Movies & TV Star Trek: Starfleet Academy “Welcome to the team” — Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s “Vitus Reflux” The Academy cadets and the students of Starfleet’s War College face off in a “friendly” competition… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on January 22, 2026 Credit: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Paramount+ From 2000-2007, your humble reviewer was the editor in charge of a monthly series of novella-length Star Trek eBooks featuring the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. We did 74 novellas across those seven years by a variety of authors, some of whom are well-known Trek authors (David Mack, Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, Christopher L. Bennett, the late great Dave Galanter, Dean Wesley Smth, Christie Golden), others for whom their S.C.E. stories were more or less their only Trek work (Paul Kupperberg, Loren L. Coleman & Randall N. Bills, Aaron Rosenberg, the late great Scott Ciencin, Richard C. White, John S. Drew). One of the stories we kept trying to do, but which took a while to get done, was one involving a prank war on the U.S.S. da Vinci, the ship on which the series took place. The struggle was that the folks in the licensing department were resistant to the notion of a prank war on a Starfleet ship because we’re talking about professionals in a military organization who wouldn’t do that. All the counterexamples we provided of professionals in contemporary military organizations (not to mention professional engineers) who prank each other all the damn time fell on deaf ears. However, we finally found a way to make it work: we had the prank war happen at Starfleet Academy, the end result being Creative Couplings by Glenn Hauman & Aaron Rosenberg (a story that also featured the first-ever Klingon-Jewish wedding). Students pranking each other was something the folks in licensing were willing to approve. And, of course, it took until there was a Starfleet Academy TV show to have a prank war between two sets of people break out in an episode. I have to qualify it because there was one other Trek episode involving pranks, to wit, the animated episode “The Practical Joker,” but that was a computer malfunction, not people playing jokes on each other. Amusingly, in that episode, McCoy mentions how they used to prank each other in medical school… Now we have “Vitus Reflex,” which makes use of the fact that there’s both Starfleet Academy and the War College, who are natural rivals. While we haven’t gotten the full details on the War College, it’s presumably something that grew out of Earth being on its own post-Burn, built on the former campus of Starfleet Academy. They’re training soldiers, while Starfleet Academy is training Starfleet officers. The students at the War College don’t think much of the Academy cadets, and the prank war starts with them, when they transport several of the cadets from the shower to some other part of the campus. We also get a new futuristic game to join Parisses Squares and three-dimensional chess and kal-toh and Stratagema and dom-jot and dabo and tongo: Calica, which is a mix of Laser Tag and Capture the Flag. Lura and Reno hold tryouts for the Academy Calica team, and this gives us an opportunity to show what happens when the two overachievers want the same thing. The episode opens with Darem writing a letter home while showing that his morning routine involves getting up before either of his roommates and doing an intense workout routine—and then we see that Genesis has a similar workout routine every morning. The aristocratic Khionian and the admiral’s daughter both have a fervent need to be the best of the best of the best, so of course they each want to not just make the Calica team, but be the team captain. What I love about this plotline is how it plays out, because it goes exactly the way it should given the backgrounds of the respective overachievers. Darem is an aristocrat who assumes that greatness is his right. Genesis is expected to achieve things because of who her parent is, but she’s also expected to work hard for it. Of course, the pair of them tie in points needed to make captain. (Of all the people who try out, the eight highest scores make the team, while the highest score becomes captain.) So they have a shootout competition, and Darem only wins because he says something mean to distract Genesis, allowing him to beat her. The catch is that Darem isn’t actually any good at being the captain. When they play a Calica game against the War College’s team (more on that in a minute), he has no strategy whatsoever, and they lose several rounds in a row. The weaponry in Calica is a modified phaser that, when it hits a player, it transports that player to the penalty box, where they have to sit until the round is over. In one round, Darem is zapped out immediately, and so Genesis takes over and wins their first round, at last. After that point, Darem yields the captaincy to her, recognizing that she’ll actually be good at it. In a lovely touch, the “goalie” who has to protect the final target that you have to hit to win a round is the mascot: someone dressed as some kind of animal. In the cases of the two schools in question, the Academy mascot is a lapling (seen in TNG’s “The Most Toys”), while the War College has a mugato (the original series’ “A Private Little War” and LD’s “Mugato, Gumato”). The second prank that the War College cadets pull on the Academy cadets is to broadcast footage of their less-than-stellar moments during Calica tryouts to the whole school. And that changes everything, because Ake realizes that the only way the cadets could have done that is if they have access to the footage—which cadets don’t have. She confronts the War College commander Kelrec (played with button-down hideboundness by Canadian character actor Raoul Bhaneja). That scene is a delight, as Kelrec is rigid, habitual, controlled—basically, everything that Holly Hunter’s Ake isn’t. She slinks all over his quarters, relaxed where he’s stiff, constantly moving where he’s still. And she calls him on the fact that he’s helping his students with their pranks. Credit to scripters Alex Taub and Kiley Rossetter for Ake’s rebuke of Kelrec in this scene. Kelrec high-handedly says that Ake’s cadets should be able to handle adversity, and Ake points out that these are all kids who came of age in the Burn and a lot of them have had plenty of adversity to deal with, thanks. The Academy should be a place where they can learn in safety for a change. Ake, though, isn’t going to just actively return the favor and overtly help her cadets get back at Kelrec’s cadets. But she will drop lots and lots of hints. At first, the Academy cadets challenge the War College cadets to the aforementioned game of Calica, though that ends prematurely when Lura and Reno catch them. (I should add that this episode establishes that Reno and Lura are a couple, which is fantastic. Their conversation about dinner plans is epic, with Lura having a craving for coq au vin with Klingon garnishes. (Speaking of that, there’s an equally epic bit where Ja’Den sings the praises of blood in food and drink, which as we know from bloodwine and rokeg blood pie, is a Klingon delicacy. (Caleb is, of course, grossed out by it. (Oh, geez, I’m doing the nested parentheticals again. Sorry about that.)))) Early in the episode, we’re introduced to a plant that is very obviously inspired by Little Shop of Horrors, which responds to the emotions of beings around it. Students have been given plants to care for, and they have to be soft-spoken and not stressed when near it. So our cadets use their assorted skills—as well as Caleb disguised as a mugato with a replica of Kelrec’s eye, obtained through clever subterfuge—to grow a bunch of that plant in each of the dorms of the War College cadets. Of course, they’re all surprised and scared, which just makes the plants grow huge and nasty. And the only way they can stop the plants from rampaging is to be calm and collected and show empathy. The very qualities that are at the heart of Starfleet and of the Federation. Hey look, it’s a lesson as well as a victory in the prank war! Because, as Ake tartly points out to Caleb when he complains that everything is a learning experience here, it’s a school. And it’s also still Star Trek, so the solution should absolutely be about empathy and understanding, and also science-ing the shit out of something (even if it is a practical joke). One other plot bit carries over from last time, and that’s Tarima’s decision to attend the War College instead of the Academy. Caleb confronts her on this subject while playing a flirty game of one-on-one basketball with her. Because he’s a thundering dumbass, and also colossally self-centered (to be fair, he comes by that honestly by virtue of being on his own and on the run since he was six), he assumes that Tarima did it to avoid him, either because she didn’t really like him or maybe because she likes him too much. But the reason has nothing to do with him, but rather with her. On Betazed, she could be herself because everyone is telepathic and used to feeling everything. Off Betazed, she needs control to avoid feeling all the things, so she needs the discipline that she will learn at the War College. Yes, that’s part of what she’d get at the Academy, but it’s only a part, where it’s the primary mission statement of the War College, and that’s what she needs. It’s very sensible, and I hope that they don’t contrive a way to get her to switch to the Academy, as having her there gives us an entrée into the War College. Finally, I want to say that it’s obvious that Stephen Colbert is having so much fun as the voice of the digital dean, especially when he gets to be the de fact announcer for the Calica tryouts and competition.[end-mark] The post “Welcome to the team” — <i>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</i>’s “Vitus Reflux” appeared first on Reactor.