Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has officially opened its doors and the new series boldly pushes the franchise ahead into one of its most intriguing eras yet.
Set centuries after one of the most catastrophic galactic events in the franchise, The Burn, Starfleet Academy looks to chart a course toward a brighter future. At the heart of the show is a diverse group of fresh-faced cadets from all walks of life, each carrying their own hopes, doubts, and potential. These cadets are guided by seasoned Starfleet mentors shaped by their own unique experiences, mentors who each come with their own distinctive backgrounds and own quirks.
Among the mentors at the Starfleet Academy helping to guide (and challenge) these cadets are Robert Picardo’s iconic Emergency Medical Hologram, The Doctor, now centuries removed from when fans first met him in Star Trek: Voyager, and Gina Yashere’s Lura Thok, a half-Klingon and half-Jem'Hadar who oversees the Academy's War College.
As fans have already seen in the first two episodes of the season, The Doctor and Lura’s interactions with the cadets are quite unique. Those bonds will continue to grow as the season continues, evolving in surprising new ways.
Ahead of the premiere, Redshirts Always Die spoke with Picardo and Yashere about stepping into Starfleet Academy and how their characters’ very different life experiences shape the next generation of Starfleet officers.
Redshirts Always Die: Robert, you’re returning to Star Trek after already leaving a mark on the franchise — what did it feel like to step back into this universe at a very different point in its timeline?
Robert Picardo: Well, that was the challenge to think about what it meant to have 800 years of digital memory where everything is completely clear. The memories of a colleague who died 790 years ago are as fresh as the memory of someone you saw yesterday.
That's a hard thing to wrap your mind around, but it also to me tells you that the character is not keen on making personal relationships because organics grow old and die, so why invest?
So I think he's a little more reserved, especially with the young cadets. [He’s] unwilling to go beyond just being a teacher when they want more of a mentoring relationship with him. I think that there are a couple of the cadets that, in the future, we'll see kind of wear him down a little bit [and get] closer to him in a way that makes playing the character interesting. The fact that he was designed for one thing, for emergency medical use, and now he is a full-fledged human-like artificial intelligence that does all sorts of things.
And Gina, coming in fresh, what has it been like to join a franchise with such a passionate legacy and become a part of its latest chapter?
Gina Yashere: I mean it's been really exciting. I don't try and get down the internet rabbit hole too much because there is so much discussion and I know that my character has split the fan base where some people are like this is terrible, there are no female Jem'Hadar and then there are some people. Oh, this is exciting. I'm looking forward to hearing her story.
It's exciting because it's a new character, it's a new hybrid that has never been seen before. So I'm looking forward to it getting out there and seeing how she's embraced by the universe.
Having seen several of the episodes, I have to say I love the character! Each of your characters brings a very different life experience into the academy. What can you tease about how they're going to interact with the cadets in the season moving ahead?
Yashere: I mean, when you first see Lura, she's screaming at the cadets, just terrorizing them. Luckily, we have such great writers and they've added different facets to her personality, so you'll see small, incremental changes over time where she starts to soften.
Then there is an episode in season one where she has a one-on-one with Jayden, the young Klingon, and you see that she has empathy and that she actually cares about this cadet.
And that underneath the spikes and the anger and the screaming and the bluster, there is a heart, well, two hearts; there are two hearts.
Picardo: And without giving away any spoilers, The Doctor develops unique friendships with two of the cadets. They're very different. The friendships are very different, but they're unique, and I think they push him in different ways that make it very fun for me to play. I think for the fans of my character who’ve known him a long time, they'll be quite surprised.
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