Starfleet Academy Review: Ko'Zeine

Spoilers below Ko'Zeine performs an obvious function in the season's structure. This is the moment to pause and reflect after the tragedy of "Come, Let's Away". The Academy itself here is all but abandoned, almost sepulchral; a place where a single rolling pebble is a disturbance. Other than some fun intrusions from Jet Reno, our Academy-based storyline this week features only Caleb and Genesis for its first three acts. The royal wedding plot seems like an odd counterpoint to this sense of space and stasis, but the episode sensibly and deliberately keeps our view of the preparations and ceremony sparse. Compare this storyline with, say, SNW's "Wedding Bell Blues", and Darem's quiet desperation and nervous arguing with Jay-Den feel more like the run-up to his own wake than his marriage.

It is, as they say, a vibe, and a wholly suitable one. We're not just getting the quiet to counterpoint last week's fireworks, we're getting the space to let things echo. Crucially, setting this up as the atmosphere saves the episode from having to be an explicit sequel to "Come, Let's Away". A ten-episode season just doesn't have the space for that. Instead, while what happened on the Mizayaki is referenced at several points, its only really Caleb this week who is lingering on what took place, and that mostly in the context of Tarima's recovery, and him struggling to know how to speak to hear after what happened.

Instead of being a direct continuation of last week's episode, "Ko'Zeine" instead functions as a thematic sequel to "Vitus Reflux". That episode also focussed on Darem and Genesis, and their shared drive to be the best. I wasn't overly complimentary with that episode, partially because space PE is not something I have any interest in, but also because British-coded royal dickhead just isn't an archetype I want to be asked to care about.

"Ko'Zeine" ultimately suffers from a similar problem - I in some ways the inverse of Jay-Den, in that I on principle refuse to sweat about the specifics of a royal wedding. It's notable though how, four episodes on from "Vitus Reflux", Darem's character has been built up to the point where his inner conflict has some actual depth to it. Setting him up as someone whose disinterested parents have forged into a desperate people pleaser unlocks his character. He is very much, to quote Jay-Den's diagnosis, "essentially an asshole", but he's an asshole because he wants to please people by seeming cool, which he interprets as persuading people he doesn't want to please them. The result is a vicious cycle; the more of a dick he is, the less people think of him, so the harder he tries to front about not caring that they think he's a dick. You can see all this written on his face after he's given shit to Kyle, just moments after seemingly making progress in his friendship with Jay-Den.

I'll also give the episode points for how it resolves the dilemma of the accelerated wedding plans - having Kyra call off the match because she's realised Darem is just tying to keep everyone happy is a much better beat than having Darem realise it himself. It's both truer to the character the show is building for George Hawkins (who I think gives the show his best work so far here), and avoids the classic trope of the clueless bride destined to be pushed aside. I can't be expected to give much in the way of kudos about Khionia's first royal girlboss - Give! More! Women! Wholly unchecked hereditary authority! - but it's fair to say the show does fairly well within the confines of a story form I was never going to be particularly interested in.

The story back on Earth is rather more interesting, as Genesis dupes Caleb into hacking their way onto the Athena's bridge so she can re-edit the reference letters she partially forged months earlier. A good part of what makes this work is just how fun these two are together. We return, very subtly to the hint of a romantic triangle here, but mostly they're just being charmingly fun as they goof around on their holiday.

It's also a nice pairing to the story on Khionia's moon. The parallels to Darem's story here are clear - there's the shared connection from "Vitus Reflux" I've already mentioned, and the fact that, admirals are probably the closest equivalent Starfleet has to royalty. There's also the idea that both of them are struggling to separate what they want from what they imagine their parents want. While Darem is driven by how his parents relate to him, though, Genesis is concerned about everybody else's relationship to her father. She knows she's gifted, but she's still worried how much of what she's got has been given to her as a gift. Put another way, Genesis knows how to get what she wants, but that doesn't help her figure out what she wants in the firs place. This is a fact which terrifies her, and that terror sets of a chain of events which almost gets her expelled.

This is, broadly speaking, a pretty common situation. We don't all have famous or powerful parents, but the basic feeling of being under huge pressure to do your best at school in order to prepare for a future you're not sure how to even being shaping will be familiar to an awful lot of us. The danker corners of the internet keep whining that this show is "small stakes", but that wholly misses the point that this is a show about being in school, and no-one in a school ever thinks the stakes are small while they're there. How you're possibly supposed to succeed in laying out the tracks for your whole future when you don't even know which direction you want to be heading is no small thing, and Darem and Genesis both come close to disaster in the ways they try and keep their trains on the rails they think they're supposed to stay on. Without Kyra's perceptiveness and Ake's understanding, they'd both be gone from the Academy. If you can't see how those a real stakes, I just don't know what to tell you.

Ultimately, my take on "Ko'Zeine" isn't too dissimilar from that of "Vitus Reflux". In both cases, they're competently made episodes telling stories which don't particularly resonate with me personally, but which I can see the clear value of for many of those in the show's target audience. We're now seven episodes in without a single turkey, and the show has returned here to what I consider it's least successful mode, and made it better. I'm really not sure there's all that much more I could ask.

Ordering

1. Series Acclimation Mil

2. Kids These Days 3. Vox In Excelso 4. Beta Test 5. Come, Let's Away 6. Ko'Zeine 7. Vitus Reflux