First broadcast on 15 January 2026.

Starfleet Academy‘s first regular episode shows a series rapidly settling into its groove, with some further character development, a healthy dose of humour, and an excellent use of Star Trek history. It represents a decent balance between respecting the franchise’s past, while gently pushing to find its own niche as a contemporary streaming drama.

In “Beta Test”, the Academy serves as the site for negotiations for the planet Betazed to rejoin the United Federation of Planets. While Admiral Vance and Captain Ake (Holly Hunter) lead the negotiations, Caleb (Sandro Rosta) romances the Betazed leader’s rebellious daughter Tarima (Zoë Steiner).

We have been here before, many times. It is effectively a Star Trek stereotype, where the captain engages in diplomacy while a key member of the crew starts to date one of the other negotiating party. Inevitably the two storylines interweave, and inevitably the romance will jeopardise – and ultimately save – the negotiations. This is a good thing. Starfleet Academy‘s first episode showed off some significant differences to the Star Trek model, such as its young adult focus, and by adapting a familiar story to the new set-up it becomes apparent that the classical Trek tropes still work perfectly well despite the innovations.

New character Tarima seems bright and appealing, and fits the more upbeat tone of the new series very well. Zoë Steiner is from Melbourne, Australia, where I currently live – I mention this for no reason beyond parochial bragging. The re-introduction of the Betazoid people is a smart move for the episode: they are familiar enough to fans and general viewers to have some narrative weight, and their human-like appearance avoids any hurdles that come from rubber-faced aliens trying to generate familiar drama. More hardcore fans should appreciate some of the deep cut continuity references, particularly a small comedy bit involving an Exocomp; the rest of you will have to Google it.

There really is an awful lot of money being thrown at this series, which allows it to look tremendous. As with the series premiere, producer Alex Kurtzman directs. The script, by Noga Landau and Jane Maggs, is smartly composed and effective. Their character work and dialogue is really what makes the episode so enjoyable, but that enjoyment is only enabled because the bedrock of the story is so reliable.

There have been some tiresome complaints on the Internet about this series, relating to everything from actors’ weight to its basic premise. It is, predictably, all noise. This is upbeat, enjoyable television right at a time when I think audiences could probably do with some hope and levity in their lives.