Starfleet Academy Finally Explains One Of Star Trek's Biggest Obsessions

Spoilers for "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" episode 8 to follow.

"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" just put its students in dangerous, foreboding territory: drama class. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), introduced on "Star Trek: Discovery," appears as a guest teacher in the show's latest episode, "The Life of the Stars," as the students learn about theatre.

Knowing that Starfleet Academy includes drama as part of its curriculum adds new context to the longstanding love affair between "Star Trek" and William Shakespeare. Many "Star Trek" episodes have titles that reference Shakespeare's works. One of them is "The Conscience of the King" (a favorite of venerated "Trek" writer Ronald D. Moore), which is all about a Shakespearean actor (Arnold Moss) who might be a mass murderer in disguise.

Several prominent "Star Trek" actors have also come from Shakespearean theater backgrounds; most notably, Sir Patrick Stewart worked in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company long before he was Captain Jean-Luc Picard. What might be more surprising is that William Shatner, Captain Kirk himself, also had a Shakespearean background; in the 1950s, he was part of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival troupe in Ontario.

Since the casts of "Star Trek" shows have included professional Shakespeare nerds, it makes sense that this bled through into their characters. But the Shakespeare references are also part of a larger motif in "Star Trek" about arts appreciation. During "Star Trek: The Next Generation," for example, the Enterprise-D held classical music concerts (like in the episode "Sarek"), while Data (Brent Spiner) took up painting and poetry to better grasp humanity.

Starfleet Academy is meant to nurture the best and brightest of the Federation. So, to become that, it seems that Starfleet officers must be just as well versed in stagecraft as they are in technobabble.

During Tilly's class, our leads wonder the same thing that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematic) students do when asked to study literature and the arts: What's the point of learning this? Humanities education has been facing defunding across U.S. universities for years. Critics often attack these curricula for not teaching employable skills.

But the future of "Star Trek" is post-scarcity, and the word "productivity" has evolved away from generating profit. The world of "Star Trek," where people can make and appreciate art for leisure, is sometimes described as socialist. The Federation's social structures do evoke Karl Marx describing a world where people can "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman, or critic."

Tilly has none of her students' indignation, explaining why drama will teach them Starfleet-relevant lessons: "Theatre is statecraft, statecraft is theatre." Starfleet are explorers and diplomats, and one of the key ways to connect different civilizations is by sharing culture.

As TV Tropes notes, "Klingons Love Shakespeare." In "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner) and General Chang (Christopher Plummer) quote "Hamlet." Chang quips Shakespeare is better in "the original Klingon," suggesting Klingons perform the Bard's plays. Klingons' appreciation for human stories, and realizing humans had some Klingon in their spirit, is one reason the Klingons and humanity went from enemies to allies.

"Starfleet Academy" has explicitly divided the eponymous school and the War College; the Starfleet cadets are studying to be more than only soldiers. In Tilly's drama class, they learn critical thinking and empathy via a humanities education as well.

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