There are so many things we liked about this episode we had to create a supplemental post sharing what we thought about specific performances, direction, and cinematography while adding a few thoughts about the writing.
Acting
The performances in this episode represent perhaps the widest range of quality the season has offered so far, from some of the franchise’s most genuinely affecting work to moments that leave critical viewers cold.
Kerrice Brooks as SAM continues her status as the season’s most consistently compelling performer among the younger cast. Brooks turns in a captivating performance as SAM, having been a standout all season, but “The Life of the Stars” gives her more meaty scenes to sink her teeth into. The challenge of playing a holographic being whose very existence is unraveling — while also playing that character as an infant, a child, and finally a young adult in the Kasq sequences — is considerable, and Brooks handles it with a naturalness that keeps the emotional stakes grounded. She is, by many accounts, one of the most interesting characters in the show, and the episode smartly anchors itself in her journey.
Holly Hunter as Chancellor Ake is fascinating and a little puzzling in equal measure. She brings an otherworldly stillness to the role that befits a Lanthanite who has lived for centuries, and her delivery of the episode’s closing monologue is quite powerful. Yet the role as written here largely confines her to observing and commenting rather than behaving, and there is a recurring tension between the extraordinary magnetic force of Hunter’s presence and the relatively limited dramatic function she is given to perform. Hopefully, the two remaining episodes will give her more to
Mary Wiseman as Tilly is welcomed back warmly. Tilly’s growth since Discovery is evident — she has more swagger, to be sure — and seeing Wiseman on screen in the role again is an absolute joy. Wiseman plays Tilly’s enthusiasm with more authority than before, and there’s a satisfying maturity to the performance. One of the episode’s best-received acting moments belongs to her: the scene in which Tilly firmly and directly tells Tarima to stop being a brat and participate in her own education registers as both in-character and quietly thrilling.
Writing
The script by Gaia Violo and Jane Maggs is the most tonally ambitious of the entore first season.
Its primary strength is structural architecture. The writers succeed in telling the most emotional story of the season while further developing the bonds between the characters giving several members of the cast an opportunity to shine. The use of Our Town functions not merely as window dressing but as a genuine thematic vehicle. The parallel between the cadets reading Emily’s role — a ghost grappling with the preciousness of life she can no longer touch — and Tarima’s enforced alienation from everything she was before the Miyazaki incident is sophisticated and understated. Similarly, the writers’ decision to frame the immortal Doctor and the ancient Chancellor Ake as natural analogues to Wilder’s Stage Manager is a genuinely innovative piece of literary architecture.
Where the episode’s premise overreaches somewhat is in its setup: when Tilly introduces the idea of theater as Starfleet statecraft, suggesting it has long functioned as a tool of diplomacy and cultural exchange across species, the episode promises a broader exploration of performance in the Star Trek universe — echoing the franchise’s long history of using Shakespeare and classical literature in exactly those ways. Instead, it narrows its focus almost entirely to the cadets processing their collective trauma through a single play, a shift that feels smaller than the premise promised.
At the dialogue level, the episode is inconsistent. The Doctor’s monologues are eloquently constructed, and several of his exchanges with Ake have a depth and genuine philosophical weight. But in the cadet scenes, the writing too often opts for shortcuts. Critics note that the conversations take shortcuts into emotional reactions and responses, as though the script were written by someone who thinks people talk in emotional conclusions rather than through them. Characters announce their feelings rather than dramatizing them, and the cadet ensemble is periodically reduced to functioning as emotional exposition rather than as fully individuated people navigating a difficult situation.
There is also the question of Tarima’s central dilemma — her forced transfer from the War College to the Academy — which some viewers found insufficiently motivated by the script. The reasoning for why Tarima cannot simply return to the War College is presented in a way that appears to prioritize the institution’s interest in her as a resource, but the script frames it as being entirely for her own benefit, a tension that goes unresolved and slightly undercuts the emotional logic of her arc.
Directing
Andi Armaganian brings a deliberate, character-driven sensibility to the episode that is largely appropriate to its material.
The most consistent praise for the direction concerns Armaganian’s pacing in the Kasq sequences. These scenes are given room to breathe — a genuine rarity in modern franchise television. The episode closely mirrors the “muted minimalism” of Our Town‘s lighting direction in its visual approach to the Kasq storyline, and Armaganian handles this conscious theatrical stylization with care and intentionality. The decision to stage the episode’s opening and closing in near-darkness, with a single figure illuminated against black — directly evoking Wilder’s stagecraft — is bold and effective.
Where the directing draws criticism is in its handling of the cadet material. Everything about the production of the Academy scenes felt overwrought: the music, the direction, the runtime — all of it trying so hard that there was zero faith in the audience to pick up on thematic or emotional cues for themselves. Particularly problematic are the long, pondering reaction shots that could have been cut to significantly reduce the runtime without sacrificing anything of substance. This is a directorial problem as much as a writing one: there is a difference between giving scenes room to breathe and padding them with held expressions that the performances cannot sustain.
Armaganian also directs the climactic eight-plus minutes montage of SAM growing up on Kasq intercut with the cadets’ impromptu performance — with genuine feeling, though some find the sequence tips into sentimentality. The staging of the theater scenes at the Academy has an improvisational, slightly rough-edged quality that feels deliberate, evoking the authenticity of young people encountering serious material for the first time rather than the polished delivery of trained performers.
Cinematography
The cinematography used in this episode is one of its most effecting technical elements. The cinematography throughout the Kasq sequences — from the actors’ blocking to the use of the grayscale in lieu of color — makes for memorable viewing. Moments after the Doctor references Our Town‘s unique stage directions that emphasize minimalism — muting the lighting and color — Ake, the Doctor, and SAM find themselves on a mostly black-and-white Kasq with selective elements rendered in starkly contrasting bright color.
On Kasq, moments only gain color after they become memories, infused with emotion and nostalgia. The episode makes the right choice to render Kasq in a near-monochromatic palette. The world is bleak, grey-washed, and still — and then, in a moment of genuine visual poetry, the planet gains color as SAM is “born” into it. It’s a classically cinematic technique, one that earns its emotional payoff precisely because the groundwork has been laid both visually and thematically beforehand.
The closing moments of the episode similarly attempt to mirror the minimalism of Our Town‘s final stage directions. This conscious theatrical-to-visual translation is the episode’s most formally inventive move, and it works: the cinematographic grammar of the Kasq sequences functions as a direct extension of the thematic argument Our Town is making about memory, life, and what it means for the world to become fully real to us only in retrospect.
The Academy scenes are lit in a warmer, more naturalistic register, which creates a productive visual contrast between the two storylines — the world of the living and engaged against the world of suspended, grief-stilled time. This isn’t just atmospheric decoration; it reinforces the episode’s central argument about the relationship between emotional openness and vitality.
Conclusion
The overall quality of “The Life of the Stars” has us excited for what’s coming in the next two episodes. We’re looking forward to a strong finish for the newest addition to the Star Trek franchise.