Summary
- Starfleet Academy is set in the chaotic aftermath of a cataclysmic event, offering a more relatable and authentic experience for young viewers.
- The show focuses on the first class back after 100 years, inheriting the responsibility of exploration in a world recovering from the Burn.
- Starfleet Academy promises to be optimistic, fun, funny, and emotional, reflecting the feelings and experiences of young adults today.
Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman explains why Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is set in Star Trek: Discovery's 32nd century. Kurtzman, who is co-showrunner with Noga Landau, is also directing the first two episodes of Starfleet Academy, which is scheduled to go into production in the fall and will film on the largest sets ever constructed for Star Trek. Kurtzman also confirmed that Starfleet Academy will be both based in San Francisco and in outer space.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Alex Kurtzman discussed the present and future of the Star Trek franchise. While careful not to reveal spoilers, Kurtzman delved into why Starfleet Academy, which is the latest spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery, is set in the 32nd century and how he hopes it will be more relevant to the next Star Trek series' target audience of young adults. Read his quotes below:
[Starfleet Academy is set] in the “Discovery” era. There’s a specific reason for that. As the father of a 17-year-old boy, I see what my son is feeling as he looks at the world and to his future. I see the uncertainty; I see all the things we took for granted as given are not certainties for him. I see him recognizing he’s inheriting an enormous mess to clean up, and it’s going to be on his generation to figure out how to do that, and that’s a lot to ask of a kid. My thinking was, if we set “Starfleet Academy” in the halcyon days of the Federation where everything was fine, it’s not going to speak to what kids are going through right now.
It’ll be a nice fantasy, but it’s not really going to be authentic. What’ll be authentic is to set it in the timeline where this is the first class back after over 100 years, and they are coming into a world that is only beginning to recover from a cataclysm — which was the Burn, as established on “Star Trek: Discovery,” where the Federation was greatly diminished. So they’re the first who’ll inherit, who’ll re-inherit, the task of exploration as a primary goal, because there just wasn’t room for that during the Burn — everybody was playing defense. It’s an incredibly optimistic show, an incredibly fun show; it’s a very funny show, and it’s a very emotional show. I think these kids, in different ways, are going to represent what a lot of kids are feeling now.
Star Trek's Alex Kurtzman Reveals How Starfleet Academy Cast Holly Hunter
Starfleet Academy will be led by an Academy Award-winner
Star Trek on Paramount+ recently announced Star Trek: Starfleet Academy cast Holly Hunter as the series lead. An Emmy and Academy Award-winner, Hunter will be playing an unnamed Captain and the Chancellor of the Academy. Alex Kurtzman revealed to the Los Angeles Times how Hunter was cast to lead Starfleet Academy:
I’m very, very , very excited that Holly Hunter is the lead of the show. Honestly, when we were working on the scripts, we wrote it for Holly thinking she’d never do it. And we sent them to her, and to our absolute delight and shock she loved them and signed on right away.
Holly Hunter joins Michelle Yeoh as a fellow Academy Award-winner to headline a Star Trek project on Paramount+. Before Yeoh won her Best Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once, she lent her prestige as Emperor Phillipa Georgiou on Star Trek: Discovery. Casting an actress of Hunter's status, and Yeoh previously, speaks to the calber of actor Star Trek can now command. Holly Hunter's Chancellor will be the guiding light of the next generation of cadets in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
