Star Trek’s Next Show Balances An Incredible Amount Of Canon For New & Old Fans

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will meet the challenge of balancing 800 years of Star Trek canon for new audiences and longtime fans. Premiering in early 2026 on Paramount+, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is headlined by Academy Award-winner Holly Hunter, with Academy Award nominee Paul Giamatti playing season 1's villain.

Set after the end of Star Trek: Discovery in the late 32nd century, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy introduces a new crop of young Starfleet cadets, along with bringing back legacy characters like The Doctor (Robert Picardo) from Star Trek: Voyager. Potentially, all of Star Trek's thousand-year history can be referenced by Starfleet Academy.

TrekMovie caught up with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy writer Kristen Beyer at STLV: Trek to Vegas. Beyer explained how Starfleet Academy will approach canon and connections to Star Trek lore, since Paramount+'s upcoming series takes place 800 years after Star Trek: The Next Generation's era. Read Kirsten's quote below:

Definitely, the operating instructions are you should not have to have ever seen Star Trek to be able to step into Academy and enjoy it. That said, if you have seen a lot of Star Trek, you should also very much recognize it as a continuing part of the history and tradition that you are familiar with. On the one hand, it seems like you have a metric ton of canon to sort of contend with, but it doesn’t have to be a weight around your shoulders as you’re creating these stories. Because we’re able to totally move forward into the unexplored, and that’s super exciting. You just want to make sure that it’s informed by what we know went before.

The other thing that’s really tricky though, is that, like 800 years have passed since anything really deeply known has happened. And when you start to touch on certain issues, you’re like, “Well, okay, but if I’m a fan and I’m watching this, I need to know now the 95 other things that probably happened between that moment and where we are right now. And can you tell me all of those right now?” But that doesn’t serve the story to sort of go into that sort of thing. So what you want to do is be like, Okay, so this is what we want to do now based on what the last thing we saw. Is that possible? Is that likely? Is that and if the answer is yes, you run with it… without worrying so much about getting bogged down in the whole “Let me explain to you how that all happened.” Because a book could be written on any of a million subjects. So it’s the trick of making it feel like it’s part of the same universe and also breaking all of this new ground.

Star Trek: Academy Balancing 800 Years Of Star Trek Canon Explained

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is designed to be accessible to new audiences unfamiliar with Star Trek. Starfleet Academy's young cast aims to bring a youthful audience to the franchise, and the cadets learning about Starfleet's history is meant to reflect new viewers. Star Trek needs to cultivate a younger fanbase to continue to grow.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy taking place centuries in the future is both an advantage and a challenge. As Kirsten Beyer says, 800 years have passed. That creates a tabula rasa. Many things fans know from TNG's era have changed. A prime example is Starfleet Academy's First Officer, Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), who shows how Star Trek: Deep Space's Jem'Hadar and Klingons have evolved into hybrids.

The Doctor is the most familiar bridge to Star Trek's past, and perhaps the most exciting. The 800-year-old hologram is a living history book in his own right, and the opera-loving Emergency Medical Hologram has much to teach Starfleet Academy's cadets while also hopefully filling in some blanks in Star Trek's missing centuries.

Our Take On Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's Canon Challenge

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's first teaser trailer was an eye-popping showcase for the new series' visual splendor that also contained numerous Easter eggs and odes to Star Trek canon. Starfleet Academy is about cadets learning, and learning from, Star Trek's history, both the inspiring events and the tragic.

More than other Star Trek on Paramount+ series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy can please Star Trek's extremely knowledgeable longtime fans and attract a new audience. It's a challenge that every Star Trek show in the streaming era since Star Trek: Discovery has faced, but Starfleet Academy is best positioned to meet it.

The most important thing, as Kirsten Beyer explains, is that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy creates compelling characters and stories that keep audiences coming back. Starfleet Academy can't be a Wikipedia for how Star Trek lore has changed. It will be a delicate balancing act for Star Trek's next show to achieve.