The venerable Star Trek franchise has boldly gone to a new setting: school. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the latest streaming series on Paramount+, transplants the saga's ideals of exploration and camaraderie into a hormone-fuelled, coming-of-age drama. With Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti leading the cast, this spinoff offers a transgressive thrill that feels both fresh and classically Trek.
A New Era and a Rebellious Chancellor
The series is set in the 32nd century, the furthest the franchise has ever ventured into the future, in a universe still recovering from a cataclysm known as the Burn. Starfleet Academy in San Francisco is reopening its doors after a century of isolation, welcoming its first new cadet intake.
At the helm is the newly appointed Chancellor Nahla Ake, played with captivating, free-spirited energy by Holly Hunter. Ake is a half-Lanthanite ex-Starfleet captain, whose long life means she remembers the pre-Burn era. Her appointment is conditional on her mentoring a troubled young man named Caleb (Sandro Rosta), whose life she impacted years earlier in a fraught incident involving a desperate mother (Tatiana Maslany) and a bristly alien gangster.
Scene-Stealing Villains and Teenage Cadets
That gangster is Nus Braka, portrayed by a gloriously over-the-top Paul Giamatti. In a spittle-flecked, scenery-chewing performance that echoes the heightened style of the original 1960s series, Giamatti's Braka is an immediate standout, with a bizarrely intricate haircut to match his villainy.
The opening feature-length episode is a thrilling space adventure aboard the USS Athena, a combined campus and starship. When Braka attacks, a ragtag group of cadets—including a pacifist Klingon (Karim Diané) and a sentient hologram (Kerrice Brooks)—must team up with Caleb to save the day. The dynamic shifts in episode two, which settles into a more traditional campus structure, playfully sending up US college movie clichés with a 32nd-century twist.
Classic Trek Meets Grange Hill
What sets Starfleet Academy apart is its youthful, impulsive energy. This cohort is far hornier and more headstrong than the buttoned-up crews of the USS Enterprise. The show successfully captures a Grange-Hill-with-phasers vibe, as the young cadets test boundaries and navigate rivalries.
Yet, it remains earnest and formulaic in the best Trek tradition. The educational setting allows for literal history lessons about the franchise, and the return of Robert Picardo as the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, now a grumpy teacher, is a haughty delight for fans.
With Hunter's genuinely transgressive captain—who goes barefoot, wears retro spectacles, and sits in her chair with rebellious informality—the series carves out a unique identity. As Braka surely lurks in the wings for more galactic strife, the immediate stakes feel refreshingly human: winning a laser tag battle against rivals. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy airs on Paramount+, with new episodes released on Thursdays.
