From: atropos@mac.com   
      
   On Jan 16, 2026 at 8:45:52 AM PST, "Arthur Lipscomb"   
    wrote:   
   > Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (Paramount+) - "Kids These Days" - Pilot   
   > episode for this "Discovery" Spinoff.  Set about 1000 years from "TOS"   
   > timeline the Federation was fractured after an interstellar accident   
   > destroyed most warp capable ships.  This was dealt with in the last   
   > season of "Discovery."  This new series focuses on a newly established   
   > Starfleet Academy back on Earth.  Although the academy itself is a   
   > starship that can leave Earth.  The pilot episode introduces the new   
   > cast.  Holly Hunter stars as the captain of the ship and chancellor of   
   > the Academy.  But the main focus seems to be a young man whose mother   
   > was arrested by Starfleet and sentenced to prison by Hunter.  The boy   
   > escaped before he could be shipped off to a Starfleet orphanage, he   
   > spent his youth on the run and committing petty crimes while trying to   
   > find his mother.  Hunter felt guilty about this and recruited him to   
   > enroll in the Academy.  Or coerced him would be more accurate.  I won't   
   > go through all the cast but one of the highlights was Robert Picardo   
   > returning as the Doctor, making his character about 900 years old.  The   
   > first adventure for the cadets features Paul Giamatti as a scenery   
   > chewing space pirate who has a connection to both Hunter and the new cadet.   
   >   
   > "Beta Test" - Episode 2 is set on Earth and has the Federation trying to   
   > get Betazed to rejoin.  The newly elected Betazed President comes to   
   > Earth with a delegation of young people so the Federation decides to use   
   > their young cadets as a way to relate.  Overall even though there was no   
   > space action or battles, this was a pretty good episode that continues   
   > to establish the characters.  I'm not sure if this is a plot hole or   
   > there's more to the story, but they seemed to have retconned Betazoids   
   > from being telepaths to empaths.  But there are ways around this since   
   > those details only came from humans who may not have known otherwise or   
   > could have been using the term interchangeably.  Still, as portrayed on   
   > screen it felt very much like a retcon which removed their telepathic   
   > abilities.   
      
   I've been reading that this series is chock full of stuff like this, where   
   they ignore/depart significantly from established TREK canon with no   
   explanation and for no other reason than it makes the plot work easier for   
   them.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)