Why Star Trek Just Returned To An Underrated Tear-Jerker Episode From 1997
Starfleet Academy’s bosses revisited Voyager’s “Real Life” to bring a new dimension to the Doctor.
Despite a gulf of several centuries between Starfleet Academy and a good chunk of the established Star Trek canon, there are always tricky ways to bring characters from the past into the future. And although 23rd-century folks like Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Reno (Tig Notaro) jumped into this future back when Discovery came to the 32nd century, there are other sci-fi methods, outside of time travel, to get folks from one era to another. Maybe you’re quasi-immortal, or a Trill with various host bodies. Or, in the case of Voyager’s cranky physician known only as “the Doctor,” perhaps you’re a long-lived holographic AI.
By now, Trek fans are well aware that Robert Picardo’s Doctor from Voyager is a major character in Starfleet Academy, living well beyond his initial activation in 2371; he now teaches at the titular space school in the 3190s. And in Starfleet Academy Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars,” the Doctor’s journey from the era of Voyager to the present is touched upon in a surprising way. For the second time in Trek canon history, the Doctor has a holographic family, and this time, it doesn’t end in tragedy.
Spoilers ahead for Starfleet Academy’s “The Life of the Stars.”
The Doctor (Robert Picardo) and his holographic daughter, Belle (Lindsey Haun), in the 1997 Voyager episode “Real Life.”
“In the case of Robert Picardo, we were children when he was playing the Doctor on Voyager,” Starfleet Academy showrunner Noga Landau tells Inverse. “So, you think to yourself, if we're going to get this actor to say yes, to come and give up years of their lives, put back on a uniform, we have to give them something good to sink their teeth into.”
And so, what Landau and series creator Gaia Violo decided was to revisit the themes of a quiet episode of Star Trek Voyager from 1997 called “Real Life,” written by Harry Doc Kloor and Star Trek legend Jeri Taylor. In that episode, the Doctor toyed with creating a holographic family, which eventually resulted in some very real tragedy when his holographic daughter passed away. In Starfleet Academy's “The Life of the Stars,” we discover that in the 32nd century, the Doctor is very reluctant to take on another holographic surrogate daughter in the form of SAM (Kerrice Brooks) because of his painful memories from that episode.
“That episode [“Real Life”] is, let me say, traumatizing to the millennial brain,” Landau says. “He grew a holographic family for himself only to have his daughter pass away, and he basically shuts the whole thing down and says, I'm never doing that again. So, we knew that in order to introduce a fresh story for the Doctor, we had to take a bold swing. And so, we said to Bob [Picardo] what if you became a father, but for real this time?”
Kerrice Brooks as SAM and Robert Picardo as the Doctor in Starfleet Academy.
When SAM is taken to her homeworld of Kasq, the only way to save her life and fix her programming is for the Doctor to become a parental figure and raise her in a simulated childhood. But, unlike what happened in “Real Life,” this time, the amount of time experienced by the Doctor and SAM is real for them, even though it only occurs in the span of a few moments for Captain Ake (Holly Hunter). This idea of a life lived in a blink-of-an-eye is an old-school Star Trek trick, most famously seen in Morgan Gendel’s The Next Generation classic “The Inner Light.” (Strange New Worlds pulled a similar trick in the recent 2025 Season 3 finale.)
But in “The Life of the Stars,” the Doctor’s time with SAM isn’t just simulated or in an alternate reality; he and SAM actually experience her entire childhood together, in real time. So, when they return to Starfleet Academy, the Doctor and SAM are forever changed, now father and surrogate daughter. Unlike Voyager in 1997, in which episodes like “Real Life” weren’t revisited that often, this new family unit between the Doctor and SAM won’t end with “The Life of the Stars.”
“Bob is this mentoring figure,” Violo explains. “With this episode in particular, their relationship evolves, now that she’s a teenager. The episode is an emotional goodbye to the first version of SAM, leading to the second version of SAM. And you’ll see more of this relationship in Season
