I sat down an hour early for the Star Trek Universe panel at New York Comic Con, and I’m glad I did. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season two arrives in March 2027. That was the last thing they announced.
If you followed my season one coverage, you know my reviews were rocky. Some episodes I liked a lot. Some I didn’t. So I walked in curious about one thing: what did the people making this show learn from year one? Here’s what they told us.
Who was on stage
Perri Nemiroff moderated, and I’ll admit I was excited to see her do it in person. Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau came out first, then the cast one at a time: Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Bella Shepard, Holly Hunter and Robert Picardo.
What season one added to the lore
Perri’s first question was what season one added to Star Trek lore that the team is proudest of. The answer was episode five, the Benjamin Sisko episode. It was a controversial one for some fans, and it brought back Cirroc Lofton, who played Jake Sisko.
She also asked which fan reaction surprised them. The answer was the White House tweeting at the show. “It’s weird. They’re our favorite fans.”
Season two is sophomore year
Noga Landau laid out where the show is going. Season one, she said, is “about letting go of who you were in the past to start again at Starfleet Academy.” Season two is about realizing the person you thought you were isn’t fixed:
“So it’s really about sophomore year, right? Sophomore year is when you say, I thought I wanted to be pre-med, I guess I’m going to be this instead.”
She also added: “It’s also about like Nova Flyers that go really fast, and people hooking up, and crazy aliens finding us and doing crazy things to us.”
The exclusive clip and a new cadet
They screened an exclusive season two clip. The setup: the cadets head out on their first away mission, which is supposed to be a test, until a new cadet crash-lands on a planet. His pod holds information the cadets need, so the test turns into a real away mission, on a clock. That new cadet, they said, has a very significant part in season two.
Kurtzman explained how they think about action:
“My belief is that action sequences don’t work if you don’t care about the characters. That they become very boring and very, you know, they just become mechanical.”
Every action scene, he said, has to work as a story beat that moves the characters forward, makes them grow or puts them in jeopardy. What they’re pulling from that pod is “life or death.”
Strengths and weaknesses going into season two
Perri asked each of them for their character’s greatest strength and greatest weakness at the start of season two.
Caleb (Sandro Rosta). “He’s discovered a sense of community, which I think is a big missing piece for him in the beginning of season one.” The weakness: “He knows that he’s a part of a community, but who he is in that community is still to be worked out.” Rosta also teased a vulnerable Caleb moment in season two: “Bella and Genesis fused together in my brain in that moment… they just became the exact same person.”
Jay-Den. His loyalty is “super cool and super noble and honorable.” His weakness ties into it: “discernment. Who deserves that loyalty? And you’ll see him struggle with that in his episodes in season two.”
The Doctor (Robert Picardo). The strength and the weakness are the same thing: “now he has someone that he loves and cares about enough that he is afraid of losing.” Picardo also talked about returning to a character he played 30 years ago, who is “still the same character, but he is forever changed by this huge event,” and said that change “informs all of season two.” His primary relationships now are with his daughter and with Jay-Den, “as I’m mentoring him as a future physician.”
Chancellor Ake (Holly Hunter). Her strength is the duality of the job: as chancellor, “a position of listening,” and as captain, making “split-second decisions,” assessing risk and taking responsibility for them. The weakness, “more explored in season two,” is “unresolved past relationships.”
The cast on each other
Hunter on working with her younger co-stars: “I didn’t really tell them what to do. People were like, oh, what kind of advice would you give? I really, I didn’t need to. I spent so much time observing them.” She called it “a tremendous honor and learning experience.”
There was also a story about Bella Shepard. The cadets were wiped out after a long day, and she pulled them back up: “Come on, honey, you got this. I believe in you.” The verdict from the stage: “Bella’s always lifting all of us up, literally and figuratively.”
Two new guest stars
Then the casting news. Noga Landau announced that Rosemarie DeWitt joins as a new member of the Sadal family: “A classic Star Trek Betazoid mom visit.”
Holly Hunter introduced the second: Bill Nighy plays Chancellor Ake’s father, a full Lanthanite who, in her words, “if he wants, can achieve immortality.” Landau summed up the theme: “it’s all family baggage all the way down.”
Catch up before March
If you want to know where I landed on season one, episode by episode, the whole run is in my playlist: Analysis of Starfleet Academy.
Season two arrives in March 2027.
What do you want season two to fix from year one? Tell me in the comments on the channel.
