“Trek” sequel: school daze in a high-tech universe

Fantasy fans seem to love schools that are stuffed with weird teachers and weirdly gifted students.
There’s “Harry Potter” and “X-Men” and “The Magicians” and more. Now “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy”(shown here) debuts Thursday (Jan. 15) on Paramount+.
This isn’t a copycat, producer Noga Landau insists. “Starfleet Academy existed before all of them,” she said. “It’s 60 years old …. It was always something that was discussed.”
In the original, 1966 “Star Trek,” Kirk and Spock were Academy grads. Seven years ago, when Alex Kurtzman was put in charge of the “Trek” universe, there was talk of a series centering on academy cadets.
And then things lingered, through different writers, actors and notions.
This had to be just right, Kurtzman told the Television Critics Association. It’s “designed to bring in a new audience (with) no experience of ‘Star Trek,’ (but) also appeal to all the people who love ‘Star Trek’ and are steeped in 60 years of it.”
Eventually, he chose relative newcomers: Creating the series was Gaia Violo, whose “Absentia” ran for three seasons on Amazon Prime; the showrunner is Landau, whose “Nancy Drew” did four seasons on CW.
Even in the “Drew” writers room, Landau said, “I was always the ‘Star Trek’ girl, ’cause that’s how I learned to tell stories. That’s how I learned how to look at the world. I don’t know what the world looks like without ‘Star Trek.'”
Now she has a show that juggles opposites.
It’s an outer-space action-adventure in the first hour, a school drama (with comedic touches) in the second, which also airs Thursday. It’s high-tech visually, but still rooted in character. And the cast blends generations.
It’s “important for the teachers to be as interesting as the students,” Kurtzman said, adding: “We cannot make a show where, when the adults show up on screen, the kids (at home) want to fast-forward.”
So he loaded the academy with intriging grown-ups. Oscar-winner Holly Hunter is the chancellor … Emmy-winner (and two-time Oscar-nominee) Paul Giamatti is the prime villain … comedians Gina Yashere and Tig Nataro are faculty members … and perennial “Trek” favorite Robert Picardo returns to his role as a holographic doctor, now 900 years old.
On the flip side are the actors playing students, at a 32nd-century academy that is re-opening after being closed for a century. Most are attractive and talented, all are unknowns. They include:
— Bella Shepherd as an admiral’s daughter, tiny and forceful, “She’s learned a lot because of” her dad, Shepherd said. “But also, she uses her confidence as a protective shield.”
— Karim Diane as a Klingon who — resisting his warrior roots — wants to be a medic. Dione said he immersed himself in past characters, but “this is a very different version of a Klingon …. He doesn’t want to go into a battle.”
— Others, including George Hawkins as a bullying rich kid, Zoe Steiner as the daughter of the president of Betazed and Kerrice Brooks (shown here) as an AI who has newly adopted the human form of an overeager teen-ager.
— And Sandro Rosta, making a huge leap: In his first film role since graduating from Oxford, he plays the lead character, a rogue who is tough, brilliant, angry and pained.
And yes, he said, he’s surprised to be there.
Young actors get lots of chances to send audition tapes, Rosta said, but usually nothing comes of it. “You’re going to do the best work you can; then you’re going to foget about it.
“And then I got a callback. And then it’s exciting … and then you forget about it. And then you get another callback …. You keep doing the process. I have still yet to kind of fully-in-my-bones feel the truth of what this is.”
There was another factor, Steiner added: “unbelievable talent and hard work on Sandro’s part.”
That could be helpful, if you’re filling a prime space in the 60-year “Star Trek” universe.