Starfleet Academy Review: Beta Test

First thing's first: we just have to spend a moment sitting silently in awe at that episode title. It alludes, of course, to the Betazoid President and his delegation testing Starfleet's willingness to protect their territory, and to the new Academy faculty getting to see what outsiders think of the way they've set out their stall.

But it's also about the fact that the second episode of this show, as with any show, represents a test conducted by the audience, in a way that "Kids These Days" isn't. As I said in my last review (not for the first time), it isn't your first episode that you use to demonstrate the long-term viability of a series. It's the one that comes after. Your premiere tells the viewer why your show exists. Your second tells the viewer why they should want it to continue existing.

By that metric, "Beta Test" comfortably clears the bar. In particular, it's heartening to see people learned the lessons of Discovery and (particularly) Picard, and aren't attempting to make another ten-hour long film. It's clear there will be at least two narrative throughlines for the season - Caleb's hunt for his mother, and Ake's focus on rebuilding of a Federation shattered by the burn just over a century earlier. And frankly, those are two pretty good hooks, especially since the friction between the two further complicates the already interesting central relationship between those two characters. Still, despite the strength of these ideas, "Beta Test" makes clear the show intends to be essentially episodic. This is my strong preference for Trek in general but it's particularly savvy here, allowing not just for more themes to be explored and stories to be told, but to allow for the kind of quieter, character-driven stories that live-action Trek seemed to have almost given up on before Strange New Worlds.

"Beta Test" is a strong example of that kind of episode. Yes, as the Chancellor makes clear here, the outcome of the President of Betazed's visit to Earth will literally affect who lives and dies in the future, but those stakes are wholly off-screen. Ultimately, what matters here aren't the consequences to the Alpha Quadrant, but the consequence to Ake and Vance, as well as to Tamira Sadal, who with Tig Notaro's returning Jet Reno shows up here to complete the main cast.

And speaking of Sadal, it's her interactions with Caleb that for the basis of the episode. Two kids from extremely different life experiences turn out to have one thing in common, and it ends up driving them apart rather than bringing them together. As a guy who just (like today) turned forty six, and who finds himself regularly stunned by the dramas generated by the young adults I teach for a living, I'm not sure how fully I can express how much I appreciated this plot reading as not just basically plausible, but engaging. It helps that it's so well-justified that Caleb would both struggle to trust Tamira, and that her insistence he should have come into their interactions with the same sense of openness she did would piss him off. Girl, you literally have a gemstone in your teeth to mark you out as (effective) royalty; your views on what you can expect from people you've just met are bound to be different to just about anyone else's.

Not that Caleb is blameless either, of course. The episode is too smart for that. I'm sure he's being honest when he says he didn't intend to manipulate Tamira, but as Ake tells him with exhausted disappointment, "This isn't about you". However understandable Caleb's obsession with finding his mother is, there are other considerations, other people, in play here too. I talked last time about how the last generation should take their political cues from the next, rather than the other way round. This theme is continued here, via the idea that it's the youth of Betazed that have pressed their President to at least try talking to the Federation again (Ake even name-checks student activism). It's also notable that the episode doesn't suggest Caleb has detonated the diplomatic talks by pissing off President Sadal - as Admiral Vance notes, he'd clearly come to say "no". Rather, Caleb has messed up by not giving Tamira a reason to push her father to reconsider. And that happens because, like so many young people, Caleb's best intentions get pushed to the side the instant something personally important enters the frame.

This push-and-pull between passionate-yet-solipsistic youth versus measured-but-hidebound experience is clearly going to be a key theme of the show - Reno more or less makes this point explicitly in her lesson, but the Doctor and the unnamed Niharan teacher underline it as well. It's perhaps frustrating that Caleb manages the second out-of-nowhere miracle save here in as many episodes, but the idea he inspires Ake to realise they can only rebuild the Federation ideal by pointedly not rebuilding the Federation's past structure at least plays into this wider theme.

And fair enough; it's not just a classic theme in fiction, it would be extremely odd for it not to be central plank of a show about a university for people who want to help change the galaxy. That said, it does identify a potential failure state for the show, which is that Caleb digs enough escape tunnels under the academy that the entire structure collapses. The problem with stories about charmingly rebellious students is that ultimately they stop being rebellious, or they stop being charming. I don't want to spend every week wondering why Ake hasn't been forced to expel the guy who is actually damaging what she is trying to build, and neither her own guilt nor the fact he (very conveniently) keeps pulling various asses out of various fires can change that.

And, while I'm complaining, I'll note it makes absolutely zero sense that the Federation and Betazed would hold their diplomatic talks in front of an audience of hundreds, with closed room discussions just taking place within, rather than between parties. It's also not clear why the Betazoids, finding their psychic shield is no longer defending them from raiders, and with defensive technology that has dangerously stagnated through a century of isolationism, are so willing to snub the Federation offer of cutting-edge warships and who know what other cool toys. Still, it's easy enough to see the discussions between Vance and President Sadal as political theatre, and it's not like isolationist politicians tend to be terribly rational when it comes to their culture's actual interests. These are ultimately niggles, which don't stop the episode from working. We also get another handful of killer lines and ideas. It's possibly a little on the nose for the dude who has no interest in listening to the Federation be literally deaf, but it's always good to see deaf actors on screen, and it's delightful to see this be wholly a non-issue for everyone involved (indeed, it's his daughter's overpowered empathic abilities which are highlighted as being a problem instead). Caleb having to share a room with Reymi was an extremely obvious reveal, but you can see the potential, and him learning he's also going to be sharing with Ocam means we still get a twist to things (I also quite like the making your bed metaphor, and how it pays off).

It's all enough to give an old Trekker hope. Certainly, I'm genuinely bummed I have to wait a week to watch the next episode, something I've almost never been able to say about Trek since it returned with "The Vulcan Hello". Clearly, someone's doing something right.

Shouldn't we be able to talk to the humpbacks by now, though?

Ordering

1. Kids These Days

2. Beta Test