Ake accepts the job, and to atone for her mistake in separating Mir from his mother, she pressgangs him into the Academy as a new recruit. Oh, she’s also a Lanthanite (technically a human-lanthanite hybrid), and 422 years old, which means she remembers working for the pre-burn Federation. She isn’t the only academy instructor with pre-burn experience in Starfleet. Jett Reno (Tig Notaro), who came to the 32nd century with Discovery, teaches the cadets physics. And the Doctor (Robert Picardo) is chief medical officer.

I had hoped this would be the result of a deep cut to “The Living Witness,” an episode of Voyager set in the 29th century where a copy of the Doctor is restored in a museum in the Delta Quadrant. At the end of that episode, that Doctor sets off for Earth, and having him show up would be a nice bit of closure; instead, he probably perished in the burn, which just makes me sad. As chief medical officer, the Doctor is apparently constantly monitoring the cadets’ biosigns—he breaks up an incipient fight after detecting students with elevated excitatory neurotransmitters. That seems more than a little invasive to me, although later he gets a taste of his own medicine from Starfleet’s first holographic cadet, SAM (Kerrice Brooks).

I’ve got a bit of a problem with Cadet Master Commander Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), who is a female Klingon-Jem’Hadar hybrid.

Obviously, a female Jem’Hadar must be canon, because it’s right there on screen, and that’s how Trek canon works. But the Founders bred the Jem’Hadar in tanks, and they lived short, dangerous lives as warriors. What use would sex organs or sexual reproduction be to a species genetically engineered to do a specific job by a race of contemptuous changelings that treat their minions as little more than tools.