Movies & TV Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Adults These Days — Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s “Rubincon” By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on March 12, 2026 Credit: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Paramount+ There is a great deal that I loved about the excellent finale to Starfleet Academy’s first season, including that they followed the formula that was so successful in “Kids These Days” and “Come, Let’s Away” and put Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti in a room together for significant portions of the episode. But the moment that got me was when Ake brought up something that was a minor part of Anisha and Braka’s trial back in the during-the-Burn teaser for “Kids These Days,” one that is easily forgotten in the hugger-mugger of Anisha and Caleb being separated and Giamatti chewing a ton of scenery: Braka and Anisha’s actions that they were on trial for led to the death of a Starfleet officer. One of Star Trek’s biggest issues as a franchise has been the redshirt problem, the disposable side characters who die to show how dangerous things are, but whose deaths never impinge on the main characters. There were occasional mitigations of the phenomenon (the original series’ “What Are Little Girls Made Of?,” TNG’s “The Bonding,” DS9’s “The Ship”), but in general, we didn’t see the shows trending away from it until Enterprise, with the current crop of shows doing an excellent job of avoiding the redshirt phenomenon (with occasional reversions like SNW’s “All Those Who Wander”). The pilot who died because of Braka and Anisha’s actions is a classic redshirt. We didn’t know anything about him, didn’t even see him. He was an abstraction. Until Ake tells us about him. The bulk of the episode is a show trial that Braka is running, and broadcasting to the entire quadrant. It’s a pure propaganda piece, with Braka trying to convince everyone that the Federation is an oppressive regime and he’s a bastion of democracy. (He doesn’t actually say that he’s going to make the galaxy great again, but yeah.) The centerpiece of his argument is Ake separating Anisha from her then-six-year-old son a decade-and-a-half ago, though he also couches Caleb’s enrollment in the Academy as a setup by Ake rather than a rescue, making it seem like she arranged for his capture and imprisonment instead of the reality that she saved him from that. Because Braka is pretending this is a fair trial, he lets Ake defend herself, and her method of doing so is to remind Anisha—and the audience, both the quadrant-wide audience for the trial within the episode and the TV audience watching an episode of SA—about the guy who died. Where’s the justice for his family? Yes, Ake caused the Mir family tremendous trauma, but that pilot had a family, too. Indeed, this was his last mission before a planned retirement to spend time with that family. What about their trauma? And it brings Anisha up short. It’s also the first time that Anisha sees Ake as anything other than a monster. The episode opens where last week left off: Anisha in Athena’s sickbay, being confronted by Ake for the first time in fifteen years. As always, Tatiana Maslany plays it magnificently, as Anisha wants absolutely nothing to do with Ake or Starfleet or the Federation. Ake rather patiently explains that, under normal circumstances, she’d let Anisha go anywhere she wants, and take Caleb with her if that’s what he wants, but right now they’ve got bigger problems. Reno is able to punch a comm signal through the wall of omega-47 particles Braka has surrounded the Federation with and Ake, Vance, and Lura discuss the situation. My hopes for a Discovery cameo are dashed, as Ake asks if the spore drive can get around the barrier, but Vance puts the kibosh on that, as they can’t be sure it won’t also set off the minefield. (I’m glad it was at least brought up.) Credit: Paramount+ They figure out—with Anisha’s help, despite the fact that she’s as uninterested in looking at Vance’s face as she is Ake’s—that there’s a way to shut down the minefield, but Braka will have defended against it. They have to find Braka and shut it down from wherever he’s controlling it—which, knowing Braka, would have to be on or near his person. Then his person shows up in the form of a fleet that batters the shit out of the Athena saucer, beams aboard, and takes Ake and Anisha hostage. (The cadets hide in the airlock, using the same trick Jay-Den and Tarima used last week to hide their lifesigns.) Reno and the EMH then use holographic trickery, by plugging the EMH’s mobile emitter into the ship itself, creating the illusion of the ship’s destruction. (When he hands over the emitter, the EMH very quietly asks Reno to be gentle with it, as he’s had it for a thousand years now, though the technology itself is only two hundred years old, so I’m surprised he didn’t replace it with a newer model. Then again, sentiment is a thing…) Meanwhile, Braka takes Ake and Anisha to the atrium, which he’s captured and trashed, for his show trial. The portion of the plot that takes place on Athena, with Reno in charge of the cadets, is magnificent. Tig Notaro is—by her own admission—not an actor, and she’s been playing Reno as Tig Notaro + technobabble since she was introduced in Discovery’s “Brother.” Indeed, her backstory established in that episode—that she was stuck on the Hiawatha for ten months in a busted ship with a dead and dying crew—plays a big role here, particularly in a pep talk she gives Caleb, who is, for obvious reasons, a bit distracted by the fact that his mother that he finally found after fifteen years and the mentor he’s come to care about have both been kidnapped by a shithead. Reno’s role as a teacher also remains prevalent, as she never passes up an opportunity for a teachable moment with the cadets. And Notaro absolutely nails it. After four seasons on Discovery and a season here, she’s turned into an actor, and brava to her. The folks on Athena have the usual Trek task of science-ing the shit out of things to solve the problem. Being plugged into the ship has given the EMH insight in how to bring down the minefield, but being plugged into the ship also mucked up his vocal matrix, so he’s talking nonsense. However, Jay-Den, Genesis, and SAM are able to work their way through said nonsense to figure out what he’s actually saying. (The episode’s title of “Rubincon” isn’t a typo for “Rubicon” as I feared, but one of the EMH’s nonsense words that actually means something important.) In the midst of that, we also get a nicely done resolution of the minor rift that SAM opened up last week between her and Genesis when the hologram announced that she was getting a single room next year. She views Genesis’ friendship with the previous iteration of SAM through a rather harsh lens, and Genesis has to convince her that that’s not the case, that Genesis values her friendship with SAM, not as her inferior but her equal. Kerrice Brooks and Bella Shepard play the scene beautifully, the former in particular continuing to show how SAM has changed by retconning a childhood into her life. Points also to Brooks and Robert Picardo, whose dynamic is completely different now, and totally a joyous father-daughter relationship. Credit: Paramount+ All the cadets get their moment to shine—Darem gets to do some nifty piloting, Genesis gets to be in charge and help figure stuff out, Jay-Den has the breakthrough regarding the EMH’s aphasia, Tarima is able to use her telepathic bond with Caleb to find Anisha and therefore also find Braka, and SAM is the one who implements the plan to shut down Braka’s minefield—but Caleb gets the most to do. I will give Sandro Rosta credit for being far less annoying in episode ten than he was in episode one, though he’s still the person in the cast I care the least about. However, the episode’s climax is Caleb showing up at the trial to testify. He gets Braka to let him do so by reminding him of his bullshit about democracy and openness and he should let Caleb speak freely if he really believes that. Unable to back off that without losing face, Braka lets him talk, which finally gives Caleb the opportunity to do something he hasn’t really had the time to do prior to this: tell his mother about his life for the last fifteen years in general and the last nine months in particular. Even more than being reminded that she was responsible for ending a life, this has a profound effect on Anisha. So does the next thing, as Ake figures something out. One of the sources of Braka’s animus against the Federation is that he claims that they fired upon the very poor strontium-mining world that he grew up on. Braka’s father made a weapon to fight back and the Federation’s retaliation all but destroyed the world. But Braka’s description of that retaliation sounds wrong to Ake, and she and Caleb—using science, of course—pick apart his story and make it clear that what really happened was that Braka’s father’s weapon went off prematurely and destroyed the world. At first I thought this was going to show Braka’s deception, but it’s more fundamental than that: Braka genuinely believed that it was the Federation. He was just a little kid at the time, but he hung onto that misunderstanding, refusing to think that his Daddy was responsible. On a show that has been all about young people growing into adults, the big bad proves that he never stopped being a little kid lashing out against the people he mistakenly thought were his enemy. By this time, Braka realizes that he’s losing his audience, so he plays his final card: setting off the minefield. However, Caleb’s delaying tactic has given SAM the time she needs to deactivate the mines, and then the fleet—which Vance had sitting and waiting at the edge of the minefield—shows up to take Braka prisoner. There are a couple of tropes here that are kind of annoying, ones that the Secret Hideout era have been guilty of far too often. One is tiresomely high stakes. This show in particular is best when the stakes aren’t high, and they’ve mostly stuck with that, but having Braka threaten the entire Federation is just ridiculous, and a contrivance so that our one ship with its spunky cadets will save the day. Another is director Olatunde Osunsanmi’s ridiculous need to having spouting flames everywhere, in this case on the trashed atrium for Braka’s show trial. But it’s still an effective finale. The bonds of the cadets have grown stronger, the Federation is saved, the Venari Ral are dealt a vicious blow, and Caleb and his mother are reunited. Anisha in the end admits that she kind of wishes that Caleb would go off with her, but she recognizes how good the Academy is for him. And they do get to spend the summer together and, best of all, they know where to find each other now. There’s a lot more to say about this episode and season, but I’ll save it for next week’s season review, from speculation on where they go from here in season two to the endless journeys of that poor Talaxian furfly.[end-mark] The post Adults These Days — <i>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</i>’s “Rubincon” appeared first on Reactor.