Academy Award winner Holly Hunter is set to star in Paramount+’s upcoming show Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Deadline reported.
The actress will play Starfleet Academy’s captain and chancellor in the series. It will start filming later this summer. The series is produced by CBS Studios.
Welcome, cadets!
Starfleet Academy follows the story of new Starfleet cadets as they learn and grow in one of the most iconic schools in the galaxy. The series’ logline reads: “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 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 will serve as co-showrunners and executive producers. Gaia Violo, Aaron Baiers, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa and John Weber will also serve as EPs. Violo also wrote the series’ first episode.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is originally a PC simulation game published in 1997. The game simulates a Starfleet cadet’s typical day. The player learns the basics of flying a starship and engages in roleplaying with the rest of the cadets. The goal is to become the captain of their own ship.
The game also has a full motion video which features William Shatner, Walter Koenig and George Takei reprising their roles as Captain James Kirk, Ensign Pavel Chekov and helmsman Han Sulu, respectively. Starfleet Academy is a multiplayer game which allows up to 32 players.
What happens at the Starfleet Academy…
A tie-in novelization of the game was released in the same year. In it, the story is set two years before the events of 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise arrives with Captain Hikaru Sulu and Pavel Chekov on Earth to attend the United Federation of Planets’ Starfleet Academy’s Command College class. Sulu is there for the next two years before he takes command of his own ship, the USS Excelsior. Kirk and Chekov are there to help out in the simulator assignments.
The students at the academy are made up of humans, Vulcans, Andorians, Trills, Alpha Centaurians, as well as Klingons and Romulans.
Since the series hasn’t announced the cast aside from Hunter, it’s unknown if the show will follow the game or the novel’s plot details. I hope that since Kurtzman is involved in the production, Chris Pine and John Cho could make an appearance. If not, Shatner, Koenig and Takei could do it as well.
As for the students, they’ll most likely be new characters who will play the different species in the Star Trek universe. With any luck, one of the episodes could feature the iconic Kobayashi Maru test.
To the uninitiated, it’s a training exercise designed to test the Starfleet Academy cadets’ character by putting them through a no-win situation. It was first seen in 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and has since been referred to and depicted in other Star Trek movies. It was most recently seen in the 2009 Star Trek movie.
The test begins by giving the cadet the mission to rescue the damaged civilian ship Kobayashi Maru, which is stranded in the neutral territory between the Federation and the Klingon empire. The cadet has to decide whether to try to rescue to starship — which will endanger their own ship and crew — or leave it to certain destruction. If the cadet chooses a rescue attempt, enemy forces will attack their ship.
To date, Kirk is the only cadet to sort of pass the simulation — by reprogramming the test to his advantage.
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