The way forward for “Star Trek” is right here and it really is boldly going to some new and undiscovered locations. (Take a look at our rating of each “Star Trek” live-action present). The message from Paramount+’s presentation for the franchise July 26 at San Diego Comedian-Con‘s Corridor H isn’t boundary- and format-pushing alone: It’s clear that they need to bundle new issues with some heavy doses of the acquainted — main stars, beloved returning franchise vets, and a few cutesy gimmicks.
Check out the teaser for “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.”
There are a ton of latest faces there for the thirty second Century-set present, as a lot of the forged is teenage and 20-something newcomers. And it’s set in a time interval, post-“Star Trek: Discovery” that permits for all-new storytelling fully unrestrained by preexisting canon. However that’s additionally numerous unfamiliar stuff, and audiences can want a bit of dose of the acquainted to anchor them.
So “Starfleet Academy” has a few high stars — each Oscar winners, no much less — to lend the suitable gravitas: Hell yeah, Holly Hunter ought to be somebody who leads the subsequent era into the longer term because the chancellor of Starfleet Academy — who wouldn’t belief her along with her college-age children within the thirty second Century or now? And Paul Giamatti provides simply the suitable fringe of menace, whistling the “Star Trek” theme as his “Klingon hybrid” villain, to tell us that Starfleet higher look out.
Then there’s a returning favourite in Robert Picardo’s The Physician, who apparently isn’t just one other hologram in his sequence, however actually the very same Physician from “Voyager” who’s survived greater than eight centuries to have his story proceed on this present. Continuity together with his arc from that present is one thing showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau are promising. (There’s additionally Tig Notaro getting back from “Discovery” as Jett Reno, one thing she instructed IndieWire she very a lot wished to do.)
And there are a few intriguing callbacks to maintain followers hooked as effectively: There’s a Jem’Hadar Starfleet officer? (A member of the menacing warrior species from “Deep Area 9.”) And one other mysterious “DS9” shoutout as effectively, as a pc show on the title academy appears to have info on it associated to the destiny of that present’s Capt. Benjamin Sisko — did he die on the finish of that sequence, or did he dwell on? Whether or not that’s only a throwaway second or a teaser for a deeper exploration on “Starfleet Academy” stays to be seen.
And throughout the “Star Trek” portfolio offered at Corridor H, this mannequin of some familiarity being blended in with the brand new stuff as a type of sweetener to make swallowing the unfamiliar extra palatable was in all places.
For the primary time ever, “Star Trek” is making a push into the audio storytelling house with “Star Trek: Khan,” a podcast concerning the legendary “Trek” villain in his years after his introduction on the “Unique Sequence” episode “Area Seed” when he and his crew are marooned on Ceti Alpha V. Naveen Andrews, the actor fancast for years as Khan (and may have been forged in “Star Trek Into Darkness”), can be voicing the character.
Andrews can be joined by a few returning vets: George Takei as Capt. Hikaru Sulu and Tim Russ as younger Ensign Tuvok. Within the years after Khan’s closing defeat they uncover extra info that permits Khan’s story to unfold in flashback. This can be a canon-friendly means of presenting this story as we all know from a ’90s “Voyager” episode that Tuvok served with Sulu aboard the USS Excelsior. Take a look at the “Star Trek: Khan” trailer right here:
And at last, “Star Trek” is nothing with out a good gimmick, and “Unusual New Worlds” teased that in Season 4 there can be an episode staged solely with puppets created by the Jim Henson Workshop. By some means Capt. Pike has even greater, extra lush hair right here. Just a little felt is the final word volumizer, one supposes. Right here’s a sneak peek:
That doesn’t do something to counter our cost that “Unusual New Worlds” is possibly veering a bit of too far into the insubstantial, nevertheless it reveals the elasticity of “Star Trek” in permitting for thus many various sorts of stunts. It additionally jogs my memory of how in 2005 as an April Idiot’s Day joke, the StarTrek.com web site introduced that “Star Trek: Enterprise” can be persevering with however solely by way of marionettes to chop down on prices. For a second, teenage me believed that. However I assume I solely wanted to attend 20 years for some puppet-based storytelling in “Star Trek” to turn out to be a actuality.