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The first two episodes of Starfleet Academy do a lot to, almost to the point of an open defiance of academic authority as a stand-in for expectations wrought from 60 years of Star Trek, tell you that this is a show with a very different vibe from what’s come before. Its young adult heroes are a heady mix of hormonal emotions and sullen distrust of their elders that, in equal parts, feel like accurately charming representations of a bunch of kids who’ve grown up in a wildly shaken universe and also like the show itself almost baiting long-time Star Trek fans into being annoyed that these damn youths aren’t behaving like people in Star Trek should behave.
But it’s not one of the kids who actually pulls off the most charming move, or the move that’s probably bound to have some corners of Star Trek fandom gritting their teeth at perceived disrespects. Instead, it’s arguably the most seasoned member of the cast, Holly Hunter, and I am absolutely in the camp that the move is incredibly charming above anything else.
Hunter plays Nahla Ake, Starfleet Academy‘s stand-in for the head honcho of its ensemble of young cadets and senior staff, the dual chancellor of the academy as an institute of learning, as well as the captain in command of the Starfleet vessel the academy is based out of, the USS Athena. A half-Lanthanite, Ake has lived for centuries, meaning that in the show’s 32nd-century setting (during the events of the back half of Star Trek: Discovery), she’s seen some of the very best and very worst that the Federation can offer—and been a part of the latter, something the series explores in its opening as it flashes us back to the moment Ake follows judicial orders that cause her to become disillusioned with, and ultimately quit, Starfleet.
When the show then flashes forward 15 years later and Ake is approached with the chance to rejoin Starfleet and lead its efforts to re-establish the academy, she’s become much more chill in the meantime. She’s hanging out on Bajor, relaxing and looking after young kids, and just because she puts a Starfleet uniform back on doesn’t mean that vibe stops immediately. Hunter is the most charming in a cast of very charming stars, playing Ake with a playful precociousness that makes her feel less like a traditional Star Trek captain and more like your cool aunt, but still reminiscent of the kind of lighter streaks we could see in past captains (she feels especially in conversation with Captain Janeway, especially in Voyager‘s early seasons, where she had to grapple with the idea that the traditional captain-subordinate relationship Starfleet expects can’t persist on a ship stranded 70,000 light-years from HQ).
But it also comes through in Ake’s physicality. The minute the Athena lands in its primary home of San Francisco, she kicks her Starfleet-issue boots off and walks around barefoot, almost challenging everyone to call her out on it. You’re just as likely to see her wearing flowing, loose dresses and chunky glasses as you are in her red command tunic. And it’s also there in the way that she has absolutely not seen a chair that she can’t clamber over and curl up in like a house cat.
Hunter plays Ake as the Tiniest Woman in the Alpha Quadrant (the actress is 5’2″ and is comically dwarfed by even a good chunk of the students, a fact revealed in the sheer number of scenes where she shares a close-up with someone else’s torso). Her private office on the Athena is jam-packed with chairs, sofas, and chaises, and across the first two episodes—as well as in the remainder of the six episodes screened to press thus far—we see her curled up or practically slathered over them plenty of times. A great scene early on in the premiere episode sees her senior crew quietly acknowledge as Ake repeatedly adjusts the comfort settings of the captain’s chair on the Athena‘s bridge to its lowest height, only for her to promptly bring her feet up and casually prop herself up on one of the armrests. Later on, we cut back to her almost lying down in it, bundled up and reading a book.
It lends Ake this disarmingly chaotic energy that, on the one hand, feels like the shitposting evolution of everyone realizing when Jonathan Frakes would have the inverse scenario and stoop over the backs of chairs to take his seat in TNG, and on the other, feels almost like poking at what we’ve come to expect from typical Starfleet decorum. It’s an immediate visual indicator of where Ake is at this point in her life: she was that stiff, rule-abiding Starfleet officer once, and being so led to her propping up the bones of a status quo that had long been broken. Now, she doesn’t really give a crap about nitpicking the rules or what other people think of her—she’s just here to be comfortable, to show this new generation of students that they can be comfortable with her in turn, and to come at them at a more approachable level.
Every Star Trek captain has a quirk, and a beverage of choice has already been picked over. It’s fun to have one whose personality is built around finding new and inventive ways to hang themselves off of their furniture.
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