Paul Giamatti and Holly Hunter in 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.' Brooke Palmer/Paramount+ Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment You can hardly blame the young leads of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy for being chaotic. They're essentially first-year college students, most of them adjusting to life away from their home planets for the first time and figuring out who they want to become. Confused and inconsistent is exactly what they're supposed to be at this stage. You can, on the other hand, certainly blame the Paramount+ show itself for being messy. Created by Gaia Violo, the series is a hybrid of sci-fi spectacle and teen drama that's admirable in its ambitions but shaky in its execution, at least in the first six hours (of 10) sent to critics. But much like Starfleet's brightest cadets, it's too full of charm and promise to dismiss outright. You just hope to see it live up to its full potential someday. Related Stories TV 'Star Trek': Thomas Jane Cast as Dr. "Bones" McCoy in 'Strange New Worlds' Movies 'Beam Me Up, Sulu' 'Star Trek' Doc Featuring George Takei Gets February Release (Exclusive) Star Trek: Starfleet Academy The Bottom Line A cast worth following to the ends of the galaxy. Airdate: Thursday, Jan. 15 (Paramount+)Cast: Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, George Hawkins, Zoë Steiner, Gina Yashere, Tig Notaro, Robert Picardo, Oded FehrCreator: Gaia Violo Starfleet Academy unfolds sometime in the 32nd century, roughly concurrent with the later seasons of Paramount+'s Star Trek: Discovery but centuries after most of the rest of the Star Trek canon. As the show gets underway, the titular school is preparing to reopen its doors under the leadership of chancellor Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter), having shut down a century earlier amid a galaxy-wide catastrophe known as the Burn. If the previous paragraph made perfect sense to you, you're probably a Star Trek fan and will surely be pleased to see some familiar faces here, including Tig Notaro's Jett Reno, Oded Fehr's Charles Vance and Robert Ricardo's Doctor, as well as references to events of several other Star Trek properties. If all of that sounded like gibberish, come on in anyway. Starfleet Academy requires no previous buy-in to the franchise - just a high tolerance for lore dumps and alien names you can't spell. Nahla has her issues with Starfleet, having quit the force 15 years earlier after working on a criminal case that separated a desperate mother (guest star Tatiana Maslany) from her son. Now the boy is 21, and despite the lengthy rap sheet and rebellious attitude he's acquired from a life on the run, Nahla offers Caleb (Sandro Rosta) a spot at the school. In him, she sees an opportunity to right her own past wrong; in her work, she sees a chance to chart a more compassionate path for the galaxy as a whole. By far the best things the show has going for it - the thing that makes you eager to forgive any other shortcomings along the way - are its characters, who tumble into the Alex Kurtzman-directed premiere already fully formed. Hunter is a total delight as the half-Lanthanite Nahla, whose tiny stature, playful humor and disregard for propriety (this is a woman who keeps inventing new ways to slouch into chairs) belie her quiet strength as a Starfleet officer. Picardo, as the perpetually cranky holographic Doctor, and Gina Yashere, as ferocious half-Klingon cadet master Lura Thok, are almost as entertaining - though no one is having more fun than special guest star Paul Giamatti as Nus Braka, a Klingon-Tellarite pirate who delivers every line like he's putting on a one-man show and punctuates every other sentence with a clack of his silver-tipped fingers for good measure. Of the kids, Karim Diané makes an immediately touching impression as Jay-Den, a painfully shy Klingon with a very un-Klingon interest in medicine, as does Kerrice Brooks as Sam, a bubbly hologram who's new to the "organic" world and therefore reacts to every single experience like a baby tasting ice cream for the first time. While most of the younger set evoke familiar tropes - Genesis (Bella Shepard) is the overachieving daughter of a prominent family, Darem (George Hawkins) the rich bully with mean parents, Tarima (Zoë Sadal) the sheltered princess - all are embodied by actors lovable enough to make those archetypes fresh and fun again. Collectively, they make for a cast I was excited to see interact, especially since the sparks between them - whether as instant besties, enemies or star-crossed lovers - fly so fast and furious. But Starfleet Academy unfolds less like a serialized ensemble drama than a string of connected standalone stories, each focused on a different main character. The advantage is that it allows the series to go deep into Jay-Den's poi