Spoilers Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x03 – “Vitus Reflux”
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
I don’t think we have a definitive answer yet, but we can theorize: The idea of Sam seems to be that she more or less lives the life of an organic person, trying to blend in as much as possible. So the reason for her being there and taking part in fitness exercises is to be part of the community of students, to experience social life with them. If she wouldn’t there would probably have been little point in sending her there. She doesn’t just seem to be there to successfully become a Starfleet officer. The idea is to get to know humans and other organic life forms.
The other possible reason for her being in the dressing room is that she had to shower. She may be a
I guess the real world equivalent would be a different faculty that’s using the same campus. This kind of scenario would definitely have been possible where I went to university. I studied graphic design, but when you went to the cafeteria you would meet students from science faculties.
Well, I happen to love “Parallax” and the slightly different feel that episode has, and really that a lot of early Voyager episodes had, where we got some more grounded slice of life glimpse into the life on the ship. I loved how it continued the story from the pilot of what to do with the Maquis officers.
But yeah, I still understand what you mean. I think a good example is most of the first season episodes from The Next Generation, that don’t feel like what we got from season three onwards at all.
Several of the reviewers who got screeners of the first six episodes named this as the their least favorite of the six. If so, I think we're in a good place.
Score: 4
Ake's moral lesson at the end was nice albeit expected. This episode was too silly, with too much YA drama and basically rehashing the trope we've seen in every high scool drama where two rival schools get into a prank war. The cadets were annoying and immature. The Jem'hadar lady is also a bit over the top. She is trying to be the tough drill sargeant but constantly yelling about death is annoying. Ake's bare feet and casual sitting is a bit weird imo. It is like she is trying to be too chill and cool. She is the chancellor of Starfleet Academy, not your friend hanging out of the bar after hours. She lacks gravitas. The dialogue felt really clunky, too casual. The episode was also very predictable with cadets arguing who will be captain but eventually bonding and learning the value of teamwork.
I am hoping we get lots of "field trip" episodes where the Athena goes off into space so we can get more classic Star Trek episodes. It will also be an opportunity to go more world-building and see how the Federation is rebuilding and what is happening in the galaxy after the Burn.
My advice to the show's creators is that they have a real opportunity for world-building. We saw glimpses of that in episode 2 and it was very good. I think the overall arc of the show needs to be seeing how starfleet rebuilds after the Burn and how the Federation and the galaxy develop, through the eyes of these new cadets. The cadets should also have a character arc from immature to eventually becoming mature starfleet officers. The show needs to stay away from silliness, YA drama and trying to be "cool".
Ake's moral lesson at the end was nice albeit expected. This episode was too silly, with too much YA drama and basically rehashing the trope we've seen in every high scool drama where two rival schools get into a prank war. The cadets were annoying and immature. The Jem'hadar lady is also a bit over the top. She is trying to be the tough drill sargeant but constantly yelling about death is annoying. Ake's bare feet and casual sitting is a bit weird imo. It is like she is trying to be too chill and cool. She is the chancellor of Starfleet Academy, not your friend hanging out of the bar after hours. She lacks gravitas. The dialogue felt really clunky, too casual. The episode was also very predictable with cadets arguing who will be captain but eventually bonding and learning the value of teamwork.
I am hoping we get lots of "field trip" episodes where the Athena goes off into space so we can get more classic Star Trek episodes. It will also be an opportunity to go more world-building and see how the Federation is rebuilding and what is happening in the galaxy after the Burn.
My advice to the show's creators is that they have a real opportunity for world-building. We saw glimpses of that in episode 2 and it was very good. I think the overall arc of the show needs to be seeing how starfleet rebuilds after the Burn and how the Federation and the galaxy develop, through the eyes of these new cadets. The cadets should also have a character arc from immature to eventually becoming mature starfleet officers. The show needs to stay away from silliness, YA drama and trying to be "cool".
There was no nudity really. Caleb is the only one that was naked. But we only see his bare chest. His bottom half was hidden so we don't see anything, just implied that he was fully naked. Everyone else was clothed but Genesys says they were "basically naked" which was not incorrect.
I feel like there might have been a conflict between the script and the direction. The whole point of the prank was that the cadets would be naked. That is what makes the prank "funny" supposedly. So the script calls for the cadets to act like they were naked and outraged. But the rating has to be PG13 so they could not show any nudity. And if they had showed full nudity, it would have been out of place and gratuitous so it would not have worked. That is why the scene fails imo. It is a lose-lose.
At any rate, that episode was silly as hell as expected. And as expected, I loved it. Not as much as the first two though.
7
7
I don't have a problem with the War College being next door. There are plenty of real-world cases where two universities have campuses which directly abut one another. Plus, since Starfleet Academy is pretty new, it wouldn't be surprising if they share some faculty and the like for logistical reasons. The problem I have, though is one of scope. Which admittedly is something that Trek has always had regarding the Academy and the size of Starfleet, but it's acute here.
I mean, think about it. In its prime, the Federation covered 350 worlds. I think it's around 60 now with Betazed rejoining? Still, rationally speaking, we should expect the Academy to be enormous. I mean, look at the U.S. armed forces, which have about 13,200 cadets in total. The U.S. has about 4.2% of the global population, so if we extrapolate that out, we get around 314,000. Multiply by 60 worlds, we get 18.9 million cadets!
Of course, I can buy the math is off by a few orders of magnitude. The U.S. military is much larger than many other countries, for example, and a lot of military work is ground-based stuff which even in the future, wouldn't transition into Starfleet. Plus the ship counts for Starfleet have always been absurdly low given the size of the Federation (in the tens of thousands at its height). But given we know Starfleet is in the process of rebuilding its fleet rapidly from only a few dozen after The Burn, there needs to be a massive recruitment push. So let's say I'm off by two orders of magnitude. The school should still have around 20,000 cadets - pretty similar to a mid-sized public university. Which isn't impossible to get across with these sets at all, provided they use lots of extras, and maybe add some digital crowds in places.
The problem is, this episode in particular makes it feel like both Starfleet Academy and the War College have a combined - I dunno, 80 cadets or so? Makes it all seem so small and tawdry. How could Starfleet ever use such a small school to bolster its officer corps? The crowds are too small, the facilities are too empty, and they keep running into the same faces over, and over, and over. Just not realistic to what university life is like at all, which gives it a "space high school" vibe more than anything.
Clearly, most officers must still be getting field commissions.
I definitely have that problem with a lot of modern shows, where the dialog is super quiet, the characters mumble and breath their lines, or the sound FX drown out what they are saying. It’s either that or the dialog is lightning fast and I’m not able to follow that way. Been watching modern shows with subtitles on for years now because of that. I haven’t noticed that it’s more pronounced on SFA, though. If anything, I’m surprised how much better I’m able to follow the dialog compared to Discovery, which was a challenge sometimes for this non-native speaker.
I've been rewatching The Expanse recently, and it's remarkable to me how they actually let the quiet, emotional scenes sit in stillness without having music blaring constantly in the background.
Indeed. In a future where there's no homophobia, having gender-segregated anything strikes me as a bit strange, as there would be a default assumption that whether or not someone is ogling you wouldn't relate to gender at all.
The thing I don't get about the arc of this season to date is we started with a very traditional Trek episode with minimal YA elements, with the following two way, way more YA in nature.
Shouldn't it be the inverse? Trek super-fans are more likely to give a cheesy, youth-focused opening the benefit of the doubt, and continue watching. OTOH, the market expansion they're looking for (the YA market who wants to watch hot people flirt) would probably be turned off by a lot of the pilot, including Caleb's 20-minute prologue and the big Starship combat scene at the end.
^ After the defeat of the Emerald Chain, Federation membership jumped from 38 to 59 and that was before Ni'Var and Earth rejoined.
The first 2 episodes were better than this one. 6.
Favourite bit again was the drill Sargent half- Klingon half-Jem'Hadar.
Favourite bit again was the drill Sargent half- Klingon half-Jem'Hadar.
So why to they keep addressing Kelrec as Commander Kelrec, yet he wears Captain's insignia?
I liked it..! I guess we'll probably look back at this episode one day and find it somewhat insignificant, but I think it did a lot for the characters.. It was silly for the sake of being silly, which was the point, and there is nothing wrong with that... It will however be fuel for haters and distractors, that's a shame. My guess is that the next episodes will have more of a Trek-spirit, and am glad for that, but again I really liked this episode for what it was..!
Are we sure that it doesn't just look like a captain's insignia due to an unfortunately placed kernal of corn?
Oh no someone call the anti woke police Darem's bisexuality is the end of all Star Trek!
Commander could be the position he holds like chancellor is for the Academy.
Except the War College cadets do refer to him as Chancellor. Admiral Vance and the War College computer call him Commander.
No they said furry like a Koala. It was the Lappling, which iirc was that creature Alexander tried to rescue in an episode of TNG
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