Starfleet Academy Season 1 Episode 6 Come, Let’s Away is a high-octane call back to the 80s teen horror action genre like the original Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. But for eagle-eared Star Trek fans, this movie genre is not the only callback.
For starters, the episode opens with a very romantic love scene between our favorite cis Starfleet Academy couple, Tarima Sadal and Caleb Mir. Now, not the raunchy t and a trappings of the 80s genre, but still falls into the realm of the teens gettin busy while the grown-ups aren’t watching. This beautiful scene comes to an abrupt end as we learn that Tarmia is not a typical Betazoid and that her abilities give her some unique and special skills. We learn this at what Caleb initially thinks is a great cost to him. I won’t spoil the details here; you’ll have to go and watch the episode.
Skipping over a bit, let’s jump into the action. Our cadets are trapped aboard a derelict ship, the USS Miyazaki. This ship is used by Starfleet for cadet training, so there was no expectation of real danger. The show’s main villain Nus Braka took full advantage of this and partnered with the terrifying hybrid species, the Furies. It is determined that the Furies are part Lynar, part human, and all cannibal. Trekkies have heard of the Lynars before, in season 6 episode 10 of Star Trek: The Next Generation – Chain of Command Part 1. Captain Picard, Dr. Crusher, and Lieutenant Worf encounter a small colony of bat-like creatures on Celtris III. Now, considering Starfleet Academy takes place 800 years after the events on Celtris III, it is possible that the Lynars have evolved as well as genetically modified themselves to become the Furies. I think, however, the writers are trying to pull the wool over our eyes, and there may be a bigger reveal in the future.
When the Furies appear, they are first detected like transporter signals, but something never seen before and unknown power sources. Genesis then reports that 10 new lifeform readings appeared out of nowhere and boarded the Miyazaki. When the Furies first hail the USS Athena, the first thing we hear from them is strange clicking sounds. The Furies leader, N’Duwo Skra sounds like he is breathing heavily, wearing a mask which may indicate some sort of breathing apparatus. Also, he does not seem to be fully in this physical reality. His face and head keep shifting or phasing in and out. Given these observations, I find it difficult to believe that a harmless bat-like creature evolved into a humanoid hybrid alien cannibal in 800 years. Just looking at Earth’s history, the oldest fossilized remains of bats were from 50-60 million years ago, and yet they are nowhere near to being humanoid and capable of speech. Trekkies, however, have encountered a more likely species that could be the origin of the Furies.
Star Trek: The Next Generation season 6 episode 5 – Schisms. In this episode, members of the Enterprise crew are subjected to alien abduction in the middle of the night. The abductions are occurring without setting off any sensors or alerts, so the crew is essentially disappearing out of nowhere. They are being abducted by a humanoid alien species that communicates using almost identical clicking sounds to those heard from the Furies. The crew is being abducted to a pocket of subspace and is therefore no longer within our physical reality. These subspace aliens were conducting experiments on the Enterprise crew. Also, a growing pocket of subspace appeared in the Enterprise’s cargo bay. Geordi hypothesized that the aliens were trying to make a pocket of their own subspace there. Now, while the Enterprise was able to collapse the pocket of subspace that the aliens had created, which stopped the abductions, we don’t really know what happened to the aliens. Perhaps over the 800 years, this subspace species continued its abductions and experimentation, eventually resulting in the human-alien hybrid Furies.
Once again, I commend the Starfleet Academy writers on a job well done. Let me know what you think about my theory. Are the Furies really human/bat hybrids originally from Celtris III, or are they human/subspace alien hybrids that continued to abduct and experiment on humans long after their encounter with the Enterprise-D?
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