Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1.08
Feb. 27th, 2026 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which we find out the writers of this show must really like both Thornton Wilder and the last two seasons of Angel: The Series while having issues with one particular Voyager episode, or rather its aftermath. Also, at last, at last, SOMEONE is back an my screen!
Mind you, given that the episode opens with a private log entry by the Doctor, what I was focused on most was whether this would be when we get more than hints about the Doctor (not) coping with centuries of immortality and losses and hence his attitude towards SAM, and indeed it was. Pllus we got what I hadn't expected yet should have, because it makes perfect character sense; conversations between the Doctor and Nahla Ake about being (near) immortal and observing other people live and die. Both Robert Picardo and Holly Hunter bring their A-Game, and I loved those scenes.
The criticism I take back from last week is that last week felt as if it wanted to be the Academy version of TNG's episode Family and was failing at it. Both becausethalia_seawood convinced me they were going for something different, and also because clearly this week is the Picard section of Family, as it's "face your repressed trauma" time for just about everyone. There is a tonal whiplash to the mostly light hearted tone from last week, but I actually don't have a problem with that; it strikes me as realistic that in the immediate aftermath, everyone (more or less) would pretend they're doing fine and focus on other things, with only weeks later some of the unprocessed drama resurfacing. I also think the plot device used to bring Tilly back (at last!), "counselling without telling them it's counselling", works, because you just know that some of the cadets (hello, Caleb and Darem) would have plain refused "official" counselling, or just sat there without engaging, while others (*cough* Genesis) might have pretended to engage but would have just said what they thought the counsellor wanted to hear.
Now, Tilly going for a drama class in order to get them to open up - and for once in Star Trek the writers don't pick Shakesparare but Thornton Wilder for their theatrical reference, go, team, for variation! - might be nerdy but it's both in and out of universe nerdy in a very Star Trek way. (Sidenote: I've been to school productions of Our Town, in several schools. Though my own school did another Wilder play, his take on Alkestis. Also I knew him from his letter novel The Ides of March, and we got told he was the one playwright not Bertolt Brecht who did Episches Theater. What I'm trying to say here is that I actually recognized the lines quoted in this episode, and I have no idea whether or not they'd work for people unfamiliar with Our Town, but hope yes?)
Tilly hitting it off with SAM immediately was to be expected, but alas for more on screen giddiness but not for character exploration SAM then disappears into the episode's other plot, because her glitching from last week hasn't gotten better, it got worse, and so the Doctor and Captain Ake have to bring her to her homeworld. Where it turns out her people are not the stern authoritarians presented in her focus episode but also can't help her because the key problem isn't the physical injury two eps ago but the fact SAM was created as a 17 years old from scratch (well, with 200 years building time, but still), without a childhood and adolescence and any kind of growing experience having helped her earlier to process trauma. Because SAM's homeworld is of the sci fi kind where time passes much faster, something the Doctor has encountered on Voyager before, this allows for a solution that's both very Star Trek and very familiar from Connor's arc in Angel: The Series. SAM gets a second set of memories (in addition to, not as a replacement of her original memories - this is a difference to how things went down with Connor, though by the end of the show he had regained his original memories yet still maintained the new ones which stablized him). She gets them not all at once but by the Doctor vollunteering to stay with her for 17 years (which are only a few weeks for the rest of the universe) , raising her. Said volunteering takes place after her sort-of-death before finally made him come clean as to why he's been so standoffish with her, and it mostly is what everyone guessed. The moment he saw her, he knew she'd be all too easy to love (and who doesn't? SAM surely is the most poplular new character on the show?), and he didn't want to to face loss again, so he brushed her overtures off at every oppportunity and kept his distance.
What no one did guess is that he doesn't cite his "organic" losses, so to speak, i.e. the by now dead Voyager and Prodigy characters, but the family from the Voyager episode Real Life, specifically his daughter Belle, whom SAM reminded him of. If you haven't seen the episode, in it, the Doctor, wanting to experience having a family, creates one on the Voyager holodeck. B'Lanna Torres finds the fact they are initially all adoring of him and without any arguments sickening and reprograms them to be a bit more realistic. Unfortunately, this not only means the hilarity of a teenage son into Klingon punk, but also, near the end, a daughter dying tragically by accident. The Doctor is heartbroken, but because we're still in the era of mostly episodic tv on Voyager, never mentions this again for the remaining show, and nor does anyone else. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has now retconned this to mean B'Lanna has traumatized the Doctor for the next 900 years, thanks, B'Lanna. But you know, thinking about it, it does work for me - I mean, that the Doctor names the loss of Belle the hologram daughter and not of the Voyager and Prodigy crews as what caused him to keep his distance from SAM. For starters, Belle was someone he literally created himself, which surely is the photonic equivalent to biological parenthood, and secondly, like SAM, she was a photonic, thereby bringing home the fact that photonics aren't vulnerable to the same things as organics are doesn't mean they are that much safer. And thirdly, the episode tells us at the start the Doctor as an artificial being remembers everything (minus memory wipes by Janeway, I assume), not, as we biological creatures do, in a faded manner the more time passes but with perfect recollection as if it was yesterday. And lastly, his this doesn't mean he didn't deeply care for his organic friends as well - just that the potential relationship meeting SAM immediately reminded him off and which he therefore was determined to avoid was the one to his daughter.
Where I have a bit "yes, but..." feelings is that given the natural time contraints of tv, this also means we only get a montage of images of SAM growing up with the Doctor, which is fast forwarding their relationship instead of letting us, the audience, see it develop as well. (Yet another reason to regret we don't get 22 episodes per season anymore - I suspect if that was still the case, the writers might have chosen a different plot device to let SAM and the Doctor restart their relationship?)
All lin all, though: hooray for this episode! Especially since there are only two more left this season, and I expect they will be action-heavy by contrast.
Mind you, given that the episode opens with a private log entry by the Doctor, what I was focused on most was whether this would be when we get more than hints about the Doctor (not) coping with centuries of immortality and losses and hence his attitude towards SAM, and indeed it was. Pllus we got what I hadn't expected yet should have, because it makes perfect character sense; conversations between the Doctor and Nahla Ake about being (near) immortal and observing other people live and die. Both Robert Picardo and Holly Hunter bring their A-Game, and I loved those scenes.
The criticism I take back from last week is that last week felt as if it wanted to be the Academy version of TNG's episode Family and was failing at it. Both because
thalia_seawood convinced me they were going for something different, and also because clearly this week is the Picard section of Family, as it's "face your repressed trauma" time for just about everyone. There is a tonal whiplash to the mostly light hearted tone from last week, but I actually don't have a problem with that; it strikes me as realistic that in the immediate aftermath, everyone (more or less) would pretend they're doing fine and focus on other things, with only weeks later some of the unprocessed drama resurfacing. I also think the plot device used to bring Tilly back (at last!), "counselling without telling them it's counselling", works, because you just know that some of the cadets (hello, Caleb and Darem) would have plain refused "official" counselling, or just sat there without engaging, while others (*cough* Genesis) might have pretended to engage but would have just said what they thought the counsellor wanted to hear. Now, Tilly going for a drama class in order to get them to open up - and for once in Star Trek the writers don't pick Shakesparare but Thornton Wilder for their theatrical reference, go, team, for variation! - might be nerdy but it's both in and out of universe nerdy in a very Star Trek way. (Sidenote: I've been to school productions of Our Town, in several schools. Though my own school did another Wilder play, his take on Alkestis. Also I knew him from his letter novel The Ides of March, and we got told he was the one playwright not Bertolt Brecht who did Episches Theater. What I'm trying to say here is that I actually recognized the lines quoted in this episode, and I have no idea whether or not they'd work for people unfamiliar with Our Town, but hope yes?)
Tilly hitting it off with SAM immediately was to be expected, but alas for more on screen giddiness but not for character exploration SAM then disappears into the episode's other plot, because her glitching from last week hasn't gotten better, it got worse, and so the Doctor and Captain Ake have to bring her to her homeworld. Where it turns out her people are not the stern authoritarians presented in her focus episode but also can't help her because the key problem isn't the physical injury two eps ago but the fact SAM was created as a 17 years old from scratch (well, with 200 years building time, but still), without a childhood and adolescence and any kind of growing experience having helped her earlier to process trauma. Because SAM's homeworld is of the sci fi kind where time passes much faster, something the Doctor has encountered on Voyager before, this allows for a solution that's both very Star Trek and very familiar from Connor's arc in Angel: The Series. SAM gets a second set of memories (in addition to, not as a replacement of her original memories - this is a difference to how things went down with Connor, though by the end of the show he had regained his original memories yet still maintained the new ones which stablized him). She gets them not all at once but by the Doctor vollunteering to stay with her for 17 years (which are only a few weeks for the rest of the universe) , raising her. Said volunteering takes place after her sort-of-death before finally made him come clean as to why he's been so standoffish with her, and it mostly is what everyone guessed. The moment he saw her, he knew she'd be all too easy to love (and who doesn't? SAM surely is the most poplular new character on the show?), and he didn't want to to face loss again, so he brushed her overtures off at every oppportunity and kept his distance.
What no one did guess is that he doesn't cite his "organic" losses, so to speak, i.e. the by now dead Voyager and Prodigy characters, but the family from the Voyager episode Real Life, specifically his daughter Belle, whom SAM reminded him of. If you haven't seen the episode, in it, the Doctor, wanting to experience having a family, creates one on the Voyager holodeck. B'Lanna Torres finds the fact they are initially all adoring of him and without any arguments sickening and reprograms them to be a bit more realistic. Unfortunately, this not only means the hilarity of a teenage son into Klingon punk, but also, near the end, a daughter dying tragically by accident. The Doctor is heartbroken, but because we're still in the era of mostly episodic tv on Voyager, never mentions this again for the remaining show, and nor does anyone else. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has now retconned this to mean B'Lanna has traumatized the Doctor for the next 900 years, thanks, B'Lanna. But you know, thinking about it, it does work for me - I mean, that the Doctor names the loss of Belle the hologram daughter and not of the Voyager and Prodigy crews as what caused him to keep his distance from SAM. For starters, Belle was someone he literally created himself, which surely is the photonic equivalent to biological parenthood, and secondly, like SAM, she was a photonic, thereby bringing home the fact that photonics aren't vulnerable to the same things as organics are doesn't mean they are that much safer. And thirdly, the episode tells us at the start the Doctor as an artificial being remembers everything (minus memory wipes by Janeway, I assume), not, as we biological creatures do, in a faded manner the more time passes but with perfect recollection as if it was yesterday. And lastly, his this doesn't mean he didn't deeply care for his organic friends as well - just that the potential relationship meeting SAM immediately reminded him off and which he therefore was determined to avoid was the one to his daughter.
Where I have a bit "yes, but..." feelings is that given the natural time contraints of tv, this also means we only get a montage of images of SAM growing up with the Doctor, which is fast forwarding their relationship instead of letting us, the audience, see it develop as well. (Yet another reason to regret we don't get 22 episodes per season anymore - I suspect if that was still the case, the writers might have chosen a different plot device to let SAM and the Doctor restart their relationship?)
All lin all, though: hooray for this episode! Especially since there are only two more left this season, and I expect they will be action-heavy by contrast.
