Star Trek: Starfleet Academy> Read The Comic Instead

Yes, I have seen the trailer. No, I’m not impressed.

While I do question some of the critiques, many born from just past experience with Kurtzman “Trek” (for example the main cast is actually not as female dominant as I’ve seen claimed, but having seen Memory Alpha’s preview report as of this writing, and the trailer, I do agree with “pretty boy Klingon” and why the hell is there a female Jem’ Hadar when they’re a clone race that serves as the army for the Founders that never had a female because they don’t reproduce?), it’s those same experiences that make me apprehensive. No, I’m not fixing that run-on sentence. I’m not sure where to divide it to make sense. My apologies.

Anyway, not having Paramount Plus means I haven’t suffered through most of Kurtzman “Trek”. I did watch the pilot episode of Discovery on CBS, but I wasn’t impressed. Everything I’ve heard since has made me even less impressed not only about that show but the entire Kurtzman era. I wonder if that’s why I never went back for more Prodigy, either? So I have about as much interest in Kurtzman’s Starfleet Academy as I do the rest of his alternate universe. In other words, none.

Before this nonsense clogs up the wi-fi, however, I would push you towards a most likely better, but sadly all too short, better take. I haven’t read IDW’s version, but it’s set in the movie timeline so I don’t care. Instead we’re going back to 1996. For a time, Marvel had been coordinating with Paramount to form the imprint Paramount Comics. While not exclusively Star Trek based, the majority of its comics were Star Trek, the second time Marvel technically had the Star Trek licence before losing it to DC Comics for decades. The titles included:

• Star Trek Unlimited: For some reason the original series and The Next Generation shared a double-sized comic, with only one actual crossover between the two.
• Star Trek: Early Voyages: A better take on the Christopher Pike years aboard the Enterprise than anything I’ve seen or heard about Strange New Worlds.
• Plus miniseries like Untold Voyages, set between movies, a couple of one-shots, and separate ongoings for Deep Space Nine and Voyager. I wouldn’t expect them to share a title, but combining both TV Enterprises makes for questions in my comic box lineup.

And of course for this article, Starfleet Academy. Set during the 24th century, it was a way for Nog to remain part of the franchise when his character left Deep Space Nine to join Starfleet. I reviewed these comics during a “Yesterday’s” Comic re-read, but this is a full series overview, and why these are better to track down than anything Kurtzman is going to toss out, given his history with “Trek” branded shows that don’t feel like Star Trek.

Look, Parker, just because you can’t do the obligatory issue 3 Spidey-cameo doesn’t mean you can ruin the first cover!

As mentioned, Starfleet Academy was a way to keep DS9’s Nog alive in the series, following his time at the Academy. This continued his character arc of not so much rejecting Ferengi ways as adding Starfleet’s ways to temper them. I guess between his father and uncle he wanted something else to follow. He would be placed into Omega Squad, a diverse group of people back when that wasn’t corrupted into an ugly word used to cloak the real goals of activists. The first few issues are about his settling in, dealing with prejudice as the first Ferengi since the race was still into an actual economy instead of just making everything in their futuristic 3D printer and doing stuff just because. The rest of the team consisted of: (yes, more bullet points)

• Kamalah Goldstein: (Bottom right in the cover to the left) Made the team leader until her passing, nobody complained because she was a good character, trying to keep her team of newbies from becoming dysfunctional. She was the heart of the team, a daughter of an Israeli and a Palestinian, as they got along like everyone else. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any conflict, just not along the lines of what we see in 2025. Thus she knew how to keep the team together and getting along. She ended up dying partway through saving her team, and while I would have liked to have seen more (in fact there was a tease that maybe she wasn’t so dead that sadly never got paid off), her time with the team in the early days was important to what Omega Squad would become.
• Matt Decker: (The other dude) A descendant of the Matt Decker from the TOS episode “The Doomsday Machine” and Willard Decker from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (don’t ask me how since both are dead by the end of their stories), Matt is living in the footsteps of his Admiral father. Also, his brother was lost in space and I get the feeling that would come into play at some point had the series continued. (Maybe he’s hanging out with Kamalah?) Matt’s best friend is recurring character Yoshi, whom he was separated from thanks to botching up a Starfleet investigation trying to prove themselves. Matt worries about his reputation, and his arc involves learning to support his team and putting them before his personal goals not because the goals are bad but the way he was going about it was. This included accepting Nog on Omega Squad and not being teamed with Yoshi. Events led to him losing an eye and gaining a robotic one and taking over leadership of the Squad after Kamalah’s alleged death. He probably has the most development as a character of the team.
• Pava Ek’Noor sh’Aqabaa: An Andorian and probably the reason Andorians turn me on as far as Trek aliens go. Yes, I wrote that and I’m not taking it back. Pava isn’t so much loose as very flirty. Blame that on her romance story author mom and not having her dad along. Now momma’s a loose girl. She even hooked up with Matt’s dad during parent’s day. We also get to learn about her past, a Klingon lover in a rival Klingon academy squad not helped by one of his teammates wanting the dude for herself and not caring who she has to destroy to get him. Spoilers: she doesn’t really get him, but does manage to cause a lot of trouble for both squads and is why Matt has a cybernetic eye and Kamalah has a death certificate.
• T’Prell: A Vulcan representative…now what do I spoil here? I don’t want to ruin the story but you’ll see what’s going on if you read my individual reviews or that Memory Beta linked article. What I can say is she has an interesting connection with the Romulans that forms an important storyline.
• Edam Astrun: To best describe Edam is to use words I tend to avoid using on this site. He’s rude, obnoxious, self-important, and for most of his time thinks himself better than the rest of the team. Edam isn’t just a Betazed telepath (I guess Betazed has an “Africa”, too, as he’s the only black Betazed I’ve ever seen at that time) but with a level so high he needs medication to restrain it, possibly one of the reasons for his behavior. He also went to Starfleet just to annoy his pacifist parents who wanted him to attend a Betazed academy instead. He does become less obnoxious and more of a team player before the story ends, but mostly that’s because of his fascination with T’Prell that I still can’t get into without a huge spoiler. He also makes the worst first impression possible.

“I swear, this isn’t what it looks like!” “It looks like you’re being tortured by a cult.” “IT IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE SAVE ME!”

Their primary instructor is Kyethn Zund, a Trill (and also a woman–amazing when that wasn’t immediately a concern because they were written like characters instead of stereotypes that had to represent “every woman”), but the focus is on these characters as they learn to become better people and Starfleet representatives. For Matt, he has to learn to follow his own path. For Nog, it’s acceptance that he started learning on DS9. The others I went over in their descriptions. Edam and T’Prell’s arcs push the plot while the others experience personal growth as characters. That’s because telepaths end up playing a huge role thanks to occurring alongside Star Trek: Deep Space Nine both as a TV show and tie-in comic.

This was the only series not directly tied to a show, but the Dominion War storyline on Deep Space Nine the show impacted this comic more than even the show’s tie-in comic. That time Changelings invaded the Academy? Omega Squad was in the thick of it. Edam’s recruitment was part of an attempt by Starfleet to use telepaths to expose the Founder’s agents. The Founders responded with a “mental virus” (like a computer virus, only the “computer” is the brain) that they tested on Talos IV. (We also got an appearance from Charlie X. These are the only times I recall continuing older Trek stories in this title.) When events bring Omega Squad to the planet so forbidden it’s the death penalty, it not only gets them in trouble but kicks off the Paramount Comics crossover event “The Telepathy War” as Omega Squad teams with the DS9 crew, already at the center of the Dominion War, the Enterprise-D in the rare Unlimited issue to not feature the TOS crew as a second story, and a “why did you bother” attempt to include Voyager tangentially. There was also the Telepathy War special that tied into the storyline. It’s a really good crossover that didn’t have to worry about ruining existing storylines as they mostly had done-in-one or two-part stories at the time.

Starfleet Academy also ended with a scene you won’t see in today’s Trek or most other 2020s fiction. Long story short, our cadets meet up with an alien who came through a portal and is the last of her species. Her whole race is dead except for her. She ends up going on Yoshi’s team, just as we’re told Yoshi is gay and just got a boyfriend. The revelation comes out of nowhere and I swear it’s just there to make this scene happen, as Yoshi is upset that the alien lizard girl who is the last of her kind is repulsed by homosexuality or any relationship that won’t lead to children, something she can’t have unless she at best finds a compatible species in the Alpha Quadrant who will still only be half of her race. Yoshi confronts the ranking officer at the time, Captain Sisko, about this and wants her kicked out of Starfleet for her bigotry.

Remember when Star Trek actually taught this?

In a “modern audiences” story, Halakith would be treated as a monster and either constantly humiliated in the most violent way possible for her sins. In good Trek, her perspective isn’t praised nor condemned. The story and writer Chris Cooper, who did the entire series, understood that. In fact, according to Memory Beta this wasn’t the character he wanted to gay up:

Cooper’s run on Starfleet Academy notably featured depiction of Star Trek characters in a gay relationship, a milestone of sexuality in the Star Trek franchise. Cooper’s original drafts had lead character Matthew Decker as a gay character, but Paramount’s licensing office felt this was too drastic. Instead of using a series regular, Yoshi Mishima was introduced as a prominent gay recurring character. When the studio ordered that the comic could not show a gay kiss, Cooper and the editorial staff followed along, but decided that there would be no kissing at all depicted in the title.

Except for Pava and her Klingon ex if memory serves. This is not something you’d see today. Yoshi was also a regular supporting cast member throughout the series and despite being on a different team was an ally to Omega Squad when they needed it. It wasn’t until the final issue, leading up to that scene. that we learned Yoshi was gay because that was never the important part of his character. Learning to accept Nog in Starfleet and being a friend to Matt were. Cooper also introduced a potential threat that I don’t remember being named in the comic but Memory Beta calls the Viator. It’s one of a series of plot threads the comic’s unfortunately early cancellation kept us from ever having. There was also a weird issue that was released in both English and the “original” Klingon during one of Omega Squad’s encounters with First Cadre, those rogue Klingon cadets from earlier. I don’t think that was fully resolved, either, or why someone Nog thought was Kamalah (or at least sounded like her according to Nog’s comments–being a comic book and all) warning him that his team was still alive and needed his help during the Telepathy War.

Speaking of comics, this is the only time I’m aware of that comics, or any media outside of the “approved” Star Trek Universe surviving media, shows up in the franchise, as both Matt and Nog are collectors. This leads to starting their bonding as Nog brought one back from his trip to the past and Matt has a huge collection.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy only ran one year, when the Paramount Comics collaboration ran its course and wasn’t renewed. That’s too bad since outside of the DC run, Marvel’s run had some great Star Trek stories, and this comic was great addition. It’s too bad they didn’t just adapt and continue this, but that would be in a different continuity and even if Cooper continued the animated series (which is what it would have to be without recasting Nog or the other crossover characters for the Telepathy War arc) as he originally planned I don’t see Kurtzman going along with it. So before watching that show, go pick up these 19 issues, the Telepathy War special, and if you don’t get the entire Paramount Comics run, at least get the crossovers. (You can ignore the Voyager comic. While they run into telepaths on their end, the only real connection to the crossover, being in a quadrant far away, is someone having a premonition of the event.) I think you’ll be better off than whatever Kurtzman’s show is going to be.

Also heard they want to redo Kirk’s time as Captain. Even harder pass.