By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 31 seconds ago

Starfleet Academy had a satisfying Season 1 finale, but as I watched, I kept asking myself a blunt question: “why do I like this so much?” Sure, the episode was free of many things I hated from earlier stories, including the vulgar slang and potty humor of earlier episodes. It also focused on drama and characterization instead of terrible comedy, which is a major improvement over the first half of the season. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else made this episode infinitely better than most of what had come before.

That’s when it hit me: it was the characters. Or, more precisely, the lack of characters: thanks to the season finale’s premise, several characters are left out of the episode altogether, and other characters who appear are sidelined in favor of focusing on a few key storylines. The result was that this episode (“Rubincon”) is a shining example of what this new Star Trek series is capable of. But it’s also proof of a simple fact: Starfleet Academy has way too many characters, and it needs to let some of them go in order to become a successful show.

A Seriously Crowded Cast

Starfleet Academy has, to put it mildly, a huge cast of characters. There are 11 main characters who are prominently featured in almost every episode. For comparison, Star Trek: The Next Generation started with nine main characters, but this included Tasha Yar, who died midway through Season 1. It also includes Wil Wheaton, who left after Season 4. This means that for just a little under half of its iconic run, TNG sported only seven main characters, which made it easy for episodes to focus on the entire cast.

In case you’re wondering, Star Trek: The Original Series had only eight main characters. Deep Space Nine had nine main characters, and that’s counting Worf, who joined in Season 4. Voyager also held steady at nine main characters, eventually substituting Kes for Seven of Nine. At 11 main characters, Starfleet Academy is obviously overcrowded by the standards of the franchise, and its limited number of episodes per season keeps us from getting to know everyone.

Time Is The Fire In Which We All Stream

Star Trek: Discovery began what would become a fairly depressing trend with NuTrek shows: a limited number of episodes per season. While the so-called Golden Age of Star Trek had 26 episodes per season, shows like Starfleet Academy only get 10 episodes per season. That means that even if SFA gets four full seasons (a goal that seems increasingly difficult to meet), it will end with fewer episodes than Voyager got in only two seasons!

That’s important because, each season, Starfleet Academy only gets 10 episodes to develop its 11 main characters. There’s just not enough time to do so, and some characters really get the short end of the stick. For example, Genesis is the only cadet who doesn’t get a solo episode devoted to her; the closest thing she gets is a side story with Caleb, where we learn that her dark secret is that her previous instructors thought she would never be a good captain. 

The Season 1 finale puts her in the captain’s chair, but she inexplicably doesn’t get to do anything notable while she’s in command except announce that she has to pee. Unfortunately, this lack of resolving her story highlights a big problem with Genesis: because she’s also a highly driven, Type A overachiever, she is often written as “Darem with boobs.” But Darem got his own episode, a romantic subplot, and a special effects-heavy sequence where he saved the ship; comparatively, Genesis got absolutely nothing, making her character feel weirdly redundant.

Main Character Syndrome

Given the limited number of episodes and the outsized number of lead actors, it’s also bizarre how much screen time Starfleet Academy devotes to supporting characters. We got entire episodes focused on stories with the War College and its frosty chancellor, only for them to all disappear from the narrative in the last two episodes. We also get a lot of screentime dedicated to weird comic relief characters, including Tarima’s beta brother and that one cadet who swallowed her comm badge. 

Compounding this is the fact that Caleb Mir is undeniably the main character of Starfleet Academy’s first season. This isn’t inherently a bad thing: Caleb has proven to be a very compelling character, and actor Sandro Rosta has the charisma and magnetic screen presence of a leading man. But every moment spent developing Caleb is a moment not spent developing anyone else. This is to the show’s detriment, but the Caleb focus of season finale “Rubicon” revealed the easiest way to improve Starfleet Academy: namely, Paramount needs to thin this cast out!

Less Is More

The Starfleet Academy Season 1 finale, “Rubincon,” had a reduced number of characters for a simple reason: the previous episode had most of the minor and some of the major characters stuck inside Federation space when supervillain Nus Braka trapped everyone there with futuristic mines. Lura Thok (the half-Klingon, half-Jem’hadar) was trapped back home, as was Admiral Vance. Similarly, Chancellor Kelrec and the rest of his War College brute squad were stuck inside Fed space.

This left us with a streamlined crew of cadets, and the show wasn’t afraid to sideline a few of them, too: as mentioned before, poor Genesis doesn’t get to do much more than look pretty and sit in the captain’s chair. Darem, meanwhile, gets to do even less. But as a result, everyone else gets to shine: Chancellor Ake gets to dramatically defend Federation honor during a show trial, the Doctor saves the ship, and Kraag saves the Doctor. Caleb gets to save his biological mother and his surrogate mother, all while cementing his relationship with Tarima, who uses their newfound bond to help locate the bad guys and ultimately save the day.

That was all it took for Starfleet Academy to shine: by giving fewer characters the spotlight, it made it easier to develop everyone else while delivering a tight and compelling episode of Star Trek. This new spinoff has already shot its second season, and superfans are crossing their fingers that this won’t be the last voyage for these plucky cadets. But for this futuristic show to survive, it will need to take a cue from the past. Namely, ditching some of these main characters, occasionally sidelining others, and doing what The Next Generation always did so well: focusing on just one or two characters per episode, ultimately giving everyone a chance to shine.