Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars,” which is available on Paramount Plus now.
It’s a funny thing with Starfleet Academy. While the show has often had me raising an eyebrow Vulcan-style when trying to compute some of the story or in-universe developments, by the time the closing credits roll that stuff typically winds up not mattering that much to me. I think this is because the bigger story and emotional stakes involving our core group of cadets just work so well 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” just become non-issues.
Such is the case in “The Life of the Stars,” where we find Caleb (Sandro Rosta) and the gang still dealing with the tragic events which took place onboard the USS Miyazaki a few episodes back, with Zoë Steiner’s Tarima and Kerrice Brooks’ Sam confronting particularly rough circumstances. That this is framed around an amateur reading of the 1938 Thornton Wilder play Our Town is ultimately beside the point because of how resonant the episode winds up being.
That’s where Mary Wiseman’s Lt. Sylvia Tilly comes in, formerly of Star Trek: Discovery and sort of a changed character here. Or maybe “matured” is the better way of putting it? Yes, she’s still quirky and fun at times, but she also has a harder edge in some of her moments with the cadets, particularly 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 where she saved the day, but had to injure herself – and unleash her powers – to do so. She’s also all up in her feelings about her relationship with Caleb, and the two of them are more confused than anything right now.
Here’s the part of this review where I confess that I am not an expert on Our Town – not only am I not an expert, but I’ve never read it, I’ve never seen a production of it, and my knowledge of it is pretty minimal. Still, the notion of the “stage manager” being the actual stage manager of the theater where the play is being performed but also a character in said play is intriguing, and certainly one can see how the meta aspect of the play was of interest to episode writers Gaia Violo and Jane Maggs (Violo is also the creator of Starfleet Academy). And that’s what takes us to the Sam and The Doctor part of the story.
Robert Picardo’s return as his beloved Voyager character on Starfleet Academy has been mostly played for laughs so far – at first glance, his eternally annoyed but still lovable hologram doesn’t seem to have changed that much from his days with Captain Janeway. But Episode 8 finally delves a bit deeper into how the essentially immortal Doctor has suffered in the years – rather, centuries – since he first came 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 musta 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 much impact is ultimately because this story is The Doctor’s and not Sam’s; no, she gets more of a “death between commercial breaks” that would’ve happened on the 1960s show since she’ll presumably be mostly unaffected by the event. (Unless of course her being raised by The Doctor for 17 years here changes her character in some substantial way. But I’d be surprised if that happens since the show has only just established her.)
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- Tilly, who started as a cadet on Disco, is now teaching cadets. It’s already been touched upon on Discovery, but still, it’s nice to see such continuity in the Trek universe.
- That said, how exactly does Tilly know Holly Hunter’s Captain Ake? I don’t believe we have a specific date as to when Ake left Starfleet in the wake of young Caleb’s disappearance, but we do know she went to Bajor to become a teacher. It seems likely that would’ve been during the same period that Tilly jumped forward into the 32nd century onboard the Discovery, and subsequently had her interactions with the Academy… so basically Tilly wouldn’t really know Ake from the Academy at all, right?
- The episode of Voyager which featured The Doctor creating a holo-family was called “Real Life,” and he did indeed “lose” his holo-daughter in that story.
- Regarding Sam’s planet Kasq… can a planet actually be shaped like that? Or is it artificial?
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