Movies & TV Star Trek: Starfleet Academy “How’s that for a trauma loop?” — Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s “Come, Let’s Away” Who’s ready for one of the darkest and most depressing episodes of Star Trek? By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on February 12, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share So in all the hugger-mugger of last week’s DS9 tribute, I never really talked about one of the things that happened in the episode: Caleb and Tarima smooched. I mention this first in this review of one of the darkest and most depressing episodes of Star Trek extant (which is not a criticism, but a description), because that’s where the episode starts, and it’s an important plot point. The opening of the episode fools you into thinking that this is going to be a sappy romantic episode, as we get telepathic sex with the happy couple, and it’s full of gooshy romantical stuff and dewy-eyed looks and naked bodies intertwined and all that fun stuff. Athena is back in space in this episode, in this case a joint training exercise between the Academy and the War College: managing an away team, specifically one trying to salvage the U.S.S. Miyazaki. This is a Starfleet ship that attempted during the Burn to make a singularity drive work. It failed, resulting in catastrophic failure and the death of the crew. The War College and now also the Academy have been using the Miyazaki for training purposes, training the cadets in away-team management, with one team on the bridge of the ship and one team boarding the Miyazaki. This is the kind of story that I was worried would be every episode: cadets do a training mission, it goes horribly wrong, and the cadets have to fight their way out of it via clever means. I was relieved to see that, after the premiere episode, they didn’t dip into that well every week. Instead, we’ve seen them actually doing cadet-y things: taking classes, learning stuff, as well as exploring relationships and such. The stakes have been refreshingly low for the most part. Not this week. A rather vicious alien species known as the Furies—who seem to be shifting in and out of phase all the time, and are described at one point as being in constant pain, which is part of why they’re so cranky all the time—attack and board the Miyazaki. With the help of their officer chaperone, Lieutenant Commander Tomov, the hostages are able to escape, though Tomov is killed, sacrificing himself to save the kids. Jeff Tervainen does the best he can to make the clichéd dead-meat character of Tomov interesting (he made a wager with Lura about how the cadets would perform, for one thing), but the only serious problem I had with this episode was the tiresome inevitability of Tomov’s death, and the fact that his death was completely forgotten about shortly after it happened. Star Trek has had a redshirt problem practically since jump (Lee Kelso, anyone?), but the Secret Hideout shows have generally been better about it. Tomov, though, is a total redshirt, and it’s irksome. Anyhow, the hostages manage to lock themselves onto the bridge, though it’s slow going, as the ship’s computer is fragmented. SAM is able to interface with it and put it back together, but then the computer still thinks it’s on the Miyazaki’s final mission. It takes SAM a bit to convince it that the crew is long dead and the cadets are the new crew, and would you obey our commands, please, before the bad guys break into the bridge? They’re aided, entertainingly, by a comic book. B’Avi, the spectacularly snotty Vulcan War College cadet played by Alexander Eling, is an avid reader of a comic book that chronicles fictionalized adventures of the Miyazaki crew. (Though the pages we see look like an original series comic from IDW…) Meanwhile, the folks back on Athena, as well as Vance, communicating holographically, are trying to figure out how to get the hostages back safely. The Furies are demanding a ransom, but they’re known for killing their hostages after the ransom is paid, so while they’re gathering the latinum necessary to pay, they need alternatives. Vance points out that there’s one person who’s gotten the better of the Furies recently: Nus Braka. Ake is massively against the idea of asking him for help, but they’re low on options. Meanwhile, the cadets help. Genesis—who is part of the group that was assigned to the bridge in the training exercise along with Darem—comes up with a way to find the Furies’ cloaked ship that they have to have nearby, as that’s got to be the source of the jamming field that’s keeping them from transporting the cadets out. However, in order to keep the Furies from noticing, the probe they’re using to track debris displacement is very very slow. Braka arrives at the Athena and here’s where the episode shines, as every moment that Paul Giamatti is onscreen shines, especially because in every scene, he’s sharing a room with Holly Hunter and/or Oded Fehr. Even if the other parts of the episode were terrible (they aren’t), just being able to watch these three interact, and then later watching Giamatti and Hunter interact, is magical. Absolutely great stuff, with the constant negotiating, the banter, the give-and-take, the snark, and the hidden meanings. All three characters are smart, all three characters are not easily misled, but two of them are hamstrung by ethics—something Braka points out rather snidely. Fehr is the voice of reason and compromise, as befits his position, even though he knows that Braka’s a piece of slime. Hunter plays things uncharacteristically close to the vest, not willing to give a millimeter to Braka. And Giamatti once against magnificently chews every micron of scenery, as Braka is in the driver’s seat, and he knows it. Vance has to consult with President Rillak over Braka’s terms—asking the Federation to stop providing dilithium to a species that can go around a passage that Braka controls—and after Vance’s hologram fades, we get just Braka and Ake. What I love about this scene is that Ake stays quiet. She lets Braka rant on and on, and it enables her to, she thinks, get the upper hand. We also learn that Ake had a son, and she had to sacrifice his life on a mission some time earlier. Meanwhile, there’s another method of helping the hostages that Tarima provides. As established way back in TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint,” the episode that introduced the species, Betazoids and non-Betazoids who become intimate also become telepathically linked. The intensity of that link causes problems for Caleb, as Tarima gets way deeper into his brain meats than he’s comfortable with. But that intensity also allows her to mindlink with Caleb, which she does under the supervision of the EMH, and with the temporary shutting down of her implant. Credit: Paramount+ We learn that the implant was put in place after she got so deep into someone’s mind that she blew out her father’s auditory system, which is why her father is now deaf. But she’s willing to turn it off to try to help. Kelrec gives her specific instructions to pass on to Caleb so that the cadets can activate the ship’s singularity drive, which should disrupt the jamming field. At first, it seems like things are going well. The probe Genesis is using finds the cloaked ship, and attacking that might stop the jamming field, plus Tarima is in contact with Caleb. They have two possible ways of wiping out the jamming field, and the U.S.S. Sargasso has arrived with a sonic weapon that is similar to what Braka used to beat back the Furies, which was in development on a classified starbase. However, once they expose the cloaked ship, it decloaks only to be revealed as, not a Furies ship, but Braka’s ship (the same one he used to try to take over Athena in “Kids These Days”). The cadets on Miyazaki are able to activate the singularity drive, but it takes time for it to take down the jamming field, and in that time, the Furies break through the forcefield protecting the bridge. In the ensuing firefight, SAM is badly disrupted and B’Avi is killed. Tarima then yanks out her implant and uses her link with Caleb to fry the brains of the Furies on the bridge. Then, finally, Athena can beam them back. It becomes clear that they’ve been played. The starbase is attacked and ransacked with appalling casualties. (In a nice touch, Vance says that Discovery is leading the rescue operations on the starbase.) In the end, Braka has his grubby hands on some classified tech, SAM and Kyle (who was shot earlier in the episode) are both injured, B’Avi and Tomov are dead, and Tarima is in a coma after ripping her implant out and killing the Furies. Braka leaves a lengthy message for Ake, and we end on her playing it. Braka compliments Ake, as going up against her has forced him to up his game—she’s a good teacher, a comment he obviously is making to be as hurtful as possible. It’s easy to forget after several episodes of pranks and relationship shenanigans and classes and formal debates and such that we’re dealing with a Federation that is a shadow of its former self, still putting itself back together, and is not a super-power in the galaxy anymore. As we saw particularly in season three of Discovery, the galaxy of the thirty-second century is a very dangerous, very unpleasant place. And yet, this is still a Star Trek episode, and it never forgets that. Our heroes are able to gain some measure of success due to their science-ing the shit out of the situation, using their cleverness and resourcefulness. The loss of life would’ve been a lot worse otherwise. The end result is by no means a victory, but the defeat is mitigated by our heroes being, well, heroes.[end-mark] The post “How’s that for a trauma loop?” — <i>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</i>’s “Come, Let’s Away” appeared first on Reactor.