TO long gestation effort bring a Starfleet Academy The concept-to-reality TV series has finally manifested itself, as the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy “Discovery” spinoff series debuted on Paramount+ with a two-episode release on January 15.
It chronicles the lives and loves of a new generation of young Starfleet cadets in the 32nd century under the guidance of the school’s rector and captain of the USS Athena, Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter). Executive producer and current master of ceremonies of “Star Trek” Alex Kurtzman and series co-showrunner Noga Landau (“Tom Swift,” “Nancy Drew”) believe this was the ideal “Star Trek” show to engage fans and commemorate the venerable franchise’s 60th anniversary.
“They’re saying something about society in its different phases. And right now, and I speak as a showrunner but also as a father, I see our children inheriting a very divided and fractured world. And I also see that they can still hold on to this optimism, that anything is possible. It’s probably the first generation that I’ve seen able to do both. And that felt like a beautiful reinforcement of Roddenberry’s essential vision.
“What a great reason to do a show, because right now they’re being bombarded with negativity all day long,” Kurtzman explains. “We wanted to be a compass that guides them back to hope, possibilities and a better future.”
Related: How to watch Starfleet Academy online and from anywhere
“We deal with very real-world themes. All science fiction, but particularly ‘Star Trek,’ is always allegorical to something, and you can read into it whatever you want. I felt like we had to talk about something very relevant now in this series. And that you can’t learn without a legacy. You have to learn from the past in order to understand the future and the present. Having a new generation and then several members of previous generations there, I think speaks to the spectrum of what is possible with ‘Star.’
“We wanted to be a compass that guides them back to hope, possibilities and a better future.”
Alex Kurtzman
With ‘Star Trek’ celebrating its 60th birthday later this year, Landau is sure there’s never a bad time to make ‘Starfleet Academy.’
“Our audience, some of them, have been waiting 60 years to go to Starfleet Academy, and they can finally do it now,” he adds. “For the Athena look, our ship has wings, and that was very intentional. It was important that the ship looked like classic Trek, but also looked like something we’d never seen before.”
The design aesthetic and production logistics of “Starfleet Academy” were ambitious, and Kurtzman is excited for fans to experience this transformative moment in Federation history and the show’s impressive USS Athena mega sets.
“We are on the largest stage in North America, it is the first two-story stage we have built,” he explained. “We built it so that we could do long walks and talks that would start on the upper level, take you downstairs, go through the big time window into space, go through the lobby, get to a turbolift, go down a hallway and keep it all continuous. That’s really exciting stuff.
“We wanted it to be consistent with the language we’ve established for the 32nd century, but we also wanted to remember the college vibes of the East Coast. So how do you add a little bit of Harvard? Our production designer, Matthew Davies, and his entire team had the idea of marrying the dark wood with this whole future aesthetic. If you look at Nahla’s office, since we’re located in San Francisco, it’s full of Frank Lloyd Wright. Very mission-heavy furniture and we lit the show differently and used different lenses than we’ve used before on ‘Star Trek.'”
“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” is streaming exclusively on Paramount+. The two-episode premiere took place on January 15, with subsequent episodes released weekly on Wednesdays.
