“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” can thank multiple members of the Kurtzman family for how it took shape.
Starfleet Academy co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman said in an interview with Variety that his interactions with his son and his friends in college had a big influence on how he approached the new Paramount+ series.
“My wife, son and I are very close, and I feel like I’m part of his world,” Kurtzman said. “And our house became the house where all his friends would come and gather. So I’ve been listening to their stories for years, and we’ve both been amazed at how much they look like us, but also how much they don’t look like us.”
He went on to say that his son and his generation are worried not only about their future, but whether there is one at all. “They can approach it, and they can approach it with an incredible sense of optimism and a youthful enthusiasm that says, ‘Anything is possible.’ I think this is the first generation of people to really have both of these very contradictory things.”
Set in the Star Trek: Discovery timeline in the 32nd century, Starfleet Academy begins with the Federation of Planets recovering from the devastating effects of the apocalypse known as The Burn nearly a century ago. Kurtzman said it was important for the show to keep things in line with the timeline and tap into the darker influences of The Barn.
“If it had been the 24th century, it would have been a nice fantasy, but it definitely wouldn’t have accurately reflected what my son and his generation are going through right now,” he said.
The film stars veteran actor Holly Hunter as Academy President Captain Nara Ake, and Paul Giamatti as the villainous Klingon, Tellarite, and human pirate Nuth Braka. Regarding “Hunter’s Ake,” Kurtzman says that the more the writers developed the role, the more they realized that the character’s voice matched Hunter’s voice.
“The good thing about Holly is that she can handle whatever tone is thrown at her, because she’s grounded in emotional truth that is uniquely Holly Hunter, no matter what it is, even something as big and broad as ‘Raising Arizona,'” 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 six roles with the idea that it would be a one-off role, maybe he would do one episode,” Kurtzman said. “And he came back and said, ‘No, no, I want to be in this movie! I want to play the villain.'”
But at the heart of “Starfleet Academy” are its young students, including Sandro Rosta, Karim Diane, Kelais Brooks, George Hawkins, and Vera Shepard. Maintaining a strong balance between storylines for both the adults and the young cast was essential to the show’s success.
“If you were 18 years old and you were watching this show, and every time an adult came on screen you wanted to fast-forward to the next scene with a child, this show would be gone,” Kurtzman said. “I would be more like Harry Potter in that I love everyone and I love my teachers as much as I love my students.”
The first two episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will premiere on Paramount+ on January 15th.
