Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's First Major Death Hits Harder Than You'd Expect

This article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" season 1, episode 6 — "Come, Let's Away."

After the profoundly entertaining and meaningful resolution to "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"  character Benjamin Sisko's (Avery Brooks) storyline in "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" season 1, episode 5 ("Series Acclimation Mil,") the show pivots to the land of immediate stakes and terrifying villains. "Come, Let's Away" showcases new sides of several key characters — and features a surprisingly hard-hitting major death when the Vulcan War College cadet B'Avi (Alexander Eling) falls.  

The episode revolves around a joint training exercise between the Academy and the War College, which goes awry when a group of cannibalistic raiders called Furies attack the husk of the experimental vessel USS Miyazaki. With several Starfleet and War Academy cadets as hostages, the threat of the Furies force the captured cadets to work together like never before. 

Up to this point, the War College cadets have largely played an adversarial role to our Academy heroes, with B'Avi as one of its ringleaders. However, "Come, Let's Away" smartly shows that despite academic rivalries, B'Avi is a smart, thoughtful guy. He proves himself to be a genuinely good, heroic cadet who's ready to selflessly fight the Furies at every turn. Because of this rapid-fire character development, it's a genuine shock to see B'Avi unexpectedly die when he steps in front of a Fury gun to save Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta). 

"Come, Let's Away" has a pretty brutal body count, especially since it comes so soon after the philosophical leanings and deep cut references of "Series Acclimation Mil." The Furies are genuinely disconcerting villains, and the grand revelation that Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti, who puts his favorite thing about his "Starfleet Academy" costume to good use) has orchestrated the whole thing to ransack and destroy an important space station means that Nahla Ake's (Holly Hunter) arch-villain now has access to mysterious, experimental technology. Even the villains get as good as they give. Creepy and dangerous as they are, the Furies meet their match at the end of the episode when Tarima Sadal (Zoë Steiner) goes all out and absolutely wrecks them with her psionic powers.

Despite all this action and the many, many scenes that allow Giamatti to chew scenery with all his might, B'Avi's death works as a pivotal moment that may very well serve as the cornerstone of the episode in the grand scheme of things. After all, his heroic sacrifice is the first time a major cadet character dies in the YA-flavored "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," which makes the occasion one for the history books ... both in-universe and for the viewers.

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