“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” has added some alumni to its faculty.
Tig Notaro (“Star Trek: Discovery”) and Robert Picardo (“Star Trek: Voyager”) will reprise their respective roles of Jett Reno and The Doctor, as series regulars on the newest iteration of the venerable sci-fi franchise, while Mary Wiseman and Oded Fehr will return as guest stars playing their “Discovery” characters Sylvia Tilly and Admiral Charles Vance.
They’re joining series lead Holly Hunter, who plays the captain and chancellor of Starfleet Academy, and the cast of cadets Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, George Hawkins, Karim Diané and Zoë Steiner. Gina Yashere is recurring as another member of the faculty, and Paul Giamatti will appear as the inaugural season’s main villain.
The announcement of the legacy characters return was made by executive producers and showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau during the “Star Trek” Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday. They also debuted a touching video of the young actors playing the cadets — Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, George Hawkins, Karim Diané and Zoë Steiner — reacting to the news that they’d been cast in the series.
“Starfleet Academy” is set in the 32nd century, following the events of “Discovery,” which just concluded its run on Paramount+ after five seasons, so the return of Notaro, Wiseman and Fehr in their roles makes logical sense. Picardo’s character, however, began on the 1995-2001 UPN series “Voyager,” set roughly 800 years earlier in the 24th century. The Doctor — created to be the emergency medical hologram aboard Federation starships — became the chief physician aboard the USS Voyager after it was stranded on the far side of the galaxy. Over the course of the series, the Doctor learned to expand his consciousness beyond the confines of his programming, so who knows how he’s changed in the ensuing centuries.
Other executive producers on the show include Gaia Violo, who wrote the series premiere, along with Aaron Baiers, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa and John Weber. The series, which is due to begin filming in Toronto in August, is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment, and is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.
