Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 Finale Review - The End... and the Beginning - IGN

Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 10, “Rubincon,” which is available on Paramount+ now. Starfleet Academy closes out its first season with a decent if not thrilling wrap up to last week’s big cliffhanger, a tale that accentuates both what’s great about the show and what can also be its biggest weakness. By the end of the previous episode, “300th Night,” the gang was in a jam, with the entire Federation surrounded by an array of Omega-47 mines that threatened to detonate and thereby damage subspace for potentially millions of years, ensuring a new Burn-like era for the quadrant. With the USS Athena on the wrong side of the mines, it falls to Captain Ake (Holly Hunter) and the cadets to save the day (of course)... and when Ake is abducted by the Venari Ral, it’s up to the kids to get the job done (with an assist from the delightful Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno). Putting aside the fairly ludicrous science involved in surrounding the whole Federation with mines – like, imagine not just surrounding a planet, or a solar system, but many, many solar systems – the drama onboard the Athena plays pretty well here, as each cadet must take a station on the starship and work a