By “Star Trek” TV chief and executive producer Alex Kurtzman has offered an update on how his “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” series is progressing.
Announced in April last year, Kurtzman and Noga Landau (“Nancy Drew”) serve as co-showrunners on the young adult-targeted series following a group of young Starfleet Cadets.
As this is a spin-off from the more recent seasons of “Star Trek: Discovery,” events in the series are set in the 32nd century (not the 23rd century of ‘Strange New Worlds’) with Starfleet Academy having recently re-opened its doors a century after shuttering them due to ‘The Burn’.
Many of the behind-the-scenes crew members are moving from ‘Discovery’ to this series, but it’s not clear if any ‘Discovery’ cast members will also make the jump – the most likely being Mary Wiseman’s Lt. Sylvia Tilly.
Speaking with Collider, Kurtzman confirmed the first season runs ten episodes and is “halfway through the writer’s room now”. As for when it will air, it may be a while:
“It could end up not airing until 2026. We don’t know. But by starting [shooting in late summer], just building the sets alone is a massive endeavor, then six months of shooting, then six to eight months of post.
If you recall, there was all this noise around Season 1 and Season 2 of Discovery because the streaming service, they were like, ‘Oh, it’s like a turnaround on a cop show.’ I’m like, ‘No, you don’t understand. It’s eight months of visual effects turnaround, and we’re not gonna rush that.’ So, it’ll come out, but it’ll come out when it’s done.”
As for what we’ll see in the series, he says it will ask “fundamental Star Trek questions” that will reinforce what fans love:
“There’s a lot of different kids from a lot of different places. Some of them want to be there, some of them don’t want to be there. It’s gonna be a fundamental reinforcement of all the things we love about Starfleet, in general.
You always want to ask yourself, ‘Why this show now?’ I think that one of the big things that certainly my 17-year-old son is facing, which is kind of a fundamental ‘Star Trek’ question, is, ‘How did we get here? How has this generation inherited the mistakes from previous generations? And what are we gonna do to fix it, to build that optimistic future that is Roddenberry’s essential vision?’ That is very much going to be at the heart of Starfleet Academy.”
The comments come ahead of the fifth and final season of “Star Trek: Discovery” which premieres on the Paramount+ service on April 4th. New seasons of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks” are currently in the works, as is a “Section 31” feature.
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