The Golden Age Star Trek Episode You Need to Watch to Be Ready for Starfleet Academy
By Chris Snellgrove | Updated
Starfleet Academy will air in January, and Star Trek fans will see where it Discovery the spin-off takes on their favorite franchise. In an interview, co-showrunner Noga Landau explained how the series would give fans the exploration of strange new worlds they’ve come to expect by making the ship a teaching hospital where “cadets go into space and learn on the job.”
If this premise excites you, then you absolutely owe it to yourself to watch New deep space“Valiant,” the first Trek episode to really focus on the cadets in space.
Star Trek’s Most Famous Space Cadets
The plot of “Valiant” begins with Jake (Cirroc Lofton) and Nog (Aron Eisenberg) being rescued from the Dominion by the Starfleet ship Valiant. It was originally a training ship, but all commanding officers were killed in a particularly brutal attack. A group of elite students called Red Squadron now run the ship, but it’s only a matter of time before these Starfleet Academy cadets run into more trouble than they can handle.
How is this going for them? Spoilers, sweetheart: The cadets remain steadfastly committed to their commander’s final mission: gathering information on an advanced new Dominion ship. They succeed, but a charismatic cadet convinces them to try to destroy the ship, causing everyone on board the Valiant (except Jake, Nog, and a single cadet) to die in the attempt.
Star Trek at its darkest
Obviously, “Valiant” is one of those darker, more mature episodes that New deep space specialized in this area, and all because the cadet commanders are killed. On Starfleet Academythe instructors will be alive and well and we expect the cadets to survive (more or less) the entirety of their missions.
For Star Trek fans looking forward to the misadventure-filled new show of the cosmic cadets, this classic New deep space The episode is certainly worth revisiting as a tasty TV appetizer. That’s because the episode dramatizes something that would normally be very boring: learning.
For example, watching Red Squadron do things like study for final exams or put together capstone projects would have been nap-inducing (trust me, an English teacher!). Watching them learn on the fly while facing life-or-death situations in the depths of space now is downright fascinating.
Star Trek’s future is its past
Without traveling to the future (Discovery-style), I have no way of knowing what, exactly, Starfleet Academy will be like. Given that co-showrunner Noga Landau promises there will be a “mission of the week” format, it seems the premise of the series resembles what “Valiant” could have been if the command officers hadn’t been killed. It does this New deep space episode worth rewatching for anyone who wants a taste of the feel of the new series or for anyone who simply wants to revisit the golden age of Star Trek.
Even if it’s not the most talked about episode New deep space“Valiant” encapsulates what this series did best: taking characters and audiences out of our comfort zones to explore stories of troubled morality. Starfleet Academy will probably be a little lighter, but it promises to offer the same kind of harrowing adventures as Starfleet cadets jumping from peril to peril. This means that if you are a fan who really wants to succeed, make sure to do your homework and rewatch “Valiant” today.
