So I hear the first episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is available for free on YouTube. I think Samsung Plus is offering it as well. Not that it matters either way because I don’t care. The marketing felt nothing like Star Trek, I don’t care how many voice overs you use from actual characters from better shows. I’ve seen a few reviews and it sounds worse that I was expecting. Actually, some of the backstory reminds me of that failed animated series pitch that also decided to tear the Federation apart by ruining warp travel. I wonder if Paramount ripped itself off. You’re better off reading the comic from the 90s that spun off from Deep Space Nine and showed Nog at the Academy than this garbage.
To see the concept done better, we return to a show I discussed many years ago, Space Academy. This show, one of the few live-action productions by Filmation, also featured a bunch of cadets of a “federation” learning how to become space explorers. As the commander, Lost In Space‘s Jonathan Harris played Campu, a far different role from Doctor Smith. A further Star Trek connection would be that James Doohan played the commander of the Star Command garrison on the same planetoid in the spin-off show Jason Of Star Command, a previous Saturday Night Showcase entry. which serialized adventure of a man with superhuman strength fending off an invasion from outside the galaxy. And a couple of actors playing the kids also menaced the Enterprise in “And A Child Shall Lead Them” from the original Star Trek. Sadly, some of the actors of this show passed away according to Wikipedia (question the source).
Since I already did episode one in a previous Showcase, I’m jumping to episode 5, “There’s No Place Like Home” which shares some ideas with the Starfleet Academy episode according to reviews. Loki is given the chance to find out where he came from. The youngest member of the team, he’s put in a moral quandary when the source of that information has a request in return, to steal an explosive formula that might be more explosive than he knows. It’s up to him and his friends in Blue Team to save the day, but can they? Well, the show has 13 episodes so you can hazard a guess. Enjoy.
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