How Starfleet Academy Subverts A Classic Enterprise Trope

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 9 – “300th Night”Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9’s ending upends a classic Starship Enterprise trope. Directed by Jonathan Frakes and written by Kristen Beyer from a story by Beyer and Kenneth Lin, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9 is the first half of season 1’s two-part finale.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9 centers on Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) reuniting with his lost mother, Anisha Mir (Tatiana Maslany), and Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) rescuing Starfleet Academy’s cadets from the dangerous planet Ukeck. Meanwhile, Nus Braka’s (Paul Giamatti) theft of Omega-47 and his master plan to devastate the United Federation of Planets are revealed.

At the end of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9, Nus Braka has walled off the entirety of the United Federation of Planets with Omega-47 mines. Nustopher plans to ignite his doomsday device, which would tear space and subspace, making warp travel impossible for millions of years. If Braka succeeds, he will kill billions of people and cause a catastrophe far more destructive than The Burn.

How Starfleet Academy Reverses Star Trek’s Classic Enterprise Joke

Because Captain Nahla Ake took the USS Athena outside of Federation space to rescue Starfleet Academy’s cadets from Ukeck, Nahla’s starship is the only starship vessel that’s trapped on the other side of Nus Braka’s Omega-47 wall.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9’s ending is a novel spin on how the USS Enterprise somehow regularly finds itself as the “only starship” that can perform a task or deal with a cosmic threat throughout the various incarnations of Star Trek.

Starfleet is a massive armada comprised of hundreds of active vessels, perhaps more, yet it’s a reliable and amusing trope that no matter the version of the Enterprise, it’s commonly the only starship in the vicinity of a crisis. Of course, space is vast, and this trope is believable to a degree, but it also happens to the Enterprise a lot.

Narratively, however, it makes perfect sense that Captain Ake’s USS Athena is trapped outside Nus Braka’s Omega-47 wall, because she went rogue and left Federation space to save her proteges. Too often in Star Trek, the Enterprise is “the only starship within range” out of convenience to the plot.

Why Star Trek’s Enterprise Being The Only Ship Nearby Became A Running Joke

When it has to, Star Trek’s internal logic and realism bend to the fact that Star Trek is a television show or a movie. It’s simply more exciting that the USS Enterprise is the “only starship” that can deal with a crisis because it’s the hero ship of the story.

Star Trek: The Original Series sometimes utilized the “Enterprise is the only ship in the vicinity” trope, but it became more prominent in the feature films, beginning with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In Star Trek‘s first big-screen adventure, the newly refitted Starship Enterprise was the only starship capable of intercepting V’Ger as it headed to Earth.

In Star Trek Generations‘ prologue, the newly-launched USS Enterprise-B was somehow the only starship in Earth’s solar system that could rescue El-Aurian vessels that were struck by the Nexus space ribbon.

Star Trek: Voyager made “the only Starfleet ship” trope central to its story, since the USS Voyager was alone in the Delta Quadrant. Thanks to its spore displacement hub drive, the USS Discovery was also regularly the only starship that could deal with intergalactic crises in Star Trek: Discovery.

The USS Athena is all alone with no help from Starfleet’s cavalry as it takes on Nus Braka in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1’s finale, and Nahla only has the Athena’s saucer after the Venari Ral captured the Athena’s atrium and nacelles. Whether Captain Ake and Starfleet Academy’s cadets can bring down Nus Braka’s Omega-47 minefield by themselves remains to be seen.