Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1 ending explained – How does the trial end?

School's almost out for summer, or whatever constitutes a summer break aboard Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's USS Athena. This semester has flown by, especially as the final two episodes of the season are actually a two-parter that reunites Caleb (Sandro Rosta) with his mother after 16 years apart.

As seen at the very start of the season, Caleb was separated from Anisha (Tatiana Maslany) when he was just a kid due in part to Holly Hunter’s officer Nahla Ake. That's why the captain has gone out of her way to help Caleb all season, to make up for this awful past trauma.

By the end of last week's episode, Anisha was wounded after she helped Caleb's fellow cadets escape execution. Everyone is now back aboard the USS Athena, but that doesn't mean anyone is safe, not with Paul Giamatti’s obnoxious baddie Nus Braka back on the scene.

And where does Anisha's allegiance really lie?

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1 ending explained — How does the trial end?

Braka has everyone's favourite crew on the ropes when the finale begins.

Overlapping mines have prevented the ship from escaping, and there are 240 inhabited planets in the blast radius if one should go off. Not even the USS Discovery could jump through this using Mycelium Spores because that would trigger the bombs too.

The skeleton crew that remains aboard surmises that the energy field surrounding these mines is being controlled by one signal. If they can isolate it and jam it, they can deactivate the entire network of bombs. They just need to do so without disrupting it, because that would lead to one big BOOM.

The Venari Ral warp in then with Braka at the helm. Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) hides the first year cadets below deck as the ship's shielding is pummeled to breaking point, allowing Braka to teleport onboard.

"It was always going to be me in this chair," he laughs, leaving his stinkiness all over Nahla's nice Captain's furniture.

Braka is very surprised to see Anisha still alive, and what's even more shocking is that she's not saying much of anything.

"You were awfully chatty when I busted you out of prison two years ago," he points out before adding: "What are the only two people in the universe who hate me most doing together?"

Before Braka takes Anisha and the Captain away, Nahla leaves the Doctor (Robert Picardo) with a cryptic message: "Leap clear of all that is corporeal and make yourself greater."

Braka is obviously an idiot because this all passes him by. That's just as well because Nahla was actually telling the Doctor to run training mission Hermes 19.

What is that? We don't have time to figure it out because the Venari Ral open fire then and destroy the USS Athena completely. Boy, that was a short finale… Except, the show's title card suddenly appears over the debris as it's revealed all the broken pieces of ship that remain are actually holograms initiated by Hermes 19.

The decoy worked. Everyone on board is still alive and the Venari Ral have left without realising their mistake. The ship itself has seen better days, however, as its structural integrity continues to fail.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there's something wrong with the Doctor. He's malfunctioning, repeating weird strings of words like "There's glue in the shoe."

The gang come together to try and come up with solutions, spearheaded by Reno who uses this life and death situation as a teaching moment. Never mind the "trillions of lives" at risk. Teachers are still gonna teach, damnit!

Meanwhile, the Captain finds herself on trial, even appearing on a Venari Ral news broadcast that's being sent across the quadrant. Before shit goes down though, she reassures Anisha that Caleb is safe.

Braka recounts a story from his childhood, one which explains his hatred for the Federation and how he ended up the way he did.

Basically, Braka's father sent flares up to Federation ships who hit his family with missiles in return. "From my colony, eight of us survived."

"So today," Braka continues, "We’re putting the Federation on trial for their lives and crimes against democracy. I never got a real trial and neither did the woman next to me (Anisha)."

Braka decides that Anisha alone "will decide if the Federation deserves a reprieve," presumably so he comes across as impartial. Of course, Braka knows that Anisha hates The Federation and Nahla especially because she's the one who separated Anisha from her son.

As Giamatti showboats it for the cameras, Nahla pushes back, claiming that Braka's opening statement is wrong because The Federation would never attack civilians.

"But who writes the history?" asks Braka. Oh, good point.

"Liberators don’t take hostages," counters Nahla. Oh, also a good point.

"But you took a kid and put him in the uniform of his mothers jailers." Ooh, snap!

Nahla quickly changes the subject by pointing out that Federation shuttles "had to make hard choices in impossible times".

Anisha chimes in then, attacking Nahla for her role in separating mother and son at such a young age:

"I want you to have no shelter from this [guilt], to feel it every day like cold or hunger or broken bones. I want it there when you close your eyes, when you’re laughing or grieving. I want you to see me. It's the only way I get justice and the only way I get to dance on your grave."

Back on the USS Athena, the cadets bond in the face of death, and in doing so, they suddenly find a solution. It turns out The Doctor has been trying to communicate a solution this whole time, even though he can no longer articulate sentences properly. With surprising speed, they surmise Doc was referring to Ruben particles.

By reducing these particles, simulations show a way to transmit the algorithm so they can bring down the wall of the signal completely. They just need the right frequency. Oh wait, Tarima (Zoë Steiner) just found it.

As the others try to find a way to narrow down Braka's location, Caleb and Tarima get cutesy in a psychic room together. Just your everyday Betazoid fling, really. During their chat, Caleb reminds Tarima how she used her psychic ability to connect with his mother.

"Can you find her again through me?" asks Caleb. "Then we can find Braka."

Everything's coming together, which makes this the perfect moment for Reno to chip in with an inspiring speech: "As far as final exams go, this is a doozy. Pass we live, fail, we're all dead."

Oh. OK.

We then cut back to the trial, which is already ending apparently.

"You wanna dance on my grave?" asks Nahla. "There’s another grave… The pilot you killed," she points out, reminding Anisha of what she and Braka got up to on that ship together all those years ago.

"He was from Earth, Hawaii," Nahla continued. "We served together… He was a lousy singer. That supply ship was supposed to be his last rotation before he retired. What did you think was gonna happen when you boarded that shuttle? You both had weapons and were prepared to use them."

Braka claims he shot the pilot in self defence, so Nahla continues to interrogate Anisha instead, asking if she could have stopped him.

"'Maybe' is not enough. In that moment, you changed the lives of his kids as well, and your son’s life. So did I. We have to live with it,

Anisha claims to hate Nahla still, proclaiming her guilty at the trial (even though she's supposed to represent The Federation? It's all a bit of a mess, if we're being honest.)

Caleb shows up then, just before the trial is about to end. Braka lets him talk to save face in front of all the cameras broadcasting everything as it unfolds. He's there to save Nahla, yes, but he's also buying the Athena crew time to finish deactivating the mines.

"Mum," says Caleb. "I would ask at this minute for you to listen… I can be more than just a 'space rat' or a 'lost son.' I can be part of a community."

Accepting this community at Starfleet Academy felt like a betrayal at first, a betrayal to his mother and everything she stood for. But the lessons he learned there, the friends he made…

"I've laughed more in the last year than in my entire life. But I was a coward and I fought them. I did horrible things and they deserved so much better. I tried to push them away, but they didn’t let me because they all live for something bigger than themselves."

To be fair, this is all coming from a genuine place, as is Caleb's respect for Nahla.

"[Nahla] believed in me, mum. She’s never given up on us. She listens… I know what happened 16 years ago. She taught me I can’t stay there forever. I can be part of this world without forgetting where I come from, forgetting you... I’ve been searching for you my whole life, looking for a home for so long and now I think I finally found it."

Anisha cries, realising that her son has finally found happiness in his life. Sensing that the tide is shifting, Braka tries to laugh it all off as brainwashing.

Nahla then brings up strontium, of all things, a fuel source that could be found on Braka's planet.

Caleb explains that it's cheap, but lethal, burning red when it explodes.

Earlier on, Braka mentioned that The Federation rained down "red hellfire" on his settlement, but their weapons are always green. As such, Nahla realised that The Federation didn't attack. It was the weapon used by Braka's father which burned up the atmosphere because it was made of strontium.

"Vicious lies!" screams Braka. "Lies! Lies and propaganda!"

"You were a kid," says Nahla. Then she turns to the cameras using Holly Hunter's trademark charisma and husky voice. "Is this the person you want to follow into the future? An angry child with a finger on the trigger whose entire worldview is based on a lie?"

Spectators watching the trial in person begin to leave, presumably to go rewatch Anatomy of a Fall instead. Braka gets desperate, threatening to blow up all the mines with a trigger. What he doesn't know, however, is that the Athena's crew are doing all they can to deactivate them at the same time.

We see a counter reach 93 per cent, and then he presses the button. That's a misdirect, obviously, because a Star Trek show like this was never going to casually wipe out trillions of people in one fell swoop. Yep, the counter reached 100% before Braka pulled the trigger, which means that the mine field has been nullified.

And with that, other Federation ships are suddenly free to come in and arrest Braka for his crimes against the quadrant. Maybe he would have gotten away with it too, if not for those meddling kids.

Anisha punches Braka as he's led into custody, because her allegiance will flip on a dime, it seems.

"Close your eyes and you'll see me in your nightmares!" he screams. And you know what? With all those gross prosthetics he's sporting, Braka might just be right.

We then cut to one last sequence where Caleb goes over future summer plans with his mum.

"Part of me hopes you won’t wanna come back," says Anisha, "but I know you will".

Sounds harsh, but really she's just a bit reluctant about him and the whole Starfleet Academy thing.

Anisha tells Caleb how proud she is of him then. "I know this is your home, but you always have another one here." Yep, she touched her heart as she said it. Totes adorbs.

Caleb runs off to give his mum the tour then as everyone else at Starfleet Academy enjoys the end of year celebration that's unfolding aboard the ship.

He then says some cute stuff about home and trusting people in his first ever cadets log entry as we watch the crew celebrate the end of a successful season year.

Don't be scared though. A second season of Starfleet Academy has already been confirmed, so there's plenty more classroom hijinks to come once the summer break comes to an end. Just don't be surprised if this "summer break" takes a year or so to conclude in real time.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is streaming now on Paramount+.

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