This week’s episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, titled “Come, Let’s Away,” is a big one. Spoilers past this point but we get the return of Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) in what at first seems to be a classic “enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation, but quickly turns into an “enemy of my enemy is, you’re not going to believe this, also my enemy” situation because Starfleet is for suckers. But far more importantly than that? The action all revolves around the most important artifact in any century: a comic book. And specifically, a comic book that curiously doesn’t exist in our real world called Tales From The Frontier.
A lot goes down in the hour, so to briefly recap, things start with a pretty explicit sex scene — or as explicit as we get on Star Trek, complete with back nudity, side-boob, some thrusting, and a lot of rolling around as Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) and Tarima Sadal (Zoë Steiner) grow closer, physically and emotionally. And this is all hooked to the little dongle Tarima has that is suppressing her mental powers. Does the episode end with her having to remove it to save the day and things going somewhat poorly because of it? You bet.
That’s the main emotional hook of the episode, but the plot finds the Academy turning into a spaceship and running a training exercise with the War College to reactivate a downed Starfleet ship called the USS Miyazaki. Fun, weird fact about this: the ship is named after famed animator Hayao Miyazaki, most likely, but it hasn’t existed in Star Trek continuity before… But it has been used extensively in fanfic. Specifically, in two Harry Potter/Star Trek crossover fanfics written by a guy named William Raymer. That’s really weird! Don’t worry, this isn’t a full-on fanfic crossover, the USS Miyazaki isn’t the same ship. Instead, it was an advanced model that was powered by a singularity drive, and a powerful AI.
During the first run at the ship, B’Avi (Alexander Eling), the Vulcan student at the War College, explains that he first learned of the Miyazaki while reading about it in a comic book called Tales From The Frontier, which subsequently inspired him to enroll in the War College. In fact, it seems like the comic is all about the Miyazaki, and the captain, Chi, though Caleb calls it “Federation propaganda… Feel good, colonizing bulls**t.”
Anyway, the mission begins and they’re able to restore life support to the ship, but there’s almost immediately a complication. Specifically, they’re attacked by the Furies, a new race of baddies who like to eat people and seem out of phase with time. Interestingly, this is another non-canon reference, as the Furies is also the name of a deadly species in the 1990s Star Trek: Invasion! book series. These guys are different, but if I had a nickel for every time this episode repurposed the name of a non-canon Star Trek element, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Unfortunately, these Furies are incredibly bad news, so Chancellor Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) is left with the impossible decision to bring in the one guy who previously beat the Furies: Nus Braka. I’m not going to beat for beat the entire episode, but suffice to say that while one of the War College instructors is killed by the Furies (that would be Lieutenant Commander Tomov, played by Jeff Terevainen), a group of the “kids” manages to get to the bridge of the Miyazaki — and SAM (Kerrice Brooks) wakes up the computer, but it thinks that the ship is under the same attack that downed it 125 years earlier.
Read Comics, Save The Galaxy
How do you convince a computer that time has passed? Guess what? It’s Tales From The Frontier that holds the key. B’Avi explains the books depict the entire history of the Miyazaki, so letting the computer read the comics will bring it up to speed. Weirdly, the comics are formatted the same way modern comics are, with a cover and even a corner box with the logo of Starfleet, same as you’d get from Marvel or DC (or IDW, which currently holds the Star Trek license). The computer reads the comic, and discovers that the crew of the Miyazaki was on a rescue mission when something went “terribly wrong” and the “crew did not survive.”
It’s enough to convince the computer to make SAM, Caleb, and the rest into the new crew, and seal the bridge. But curiously, we don’t get a ton of closure on the Miyazaki, so maybe there’s more to tell either in subsequent episodes of Starfleet Academy, or in a — I don’t know — comic book series titled, just spit-balling here, Tales From The Frontier?
While this is all going down, Nus gets “welcomed” back to the Athena, downs a ton of tequila (specifically, the more aged Añejo), and kills a bunch of time sparring with Nahla and extorting Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr). We also discover that Nahla’s son died on a starship just like the Miyazaki while she was unable to stop it.
In order to save everyone, Tarima uses her Super-Betazoid powers to connect with Caleb over on the ship. Basically, Nahla and crew will brief the mostly unconscious Tarima on how to repower the ship. While that’s going on, Nahla discovers the Furies are weak against sonic attacks, and there’s an experimental weapons base equipped with a super-fast ship called the USS Sargasso that can take a sonic weapon to their location. Surprisingly for this episode, there is a USS Sargasso in sort-of continuity; but it existed in the 25th Century, and only in Star Trek Online. Again: weird!
Just to wrap this all up, all of these plans come together… But this whole exercise was just a ruse by Nus Braka. He destroys the Sargasso, and his allies sack the experimental weapons platform while it’s undefended. In the process of revealing his true plan, the kids are able to boot up the singularity drive, but the Furies attack the bridge. B’avi dies, SAM is horribly injured, and Tarima rips out her dongle and uses Caleb as a conduit to murder all the Furies… Becoming comatose herself.
We do get one last shot of the star of the episode, Tales from the Frontier, as a physical copy is placed on B’avi’s dead body. But whatever secrets the comic holds in its pages aren’t enough to save the students of Starfleet Academy from what Nus Braka has in store for them. As he promises Nahla, this is just the beginning, and he has another present coming her way. Hopefully it’s a long-box full of comic books.
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*
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