The end of any great adventure is always bittersweet, as it was for the intrepid cadets of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy“completing their first stage of training aboard the training vessel USS Athena, commanded by quirky Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter).
With episode 10, “Rubincon,” our promising officer candidates were put through another trial by fire as they battled the vengeful Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) and his rowdy band of Venari Ral space pirates, who installed a ring of Omega 47 mines around Federation Space to orchestrate a potentially devastating showdown.
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We caught up with series producers Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau to hear their thoughts on the performance of “Starfleet Academy’s” first season, this climactic chapter and what’s to come in the upcoming second season.
“I love that the last episode is a really happy ending to the season,” Landau tells Space. “It promises that this is just the beginning of the story for these characters. There’s so much more to tell. Caleb is fully committed to Starfleet in every chamber of his heart. And he’s finally reconciled with his mother, and his mother is at peace with him becoming a Starfleet officer one day. It feels really satisfying when and how it ended.
This debut season has barely finished, but Landau is already teasing what’s to come.
“These characters are barely figuring themselves out and have barely begun their journey of figuring out who they’re going to be in Starfleet,” says Landau. “What’s really cool about season 2 coming up is that the characters are starting to realize that everything they thought they wanted, they’re surprised to learn that they actually want something even more.”
Kurtzman agrees that while it all ended well, there were hurdles after hurdles, and this premiere season felt extremely gratifying because of the efforts of everyone involved.
“We’re all so proud of the season,” he notes. “I love the show. I love the cast. I love the writers. I love the crew. Everyone had such a good time. It was hard as hell, but Season 1 of everything always is.
“I reminded Noga that we threw out the finale two and a half weeks before we started shooting it,” Kurtzman reveals. “I’m very proud of that because we had built such a solid start to the show, and part of our job was to recognize that we weren’t quite sticking to a structural narrative point, and we needed to recognize how we got there. It’s one of those scary things when you’re so close to production and you have to make that kind of command decision.
“Those are the moments where you need to step up to it, and it had a huge ripple effect. Noga felt it was important that we pay off all the things that we set up so carefully and emotionally. We did, and our incredible protection team was able to follow through. To be able to make it work under that kind of pressure, those are the moments you feel you’ve earned.”
A brave aspect of “Star Trek” is its willingness to look closely at the Federation or Starfleet to interrogate mistakes made in the past and hold them both accountable for decisions that cost lives, careers and entire worlds. Nus Braka, who reveals his tragic history and his serious hatred of the union during the last episode’s mock trial, leans heavily into the long-standing tradition.
“Every institution has to stand up to scrutiny,” adds Landau. “If you can’t debate and bring to justice the actions of any government agency, peacekeeping force, military force, and make it stick, then it doesn’t deserve to exist. We shouldn’t be afraid to question our institutions in the real world, and in turn, we should let them speak their truth about the complexities of why certain decisions are made.
“Villains are the heroes of their own movie, and Nus Braka justified what he did and the brutality with which he did it because of what happened to him. It would be boring to have a villain who was evil for evil’s sake. Any good ‘Trek’-worthy villain does what they do for a reason.”
All episodes of “Starfleet Academy” season 1 are now streaming on Paramount+.
