Double posting since the board was done for a month and in that times four episodes/the rest of the series went by. I could look up the reviews I posted on dreamwdth/tumblr but that seems a lot so just the thoughts I can remember. (These got pretty recappy rather than review-y, sorry.)

Ko’ziene: It’s a holiday. Caleb refuses to leave the Academy. Genesis sneaks back to it as well. They play games, then hack their way on to the bridge. Turns out Genesis edited her letters of recommendation to clean them up and wants to cover it up. This was an underwhelming secret to me and sadly the closest we get to a Genesis focus episode.

Other plot. Jay-Den ends up as Darem’s best man. Darem’s getting an arranged marriage as a royal consort that he doing out of duty to his planet. Jay-Den gives a best man’s speech that knocks some sense into Darem’s betroyed who cuts him loose and says she’ll rule alone. Nicely meant but a bit of a pat ending. All agency is out of Darem’s hand.

The Life Of The Stars: Everyone’s still traumatised from the events of episode six. Ake enlists Tilly to help them through the power of plays. No really. This does not work for SAM who breaks down entirely. The Doctor and Ake takes her back to her planet where she dies and is recreated as a new version that’s raised from birth by the Doctor to give her context and life experience to surfive.

This one was very meaningful to a lot of people on twitter and I bounced right off of it. We find out the Doc’s trauma was specifically his holo-family from one episode of voyager rather than outliving the voyager/prodigy crews. Killing SAM and recreating her was… gutsy but well I liked SAM 1 more.

300th Night: The school year has ended. Nus Braka enacts his evil plan and englobes the federation in evil omega based mines.

Meanwhile Caleb has found his mother, a bunch of the cadets accompany him to a non federation world to find her. Then get pissy when he wants to leave with her rather than going back to the academy. He insults them. Then they get captured by Venari ral and he comes back to rescue him. Ake has followed in the Athena and rescues the cadets, Caleb and his mother and end up the only ship outside the minefield read to act.

Perfectly serviceable first part of the two part finale.

Rubincon: Stupidly named everyone autocorrected it to Rubicon in there head. Braka captures Ake and Anisha and puts Ake and the Federation on trial. I think it expects me to be much more federation critical and braka sympathetic than I ever was. His story being very easily disprovable was… again rather pat.

Meanwhile, Reno leads the cadets and an aphasic doctor somehow comes up with a plan to fix the mines. The cadets stop Braka in the nick of time. Hurray. Ake commits policy brutality on an arrested Braka for some reason.

It’s basically fine. Wraps up all the plot threads like you’d expect. There’s no curve ball with Anisha Mir, she’s not secretly evil and head of the pirates.

-

Overall: I liked the season and I liked the characters. Most of the individual episodes were fine even the ones I didn’t like, I knew what they were getting at. Nothing enfuriated me the way say S3 of SNW did.

A lot of the values and themes it espoused about the federation changing and Starfleet going back to explorer roots are good in principle but taking 10 episodes as whole. It’s less than the some of its parts.

What do the War College stand for? How are they opposed the Academy and why is the academy better? The season doesn’t actually trying to answer this. The War College are a bunch of high school jerk jocks. The tension between Ake and Kelrec and the Academy and colleges fizzles out once they work together in episode 6.

The Academy setting also feels… underutilised, it just doesn’t feel like a year has passed. We only get passing references to most classes, tests, exams etc.

This feeds into the fact than 10 episode was just not enough. It doesn’t feel like time has passed and there’s just so much more they could have done. Like SAM being replaced by SAM 2. That could have had an entire episode about the others getting used ot the new her but instead it’s a very minor subplot in the two finale episodes.

Still it’s a decent enough show and I am looking forward to seeing season 2. (More than SNW s4 at least, I should stop ragging on SNW). It’s already filmed though so they can’t exactly improve from fan feedback though, if they even should.