The upcoming series “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” is set in the 32nd century, within the ivy-covered walls of the titular college-like institution. Starfleet Academy, as Trekkies can tell you, is the incredibly rigorous school that future Starfleet officers must attend before they can serve as senior staff members on a starship. Starfleet Academy typically takes four years to complete, and involves complex studies into engineering, history, ethics, biology, piloting, athletics, and personal integrity. There are a lot of lessons about cultural understanding, but just as many about the inner workings of warp manifolds. It’s very difficult to get into the Academy and just as difficult to graduate. Once a student’s tenure is fulfilled, they are promoted to the rank of ensign, and, in many cases, given a ship to serve on. Many Starfleet cadets are allowed field experience as well, and some will serve on starships prior to graduating.
People come from all over the quadrant to attend classes at the San Francisco campus, and, like all colleges, it’s a melting pot of hundreds of cultures. Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, Benzites, Bolians, Betazoids, Tellarites, and a hundreds other species attend. On “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” it was stated that Worf (Michael Dorn) was the first Klingon to attend. On “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” Nog (Aron Eisenberg) was the first Ferengi.
“Starfleet Academy” also seems to be boasting another breakthrough of the species barrier. The character of Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), one of the faculty at the Academy, is half-Klingon and half-Jem’Hadar. “Deep Space Nine” fans will immediately tell you that the Jem’Hadar were one of the show’s scariest villains. They were specially bred to be aggressive soldiers, all of them were male, and part of their genetic conditioning forced them to be addicted to a powerful drug called Ketracel-white.
If the Jem’Hadar can now be female, and have children with Klingons, then Trekkies will have many questions and/or speculations as to what happened in the “Star Trek” universe since “Deep Space Nine.”
