| Episode: | 8 | | | Writer: | Gaia Violo & Jane Maggs | | | Director: | Andi Armaganian | | | Air Date: | 26-Feb-2026 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching The Life of the Stars, the 8th episode of Starfleet Academy. A TV series that I'm not really enjoying much.
There are some familiar names in the credits for this one. It's got the same director as the previous episode, Ko'Zeine, and the two writers have both worked on episodes already. That's all the trivia I've got, sorry.
This is going to have SPOILERS for the episode, so if you haven't watched it yet maybe consider doing that first. Or not, if you're not really enjoying the series much either.
RECAP
The cadets are doing poorly in classes due to the traumatising events of Come, Let's Away, so guest star Sylvia Tilly is called in to help. Her plan is make them study a play that hits a little close to home, forcing them to deal with the issues they don't want to talk about. Tarima is the most messed up from her experience and would rather get drunk instead, but they all finally decide to put in the effort because it's what SAM wanted.
Meanwhile SAM is secretly still glitching out and it's terminal. Ake and the Doctor take her to Kasq, but her creators are unable to repair her. They figure out that SAM's problem is not having childhood experiences to help her process what she's been going through. The Doctor is talked into putting his fear of losing loved ones aside to play the role of her father as she is reborn and lives 17 years as a child in Kasq's accelerated time.
REVIEW
It took until episode 8, but The Life of the Stars is Tilly's guest appearance for the season and the episode really does treat her like an honoured guest.
Way back in my review of episode 2 I talked about the problem with setting the series in a sci-fi school, saying "unless it's a class on storytelling or poetry, all the writers can do is lead to some life lesson or give the characters a problem to deal with". Well, they just went and made an episode about Tilly teaching a class on storytelling, assigning the cadets a play to deal in order to lead to some life lessons.
And her plan works! She gets the students (mostly Tarima) talking and they're all okay by the end. She didn't have to work through the problem, she just said what she was going to do at the start of the episode and then did it.
Plus it's not all that comfortable for the audience to watch either. Or maybe that's just me.
I have to be honest, I don't give a damn about the mental health of Star Trek characters. Except for Beckett Mariner and maybe some other people... But generally, I don't find it fun or exciting to watch people helping others to deal with their trauma.
But I didn't care. The scenes did not grab my attention. I did not find them compelling. I dunno, maybe if there was a plot going on as well, that might have helped.
The episode constantly refers to the play Old Town, even ending the episode on Ake standing in a spotlight in the dark. Characters are compared to ones from the play, with Tarima not wanting anything to do with the role of Emily after SAM passes it onto her.
Tilly asks the cadets to analyse the play's characters, which invites the same kind of analysis of the episode's characters. I'm sure a reviewer could really get into exploring all the meaning you can find in the comparisons.
Not me though, I've never even heard of Old Town and I haven't got a clue what it's about! Everything flew right over my head here and I've got no interest in doing the homework to understand the episode better.
Anyway, there's also SAM and the Doctor's side of the episode, where it turns out she's still glitching and has been hiding it. This means they need to get her back to Kasq so her creators can fix her.
The last episode introduced us to Darem's homeworld of Khionia... almost, and this time we actually get to see SAM's homeworld of Kasq! Except not really.
You'd think that this would be the episode where we finally find out what SAM is, as a being, and we kind of do if you're paying attention. The word 'emitter' is mentioned and there's a shot of this mysterious device:
Though it wasn't physical damage to the emitter from the alien ray gun that caused her to glitch, it was her struggling to process... the trauma. She only a few months old so she doesn't have the childhood experiences needed to build resiliency. The Doctor never had a childhood either, but the episode just skips right past that fact. Though he's also not dealing with his trauma well either, to be fair.
Unfortunately SAM's condition is incurable, so she dies.
There is a way to bring her back however! They can just restart her as a baby, let her grow into a 17 year old over time like everyone else does, and then integrate her existing memories. But she'll need a dad and the Doctor refuses to allow himself to love anyone again.
No, I remember that episode, he didn't lose a daughter, he lost a computer game character. She was part of a simulation designed to give him an experience of a normal life, which B'Elanna screwed with and made more 'real' to teach him a lesson. This lead to his daughter dying in an accident, and he was so distraught that he turned the simulation off and consigned his virtual wife and son to digital oblivion.
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| Star Trek: Voyager 3-22 - Real Life |
It's not weird that the Doctor would be moved by the death of his fictional daughter, these simulations can be horrifyingly realistic, but for him to still be bothered by it centuries later really hints at his own lack of resiliency
Though it can't just be this that's stopped him from loving people for all this time, because that would be ridiculous and we've seen him love people in the past. From his reaction to SAM mentioning the Voyager crew and Captain Gwyndala it seems more likely that he's just been worn down by losing everyone he's ever known, over and over. He says that the only thing that allows him to bear his infinity is not having to love anyone, but I don't get the impression that he is bearing infinity very well right now
I actually think that it's a smart idea and very sci-fi. The trouble is, they don't give SAM a real childhood. It's even less real than the fake life the Doctor's fake daughter had in the episode Real Life. Once he decided to be her dad, her creators left the two of them in a copy of the Academy for 17 years, alone. There were no experiences there to help her cope with life, no socialising with people, just two decades of isolation and boredom. How is this supposed to help?
It works emotionally, but only if you don't think about it.
The series isn't just mindless action or juvenile school drama, it's about people struggling with letting their old self go as they continue the inevitable process of becoming someone new. It's about treasuring everything in life even though it's only a blip compared to the enormity of time and space. I know this, because the episode told me.
But Star Trek is also about things happening and this is the second episode in a row to put plot on the back burner as it deals with the fallout of the episode where something did happen. They only have 10 episodes this season, they may well only have 20 in their entire run, and I reckon it's a shame they chose to use their limited time on stories like this that barely even have a story.
RATING
This episode seems to work for a lot of people, and it wasn't a complete miss for me either. I liked that the stakes remained reasonable and that the series is still taking its world and characters seriously. And... I dunno, the shuttle set looked nice.
But I just don't enjoy television like this, it's not my thing. Plus the music annoyed me.
4/10
NEXT EPISODE
What about you? Is the series for you? Was this episode for you?
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