Star Trek: Everything We Know About Starfleet Academy

Star Trek and Oscar winners have played together for quite some time. Christopher Plummer (General Chang), Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan), Joel Grey (Caylem in Resistance), Louise Fletcher (Winn Adami), F. Murray Abraham (Ru'afo), Paul Williams (Koru in Virtuoso), Keith Carradine (A.G. Robinson in First Flight), and Michelle Yeoh (Philippa Georgiou, Prime and Mirror) all won one either before, during, or after their appearance in the franchise. Star Trek (2009) also won for 'Best Achievement in Makeup,' let's not forget.

Fitting, then, that the association plays on, especially for a series with 'Academy' in the title, and for a lead who won her golden statuette for The Piano: Holly Hunter. Hunter joins Starfleet Academy as captain and chancellor of the newly re-opened institution, "presiding over both the faculty and a new class of Starfleet cadets as they learn to navigate the galaxy in the 32nd century," as the Variety article first reported it.

During the Starfleet Academy San Diego Comic-Con 2024 (hereafter SDCC[24]) panel, Alex Kurtzman heaped on the praise for Hunter, calling her "unbelievable […] just incredible". Kurtzman went on to state, somewhat cryptically, that, "She is going to be a very different kind of chancellor and captain". The "and" in that sentence certainly seems to match with Kurtzman's later statement during the panel that they "were finding a new format […], kind of a hybrid format" for the show. Whatever that means, they're not lacking the talent to make it happen!