The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 7.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is, as its name implies, the story of an institution. But it’s also the story of the cadets who make that institution worthwhile, and its sprawling cast is full of a wide variety of characters from different backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences. From humans and Klingons to Betazoids and holograms, the series has explored traditional coming-of-age themes through a wide variety of character perspectives. But, somehow, despite everything that’s happened so far in the series’ first season, we still know relatively little about overachieving Dar-Sha cadet Genesis Lythe. Seventh episode, “Ko’Zeine,” attempts to change that, with a story that takes a dive into the pressures and fears that motivate her behavior.

“This episode really uncovered so much about Genesis,” Bella Shepard tells Den of Geek. “I almost felt like I got to step outside of her a little bit and have a new perspective on her. I wasn’t given much to work with for the character as a whole when I first booked the project, so getting the script for episode 7, I was like, “Yes, finally.” Before that, it’s like I got little easter eggs about who she is and where she comes from.”

An hour that explores questions of duty, expectation, and self, “Ko’Zeine” reveals that Genesis isn’t exactly the perfect student we’ve all been led to believe. She altered her Starfleet Academy recommendations during the application process and removed the criticisms they contained to ensure she was accepted as a student. To a one, her recommendations all noted that while Genesis is incredibly driven, her drive comes from a place of fear, from an inability to accept her own successes or trust her own ability.

“She’s afraid of failure,” she says. “But that’s such a big umbrella: failure to uphold your image, failure to achieve what you want, or failure to love somebody the way they deserve to be loved. She thinks her value comes from her achievements, because that’s really what she’s known her whole life. So to have something other than achievements, which could be love or friendship, those don’t mean as much to her because she thinks that that’s not what people want from her or want to see from her. Her fear is really driven by not being who she thinks people want her to be.”

Ostensibly, her dream is to follow in the footsteps of her famous father, a Starfleet admiral who sounds as if he’s not exactly in the running for Dad of the Year when it comes to being present as a parent. But “Ko’Zeine” gives us plenty of reasons to question whether this path is one she truly wants.

“I think it’s so easy to do something familiar, and, obviously, her father being in a high position within the Federation, that’s familiar to her. Pressure’s familiar, and authority is very familiar to her. Because she’s afraid to step out of her comfort zone too much, she’s stuck with what’s familiar. Following in his footsteps, that’s what’s comfortable for her. If he’d been something really boring, like a librarian, she probably would’ve just worked at the library, but she would have been the best librarian. She would’ve had all the books in order perfectly and they would’ve been dusted and cleaned. Again, I think, it’s her being afraid of failure. And she talks about how, ‘Oh, I’m hoping that people don’t correlate my achievements to my father’s,’ but really, she set that system up herself. She needed the security of her father’s position to be able to fall back on and be like, ‘Well, that’s the guy I’m learning from. So if I’m doing it wrong, it’s because I’m just learning from him.’”

Thankfully, Starfleet Academy is allowing Genesis to open herself up to lots of new people and experiences, which often challenge her own perceptions of herself. In “Ko’Zeine,” she finds herself spending a holiday weekend sequestered in the Academy with Caleb, and though she’s technically using him to commit some mild crimes to help her break into her own records, their friendship is a genuine one.

“I think what Genesis and Caleb see in each other are both things that they lack,” Shepard says. “Genesis sees Caleb’s ability to just be free. He always says what’s on his mind. He does what he wants. He doesn’t follow the rules, and he doesn’t have any kind of structure in his life. He never has. That for him is his comfort zone, and for Genesis, her comfort zone is structure. It’s rules, it’s following things by a book. It’s almost like they both have something that the other wants, and I like to think they vibed right off the bat because they saw that reflection in each other. They’re so similar in so many ways, but they got there through opposite paths.”

“I like to think of them as platonic soulmates in a way,” Shepard continues. “They can finish each other’s sentences. I like to imagine them being on the same bridge one day and sharing a captain’s chair because they think so much alike, and they’re so good at problem-solving, and what one lacks, the other one makes up for. It makes a lot of sense to me why they feel so connected to each other, because it’s almost like, ‘I’ll be your crutch if you’ll be mine.’”

Shepard is not only spending Starfleet Academy’s first season introducing a new character, but an entirely new alien species as well. She’s the first actor to play a member of the Dar-Sha, a humanoid species characterized by thin ridges above her eyes instead of eyebrows.

“Knowing the impact that this franchise has had on the world and then being able to come in and — I’m not playing a human, of course, but all of these characters are human at heart. They all have real, true humanity. And to be able to develop something from scratch was just so liberating as an actor, because it was like…I can’t really do anything wrong here. I can have fun with this. And even down to little details. I got to work with the costume department on her jewelry, and we’ve created this whole backstory on where and how she gets it.”

While we haven’t learned that much about the Dar-Sha onscreen, one has to assume an episode about this is coming in the not-too-distant future, if only because they’re a new species that could be or do pretty much anything. But Shepard herself has clearly thought about it a lot.

“The Dar-Sha being nomadic and not having really a home planet, I like to imagine that they’re just overly resourceful. Like they just gather everything from every culture, because they’re constantly moving through space,” she says. “They’re meeting people of different cultures and different species, so I like to just pull from everything that I can research in this real physical life and put that into, “Ooh, I like this piece of culture, I feel like we can integrate that into the space, into the future version for the Dar-Sha story,” and it’s just been so fun. My job is to play pretend, and now I get to do it to the fullest extent.”

The question of what Genesis’s Academy career will look like going forward is one only the rest of the season (and series, to be honest) can answer. But to hear Shepard tell it, “Ko’Zeine” is just the beginning.

“The thing about Starfleet [Academy] is this is a great opportunity for all the characters to really discover themselves, and they’re all so young. It’s a great opportunity for them all to learn the hard lessons and to fall and get up again. And we get to see Genesis discover more of her flaws later in the story and use a lot of her strengths again. She’s such a good team leader because she’s able to utilize other people’s strengths And I think for myself personally, I’ve been told as a child that I’m very bossy, or I’m too confrontational and I’ve integrated a lot of that into Genesis. I want to speak my mind, and I want to lift my friends up and tell them how they can keep going through life. And I think Genesis does a lot of that through her story, and we get to see more of her in-depth in season 2, which I’m so excited for people to see. I can’t wait for everyone else to follow on her journey.”

New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with the finale on March 12.

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