After being on the run since age 6, 21-year-old Caleb, a brilliant street kid, is offered the chance of a lifetime: to join the first new Starfleet Academy class in San Francisco in over a century. There's just one problem — the person offering him the spot is newly-minted Chancellor Nahla Ake, the Starfleet captain who sentenced his mother to Federation prison fifteen years ago…

Holly Hunter (Captain Nahla Ake)
Sandro Rosta (Cadet Caleb Mir)
Karim Diané (Cadet Jay-Den Kraag)
Kerrice Brooks (Cadet SAM)
George Hawkins (Cadet Darem Reymi)
Bella Shepard (Cadet Genesis Lythe)
Oded Fehr (Admiral Charles Vance)
Gina Yashere (Lt Commander Lura Thok)
Brit Marling (Main Computer voice)
Stephen Colbert (Digital Dean of Students voice)
Robert Picardo (The Doctor)

Tatiana Maslany (Anisha Mir)
Paul Giamatti (Nus Braka)

Rebecca Quin (Lt. Mackenzie Ya)
Ken Barnett (Lt. Hayden Thriss)

Michael Brown (Lt. Thelonious Dandrid)
Nicole Dickinson (Lt. Astrid Atlee)
Tricia Black (Lt. Rork)
Avaah Blackwell (Haile)
Joseph Chiu (Ensign Weldu)
Raffa Virago (Cadet Pickford)
David Benjamin Tomlinson (Starfleet officer)
Scott Gemmell (Darem's posse member)
Mia Yaguchi-Chow (Darem's posse member)
Ritchie Lawrence (Darem's posse member)
Luciano Fernandez (Young Caleb)
Atlas Blu Klamer (Scrap voice)
Solen Morales (Little Orion)
Kenzyn Hoffman (Little Suliban)
Ian Busher (Torothan senior guard)
Lynn Anne Zager (Detention center computer voice)
Darren Richardson (Torothan shuttle computer voice)
Brian David Gilbert (DOT voice)
Jeremy Culhane (DOT voice)

• The U.S.S. Athena NCC-392023 is the main headquarters for Starfleet Academy. At the end of the episode, it arrives at Earth and the main hull lands in San Francisco to become the campus's main building.
  
• Oded Fehr reprises his role as Admiral Charles Vance from Star Trek: Discovery.