Movies & TV Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Theatre Kids — Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s “The Life of the Stars” Tilly arrives at the Academy to lead a drama workshop, while Sam’s holographic glitches continue… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on February 26, 2026 Credit: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Paramount+ One of the things I really like about how television in general has evolved over the past couple of decades is that the folks writing them and acting in them have finally started to admit that trauma is a thing and that actions have actual consequences. Part of this is a natural byproduct of the trend toward serialization and, even in shows that aren’t serialized, stronger continuity between episodes. And it’s all for the better, because I have always found it frustrating that shows haven’t dealt with those consequences. I think it was one of the reasons why I loved, for example, Hill Street Blues so much, because that show, unlike most, dealt with consequences and trauma on a regular basis. To keep this to Star Trek, it has always frustrated me that the conventions of TV at the time prevented them from truly dealing with the traumas that the characters went through. I mean, look at the end of the first season of the original series: first Kirk has to allow the great love of his life to die in order to save history, then in the very next episode he has to listen to his sister-in-law die shortly before finding the dead body of his older brother. That’s the kind of thing that would take months for him to work through, but 1960s TV didn’t do that sort of thing. Hell, they barely had the consequences make it to the end of the episode. This didn’t get much better with the first wave of spinoffs. The example that stands out the most for me is La Forge being brainwashed in “The Mind’s Eye,” which acknowledged the trauma at the very end of the episode, with LeVar Burton plaintively crying to Troi, “But I remember everything!” about his trip to Risa that never happened. But over the course of the character’s remaining appearances on three seasons of TNG, four movies, and one season of Picard, this trauma is never even mentioned. Not to mention things like Kim on Voyager doing the same coming-of-age story over and over and over and over again. The current crop of shows, however, have embraced the notion of consequences and especially of how characters deal with trauma, whether it’s small—Detmer’s difficulties handling the leap forward in time in Discovery’s third season—or large—Picard’s visceral reaction to being back at a Borg Cube in Picard’s first season. TNG had the good sense to put a shrink on the ship, but it wasn’t until Picard’s “Nepenthe” that Troi truly felt like a therapist rather than a plot device. All this is a long way toward saying that “The Life of the Stars” is a superlative example of showing the characters dealing with trauma. There’s a lot that’s impressive about this episode—which finally brings in Mary Wiseman’s Tilly, who was originally promised to be a recurring character, but who is apparently only in this one episode this season—but perhaps the thing that impressed me most was that it used the Thorton Wilder play Our Town, a play I have always despised with every fibre of my being, and in the end I actually liked the use of it. The thing that impressed me the second-most was that it wasn’t just the trauma of the events of “Come, Let’s Away” being dealt with here, as the EMH gets himself a story arc that deals with the Doctor’s own centuries-old trauma. Let’s start with Our Town. Tilly arrives from the original off-Earth Academy campus she was seen transferring to in Discovery’s “All is Possible” in order to help the cadets who went through the Miyazaki mission. The class she offers that our main characters participate in? A theatre class! The cadets all think this is stupid. Darem goes so far as to say that it’s stupid, and Tilly says that the ones who say that are the ones who don’t become captains. Stagecraft is a big part of being an officer in so many ways. The students are asked to suggest plays that can be performed and discussed. Jay-Den suggests a Klingon opera, while SAM—who has, of course, studied every play she can get her photonic hands on—suggests Our Town. Unfortunately, SAM is unable to stick around, because she’s still glitching. The patches applied at the holographic spa she went to in “Ko’Zeine” aren’t taking. (The EMH is a bit peeved that SAM kept this from him until she collapses in class.) The solution is to return to the Kasq homeworld, which Ake, the EMH, and SAM do. The Kasq live in a place where time moves more quickly than it does elsewhere, prompting the EMH to recall a similar planet Voyager encountered in “Blink of an Eye,” including the Doctor living there for three years and having a family. Because the EMH and Ake don’t hardly age, they are the only ones who can go. The EMH continues to resist SAM’s attempts to have him as a mentor, which we saw from the moment they met in “Kids These Days,” and extends here to the EMH refusing to hold SAM’s hand when the Kasq supervisor—again voiced by the great Chiwetel Ejiofor—examines her. This seems unimaginably cruel, but eventually it all comes out when the EMH explains about the events of Voyager’s “Real Life,” when he created a family for himself on the holodeck and had to watch his daughter die. Since then, he has lived for centuries, and everyone he was close to when we saw him in the twenty-fourth century on both Voyager and Prodigy is now long dead. He’s resisted SAM’s overtures because he resists everyone’s overtures. He doesn’t want to go through the trauma of losing someone he loves all over again, as he’s done that plenty of times, and it’s awful, and he is a self-described coward. But then SAM’s problem is diagnosed. The reason why she continues to have cascading failures is that she’s not equipped to deal with trauma. Sentient beings build their ability to suffer through childhood. That’s part of what growing up is: learning how to deal with life. SAM, though, didn’t have a childhood. She was created as a seventeen-year-old, but she didn’t actually have those seventeen years of infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Therefore the EMH recommends that SAM be re-created as an infant, have her grow to seventeen years of age. She’ll still have the memories of the previous iteration of SAM, but that will be integrated with the new SAM that has lived seventeen years, with the EMH as her parent (and Ake presumably as her eccentric aunt, as she’s still around for all of this). Because time passes more quickly on Kasq, the seventeen years is only a few weeks back at the Academy, during which Tilly is trying to get the kids to process their trauma—especially Tarima. Yes, Tarima is back, and she has transferred to the Academy from the War College, having been given an implant that is better, faster, stronger at regulating her empathy-gone-wild. Zoë Steiner does superlative work, as Tarima is so very brittle here, as she may have recovered physically, but the psychological recovery still has a long way to go. When she first arrives, she makes almost no eye contact with anyone, and is holding herself so tightly you fear she’s going to break in half. Tellingly, she doesn’t loosen up until she gets drunk, at which point she summons Caleb—which is the first time she truly acknowledges Caleb, despite his best efforts. She tries to seduce him, but to his credit, Caleb refuses to give in to that while she’s inebriated. She then opens up to Genesis in their shared quarters (shared with SAM, but she’s off on Kasq at this point) about how she doesn’t know who she is anymore. She wanted to go to the War College to learn discipline, but now she’s been forced to focus on the sciences to keep her out of trouble. Genesis reminds her that they’re all doing that: trying to figure out who they’re turning into. Credit: Paramount+ In class, though, Tarima keeps refusing delivery of what Tilly is trying to provide. She’s so stubborn about not wanting to address her issues that even her brother tells her to quit it, as tiptoeing around her has become exhausting. Tilly, of course, doesn’t give up, and continues to do what she’s there to do: educate. I love how first SAM, then Tilly, then all the students—though it takes them a while to get there—use Our Town to help process what they’ve been through. Like I said, I have never liked that particular play (it’s entirely populated with characters about whom I don’t give even the tiniest shit), but I can see why writers Gaia Violo and Jane Maggs used it. The relationship between George and Emily is a bog-obvious comp for Caleb and Tarima, with Tilly going so far as to cast them both in those roles. And the play is inherently about change and the cycle of life. This is a beautifully put together episode, and a complex one that incorporates many different characterizations and elements. I came out of it wanting more, truly, but I think it addressed what it came to address very skillfully. I loved Ake and the EMH talking about the effects of immortality on their ability to love people, I loved Reno and Tilly having their reunion, I loved Ake, Reno, and Tilly sharing a drink and passing the Bechdel Test with flying colors, I loved the sheer joy on everyone’s face when SAM returned to the Academy, I loved how absolutely goddamned brilliantly Robert Picardo played the EMH’s emotional struggles, I loved Ake returning to the Academy after seventeen subjective years and just sitting alone on the bridge. Most of all, I loved seeing how Tilly has matured and thrived in her role as teacher. Watching Tilly’s progress from motor-mouthed bundle of anxious energy cadet in Discovery’s first season to the mature, superlative educator has been an absolute joy. I really hope they use her more in season two.[end-mark] The post Theatre Kids — <i>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</i>’s “The Life of the Stars” appeared first on Reactor.