Summary
- Starfleet offers a chance for a better life to those from challenging backgrounds who long for connection and exploration.
- Characters like Lt. Commander Billups, Elnor, Nog, and Tasha Yar find hope and opportunity in Starfleet away from their pasts.
- Joining Starfleet means escaping oppressive systems, embracing diversity, and fighting for a future worth believing in.
For some Star Trek characters, running away to Starfleet is a dream that’s worth pursuing. The utopia of Star Trek‘s United Federation of Planets isn’t available to non-member worlds, so growing up outside the Federation increases one’s chances of living a harder life, and wanting to run away to Starfleet. Starfleet welcomes cadets openly, but residents of non-Federation worlds must be sponsored by a command-level Starfleet officer in order to enroll in Starfleet Academy, especially if their people are current or former antagonists to the Federation, like Orions, Romulans, or Ferengi.
In every Star Trek show, the opportunity exists for Starfleet officers to make a difference, regardless of their origin. Characters might run away to Starfleet when they long to connect with others or explore beyond their homes, but don’t have the opportunities where they’re at. Starfleet values mean these people can be themselves without question, and enjoy the benefits of a post-scarcity society that embraces difference as a rule. For these Star Trek characters, running away to Starfleet means they can live a better life with more opportunities, where they don’t have to be stifled by ill-fitting circumstances.
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9 Lt. Commander Andy Billups (Paul Scheer)
“I love Starfleet, okay, and I don’t want to live in a castle with pet dragons.”
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2, episode 7, “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” reveals that Lt. Commander Andarithio “Andy” Billups, the USS Cerritos’ Chief Engineer, is the prince of Star Trek‘s Renaissance Faire planet, Hysperia, and will be its king upon becoming sexually active. Life on Hysperia is frustrating, because Billups is a great engineer who hates that Hysperian culture is covered in a veneer of pseudo-Medieval aesthetics, despite being post-warp, and Billups would rather call things what they are. Between preferring practical applications of engineering, and escaping the pressure of ruling a planet, it’s no wonder Billups joins Starfleet.
8 Elnor (Evan Evagora)
“I have bound myself to Picard as qalankhkai.”
In Star Trek: Picard, Elnor chooses to attend Starfleet Academy after being inspired by Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and Commander Raffi Musiker. As a Romulan refugee, Elnor was raised by the Qowat Milat, Romulan warrior nuns devoted to lost causes and a philosophy of absolute candor. As a man, Elnor can’t officially join the all-female Qowat Milat, but Elnor still binds himself to Picard’s search for Soji Asha (Isa Briones) as qalankhkai: the champion of a lost cause. After being released from Picard’s cause, Elnor considers Starfleet his best option, and Elnor becomes the first full-blooded Romulan in Starfleet.
Star Trek: Picard
- Release Date
- January 23, 2020
- Seasons
- 3
- Writers
- Terry Matalas , Akiva Goldsman , Michael Chabon
- Showrunner
- Michael Chabon , Akiva Goldsman , Terry Matalas
- Cast
- Patrick Stewart , Jonathan Frakes , Jeri Ryan , Michelle Hurd , Ed Speleers , Gates McFadden , Todd Stashwick , Michael Dorn , Brent Spiner , LeVar Burton , Marina Sirtis , Amanda Plummer , Isa Briones , Alison Pill , Santiago Cabrera , Evan Evagora , Orla Brady , John de Lancie , Whoopi Goldberg
- Main Genre
- Sci-Fi
7 Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong)
“And this crew? I believe we can do anything. Even defeat the Gorn. ”
After escaping as the sole survivor of a Gorn attack on her family’s colony ship, the SS Puget Sound, La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) was rescued by Starfleet officers, one of whom was Commander Una Chin-Riley, also known as Number One (Rebecca Romijn). The destruction of the colony meant that La’an needed a place to go, and the Starfleet officers who rescued La’an provided an opportunity, as well as a fresh start. La’an Noonien-Singh was inspired to go into Starfleet security as a response to living through the Gorn attack, with hope that La’an could protect others like herself.
La’an Noonien-Singh is descended from Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban), but the Federation ban on genetic engineering doesn’t apply to La’an, since Lt. Noonien-Singh is so far removed from Khan that she has no Augment advantages.
6 Lt. D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells)
“I wasn’t just a regular Orion teenager. I was trained to be a Syndicate assassin.”
Lt. D’Vana Tendi runs away to Starfleet to escape the life promised to her as “Mistress of the Winter Constellations”, the eldest daughter of the fifth-largest family in the criminal Orion Syndicate. As her family’s Prime, D’Vana was trained since childhood to be a Syndicate assassin, but Tendi wanted a different life. In Lower Decks season 4, episode 4, “Something Borrowed, Something Green”, Tendi finds the downed Federation ship where she imagined being a Starfleet science officer. Tendi makes her Starfleet dreams come true by running away to Starfleet Academy, leaving the pirating to her sister, D’Erika.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
- Release Date
- August 6, 2020
- Seasons
- 5
- Writers
- Mike McMahan
- Showrunner
- Mike McMahan
5 Captain Saru (Doug Jones)
“I saw hope in the stars. It was stronger than fear, and I went towards it.”
In Star Trek: Short Treks season 1, episode 3, “The Brightest Star”, Saru escapes life from the pre-warp Kelpien village on Kaminar to join Starfleet. Saru believes there’s more than subsistence living and waiting to be harvested by the Ba’ul, and wants to get out. Against his family’s wishes, Saru builds a communication device from spare parts taken from a transmitter built by the (supposedly) predatory Ba’ul. Saru manages to contact alien life, which comes in the form of Starfleet’s Captain Philippa Georgiou, who gives Saru the chance to leave Kaminar, even though it means never seeing his family again.
Star Trek: Discovery
- Release Date
- September 24, 2017
- Seasons
- 4
- Writers
- Alex Kurtzman
- Showrunner
- Alex Kurtzman
4 Lt. Nog (Aron Eisenberg)
“I want to do something with my life… something worthwhile.”
Living on Deep Space Nine showed Nog that there were other alternatives to the typical Ferengi way of life — alternatives like Starfleet. Nog was terrified that he’d wind up like his father, Rom, stuck in a dead-end job and unable to use his true gifts to live a more satisfying life. When the time came for Nog to choose an apprenticeship, Nog decided Starfleet would give him the opportunities that Rom never had. Rather than see his potential wasted, Nog escaped the oppressive system of Ferengi capitalist culture, and became a true success story as the first Ferengi in Starfleet.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Release Date
- January 3, 1993
- Seasons
- 7
- Writers
- Michael Piller , Ira Steven Behr , Ronald D. Moore
- Showrunner
- Michael Piller , Ira Steven Behr
- Cast
- Avery Brooks , Rene Auberjonois , Cirroc Lofton , Colm Meaney , Armin Shimerman , Alexander Siddig , Nana Visitor , Michael Dorn , Nicole de Boer , Terry Farrell , Andrew Robinson
3 Star Trek: Prodigy’s USS Protostar Crew
“We all deserve to belong somewhere.”
The USS Protostar crew in Star Trek: Prodigy is made up of young people who ran away to Starfleet on the promise of little more than a wild dream. Dal R’El knew that finding the USS Protostar presented the opportunity to escape an awful life on the Tars Lamora mining colony. Dal, Gywndala and the other Unwanted who escaped with Dal to become the USS Protostar crew didn’t even know about Starfleet or the Federation when they found their Federation starship, and the explanations given by Hologram Janeway seemed too good to be true, but they persist in seeking out Starfleet.
Each of the Star Trek: Prodigy characters has reasons for wanting to be better than the system that oppressed them, and finds out how to rise above their own pasts on their journey to Federation space. The USS Protostar crew embody Starfleet before they even get to the Academy, and still have to fight to be seen and heard. Fortunately, Admiral Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) advocates for them all, and takes them aboard the USS Voyager-A for its new mission in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2.
Star Trek: Prodigy
- Release Date
- October 28, 2021
- Seasons
- 2
- Writers
- Dan Hageman , Kevin Hageman
- Showrunner
- Dan Hageman , Kevin Hageman
- Creator(s)
- Kevin Hageman , Dan Hageman
2 Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn)
“Maybe I could be a part of something bigger than myself.”
Commander Una Chin-Riley first encountered Starfleet as a child, when Starfleet officers came to the Federation colony in the Vaultera Nebula, where Una grew up. The Federation ban on genetic engineering divided Una’s community, subjecting Una’s family to hate because they still practiced the Illyrian custom of augmentation. Starfleet represented a better life, so Una Chin-Riley hid her Illyrian heritage and joined Starfleet anyway. Upon being discovered as Illyrian, Commander Chin-Riley pled with Starfleet for asylum, which was granted during Number One’s trial in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 2, “Ad Astra Per Aspera”.
Una Chin-Riley’s heart-wrenching origin story eventually leads to Number One becoming the face of Starfleet recruitment posters well into the 24th century, as explained in
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
season 2, episode 7, “Those Old Scientists”.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
- Release Date
- May 5, 2022
- Seasons
- 2
- Writers
- Akiva Goldsman , Henry Alonso Myers , Bill Wolkoff
- Showrunner
- Henry Alonso Myers , Akiva Goldsman
1 Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby)
“Starfleet took that frightened, angry young girl and tempered her.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Lieutenant Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) joins Starfleet to escape the harsh conditions on Turkana IV, a failed Earth colony where lawlessness runs rampant. The colony was overrun with crime, and its citizens were kept in a drug-induced haze while scavenging for food. Women like Tasha and her sister, Ishara (Beth Toussaint), lived in fear of sexual assault. At age 15, Tasha Yar jumped at the opportunity to escape from Turkana IV, and eventually enrolled at Starfleet Academy.
In
Star Trek: The Next Generation
season 4, episode 6, “Legacy”, the USS Enterprise arrives at Turkana IV, and encounters Yar’s sister, Ishara, who is still bitter about Tasha leaving for Starfleet.
Tasha Yar’s story is a reminder that the utopian society created by the United Federation of Planets doesn’t exist everywhere in the Star Trek universe, which isn’t often touched on in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Starfleet was a way out that Tasha eagerly accepted, and becoming a security officer allowed Yar to be the type of person that Tasha needed when she was growing up.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Release Date
- September 28, 1987
- Seasons
- 7
- Writers
- Rick Berman , Michael Piller , Brannon Braga , Jeri Taylor , Ronald D. Moore
- Showrunner
- Rick Berman , Michael Piller , Jeri Taylor
- Directors
- David Carson
For these characters, Starfleet represents the hope that can be found in a future worth fighting for. Starfleet is a promise, in many ways, that life can be better than the unfortunate hands that they’ve been dealt. These characters who ran away to Starfleet are a lot like us, watching Star Trek shows and looking for hope. We may not be able to board a starship to escape a brand-new life, but we can come together to try to keep the spirit of cooperation and exploration alive here and now, creating the Star Trek world these characters are running towards.
