Star Trek: Everything We Know About Starfleet Academy

More good news came nestled within a name on the same day as the official confirmation of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the series. "Excited to announce I've joined the writers [sic] room for this," Tawny Newsome, aka Beckett Mariner in Lower Decks, and absolute must-have for any Star Trek quiz team, tweeted on 30 March 2023.

That news for Newsome also meant being the first Star Trek cast member to become a Star Trek staff writer, telling TrekMovie, "It's rare that you get to be a first in something that you really care about. That's, that's very meaningful to me". We can only be excited by her presence there, too! And, as Newsome went on to tell TrekMovie, whilst Starfleet Academy will continue to innovate in its appeal to a young adult demographic, all fans can be re-assured that there are "some real canon-heads [in the writers' room]," including Newsome herself, to help, in her words, keep the "Star Trek of it feeling really Star Trek-y". (None of this to discount Walter Koenig's The Infinite Vulcan script for The Animated Series!)

Another relative newcomer, with previous writer/creator credits on the TV series Blood & Treasure, Absentia, and In from the Cold, we also now know that Academy's first episode is written by Gaia Violo, who will also serve as executive producer on the rest of the series. Newsome is not done with the new either. Both she and actor-writer-director Justin Simien are currently developing a live-action Star Trek comedy series set in the 25th century.