A Group Of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's Most Important Characters Vanished Into Thin Air

When "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" launched in mid-January of 2026 – and you can read our review here – it came packaged as two shows in one. The series was set mostly on Earth, at the titular Academy where teenage aliens from across the galaxy would come to learn engineering, command skills, arts, sciences, and everything else that an aspiring Starfleet officer ought to know. The school had just reopened for the first time in over a century, so the series was about new beginnings and rebuilding the notorious optimism of "Star Trek." It was staged as a high-concept college drama. 

At the same time, though, "Starfleet Academy" didn't want to lose the "Trek" part of "Star Trek," and had portions of the Academy Campus on board a starship called the U.S.S. Athena. The Athena would stay docked at the Academy's San Francisco campus, but would occasionally take to the stars, bringing cadets with it, offering them some hands-on deep-space training. And because the show featured a starship, it would also feature an adult bridge crew of actual officers. (At the time, we thought the Athena was the show's best decision.)

In the pilot episode, audiences got to see some of those officers. Perhaps most notably, one of the bridge officers was a character named Lieutenant Ya, played by actress Rebecca Quin. This was a casting coup, as Rebecca Quin is better known by her WWE in-ring wrestling name Becky Lynch. Audiences met the character in the "Starfleet Academy" pilot, "Kids These Days." 

Frustratingly, though, Lynch only appeared in that one episode. The entire first season has elapsed — ten episodes in all — and Lynch didn't return to the bridge of the Athena. Indeed, none of the bridge officers did. An entire crew of characters has mysteriously gone missing.

Just prior to the release of "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," a lot of publicity surrounded the casting of Becky Lynch. Her character, Lieutenant Ya, was said to be a liaison officer between the crew of the Athena and the cadets who were studying on board the ship. She was poised to play a notable and central role on the series. But then, after the pilot, she seems to have taken an unexpected sabbatical, and was nowhere to be seen. It's a bit of a let down, given that her character was properly set up. 

Wasn't the Athena's bridge crew supposed to play a much larger role on the series in general? It seemed that the day-to-day operations of a starship should be handled by a group of professionals, while the Starfleet cadets concern themselves with taking engineering exams and learning about Klingon history. It would have provided, essentially, two full casts of characters, each with their own flavor of drama. Some might already be thinking of the character dynamic on the animated series "Star Trek: Lower Decks." That series was about lowly ensigns who took care of the garbage jobs on a starship, but who occasionally interacted with the ship's senior staff. The bridge crew, at least at the start of the series, was largely distant from the plight of the show's central ensigns. 

Some of the Athena's bridge crew have remained, of course. There's Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter), who famously likes to sit in her captain's chair with her legs folded up. Her first officer, Commander Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), is also still on the show, serving as an instructor at the Academy's war college. But where is everyone else?

Admittedly, there's also the ship's chief medical officer, the Doctor (Robert Picardo), who is also always interacting with the cadets. He's been in many episodes of "Starfleet Academy" so far. However, one has to visit in-depth fan websites like Memory Alpha to even find out who some of the other Athena bridge officers are supposed to be. 

This is only based on facts circulating through the fan community, but here is the cast of characters that "Starfleet Academy" hasn't shown us in detail yet: The helmsman of the U.S.S. Athena is Lieutenant Thelonius Dandrid, played by Michael Brown, while the ops officer is Lieutenant Hayden Thriss, played by Ken Barnett. Lieutenant Mackenzie Ya, the one played by Rebecca Quin, is the ship's tactical officer. 

The communications officer on board the Athena is named Astrid Atlee (Nicole Dickinson), who belonged to an unnamed alien species. The science officer is Ensign Weldu, played by Joseph Chiu, and the ship has an academy liaison named Lieutenant Rork, played by Tricia Black. All of these characters showed up very, very briefly in the "Starfleet Academy" pilot, and then seemingly vanished from sight. I suppose it's possible that they were always there, but viewers merely didn't ever see them during their shifts. "Starfleet Academy" has only run for 10 episodes but takes place over an entire school year, so there was a lot we simply didn't get to witness. 

Perhaps in the show's second season, they'll return. It would be interesting to see the U.S.S. Athena at its full power, with a staff of professionals at every station.