Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is an American television series created by Gaia Violo for the streaming service Paramount+. It is the 12th Star Trek series and part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman's expanded Star Trek Universe. Set in the 32nd century, the far-future time period that was introduced in the later seasons of the series Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024), Starfleet Academy follows the first new class of Starfleet cadets in over a century as they come of age and train to be officers.
Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, and Bella Shepard portray Starfleet Academy cadets, starring alongside Holly Hunter and Zoë Steiner, as well as Tig Notaro and Oded Fehr, who are reprising their roles from Discovery, and Robert Picardo returning as the character of the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager. Versions of a Starfleet Academy-based series were in development for years before it received an official series order in March 2023, with Kurtzman and Noga Landau as showrunners. Production on the first season took place from August 2024 to February 2025 at Pinewood Toronto Studios in Toronto, Canada, with production of the second season following from August 2025 to February 2026.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiered on the streaming service Paramount+ on January 15, 2026, with its first two episodes. The other eight episodes of the first season were released weekly through March 12. Despite receiving generally favorable critic reviews, the series was the subject of review bombing upon its initial release. In March 2026, CBS and Paramount+ announced that the upcoming second season, which is expected to premiere in 2027, would be the series' last.
Premise The series is set in the 32nd century, the far-future of the Star Trek franchise where Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets are recovering from a cataclysmic event, as depicted in Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024). Starfleet Academy follows the first new class of Starfleet cadets in over a century as they come of age and train to be officers. They are taught aboard the USS Athena, a starship that docks at the Starfleet Academy campus in San Francisco but can also be deployed with the rest of the fleet.
Cast and characters Main Holly Hunter as Nahla Ake:The half-Lanthanite captain of the USS Athena and the chancellor of Starfleet Academy. Hunter enjoyed the dichotomy of playing both a captain and a teacher, saying the captain "is there to command, to analyze in emergency situations, and then to delegate" while the chancellor "is there to guide, to collaborate, and have tremendous empathy". She also enjoyed developing relationships with each of the cadets. Sandro Rosta as Caleb Mir:A human who is disillusioned with Starfleet and has been on the run alone for most of his life. He joins the academy as part of a journey to find his mother. Rosta said Caleb is an outsider who is introduced to Starfleet's values at the academy, allowing the audience to learn about Starfleet through his eyes. Co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman said Caleb's relationship with Ake was a key part of the series. Karim Diané as Jay-Den Kraag:A Klingon cadet and aspiring medical officer. Diané reached out to Michael Dorn and Doug Jones, who respectively portrayed Worf and Saru in previous Star Trek media, about performing with the prosthetics needed to portray a Star Trek alien. His Klingon prosthetics initially took five hours to apply each day, but this was reduced to two hours by the end of the first season. Kraag is noted as Star Treks first depiction of an openly gay Klingon. Kerrice Brooks as Sam (Series Acclimation Mil):The first Kasqian to attend Starfleet Academy. Kasqians are a kind of hologram, and Brooks explained that Sam is only weeks old but was programmed to be a young adult. She said the character is "like a newborn; everything is so fresh to her" and she "brings absolutely no baggage". Kurtzman said the character was originally written to be quite different, and was changed to match Brooks's approach after her casting. George Hawkins as Darem Reymi: A Khionian cadet and aspiring captain. Darem is from a wealthy home world which gives him certain expectations for his time at Starfleet Academy. Bella Shepard as Genesis Lythe: A Dar-Sha cadet who is the daughter of an admiral, and is determined to make her own name in Starfleet Oded Fehr as Charles Vance: The human Fleet Admiral, the commander-in-chief of Starfleet Gina Yashere as Lura Thok: The part Klingon, part Jem'Hadar first officer of the Athena and the cadet master at Starfleet Academy Brit Marling as the voice of the USS Athena computer Stephen Colbert as the voice of Starfleet Academy's Digital Dean of Students who gives daily announcements and important alerts to the cadets Robert Picardo as the Doctor:A 900-year-old holographic teacher at Starfleet Academy. Picardo said it was "mind-bending" to portray a character with such a long, digital memory that clearly remembers the "36 generations of organic colleagues" that have lived and died since his time on the original in the series Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001). Picardo said the Doctor in Starfleet Academy is "as we remember him, but deeper". Kurtzman decided to add the character to the series after he worked well as a teacher for young cadets in the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy (2021–2024), believing it made sense for the Doctor to still have that role in the future. Tig Notaro as Jett Reno: A human instructor at Starfleet Academy Zoë Steiner as Tarima Sadal: The daughter of the president of Betazed, and a cadet at the War College and later Starfleet Academy.
Recurring Paul Giamatti as Nustopher "Nus" Braka, a part-Klingon, part-Tellarite who has an ominous past connection to one of the cadets. Kurtzman said the character "represents a tide that has swept across the world in a very profound and upsetting way", reflecting a real-world rise in people who use hate to sow division and oppose empathy. Giamatti enjoyed the lengthy make-up process, saying it helped him get into character. Tatiana Maslany as Anisha Mir, Caleb's mother Raoul Bhaneja as Chancellor Kelrec, head of Starfleet's War College Romeo Carere as Ocam Sadal, Tarima's brother and the son of the president of Betazed Alexander Eiling as B'Avi, a Vulcan War College cadet who becomes rivals with Caleb and the rest of the academy cadets Dale Whibley as Kyle Jokovic, a friendly War College cadet who becomes romantically interested in Jay-Den
Guest Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly: An instructor at Starfleet Academy who served on the USS Discovery Rebecca Quin as Lieutenant Ya, a member of the USS Athena bridge crew Jeremy Culhane, Brian David Gilbert, and Rekha Shankar as the voices of DOT robots Cirroc Lofton as Jake Sisko Tawny Newsome as Illa Dax, an instructor and the current host of the Dax symbiont.
Episodes
Season 1 (2026)
Season 2
The next eight episodes were written by Alex Taub & Tawny Newsome, Eric Anthony Glover, Kiley Rossetter, Joshua Levy & Prathi Srinivasan, Gaia Violo & Alex Taub, Jenny Lumet with the teleplay by Jane Maggs & Alex Kurtzman, Lauriel Harte Marger, and Kirsten Beyer, respectively. Osunsanmi and Kurtzman directed the final two episodes respectively.
Production Background Ideas for a Star Trek production centering on cadets at Starfleet Academy have circulated for decades, taking two main forms: prequel origin stories of established characters, and spin‑offs with new protagonists.
According to writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek creator and producer Gene Roddenberry mentioned at the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention that he was considering a feature film about how Kirk and the crew of The Original Series (1966–69) first met at Starfleet Academy. When he ultimately produced The Motion Picture (1979), it was set after TOS, with its visibly aged cast portraying largely unchanged characters. Star Trek II (1982) already foregrounded younger Starfleet trainees, especially Saavik, in a supervised exercise with the veteran TOS crew. After Star Trek III (1984), William Shatner was initially reluctant to return as Kirk. In response, writer-director Leonard Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett explored alternative premises for the fourth film. Among the proposals considered by Paramount was a Starfleet Academy prequel developed by Bennett and Ralph Winter, chronicling the early years of Kirk, Spock, and other established TOS characters, thereby recasting the core crew while allowing for Nimoy's Spock to appear either as narrator in a frame story or through a time-travel device. After seven to eight months, the issue with Shatner was settled and the prequel idea was set aside.
In the mid-1980s, as Paramount developed a new Star Trek TV series set a century after TOS, the studio initially commissioned writer/producer duo Sam and Gregory Strangis. The latter recalled envisioning a "Starfleet Academy on a ship", combining younger trainees with senior officer instructors. A 1986 Paramount memo outlined this precursor concept for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Finalizing Star Trek V (1989), Bennett – encouraged by Paramount executive Ned Tanen – commissioned David Loughery to write a Starfleet Academy-centered script for the sixth film, planned for release in 1991. The storyline would have brought the young Kirk, Spock, and McCoy together at the academy for their first space adventure, involving a new struggle against slavery. According to a 1991 Cinefantastique interview with Bennett, one draft framed the prequel within a sequel narrative in which Shatner's Kirk considered a teaching appointment at the academy and reflected on his past while speaking with new cadets, later joined by Nimoy's Spock. Titled The Academy Years, another draft (reviewed by Ain't It Cool News in 2006) instead had opened with Kelley's McCoy addressing the cadets, and emphasized coming‑of‑age themes including Kirk's early romantic experiences, his impulsive behavior as a trainee pilot, young Spock's encounters with xenophobia from fellow cadets, and moments of mutual support and moral ambiguity between the protagonists, culminating in a political conflict that forced the cadets into their early field mission. The project was turned down by Paramount's Frank Mancuso. With TNG unfolding a storyline about Wesley's Starfleet Academy career, the concept briefly resurfaced as one of several spin-off options discussed in the early 1990s, along with the space-station premise that ultimately became Deep Space Nine.
As the concept shifted largely to tie-in media, several young‑adult novel series in the 1990s explored prequel stories for TV-series regular characters, such as Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (for TOS), Star Trek: The Next Generation – Starfleet Academy, and Star Trek: Voyager – Starfleet Academy. One early comic book titled Starfleet Academy! (DC, 1991) explored Kirk's academy years in a flashback. Another comic book spin‑off titled Starfleet Academy (Marvel, 1996–98), set within the DS9 continuity, followed recurring character Nog and his new group of cadets known as 'Omega Squad'. The concept also appeared in interactive media, including Interplay's 1997 FMV computer game Starfleet Academy (a follow-up to the similarly named 1995 console game). Featuring original Enterprise crew members – Kirk, Sulu, and Chekov, played by Shatner, George Takei, and Walter Koenig – in instructional roles, the story introduces Cadet David Forrester and his diverse classmates as they confront tensions with Klingons, Romulans, and Gorn pirates, uncovering a clandestine xenophobic faction within the Federation named 'Vanguard'. A tie-in novelization was published by Diane Carey the same year.