This week’s episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, on the surface, couldn’t be more timely. Titled “Vox in Excelso,” which roughly translates to “a voice on high,” the episode — and spoilers past this point — focuses in on Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané), the Academy’s sensitive Klingon, revealing much more about his past while discussing the future of the Klingons. Specifically, we find out a whole lot about what the classic Star Trek race has been up to since The Burn, the apocalyptic event that destroyed a good chunk of the universe. But thanks to a lot of a narrative back and forth, rather than a politically resonant tale about immigrants and refugees, Starfleet Academy‘s latest episode nets out as a confusing mess.
To give a bit of setup here, the focus of the episode is a debate competition presided by The Doctor (Robert Picardo), who says is “not for the chickens**t” in a clear attempt to send the “you can’t curse in Star Trek!” fans into conniptions. The emotional thrust is that Jay-Den is uncomfortable with public speaking, while it turns out Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) is great at it… Like everything else. Meanwhile Jay-Den completely goes into panic attack mode, later explaining that, “The issue is standing up for what I believe makes sweat run down my face.”
This, in essence, is a pretty good setup for the problems with the episode. There’s been a lot of talk (perhaps too much) about the progressivism of Star Trek online, with frequent, extremely dumb cries of calling the more recent shows “woke.” I’m not going to get too deep in a narrative hole here other than to mention there have been similar, opposite cries from fans that in response to the bad faith arguments about Star Trek being both too progressive and not progressive enough, that the show may have backed away a bit to both-sides arguments. I mention that because nowhere does that particular theory seem more resonant than this hour.
The continuity here, by the way, is a little confusing. Qo’noS, the former Klingon homeworld, was likely destroyed or rendered uninhabitable back in Star Trek 6. Meanwhile, something clearly happened to them during The Burn that hasn’t been fully explored as of yet (though IDW’s excellent comic Star Trek: The Last Starship is beginning to broach the subject). The important part here is that the Klingons are refugees, and as Chancellor Ake (Holly Hunter) tells Jay-Den, a Klingon ship carrying eight houses to a refugee camp suffered “catastrophic mechanical failure,” and at first they think Jay-Den’s estranged family is on board. Additionally, as Ake explains while the Federation and the Klingons used to be allies, now the latter refuses help, “even if it means their extinction,” Jay-Den adds.
This, by the way, is all fine as setup. No problems here! Jay-Den needs to debate, he has extra stress from his family maybe being dead, what will that do to him?
Look, I’m not gonna beat-by-beat recap this episode, nor will I waste too much time on the Film School 101 quality flashbacks to Jay-Den’s youth. The focus here is on the debate over the refugees.
You may not be surprised to learn that everyone quickly finds out about the Klingon refugee crisis, and they’re all walking around Jay-Den on eggshells. You also may not be surprised to hear that the subject of the debate ends up being the Klingon refugee crisis. Again, this is all fine!
What is not fine is what happens next.
Things start off simply enough with Jay-Den — who of course is taking this all very personally — telling Caleb “I do not need you to defend me” when he starts digging into a fellow classmate slinging Klingon conspiracy theories… Certainly here, we get shades of the over-effusive ally, the sort of thing where if Caleb could post a black square on his Instagram page in solidarity with the Klingon refugees, he probably would.
But then immediately after, Jay-Den digs into The Doctor when he says he doesn’t think the current situation is appropriate for the debate contest. “It is the one thing everyone is already speaking about,” Jay-Den, who I don’t know if you remember has a problem with publicly speaking, forcefully says in front of the whole class. “It is either going to happen in here, or out there.”
So to check in: Jay-Den doesn’t want other people speaking for him, but he would like to co-opt an entire debate contest to be about the Klingon diaspora. And he cannot speak out about things he believes in, but he believes in this very strongly and is speaking out about it. Thumbs up, no notes.
“Avoiding reality does not make it disappear, Doctor,” Jay-Den says, which clinches the deal. And he’s right, and this should be the focus of the episode. But, uh, it’s not.
Meanwhile, the Starfleet brass discuss how they’ve found a new homeworld for the Klingons that is comparable to Qo’noS, but the Klingons will never accept the planet if offered to them as a gift. Jay-Den agrees with this in the next scene, explaining that there’s no plan for Klingon “survival” that involves the Federation. And sure, they’re not looking for hand-outs, I get it. But also, what is Jay-Den’s deal here? What is the Klingon’s deal here, as we’re not really getting their perspective so much as the one coming from a cranky… Teen? Twenty-something?
Perhaps part of the problem is that the show is using Klingons for this at all, so the series is stuck in a logical quagmire of a race that needs to fight, and refuses help, but also have been set up as refugees, and need help. And that leads to Jay-Den hitting the debate stage throwing out multiple contradictory arguments over the course of the episode as, initially, Caleb whips his butt, before he comes back and speaks out, basically saying the same thing he’s been saying the whole time: leave us alone. And then to wrap things up, the Klingons put on a little mock fight play with the Federation, and get their homeworld. There’s just not a lot of heft there for the should-be dire stakes.
Beyond all the back and forth and waffling in this storyline, the bigger issue is how it lines up — or rather, not at all — with the real world. This is far from the first time in the history of Star Trek that the franchise got so far up its own butt with metaphor that it lost sight of what it was saying about our reality. But think about where they net out, and if it makes sense to tell refugees on the real Planet Earth that they should find their own home. Or maybe that a powerful entity (country?) should pretend to attack them so they can fight back and then claim a home for their own.
Yes, it’s hard to one-to-one Klingons with any race or people in the real world, but at the same time, if you can’t do that… Why are you doing this storyline at all? There are massive populations of refugees, and people who are under attack — not to mention immigrant populations being persecuted by the United States right now. So what is Starfleet Academy saying? By muddying the waters, they’re ultimately saying nothing. Jay-Den may have a character arc (sort of), but there’s no lesson to be learned here, or powerful message one can take into one’s real life. It’s merely an exercise. A debate contest. And debate is healthy, but only when it leads to action, an outcome.
Here, it’s clear that Starfleet Academy isn’t standing up for what it believes in, because it makes sweat run down its face. And that’s a damn shame.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, at 3am ET / Midnight PT. The season will premiere with two episodes on January 15, followed by one new episode weekly until the season finale.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy with premiere dates.
- Thursday, January 15, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 1
- Thursday, January 15, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 2
- Thursday, January 22, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 3
- Thursday, January 29, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 4
- Thursday, February 5, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 5
- Thursday, February 12, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 6
- Thursday, February 19, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 7
- Thursday, February 26, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 8
- Thursday, March 5, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 9
- Thursday, March 12, 2026: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Season 1, Episode 10 *Season Finale*
Where To Watch Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
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