(Image credit: Paramount)
“Star Trek: Discovery” has finally ended its groundbreaking run after five seasons to usher in the streaming age of Gene Roddenberry’s baby, and the third outing of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” won’t land until sometime in 2025, perhaps before the first “Star Trek” streaming film and its black-ops division arrives for “Section 31.”
Keeping the creative energies burning, the next high-flying “Star Trek” project fueling up for a probable release in 2026 from the iconic sci-fi fantasy franchise will be “Starfleet Academy.” This young adult-aimed series set in the San Francisco begins filming soon in Canada and fan anticipation is already ramping up to find out exactly what executive producer and showrunner Alex Kurtzman has planned for us Trekkies.
Before the bell rings, let’s warp into everything we know about “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” and its newest class of promising candidates that will someday join the Federation as part of its intrepid peacekeeping armada to reignite the spirit of intergalactic discovery. Take your seat and let’s dive straight in!
Official Paramount+ announcement for “Starfleet Academy” (Image credit: Paramount+)
STARFLEET ACADEMY RELEASE DATE
Cameras for “Starfleet Academy” are due to start rolling late this summer at Pinewood Studios Toronto for a planned six-month shoot. The production is destined to showcase the most enormous set ever created for any “Star Trek” show.
Its design will incorporate a central two-story academic atrium, an elaborate amphitheater, classrooms for the brightest astrophysics mind, a huge mess hall, and pedestrian walkway flanked by trees. After a normal 6-8 months of post-production, “Starfleet Academy” probably won’t arrive on Paramount+ until 2026 sometime.
STARFLEET ACADEMY PLOT
“Starfleet Academy” takes place mainly in San Francisco of the 32nd century at the end of a period known as The Burn, when nearly all of the galaxy’s precious supply of dilithium, a material which is required for warp drives, had been rendered inert.
In “Star Trek: Discovery” Season 3, Michael Burnham and her crew swept in to aid in stopping the crystal crisis, heralding a new era of cosmic exploration. This end to the severe restrictions of faster-than-light space travel results in a fresh beginning for both the Federation and Starfleet.
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This series will explore the academic incubator for this next generation of starship captains, commanders, pilots, navigators, science officers, and engineers in a higher education environment that will delve into themes of friendship, romance, peer pressure, rivalries and enlightenment as they strive to make the grade under the watchful guidance of their professors and instructors.
Sonequa Martin-Green stars in “Star Trek: Discovery” (Image credit: Paramount+)
“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,” Kurtzman explained in a May 30, 2024 interview with the LA Times.
“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.”
STARFLEET ACADEMY SEASON 1 EPISODES
Starfleet Academy follows the same 10-episode format of other Paramount+ Star Trek series. Beyond that, we don’t know much at this point as we’re still very early in the show’s development.
STARFLEET ACADEMY CAST
Since pre-production is still underway on “Starfleet Academy” there are numerous casting announcements popping up from time to time.
The most prominent of those picks is word that the Academy Award-winning actress Holly Hunter (“The Piano”) will portray the “captain and chancellor” of “Starfleet Academy” who oversees the institution’s faculty and class of bright-eyed hopefuls.
Recently, news broke that distinguished actor Paul Giamatti (“John Adams,” “The Illusionist”) has been signed in the ongoing role of the premiere season’s big baddie, described as “a man with an ominous past connected to one of our cadets.”
And just this week, Paramount+ announced that Kerrice Brooks (“My Old Ass”), Bella Shepard (“Wolf Pack”) and George Hawkins (“Tell Me Everything”) have joined the cast as newly recruited “Starfleet Academy” cadets.
Official Paramount+ announcement for “Starfleet Academy” (Image credit: Paramount+)
STARFLEET ACADEMY TRAILERS
At this time, since filming won’t start until Aug. 2024, there are no teasers or trailers. We’ll keep you updated when the first trailer drops.
STARFLEET ACADEMY DIRECTOR, WRITERS, AND CREW
Longtime “Star Trek” ringmaster Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau (“Nancy Drew”) will act as executive producers and share showrunning duties for “Starfleet Academy.” CBS Studios is in charge of production in collaboration with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment, while Paramount Global Content Distribution maintains the series’ distribution.
Additional executive producers include Gaia Violo, Aaron Baiers, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa, and John Weber. Kurtzman is also signed on to direct the first two episodes, and Jonathan Frakes is rumored to direct as well. Gaia Violo wrote the series premiere episode.
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Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.
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