Starfleet Academy Suffers a Stunning Defeat as Nus Braka Seizes Control in “Come, Let’s Away”

Review: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 Episode 6 “Come, Let’s Away”

The cadets and faculty of Starfleet Academy and the War College suffer a huge defeat as a training exercise goes awry, giving a chance for Star Trek’s newest villain to steal the show. 

Onboard Athena on the way to a joint training exercise between Starfleet Academy and the War College, Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) and Tarima Sadal (Zoe Steiner) are closer than ever, sharing a bed as the two cadets travel the stars. Being a Betazoid, Tarima even mentally connects with Caleb, much in the same way we know William Riker and Deanna Troi did back in The Next Generation, but this connection ends poorly when a sensitive aspect of Caleb’s history — a reminder of his mother and traumatic childhood — accidentally leaks into the otherwise utopic mental paradise the two create with each other. 

The training exercise both schools tackle involve working together to revive a derelict starship, the Constitution-class U.S.S. Miyazaki, which was disabled a hundred years ago when it was testing a new type of space propulsion, a singularity drive, in the aftermath of the Burn. The Miyazaki has been a training ground for the War College for a few years, a grim reminder that space used to be much safer than it is now. 

Two teams are involved in the operation: the away team, including Caleb, Sam (Kerrice Brooks), Kyle Djokovic (Dale Whibley), Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diane), and B’Avi (Alexander Eling), and the ship-board support team, including Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard) and Darem Reymi (George Hawkins).

A Furious Attack

The mission begins smoothly enough, until a terrifying alien faction known as the Furies ambush the operation and divide the Miyazaki from Athena via an energy shield. The ambushers give Chancellor Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) five hours to pay ransom, or the away team dies. In conference with Admiral Charles Vance (Oded Fehr), the two Starfleet leaders assume there is a cloaked Fury vessel nearby that is emitting the energy shield. Moreover, Vance knows the Furies’ leader has a reputation for being ruthless and deadly, even if his demands are met. 

These Furies are unlike anything we’ve seen in Star Trek, something straight out of a horror movie, what with their faceless visage, skeletal bearings, and weird phase-shifting movements. They waste no time in killing the one adult who was with the away team — Lt. Commander Tomov (Jeff Teravainen), who sacrificed himself so the cadets could escape immediate capture — thus forcing the cadets to hole up on the bridge of Miyazaki. 

For Chancellor Ake, the training exercise is now a waking nightmare, and she is forced to turn to the one person in the galaxy she hates the most: Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti), who we haven’t seen since the series premiere. Ake is forced to call for his help because Starfleet knows Nus recently ran into the Furies in Sector 119, and he apparently found a way to defeat them — temporarily, at least.

The Devil You Know

Arriving on Athena in short order, the pirate revels in Ake’s need for his help, and Ake certainly is disgusted by the pirate’s behavior. The episode’s first extended scene with Nus has the pirate explaining how the Furies are a different class of terror, uncontrollable even by him. Vance, for his part, notes how Braka conducts a “humanitarian” operation in a nearby star system, and Starfleet would provide more supplies to this operation if the pirate helps him with the Miyazaki.

Ultimately, Braka names his price: the Federation needs to stop supplying dilithium to the Tagena System so Nus can revive his control on the flow of goods and people in that area of space. For what it’s worth, we also learn in this conversation that Nus had an abusive father, which colored Nus’ perception of good guys, bad guys, and how one can make a living in a chaotic galaxy. 

“Your cadets are about to be tender, tasty, teen cutlets in a few hours.”

– Braka to Ake and Vance as he revels in Starfleet’s request for help. 

We realized early on in this episode that seeing Paul Giamatti work his magic is the best part of “Come, Let’s Away.” He is given some amazing, high-drama monologues that show just how unhinged and calculating his character is, and it’s easy to see how much fun the veteran actor has playing the pirate. He really is a fantastic addition to this cast, and it’s a shame we don’t see him more in this season. We can’t think of another villain in modern Trek that has his magnetism and dynamism. 

Ake, for her part, lets Braka monologue freely hoping he slips up and gives her something to use to force him to tell her how to defeat the Furies. He admits he and his people fear her because she effectively sacrificed her own child during the Burn to maintain control of her own ship, which is quite the revelation and clearly a tender subject for Ake, despite her outward steely demeanor. Braka does slip up, though, by alluding to Ake that he has been wasting time and resources on dealing with the Furies. 

Ake, now with some leverage, returns to Nus with zeal, sizing the larger man up without problem, pushing him around, and asserting how it’s in Nus’ best interest to have Starfleet take care of the Furies so they leave him and the Venari Ral alone. This approach works, and Braka tells Ake that it was a sonic weapon that allowed him to, temporarily, at least, take care of the Furies. 

Braka is soon on his way off Athena as Starfleet puts a plan into motion. A Starfleet ship, the Sargasso, arrives from space station J-19 Alpha — a place where Starfleet keeps a bunch of unusual and powerful weapons. The idea is to use a sonic weapon to force the suspected nearby Furies ship to decloak and stop them from jamming Athena; Athena can then beam the cadets trapped on the Miyazaki to safety. Soon before the plan is in motion, Ake gets a feeling something is off, and she’s right. 

Instead of a Fury ship decloaking, Nus Braka’s ship emerges from space to ambush the two Starfleet ships. The Sargasso is destroyed easily enough, and Athena puts up a gallant fight before the pirate ship flees. It’s Braka’s victory, though, as Ake, Admiral Vance, and Chancellor Kelrec (Raoul Bhaneja) learn after the fact that Braka played Starfleet from the start. He manufactured the crisis at the starship graveyard to leave space station J-19 Alpha defenseless, a prime target for Braka’s forces to ransack the station. 

Aboard the Dead Ship

We really haven’t learned much until now about B’Avi, as the Vulcan has been a one-dimensional, annoyingly stereotypical bully up until now, but we learn early in this episode that the young man wanted to enlist in the War College after hearing about the Miyazaki in a Tales from the Frontier comic book. Once the cadets are under siege by the Furies, the Vulcan proves to be a calming leader as they struggle to make a plan for survival. He even evokes a famous quote from Spock about how the needs of the many trump the needs of the few — a rationalization for Tomov’s sacrifice and perhaps a foretelling of B’Avi’s fate in this episode.  

The cadets decide to try to revive the ship so they can pose a defense against the Furies — after all, a sealed door wouldn’t hold off the aliens for long. Luckily — and we mean really luckily — Sam can quickly interact with even an all-but-dead computer and determine the ship can be revived, as long as the cadets somehow convince the computer of the correct year and of their authority as Starfleet cadets. B’Avri’s solution to this problem is using the issue of Tales from the Frontier that relates the tale of the Miyazaki to convince the machine to help the cadets. It’s an unorthodox approach, and pretty silly on its face, but it works, and the cadets gain control of the bridge before the Furies break through. 

The solution of using the Tales from the Frontier to convince the Miyazaki’s computer that Caleb, Sam, and the rest of the away team are the ship’s new crew doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Could anyone have brought the comic onboard to gain control of the ship? Someone could fake the metadata of the comic to make the ship believe it was whatever year they wanted. The premise suggests a dangerously low security threshold; the implication is that anyone who happened to bring the specific piece of entertainment onboard could potentially seize control of the ship. Is Paramount about to sell a tie-in comic called Tales from the Frontier. 

With the away team without a way to contact Athena, Tarima Sadel’s telepathic connection to Caleb comes in handy, as the young woman is able to tell Caleb that they need to start the Miyazaki’s singularity engine, which will disrupt the cloaking device of the Fury ship they believe is creating the barrier between the two Starfleet vessels. 

Tarima, under the ministrations of the Doctor (Robert Picardo), succeeds in making contact with Caleb and she relays instructions to him. But, she ends up taxing herself far more than is healthy when the cadets come under attack. In the fight for the bridge, Sam is critically wounded, and B’Avri is killed while protecting Caleb. In a bold move to save the cadets from Furies, Tarima lets loose a sonic blast that destroys the attacking aliens, but critically wounds herself enough to send her into a coma. We would love to know how Tarima was able to physically manifest an attack from Athena that kills people on the Miyazaki. Hopefully this seemingly impossible event will be explained in the next episode. As it is, we are left with a raised eyebrow and an unfulfilling ending. 

While not a big part of this episode, we should note the danger the cadets run into on the Miyazaki impact Kyle and Jay-Den, too, as we know the two have struck up a bit of a romance; seeing the human injured brings out the healer in the Klingon. We totally expect this shared traumatic experience to deepen the bond between the two young men.

The Beginning of the End

“All that hate opened doors in my mind. And now I know what I’m truly capable of.”

– Braka in his message to Ake after his deception is revealed. 

Considering Nus Braka and his forces were able to steal super-powerful weapons from a Starfleet space station, a Starfleet ship was destroyed, a Vulcan cadet and an adult officer were killed, and two cadets were critically injured, it’s a rough time for Chancellor Ake and our other protagonists. Admiral Vance, equally as angry as anyone else about this horrific turn of events, vows that no one sleeps until Braka is brought to justice. 

The salt in the wound for Ake comes when she receives a message from Braka, who gloats about his victory and asserts how much he hates Ake — what with her worldview with which she “infects” the universe. Finally, he says he has a “special gift” on the way for Ake — which we presume to reference whatever dastardly plan he has for the super-secret Starfleet weapons. 

Assessing the Debacle

“Come, Let’s Away” is certainly a consequential episode in the freshman season of Starfleet Academy, but it’s not one we are particularly excited about, save for the mesmerizing performance from Paul Giamatti. The episode plays B’Avi’s death as an emotional gut punch, but we didn’t yet form an emotional attachment to the young Vulcan because he has thus far been a cookie-cutter bully. Indeed, we care more about poor Kyle, who is obviously shaken up from watching his classmate die, than the death itself.

Other narrative shortcomings for this episode, including the cadets’ unbelievable revival of the ghost ship upon which they were stranded, and the questionable way Tarima was able to manifest herself telepathically to save the cadets, cast a pall over how much we enjoyed this installment. Perhaps this episode will pair better as a two parter with whatever episode in this season is dedicated to Nus Braka’s next move, which is ultimately the most noteworthy result of “Come, Let’s Away.” 

This episode does, at least, offer some visual treats that help it stand out. The Furies, with their horror-movie appearance and vague origins as described by certain characters, are definitely a faction worth exploring — a little dark, perhaps, compared to what Star Trek is used to, but nonetheless an intriguing illustration of how much of space became lawless and unsafe after the Burn. The visual of the ill-fated Miyazaki buried within a starship graveyard is also illustrative of the dangerous world the cadets aim to enter after graduating from their respective schools. These visuals, combined with the somber mood at the episode’s conclusion and the lack of theme music during the credits, offer quite the downer vibe compared to other episodes of this show. 

Starfleet Academy has dramatically upped the stakes, and we suspect the resolution to Nus Braka’s scheming will be an explosive one unlike anything the young cadets have seen before.

Stray Thoughts: 

• Why was Lt. Commander Tomov confident enough in Caleb’s away team to wager shore leave against Commander Lura Thok? Considering we don’t have an explanation for the man’s confidence, this brief bit of dialogue seems to only artificially characterize Tomov just a tiny bit before he is ceremoniously killed.
  
  
• The plasma shields that supposedly protect the away team from the elements invites some questions, such as how do the cadets breathe when they have a plasma shield covering their whole body? These shields struck us as a low-cost way to explain how the away team can operate in a vacuum. And did the Furies have similar technology?
  
  
• Nus Braka references his full name as Nustopher.
  
  
• We learn in this episode that Tarima, as a child, accidentally made her father, who we saw in “Beta Test,” deaf, which is why she received the implant that helps regulate her mental abilities.
  
  
• According to a data file seen on screen, the Miyazaki‘s commission year was 3067, and was active until 3088.
  
  
• Does Athena not have adults who could take over bridge stations in the event of an emergency? As critical as the situation in the ship graveyard is, why do cadets like Genesis and Darem maintain their positions in lieu of more experienced personnel?
  
  
• Discovery gets another shoutout, as we learn that the ship is collecting escape pods from J-19 Alpha after the Venari Ral attack.

New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy are available to stream Thursdays on Paramount+.

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