‘Starfleet Academy’ Makes a Prank War Out of One of the Oldest Debates in ‘Star Trek’

Just three episodes in, and Starfleet Academy has found itself a comfortable niche to lean on: what if we took a classically Star Trek episode premise and reframed it through a bunch of kids doing occasionally charming and occasionally silly shenanigans?

Just as last week’s two-episode premiere gave us a high-stakes diplomatic incident interwoven with the throes of young adult romance, “Vitus Reflux” focuses on one of the most interesting ideas floated there—the idea that, although Starfleet Academy itself closed its doors in the wake of the Burn destabilizing the Federation, a sister school persisted in the War College, dedicated to training young officers in military tactics and strategy to prepare them for a suddenly harsher universe. Now, as the Federation tries to put its best foot forward again in rebuilding itself, the two have to coexist, physically embodying that age-old question: is Starfleet a science-driven exploratory organization, or is it simply the militarized arm of an expansionist galactic power?

This is far from the first time Star Trek has touched upon the question, doing so as recently as last year’s season of Strange New Worlds, and it likely will not be the last—if not because it’s a debate filled with potential, then more because Star Trek itself is often hesitant to come to any kind of definitive answer to that debate that does not lead to the dual nature of Starfleet being allowed to largely continue on unquestioned. But it arguably is the first and perhaps last time Star Trek will try to question via the medium of prank-induced games of phaser tag.

© Paramount

That’s where all that charming youthful energy kicks in. Sparked by the re-establishment of both schools’ Calica teams—the aforementioned phaser tag, a wargame that sees teams work to eliminate each other with transporter-beam-firing phasers before scoring hits on their opponents’ mascot-defended goal point—as well as Caleb’s simmering moodiness over the fact that his relationship with Tarima is up in the air after she chose to attend the War College over the academy, “Vitus Reflux” largely engages with this idea by having the kids of both schools trade tit-for-tat pranks at each other in an attempt to prove the superiority of their chosen institution.

The jock energy is through the roof, from hormone-doused gym sessions to the emerging expectation-driven competition between Darem and Genesis, as the two perfectionists vie to become the captain of the academy’s Calica team during Cadet Master Thok’s hilariously over-the-top tryout drills (who needs a whole college dedicated to martial training when you can shove the Starfleet kids into a holographic warzone for shits and giggles?). As things escalate between the two schools to the point of Commander Kelrec and Chancellor Ake getting involved—including a delightful moment where Ake shows up at Kelrec’s office to chide his encouragement of the pranking while draping herself across his plush seating arrangement—things only get marginally more serious, but not due to the broader existential question at play between the existence of both schools.

First, the kids square up for an out-of-hours illicit Calica game, which sees our heroes in the academy (represented by an absurdly silly Lapling mascot, the bug-eyed lizard briefly seen in The Next Generation; Team War College gets a Mugato) struggle to form a cohesive team effort in the face of the college’s military precision thanks to Darem’s inability to effectively lead while he’s still jockeying with Genesis over the captaincy. After that gets busted by Thok and Reno, Chancellor Ake encourages her cadets to play a different game: if Calica fits the military ethos of the War College, then Starfleet Academy’s prank-to-end-all-pranks should symbolize their science-forward, teamwork-driven sense of ingenuity… which leads to the kids finally working together in earnest to plant a swath of growth-accelerated, talking titular flowers in the college’s dorms, effectively rendering them momentarily uninhabitable due to the Vitus Reflex’s protected ecological status.

© Paramount

At the point you’re getting the kids to infilitrate-via-montage (the plan includes Jay-den cloning Commander Kelrec’s eye to bypass security, Caleb swiping the Mugato costume to actually get inside and shut the college’s systems down, and Sam using her holographic nature to port in and out, delivering the spores and growth accelerant into the dorms), the chance of any serious answer to the initial question of what it means to have Starfleet Academy and the War College co-exist, as well as that broader question of Starfleet’s duality, goes out the window. And this would be the latest in a frustrating line of Star Trek shows to float the question only to then back off from thoroughly interrogating it. But that’s kind of not really the point of “Vitus Reflux”.

The point of the episode is to develop the bond between our main cast of students, with some playful nudging in the right direction from Chancellor Ake, who responds to Kelrec and the War College’s ethos that these kids need reminding that the galaxy is a harsh place with the fact that they already knew that and need a little light every once in a while. On that front, “Vitus Reflux” absolutely works—it’s goofy yet earnest, the friendship unit among the cadets gets nicely solidified, and the resolution, even if it’s a silly one, still puts an emphasis on Star Trek‘s championing of inventive solutions to conflict and teamwork. It just doesn’t really do it in a manner that’s going to convince either the easily angered or the cautiously skeptical that, beneath the lightheartedness, those ideas are still thoroughly Trek, even if they come at the expense of largely dismissing a focus on an idea that’s quietly haunted the franchise from the very beginning.

But it’s arguably better for Starfleet Academy to sidestep a question that even some of the best Star Trek has often struggled to engage with beyond a surface level (and at worst, as we saw with Strange New Worlds last year, display impotent cowardice in tackling it) and focus on something it knows it can work with. For now, the charm offensive wins out, but at some point the show is going to have to realise that it can’t put off tackling more serious ideas. It’s all fun and games until the teachers discover your illicit laser tag match, after all.

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