Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 6 Review – Come, Let’s Away

The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 6.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy continues its run of midseason bangers with “Come, Let’s Away,” an hour that sees both the return of Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka and the cadets’ first real-life mission—that comes complete with unexpected and terrifying stakes. An hour that deftly balances its student-focused plot with a larger Federation-level catastrophe, it’s an episode that not only sets up some intriguing narrative threads for the back half of the season, but it also lets one of the show’s most underrated characters step into the spotlight on her own terms. 

“Come, Let’s Away” isn’t an origin story for Betazoid War College cadet Tarima Sadal, since we covered her background — in broad strokes — back in “Beta Test”. But it is, in its own way, an emotional coming-of-age tale, in much the same way that “Vox in Excelso” and “Series Acclimation Mil” are for Jay-Den and Sam, respectively. Tarima’s decision to remove the implant that dampens her telepathic abilities is as life-changing a choice for her as anything we’ve seen happen to her classmates, just with the added bonus of literal life-or-death stakes attached. 

One of the more intriguing aspects of Starfleet Academy’s set-up is the fact that it’s a school that isn’t necessarily a fixed location, and that students aboard the U.S.S. Athena still get the chance to have various adventures (though they probably refer to them as “learning opportunities”) across the galaxy despite their Earth-bound San Francisco home base. This episode sees the kids from both the Academy and the War College head out to run missions on the wreckage of a starship whose experimental drive — ostensibly an attempt to replace the warp cores that were destroyed during The Burn — melted down. The poor lighting and overall ship-graveyard vibes give everything a sort of thinly veiled horror feel, which is only exacerbated by the arrival of a particularly violent and frightening new alien species, known as the Furies. 

Looking like nothing so much as the Star Trek take on the Mouth of Sauron from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the Furies are violent and manipulative, threatening to kill all the cadets if their demands aren’t met. Enter Nus Braka. Given how prevalent the news of Giamatti’s involvement in this series has been throughout its pre-release marketing, we all pretty much had to know that he’d be back at some point. And the sketchy plot — which involves everything from overt lying and theft to emotional manipulation —that unfolds feels perfectly in keeping with everything we’ve come to know about this character up until this point. That he becomes the best of a lot of bad options kind of feels like the story of his life in microcosm.

Even though it feels like it should be obvious from the jump that Braka is basically using Captain Ake for his own purposes, Giamatti and Holly Hunter are dynamite together and make what is, admittedly, a fairly thinly drawn vendetta feel incredibly compelling. The two play these characters as though they have the complex, established history of Professor X and Magneto, rather than the fairly shallow and poorly sketched revenge plot they’ve shared to date. Giamatti’s gleeful cruelty and harsh truths — he gets downright nasty about Ake’s son’s death and the emotional compromises required of any being forced to live on a long enough timeline — strike with painful precision, and though Hunter keeps Ake stoic and grounded enough that her breakdown at episode’s end lands all the harder.

Whether Braka’s decision to team up with the Furies to execute a secret third plot involving stealing advanced experimental weaponry from a nearby Federation starbase for his own ends is a story any of us will care about past this point is a question only the rest of this season can answer, but it’s always nice when the show cares enough about its viewers to at least try to surprise them. And to its credit, “Come, Let’s Away” actually manages to do that several times.

It’s a given that at least some of these kids were likely only introduced for the sake of being cannon fodder, but it feels particularly rude to kill off one of the only two War College students who’d be given enough of a personality to be recognizable to viewers. Alas, poor B’Avi, we hardly knew you. But at least you fought bravely and managed to teach Caleb some valuable lessons about the humanity of those we dislike! (And, look, burying him with his favorite space adventure comic book got me. I’m not made of stone!!)

But while Caleb gets to be…well, predictably Caleb, throughout most of this hour, this is Tarima’s episode through and through. (Even though she’s never even technically part of the kidnapped mission.) It’s a particularly satisfying swerve given that this is a character who hasn’t had a ton to do beyond serve as a love interest and the revelation that she’s powerful enough to turn an entire squad of alien enemies into dust with her mind is….well, let’s just call it unexpected. (And very exciting.) Don’t get me wrong, Tarima and Caleb have a super sweet bond, and Starfleet Academy has smartly dialed down his initial playboy-esque instincts in favor of giving his connection with Tarima time to build some real layers. But we’ve already seen one Betazoid in the Star Trek universe consigned to being little more than a romantic partner; we don’t need to do it again. (And I say what as someone for whom The Next Generation’s Troi and Riker were a formative romance.) 

Zoë Steiner’s performance walks a fine line between softness and steel, and there’s something deeply gratifying about the way Tarima refuses to make herself smaller in order to win Caleb’s approval or affection. In fact, if anything, this whole episode is about this character finally deciding to unleash her true self — to stop limiting what she’s capable of in order to make those around her feel better or safer or more like her equal — and it’s not just an act that saves a lot of lives, but one that completely reorients our understanding of this character and what the future holds for her. For the moment, that future appears to be a coma, but this is Star Trek; we all know that’s not going to last. But, for my part, I’m really excited to meet the young woman who comes out the other side of it. 

New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with the finale on March 12.