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| Episode: | 3 | | | Writer: | Alex Taub & Kiley Rossetter | | | Director: | Doug Aarniokoski | | | Air Date: | 22-Jan-2025 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Starfleet Academy episode 3, Vitus Reflex.
The previous episode was co-written by Picard writer Jane Maggs, this episode was co-written by Picard writer Kiley Rossetter, I'm spotting a bit of a pattern forming. Though co-writer Alex Taub hasn't written for anything. Nothing Star Trek-related I mean.
On the other hand, director Doug Aarniokoski has worked on everything, directing episodes in four seasons of Discovery and three seasons of Picard, plus he even did a Short Trek. They were often pretty good episodes too, stories like Lethe and Nepenthe. I'm assuming that Picard's producers must have been impressed, as he was the one they chose to direct the season openers.
I'm not going to be going through the whole episode scene by scene this time, but there will be SPOILERS beyond this point.
RECAP
Darem and Genesis wake up early and are immediately rivals due to their shared determination to be the best. They compete to be team leader of the calica team and are equally matched, so Darem uses dirty tactics, saying something to throw her off her game.
Meanwhile the War College next door starts pulling pranks, like beaming the Academy cadets out of the shower room naked, and showing footage at their terrible first attempt at calica. So the cadets decide to set up a calica match between the two, which goes really badly for them until Genesis becomes team leader and cheats, destroying replicators to fill the room with smoke.
Ake gives them all their punishment, while sneakily hinting at how to get back at the War College cadets with the ultimate prank. They clone War College commander Kelrec's eye to get through security and then fill the dormitories with protected plants they can't remove. He has to admit defeat in the prank war, as he was secretly supporting the War College cadets all along.
REVIEW
Anyway, one of the problems I had with the previous episode is that it was almost entirely focused on Caleb and Ake, and it didn't make use of the ensemble cast. There's nothing wrong with giving an episode over to one or two characters, but that works a lot better when we get who the other characters are and where they're coming from.
I'm not all that keen on the 'present day' part, but the 'school drama' bit actually works for me, because of how low stakes it is. One of my biggest concerns about Starfleet Academy from back when it was just a concept was that they'd have to keep contriving new reasons for the students to be in constant danger, with them fighting secret alien invasions on Earth, and finding time portals under San Francisco, or whatever. They can have stakes in the season finale, as a treat, but I'd rather the series was more on this level.
The episode's basically about the cadets dealing with War College's version of Darem: an angry Romulan girl (Dzolo) with a lot of unjustified hostility. In fact that's basically all we learn about her, she's just an avatar of the War College itself.
This is also the kind of situation that Starfleet cadets should be in, as they need to be trained to evade Gorn mortar fire and Crystalline Entities. Though maybe not in episode three! I feel like there should've been an episode where they learned to use guns before they were tested on their marksmanship.
Anyway it's the scene afterwards where the prank war plot really starts, with characters getting beamed out of the shower room in their underwear (or less).
At least the one that materialised underwater can't actually drown. Though Sam did let air bubbles out of her mouth, which maybe hints that she can hold air in her virtual lungs. Or maybe not, she's still a mystery at this point.
Though it turns out later that the whole prank war is actually being pushed forward by the chancellors of the two schools who are giving their cadets clues and sometimes security access! So right away that gets rid of the question 'Why are they allowing this when the cadets responsible filmed a confession?' while raising further questions, like 'What the hell, guys?'
Plus it turns out that the prank that started the whole thing was actually invented by Ake herself back in the day! Hopefully no one broke their neck then either. This explains why there why there was so much hugs and therapy going on aboard the USS Discovery, they'd all been traumatised from going through Starfleet Academy.
I don't think Darem wasn't anyone's favourite character in the first two episodes, and the series really needed to stop and tell us his deal before moving forward with him. It turns out that he has wealthy parents who didn't tolerate anything less than perfection, to the point of walking out of the room during a school recital. So he's got the guilt of living a privileged life while others were suffering, and an obsession with being the absolute best to finally win his parents' approval. The most tragic scene is when he goes to get his PADD fixed because he believed even after everything that they would've called him.
These character traits put him in conflict with Genesis, who also has issues with her parents, and is also driven to the be the best, and I think their semi-friendly rivalry is handled pretty well.
Though this obviously doesn't work out, because he did what it took to win, not what it took to be a supportive leader of his group. You can't be captain if you're only ever out for yourself.
On the other hand, Genesis puts her anger aside and comes back to the team without having to be talked into it and learning a lesson, which I appreciated. There are enough lessons being learned in this episode... which is actually something brought up in dialogue and then answered with "This is a school". I mean, fair enough!
Jay-Den's not into calica so he doesn't get a lot to do this episode, but we do get a scene of being an extremely awkward distraction, buying Caleb the 50 seconds he needs to have a three minute scene with Tarima.
Long story short: it's because of her super powers. Everyone else is in Hogwarts, while she's in the X-Mansion, learning the discipline to control her ability. Meanwhile he's having his own inner conflict over how much he wants to commit to being part of a team. Which Tarima helpfully just tells us, so there's no doubt.
The episode really makes an effort to spell everything out, which might explain its ridiculous hour-long run time. That, plus how it keeps coming back to calica.
There's a bit of a DS9 Take Me Out to the Holodeck thing going on with the conflict between the Academy and the War College, but I really liked that episode so I'm considering it a positive. It's maybe one extra bit of story the episode didn't need, but it does show Darem and Genesis' approaches to being team leader. First Darem puts comes up with a strategy that entirely relies on his skill, which fails, then he gets frustrated and starts getting violent. On the other hand, Genesis gets creative, shooting the replicators to fill the room with smoke and using Sam's shapeshifting ability to turn her into a fake mascot target.
It seems kind of dangerous to me that the transporter guns they're shooting each other with can actually damage things. In fact it seems dangerous for them to be shooting each other with guns at all!
Anyway, Genesis' plan actually gets them a single win! And then they get sent to the headmaster's office.
One thing I like about this scene of the characters being given dressing-down by Ake is how it's not just the main cast in the room. There are other characters involved who never get a name, never get a line and don't get attention drawn to them. We're not asked to care about them or encouraged to notice them. Discovery messed up a bit by trapping its bridge crew in an eternal purgatory between being actual characters and being there to say two lines, so it's good that these are unambiguously background extras.
Another thing I like is... actually that's the only thing I like. Ake's acting weird here, in an attempt to give them clues, and the whole thing comes off as a bit odd. And we really should've seen some of this menial work they keep being punished with by now!
Incidentally I like this weird scene of a cadet sticking around and being fascinated by the giant plants. He should move onto Team Academy, they study weird alien plants all the time.
It turns out that the plants are protected and can't legally be moved (though spraying them with quick grow chemicals is apparently fine), so I guess the War College cadets are all going to need new rooms now. That seems kind of drastic, especially when you take into account that they had to clone Commander Kelrec's eye to get past security. I feel like that has to break one or two very serious rules.
Incidentally it's a nice touch that Caleb is sitting well away from Darem here, as Darem has a banana allergy. Not that the two of them would've sat next to each other anyway. In fact Caleb's probably eating the banana just to troll him.
I suppose we've seen the difference between the two schools demonstrated here. The War College repeats old strategies in order to start conflict, while the Academy uses empathy and new ideas in order to end conflict... with a decisive victory over all that would oppose them. This is why the Academy has to have a Kobayashi Maru test to see how students deal with the concept of not winning.
I suppose the moral of the story is: don't start a prank war but always finish it. Or maybe it's: if you reach your funny prank war storyline two episodes earlier than The Orville did, that's a sign you need to dial back the comedy a little.
There's probably something in there about cheating in there as well.
RATING
I've noticed that this episode hasn't been winning everyone over and I'm definitely aware of its flaws. The biggest one being that it's 60 minutes long, which is way too long for what it is.
But I can see a lot of positives too. It has suitably low stakes for a school, the camera doesn't linger on irrelevant references, it utilises the ensemble cast... plus it still looks fantastic. So I am giving Vitus Reflux:
6/10
The episode keeps taking two step forwards and then another step back due to cringy dialogue, or over explaining something, or etc. But it still ends up ahead.
NEXT EPISODE
If you want to share your own thoughts about this episode, there is a comment box below. If you want to share my thoughts, you can do that too!
I'm sure people sometimes have green skin and forehead ridges in normal schools.
ReplyDeleteAnd, even if not, you can probably find people complaining on social media about them.
I like the sweatshirts, or whatever you'd call those jackets.
ReplyDeleteI like all the costumes in this series to be honest. They had to go to the 32nd century to reach a time period that didn't put tiny delta symbols all over the fabric, but they got there in the end.
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