39 Years Later, Star Trek Has Reimagined Its Most Famous Power Couple

He’s a handsome, cocky human Starfleet hero, and she’s an empathic, resilient Betazoid often annoyed by his nonsense. Are we talking about William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) on Star Trek: The Next Generation? Close, but no. In Starfleet Academy, actors Sandro Rosta and Zoë Steiner play Caleb Mir and Tarima Sadal, a hotshot Starfleet cadet and a Betazoid with extraordinary abilities.

It's the kind of romantic pairing that helped make TNG so successful, but both Rosta and Steiner feel like their chemistry is more than just a tribute to ‘90s Trek canon.

“There are natural parallels there,” Steiner tells Inverse. “But I guess we also have something new and different to bring as well. Tarima is a special kind of Betazoid.”

In the sixth episode of Starfleet Academy, Tarima’s extra-powerful abilities are on full display, as she and Caleb have to link their minds to save a training mission gone wrong. Early in the episode, we see Tarima and Caleb sharing a kind of mindscape, which echoes early Next Generation episodes in which Will and Deanna communicated telepathically.

“Betazoids can mindspeak,” Tarima says to Caleb. But we also learn that that level of intimacy can make a human being feel exposed. When Tarima sees Caleb’s childhood memories, things get tense. But in playing this alpha-male Starfleet hero in the Will Riker or James Kirk mold, Rosta was careful not to hit too many cliches.

“At first glance, you can form an opinion about him,” Rosta says. “ And then the more time you spend with this person, the more you realize that there are different sides to this human being. There's more underneath the surface... I made it a goal of mine to try and find the braggadociousness that sometimes comes out in my personality at times.”

As this episode reveals, there’s an on-again, off-again feeling to Tarima and Caleb that’s like Riker and Troi, but because the Starfleet Academy characters are much younger, it's almost like we’re seeing a take on Riker and Troi before they appeared on The Next Generation.

“When I first got the role, I hadn’t seen a lot of Star Trek, so the first thing I did was look up exactly who Deanna Troi was, and watched all those Next Gen episodes,” Steiner says. “So the comparison has entered my mind, and I have great respect for every iteration of Trek that’s come before us, and we have the privilege of continuing a legacy that's gone on for 60 years.”

Comparisons to the past aside, Tarima’s Jean Grey-like powers in Starfleet Academy are a game-changer not just for the series, but for how we think about these powerful telepaths in general. And it's on this point that Steiner lingers a bit.

“In that specific way, with her powers, she’s not like Deanna at all,” she says. “She’s a brand new part of Star Trek lore.”

Starfleet Academy streams on Paramount+.