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There are two main types of antagonists in Star Trek. Sometimes an entire alien race, such as the Borg, the Romulans or the Dominion, becomes the sworn enemy of the United Federation of Planets, kept at a distance via treaties, neutral zones or wormholes. Occasional descents into all-out war are a clear and present danger.
The other flavor is the solo villain, a species of independent combatants who’ve generally developed some kind of beef with Starfleet, and will stop at nothing to ensure their destructive schemes — which may or may not have galactic significance — come to fruition. These grandstanding lone wolves often have a penchant for supervillain-style monologues, and are more traditionally associated with the Trek movies than the TV shows.
Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka is clearly making a bid to join «Star Trek»‘s legion of doom in «Starfleet Academy» but he got off to such an inauspicious start in premiere episode «Kids These Days» that it felt like a waste of the Oscar-nominated guest star’s considerable talents. In the latest episode «Come, Let’s Away», however, Giamatti’s barnstorming performance does enough to suggest that Braka’s going to be an extremely disruptive influence on the students’ ongoing education.
Up to this point, «Starfleet Academy» hasn’t gone overboard on peril. As we’ve said before, the high school hijinks of «Vitus Reflux» may be the lowest stakes «Star Trek» episode of all time, while the «save the Klingons» «Vox in Excelso» and unexpected «Deep Space Nine» sequel «Series Acclimation Mil» also kept the fireworks at a minimum. At no point did we feel any of the cadets — or even the faculty members — were in danger.
That all changed this week, and it’s mostly thanks to Nus, the Klingon/Tellarite face of pirate cabal the Venari Ral — an organization that seems remarkably similar to «Discovery»‘s Emerald Chain, and wouldn’t feel out of place in «Star Wars»‘ galaxy far, far away.