For a very long time, Star Trek’s secret narrative weapon has been self-reflection. Scholars love to hold up the Federation and Starfleet’s ideals as aspirational, but paradoxically, some of the most interesting and timeless tales about Trek are when the notion of Starfleet’s altruism is put to the test. Whether it's Q (John de Lancie) putting all of humanity on trial at the start of The Next Generation in 1987, or the Maquis challenging Starfleet colonialism in Deep Space Nine, the Trek franchise loves to tell a story about the good guys being painted as, potentially, the bad guys. And, in the Season 1 finale of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, “Rubicon,” the franchise once again, quite literally puts the entirety of Starfleet and its high-minded ideas on trial, in front of the entire galaxy.After nearly a century of taking questionable actions to survive the cataclysm of Burn, the contemporary version of Starfleet in the 32nd Century has emerged as being closer, ideologically, to the Starfleet of the past. But Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) and the Venari Ral aren’t having it. The finale finds Nus putting all of Starfleet on trial, in front of the whole galaxy, not just for alleged warfare crimes, but negligence, too. Did he have a point? And in putting Starfleet on trial, was Starfleet Academy also putting the ideals of the Trek franchise itself on trial, too?The ending of Starfleet Academy Season 1 resulted in a classic Star Trek trial episode. | Paramount+“I think Star Trek is only interesting when you're interrogating it,” Alex Kurtzman tells Inverse. As the executive producer of all current Star Trek on TV since 2017’s Discovery, Kurtzman knows a thing or two about navigating the idea of Trek versus the implementation of Trek. “I think the blind devotion to an idea is ultimately how tyranny finds its way. From a creative point of view, it’s the old adage: the villain is the hero of their own story. And if you're really following through with that, it means that you have to understand that the villain has a real perspective about who they are and how they got there.”In the end, Starfleet Academy doesn’t attempt to make us want to forgive Nus Braka, but it does encourage the audience to hold two ideas in our minds at once: Nus can be evil and brutal, but it’s also true that during the Burn, Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) did questionable things, which makes Anisha Mir’s (Tatiana Maslany) distrust of Starfleet reasonable. And, according to SFA showrunner Noga Landau, Anisha’s ability to dislike Starfleet, but still, in the end, trust them with her son, is crucial to the themes of the story.“Even though she has every reason going into these last couple of episodes to hate the Federation, to mistrust them, to believe that they are bad faith actors, through the events of these last two episodes, she's able to realize...that their intentions are good,” Landua explains. “The healing she gets to do with Nahla is important for her to be able to make peace with the fact that Caleb [her son] really is going to live an extraordinary life in Starfleet.” Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landua speaking about Starfleet Academy in March 2026. | Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesLandua and Kurtzman agree that we get a “happy ending” for Starfleet Academy Season 1, but they also point out that fans should not expect Season 2 to be the same kind of show. If anything, Season 2 will challenge many assumptions we’ve had about these characters and situations so far. ““There's an introduction of a new character and some new characters in season two that really sends a ripple effect through our cadets and through the school itself,” Kurtzman reveals. “Something we promised in Season 1, which is that in our experience and so many people's experience of going to college, is that you go in thinking you want to do one thing and then you realize you want to do something entirely different, and you’re going to start to see traces of that in Season 2.”With Season 2 having already wrapped filming, and with no current new season of Star Trek shows in production beyond Starfleet Academy Season 2 and Strange New Worlds Season 5, there’s some reason to believe that the contemporary era of streaming Star Trek is coming to a close, which would suggest that there’s no Starfleet Academy after Season 2. But is that true? Are there plans for Season 3 and beyond?“Oh, definitely,” Landua says without hesitation. “We have so much more of Starfleet Academy. We have so much more of this story to tell.”Starfleet Academy streams on Paramount+.Phasers on Stun!: How the Making — and Remaking — of Star Trek Changed the WorldAmazon -