Posted in: Paramount+, Preview, streaming, TV | Tagged: paramount, star trek, Starfleet Academy

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Enrolls Cadets Brooks, Shepard & Hawkins

Kerrice Brook, Bella Shepard, and George Hawkins have officially enrolled in Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau's Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

So we have Holly Hunter set to star as the captain and chancellor and Paul Giamatti (Billions) as the season's villain = both incredibly impressive casting decisions. But Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau can have a series titled Star Trek: Starfleet Academy without cadets – and now, we're being introduced to three of them. With the series currently in production, Paramount+ confirmed that Kerrice Brooks (My Old Ass), Bella Shepard (Wolf Pack), and George Hawkins (Tell Me Everything) have joined the cast – though details on their characters weren't released.

Produced by CBS Studios and with production set to kick off this summer, the streaming series introduces viewers to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers as they navigate blossoming friendships, explosive rivalries, first loves – and a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself.

Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau serve as co-showrunners – with Kurtzman expected to direct the first two episodes – and will executive produce the series alongside executive producers Gaia Violo, Aaron Baiers, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa, and John Weber. The series premiere episode is written by Violo, with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment – and distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Thanks to an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kurtzman is offering some personal insights into the decision to have the series set in the 32nd Century – the future time period introduced in the recently wrapped Star Trek: Discovery. "There's a specific reason for [setting the series in the 32nd century]. As the father of a 17-year-old boy, I see what my son is feeling as he looks at the world and to his future. I see the uncertainty; I see all the things we took for granted as given are not certainties for him. I see him recognizing he's inheriting an enormous mess to clean up and it's going to be on his generation to figure out how to do that, and that's a lot to ask of a kid," he explained.

Kurtzman continued, "My thinking was, if we set "Starfleet Academy" in the halcyon days of the Federation, where everything was fine, it's not going to speak to what kids are going through right now. It'll be a nice fantasy, but it's not really going to be authentic. What'll be authentic is to set it in the timeline where this is the first class back after over 100 years, and they are coming into a world that is only beginning to recover from a cataclysm — which was the Burn, as established on 'Star Trek: Discovery,' where the Federation was greatly diminished."

"So they're the first who'll inherit, who'll re-inherit, the task of exploration as a primary goal because there just wasn't room for that during the Burn — everybody was playing defense. It's an incredibly optimistic show, an incredibly fun show, it's a very funny show, and it's a very emotional show. I think these kids, in different ways, are going to represent what a lot of kids are feeling now," Kurtzman added.

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