“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” can thank more than one member of the Kurtzman family for how it took shape.
In an interview with Variety, “Starfleet Academy” co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman said that interactions with his college-aged son and his son’s friends greatly informed how he approached the new Paramount+ series.
“My wife and son and I are very close, and we feel very inside of his world,” Kurtzman said. “And so our house became the house where all of his friends come and congregate. So for many years, I’ve been listening to them talk, and we’ve both been amazed at how much they sound like us — but also how much they don’t sound like us.”
He went on to say that his son and his generation are contending not only with questions about their own futures, but whether there will be a future at all. “They’re able to grapple with that, and they’re also able to approach it with this incredible sense of optimism, and this kind of youthful exuberance of ‘anything’s possible.’ This is the first generation, I think, that’s truly holding both of those very condradictory things in their hands.”
Set in the “Star Trek: Discovery” timeline of the 32nd century, “Starfleet Academy” begins with the United Federation of Planets just getting back on its feet after the devastating effects of a cataclysmic event known as The Burn roughly one century earlier. Keeping things in that timeline — and utilizing the dark ramifications of The Burn — was critical to the show, Kurtzman said.
“If we had done, let’s just say the 24th century, it would have been a lovely fantasy, but it wouldn’t have been an accurate reflection of what certainly my son and his generation are going through now,” he said.
Leading the cast are veteran actors Holly Hunter as academy chancellor Capt. Nahla Ake and Paul Giamatti as the villainous Nus Braka, a part Klingon-part Tellarite-part human pirate. With Hunter’s Ake, Kurtzman says that the more the writers developed the role, the more he came to realize the voice of the character matched Hunter’s.
“The thing about Holly is that she’s capable of really any tone that you throw at her, because she always grounds whatever it is, even something as big and broad as ‘Raising Arizona’ in an emotional truth that is unique to Holly Hunter,” he said.
As for Giamatti, the “Starfleet Academy” team reached out to him after he revealed he had always wanted to play a Klingon. “We offered him, like, six roles, assuming he was going to be a one-off, that he would maybe do one episode,” Kurtzman said. “And he came back and said, ‘No, no, I want to be in this thing! I want to play the villain.”
But the heart of “Starfleet Academy” is its young cast of students, which includes Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins and Bella Shepard. Maintaining a strong balance between the storylines of both the adults and the young cast was essential to making the show a success.
“The death of this show would be if you’re 18 and watching the show, and every time the adults come on screen, you want to fast-forward to the next scene with a kid,” Kurtzman said. “It should be more like Harry Potter, in terms of loving everybody — and loving the teachers as much as you love the students.”
The first two episodes of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” premiere on Paramount+ on Jan. 15.
