Review: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 Episode 8 “The Life of the Stars”
Starfleet Academy shows just how heartfelt and emotionally charged it can be in an episode that sees the cadets — and a key member of the faculty — learn to deal with trauma.
The cadets still have not recovered from the dire events of “Come, Let’s Away,” and it shows in their behavior. The Doctor (Robert Picardo) and Chancellor Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) feel the need to try another approach besides traditional trauma counseling, so they call in mentor extraordinaire Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman, reprising her role from Star Trek: Discovery).
“Time is [the cadets’] beast. Time is my beast. It bites us all differently.”
– The Doctor in his personal log.
Tilly understands the cadets are having difficulty expressing their grief in the weeks following the events in the starship graveyard, and she determines a more theatrical approach is required — literally. She engages Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta), Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard), Ocam Sadal (Romeo Carere), Darem Reymi (George Hawkins), Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diane), and Sam (Kerrice Brooks) in a class about theater. By absorbing themselves in studying theater, Tilly hopes the cadets learn how to process their recent trauma.
Joining the class is Tarima Sadel (Zoe Steiner), who is back in San Francisco after recovering on Betazed, now with a new implant that better regulates her telepathic abilities. Things sure are awkward between her and Caleb thanks to the poor communication between the pair since just before the graveyard incident and the intervening weeks.
As if that wasn’t enough for the young Betazoid, she has been transferred to Starfleet Academy from the War College and is now bunking with Sam and Genesis (because of course she is); the two schools’ leadership think her studying science or pursuing research is the least-stressful option for her, since her body couldn’t handle another outburst like the one she had in “Come, Let’s Away.” Tarima is certainly feeling all kinds of angst.
New Life
The charming and ever-excitable Sam is the most enthusiastic of the group to tackle theater, but major glitching continues to plague her, so much so that the Doctor and Chancellor Ake decide to take her to her homeworld, Kasq, to seek treatment from her creators. On the way to Kasq, we see the Doctor continue to be resistant to being a mentor figure for Sam — something we’ve seen since the season premiere.
“I need to talk nonsense, because if I’m talking, it means I’m not gone without ever having lived.”
– Sam to the Doctor, as she faces an uncertain future.
The Kasq examine Sam and render a disturbing verdict: she cannot be saved. Why? The Doctor and Ake realize that because Sam never had a traditional childhood — a chance for a typical child to learn how to be resilient in the face of adversity — the trauma incurred by her programming in the weeks following the Miyazaki incident means her systems didn’t know how to handle that experience.
In an emotionally charged scene, we learn why the Doctor resists mentoring Sam: she reminds him of his late daughter, who died tragically after he once had a family, as shown in the Voyager episode “Real Life.” He has been a loner, unwilling to endure such pain again, for 800 years. Sam’s terminal condition is solvable if the Doctor agrees to act as a father figure to her, should she be “reborn” and raised traditionally.
Having experienced loss herself, Ake persuades the Doctor to agree to foster a re-birthed Sam. Due to Kasq’s unique time dilation — 17 years on Kasq equals two weeks back on Earth — the Doctor raises Sam and returns to the Academy. The experience renews the Doctor’s appreciation for life, effectively “re-birthing” him as well.
Acting Out
While Sam is away from the Academy, the cadets are under Tilly’s tutelage, with mixed results. The cadets unenthusiastically deal with Tilly’s class and question its usefulness. It’s no secret that the story the group is studying — the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Thornton Wilder from 1938 called Our Town — serves as a reflection on the joys and struggles of life, something the cadets are experiencing in weighted measure. Before she left for Kasq, Sam chose this play for the group to study, so it was a prescient choice by the hologram.
In Tilly’s class, Tarima and Caleb play the opposing leads, which analogizes their troubled relationship. The Caleb-Tarima drama continues while Sam is away — a drunk Tarima even gives Caleb a call late one night, celebrating her new inhibitor, lamenting how people view her differently because of her telepathic abilities, and ultimately insulting him due to his relationship with Genesis.
“You’re just on your way to your next you. Maybe we all are.”
– Genesis to Tarima, the former of whom is sad about her situation at the Academy.
One day in theater class, Tarima, worn down by the stress she is under, confronts Tilly and says she doesn’t like how the teacher is using theater to get the group to confront their feelings. Ocam, speaking for the cadets, does admit that they have feelings of guilt, loss, and grief that they haven’t been able to process yet, and that such emotional baggage sucks. Caleb, meanwhile, explains how it’s really too bad they can’t go back to how things were before their shared trauma.
Tilly uses Tarima’s outburst and the theme of Our Town to relay a vital lesson the kids need to learn: keep bouncing back from adversity, no matter how hard it is. Tarima initially can’t absorb this lesson, but as the cadets gather after the class to act out the play — now embracing the roles assigned to them — she comes back, ready to tackle her problems.
Learning to Live Again
We think “The Life of the Stars” is one of Starfleet Academy’s best episodes yet. It’s a case study of how much charm, heart, and potent emotional storytelling this show can offer. The discussion in this episode around what it means to be alive is compelling, touching, and memorable, and Sam continues to be a wonderful window through which we examine what it means to be human.
Despite never seeing Our Town, we appreciated this episode using that play as a lens through which to examine our existence. We loved how this episode so closely interwove elements of the play to inform the episode’s plots — including the play’s “muted minimalism” lighting direction, which is mirrored in the events unfolding on Kasq — and the way the immortal Doctor is a perfect stand-in for the Stage Manager character in Our Town. Kudos to writers Gaia Violo and Jane Maggs for crafting such a delicate narrative.
We were also thrilled that the Doctor finally played a substantial, emotionally resonant role in this episode — until now, his appearances this season have largely been window dressing. This installment finally dug deep into his character’s psychological baggage, giving us a sense of the crushing weight of his near-immortal existence. This exploration of his profound loneliness and the mental toll of perpetual survival adds some much-needed layers of complexity and darkness to a character who was starting to feel frustratingly static.
Taken together, “The Life of the Stars” is one of the most emotionally weighty episodes in this franchise’s recent history, delicately exploring what our existence means and why we should embrace the opportunity to persevere through adversity. It’s a clever use of a classic theater production; Our Town ends up being an apt backdrop through which to view the struggle the cadets encounter after “Come, Let’s Away.” By digging deep into the psychological weight of its characters, this episode delivers a memorable narrative that solidifies the show’s capacity for powerful storytelling and emotional depth.
Stray Thoughts:
- The title of this episode is taken from a quote from Our Town, which Tilly references explicitly to her class.
- Tarima is apparently forbidden from rejoining the War College because she could potentially hurt herself. Doesn’t that seem the opposite of what you’d expect from a Star Trek show? Shouldn’t she rejoin the War College and work on navigating around her telepathic abilities, instead of being told what she can and can’t study?
- While traveling to Kasq, the Doctor elaborates on the premise of Our Town, noting that it starts and ends in darkness. He explains that memories are typically colorless “moments in time” until emotions like nostalgia, regret, or happiness are attached to them. This theme is physically manifested on Kasq — the illusion created by the Kasq for the Doctor and Chancellor Ake is entirely monochrome. It is only when the Doctor begins his second chance at parenting that the scenery gains color, representing that Sam is gaining childhood memories that will help her later in life and that the Doctor is experiencing memorable moments in time again.
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