Starfleet Academy is a show that’s full of coming-of-age arcs, which makes sense given its setting, subject matter, and cast full of young cadets finding their way in the world. And while Tarima’s story looks quite a bit different from, say, Jay-Den Kraag’s or hologram student Sam’s, it’s no less impactful. Not the least of which reason being that it comes with a body count, but also because it ultimately asks the young Betazoid to embrace a new way of looking at herself in the world.
“She has her neural inhibitor, and it’s designed to protect her, and for a good amount of time it has,” Steiner says. “But, and people all have things like this in our own lives, the idea of things that we do, or behaviors [we] engage in that serve their purpose for a while, and then they don’t anymore. On the contrary, they might even be holding us back. And in that scene, she knew what she had to do; that inhibitor had to come off to get access to the sheer amount of power that was required. That protective mechanism had to go.”
Through Starfleet Academy’s six episodes to date, we’ve largely seen Tarima through the lens of her romance with fellow cadet Caleb Mir. Initially introduced as a flirt with serious playboy vibes, it’s through his relationship with Tarima that we’ve been able to see his more human and likable depths.
“Caleb has had to be so guarded his whole life, but [Tarima] just bypasses all the boundaries he’s had to set up without even trying,” Sandro Rosta, who plays Caleb, says. “She has so much capacity to understand him and can kind of feel and sense everything going on inside [him]. And she does that from day one. So there’s a huge amount of release that he gets emotionally, and a huge amount of safety that he feels when he’s around her. And I think that’s something that’s very new to him.”
In this episode, it is because of the strength of Caleb and Tarima’s connection — of both the mental and the physical variety, since one clearly informs the other — that she’s able to mindspeak with him and help save the students trapped on the wreckage of the Miyazaki.
“From the very beginning, when we first meet them — and we see this reflected particularly in the aquarium scene with the whales — Caleb really represents freedom, and that’s something that Tarima really yearns for,” Steiner says. “She just hasn’t really allowed herself to or hasn’t been in a position to experience that yet. Being behind the psionic barrier on Betazed, there’s that literal wall up around her, and with her abilities, it brings her a lot of shame and [she has] emotional walls up as well. So I think when she meets Caleb, a whole new world of possibilities opens up for her.”