‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Adds Four Franchise Alumni to Cast at SDCC 2024

Paramount+ officially announced several additions to the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy cast at San Diego Comic-Con 2024.

Joining Holly Hunter (previously announced in May as the Chancellor of Starfleet Academy) and recurring guest stars Gina Yashere and Paul Giamatti for Star Trek’s first YA series are four fan-favorite franchise alumni, all of whom will be reprising their respective Star Trek roles.

At the Star Trek Universe’s Hall H panel at SDCC 2024 on Saturday, July 27, Paramount+ announced that joining Hunter, Yashere, and Giamatti on Starfleet Academy are Star Trek: Discovery’s Tig Notaro (as Jett Reno) and Star Trek: Voyager’s Robert Picardo (as The Doctor), two franchise alum known for injecting a healthy dose of comedy into their respective series. Both actors are joining the cast as series regulars. Also appearing in Trek’s first live-action YA series are Discovery alumni Mary Wiseman and Oded Fehr, who join the series as guest stars reprising their roles as Admiral Vance and Sylvia Tilly.

The five young actors playing the cadets have been announced to be Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, George Hawkins, Karim Diané and Zoë Steiner.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy co-showrunners and executive producers Alex Kurtzman (who, as it was revealed during the panel, personally paid his writers’ salaries during the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023) and Noga Landau couldn’t sing the praises of the young actors who had been cast as the Starfleet Academy cadets enough during the panel. With Landau saying (via Popverse Editor-in-Chief Chris Arrant’s liveblog), “Each of the actors is a universe in themselves.” See the moment the actors found out they had been cast as the Starfleet Academy cadets below.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy “first live-action Star Trek comedy”

Pitched by Kurtzman as “the first live-action Star Trek comedy,” the official logline for Starfleet Academy reads:

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will follow the adventures of a new class of Starfleet cadets as they come of age in one of the most legendary places in the galaxy. The series will introduce viewers to this young group of cadets as they come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they will 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.

At the Star Trek Universe SDCC 2024 panel, attendees were told for the first time that Giamitti would be playing the “new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself.”

“He plays the bad guy,” Landau said. “He’s a lifelong fan.”