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The following contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season finale.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy wrapped up its first season with a finale that’s epic in scope: The fate of the Federation is at stake, trillions of lives are at risk, and the students have to pull off some crazy science to save the day. But at its heart, its story is a deeply human one, as the show finally reckons with the event that started it all back in the series pilot: The arrest and sentencing of Caleb Mir’s mother, Anisha, which irrevocably shaped the rest of his life.
Like many episodes before it, the centerpiece of “Rubincon” is a trial. Granted, it’s not exactly a proper legal proceeding, both its participants are being held hostage, and it’s all being broadcast across the quadrant as an act of vengeance on everyone involved. But, thematically speaking, its scope is no less impactful, as the hour wrestles with the idea of what the Federation itself is meant to be and do through an interrogation of the conditions that gave rise to both Anisha’s arrest and the radicalization of space pirate Nus Braka.
“Obviously, Trek has a great history of amazing trial episodes,” showrunner Alex Kurtzman tells Den of Geek. “But in order to do that, you have to have a very complex situation that has to be dissected from multiple points of view. And the question that the show raises in the premiere, which is, was it the right thing that the Federation did with this mother and her child, gets really analyzed here.”
Given all the youthful hijinks and coming-of-age milestones for the show’s cadets in this first season, it’s easy to forget that Starfleet Academy is also about the rebirth of an institution. In the aftermath of the Burn, much of what we understood the Federation to be collapsed. Starfleet Academy, as we once knew it, ceased to exist, and this season features the first class to matriculate as students in over a century. But in addition to the relaunch of the titular Academy, the show is also about the reconstruction of the Federation itself, as isolated former member worlds rejoin its ranks, and everyone must reckon with the choices they made in the years following the disaster.
“I think that some of the best Star Trek episodes do put the Federation itself on trial. And that’s what we did,” Kurtzman says. “And I think that the moral of the story ultimately is that there is no black and white. There’s always gray. Life is gray. And if you do not evolve as things evolve, you will get left [behind] as part of something that feels antiquated and incorrect. And, from a governance point of view, you may end up making massive mistakes that hurt a lot of people. So the question is: what of our institutions do we hold onto and what needs to change, in order for us [and our institutions] to grow?”
In “Rubincon,” that conflict is most clearly represented by the confrontation between Anisha Mir and Chancellor Ake, one who has been a victim of the Federation failing to live up to its promises, and one who sees its potential to change and meet the moment the galaxy finds itself in. The finale is remarkably even-handed in its presentation of both Anisha and Ake’s failures — one, despite her intentions, was part of a robbery that killed a man; the other quit Starfleet rather than push the organization to show mercy to desperate citizens — and the ways those choices have unintentionally played out in Caleb’s life. But Starfleet Academy is just as willing to give the same kind of interpretive grace to its villain, a man threatening to kill trillions but whose reasons are, at least in his own mind, justified ones.
“In the spirit of the villain is the hero of their own story, I think for us, villains who are just mustache-wirly and one-sided and one-dimensional are not interesting at all,” Kurtzman says.
And when you have an actor of Paul [Giamatti’s]’s caliber, you owe him and the audience a role that’s rich and deep and meaningful. And part of what I think was very interesting for us was writing Nus from a perspective of understanding, finally getting to hear where he came from. Now, you may not agree with what he did about it, but you can certainly understand that he suffered the same kinds of traumas that everyone else did, and they were extreme.”
This narrative complexity is reflected throughout the episode: Anisha blames Nahla for her separation from her son. Nahla blames herself (for Anisha’s imprisonment, among many other things). And Braka, for his part, has internalized a childhood memory to frame the Federation as the source of his people’s woes, rather than his own father.
“You’re not supposed to root for either of them, you’re supposed to root for both of them,” co-showrunner Noga Landau says when asked about the courtroom-style face-off at the heart of this episode. “You’re even supposed to root for Nus Braka in a way. I think every generation of Star Trek has to counteract something out there in the current ethos that is not helpful to humanity.
“It used to be, with Gene Roddenberry at the very beginning, what he, among many other things, had to counteract was the idea that you couldn’t have a diverse workplace, you couldn’t have women in the workplace, you couldn’t have people of color in the workplace. And he did an incredible job of showing us that you can, it’s fine, that people of all different origins and backgrounds are going to work just fine with each other, and they’re going to stand up for each other. That was very important. And every generation of Trek has done something successive like that.”
For Starfleet Academy’s showrunners, it was important to confront similar issues facing modern audiences, which – as we’ve seen in the ongoing debate around the show’s existence this season – can occasionally need a reminder that everyone, whether they’re designated a hero, a villain, or somewhere in between, is on their own journey.
“I think that one thing that the world needs a little bit more of right now is a reminder that there are no perfect bad guys and there are no perfect good guys,” Landau continues. “And that instead, it’s people who are often forced into very tricky situations who have to oppose each other, and each party is the hero of its own movie. And Nus Braka, though for all of his brutality and for everything that he did, the point is to look at and understand why he did it. Same thing with Anisha, and frankly, same thing with Nahla.”
Like so many stories in Star Trek, “Rubincon” is ultimately a tale that’s rich in shades of grey, about characters who are repeatedly asked to both encourage their better angels and face their worst demons.
“The difference is ultimately who wins the day. It’s the person who’s willing to be accountable and the person who is willing to stand up to the rigors of a trial. And what’s proven by the end of the episode is that in this case, the person who can stand up to the rigors of a trial herself and see her institution and belief system on trial for what’s happened is Nahla, and it is Starfleet. Nus Braka is not able to stand up to it because he’s unwilling to be accountable. He’s unwilling to bend in any way against his own core beliefs. So that was an important story to tell, because I think that people logging onto social media nowadays need a reminder — a gentle reminder — of nuance.”
All 10 episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy are available to stream on Paramount+ now.
The post Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Showrunners Break Down That Season Finale Trial appeared first on Den of Geek.
