The cast of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy just got bigger and brighter.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s Cast Additions
At last week’s Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Paramount+ revealed four cast additions for the upcoming series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The first three actors are from the now-ended series Star Trek: Discovery, and these are Tig Notaro, Oded Fehr, and Mary Wiseman. Notaro will be a series regular, reprising her role as Jett Reno. Fehr and Wiseman will return as Admiral Vance and Sylvia Tilly, respectively, but only as guest stars.
The fourth additional cast member is probably the biggest star of them all. Robert Picardo, who made his debut Star Trek appearance in Star Trek: Voyager, will reprise his role as The Doctor in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Prior to this new series regular acting gig, Picardo voiced an animated version of his role in season 2 of the Netflix series Star Trek: Prodigy.
Notaro, Fehr, Wiseman, and Picardo join previously announced cast members of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, including series regulars Kerrice Brooks, Karim Diané, George Hawkins, Holly Hunter, Bella Shepard, and Zoë Steiner. In addition to Fehr and Wiseman, it was previously reported that Gina Yashere and Paul Giamatti will be recurring guest stars.
Cast Reaction
Also, during the Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Starfleet Academy executive producers and co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau dropped a video showing the reactions of the younger cast members when they had been informed they officially got the roles they auditioned for. You can check out the video below:
About Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Sharing a name with the late 1990s video game, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will follow an all-new class of Starfleet cadets mentored for leadership roles in the United Federation of Planets space force.
Aside from Kurtzman and Landau, the show is also executive produced by Aaron Baiers, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa, John Weber, and Gaia Violo, who wrote the series pilot.
The new series will focus on higher education, from the throes of budding romance to the pressures of academic achievement to the angst of painful self-discovery. In a March 27 cover story about the future of Star Trek, Landau told Variety that these Starfleet cadets “are kids who’ve never had a red alert before … they never had to operate a transporter or be in a phaser fight,” so it would be interesting to see how they would react if they encounter a real-life crisis.
Release date for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy doesn’t have a release date yet, but it will start filming in August 2024 in Toronto, where the largest contiguous set ever constructed for a Star Trek series can be found. The said set features a central academic atrium that spans two stories and includes an amphitheater, classrooms, a mess hall, and an idyllic walkway lined with trees.