Star Trek has a long history with a Starfleet Academy idea that's long overdue!
Star Trek fans are buzzing over the planned Starfleet Academy series that's set to premiere either later in 2025 or 2026. It picks up from the ending of Discovery, set in the 32nd century, with the first graduating Starfleet class in a century ready for their first missions.
However, this is hardly the first time Paramount and Star Trek have tried this type of project, as the attempts at a Starfleet Academy movie or show have been around for longer than many may think!
Star Trek: Year One
The first attempt dates back to 1991. The film franchise had faltered with the disaster of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and the producers facing up to the reality that the actors were aging too much. They thus believed a fresh start was needed for the films.
With the 25th anniversary of Star Trek coming in 1991, the timing seemed perfect for a tale going back to the beginning. Under the title of Star Trek: The First Adventure, Ralph Winter and Harve Bennett concocted the idea to utilize a brand new younger cast as the iconic characters.
The film has been discussed in William Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories and the excellent Charting the Undiscovered Country book. A concern from Paramount was that audiences might not be willing to head to a Trek movie without the original cast. So they decided to make a framing device inspired by the classic World War II movie Twelve O'Clock High with DeForest Kelly as Bones talking to a group of cadets.
A script review at Ain't It Cool News has Bones asked about Kirk and Spock and laughing at how the two were at each other's throats in the Academy. The bulk of the film thus flashes back to show how Kirk, Spock and McCoy met as younger men.
The script would also have a woman named Cassandra, who's Kirk's first love. It uses a theme of prejudice on both Spock and another alien student who becomes radicalized after his father is killed in a coup that's trying to overturn his world's slavery laws. That alien becomes the movie's villain, leading an attack on the Federation.
That pushes Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a young Scotty to join other cadets in taking on an early version of the Enterprise to stop the villain. Tragically, Cassandra is killed with the future crew members bonding.
A variation of the script had the producers thinking that Bones may not work as the narrator. It was thus changed to Kirk himself telling this to the Academy. That would end with a warmer coda of Kirk visiting Cassandra's grave, showing he'd never gotten over her and he and Spock sharing memories before beaming away.
The reasons the movie never came off vary. There was a regime change at Paramount that wanted a classic Trek film. Also, surprising as it sounds, there was a backlash among fans to the very idea of "young Trek." Gene Roddenberry wasn't happy either and the various issues combined to drop the project.
But a good idea can't stay dead and in many ways, elements of this script made their way into the 2009 Star Trek reboot that did a fine job with the concept.
The books showed fun YA adventures
The Star Trek books are always a great way to expand the Trek universe. It only made sense for a series aimed at younger readers to look at the Academy days of some popular characters. So, from 1993 to 1998, the Starfleet Academy series was published, which had some nice turns.
Three were for TOS, one focused on Spock before joining Starfleet; the second on McCoy and how he meets Spock during a crisis on Vulcan; and the third with Kirk joining the pair battling pirates. While out of canon, they are still fun reads capturing each character well.
The Next Generation series began with a three-book focus on Worf written by popular author Peter David. As always, David nails the character well, and so does justice to Starfleet's inner workings. An excellent touch is Worf facing bigotry over being a Klingon and thinking he's in the shadow of his foster brother, not realizing how capable a cadet he is.
The other books by a variety of authors would shift to the other TNG crew members with some good stuff: Data trying to fit in among living beings, Picard standing up to his demanding father over his desire to join Starfleet, Crusher being a troublemaker in her younger days and Riker and Geordi becoming friends at the Academy.
The Voyager series only looked at Janeway with just three books before the line ended. While written for pre-teens, the stories are still good and capture the challenges of Starfleet Academy, the tests they put their cadets through and it's understandable how the famous crew members became the heroes we know.
The Game is a mini-movie
Among the scores of Star Trek games in the 1990s, Starfleet Academy stands out. It was a flight simulator game giving gamers the chance to pilot a variety of starships through missions from rescue to combat. There were also smaller side missions that would involve diplomacy.
What got the game major attention was that it was part of the wave in the late 1990s of PC games using filmed cutscenes to tell its story. Even bigger was that it had George Takei as Sulu, Walter Koenig as Chekov and William Shatner as Kirk to make it a true Star Trek game and the last time Shatner played Kirk.
Set two years before Star Trek VI, the main storyline follows a pack of cadets led by David Forrester. They go through training under the eye of Sulu, with Kirk also giving advice. Things are tense with suspected Klingon attacks on colonies and the hints a rogue faction within the Federation is pushing them into war.
This ties into the Vanguard, an "Earth first" group that Forrester has to infiltrate to stop. The cut scenes are shot surprisingly well, and the original TOS actors do a fine job playing their old roles and boosting the tale. It really feels like a pilot movie for a TV show that would have worked.
The game received a couple of expansion packs and a sequel, Klingon Academy. That was even better to show how the Klingons clearly have much different training methods. It also had Christopher Plummer reprising his role as General Chang, which is worth the watch.
While the games can be tough to find on PC, the video of the movies are up on YouTube and showcase how an Academy story can work so well.
So it's been a long road, but finally, Star Trek is giving a Starfleet Academy show a shot in live-action. If it's half as entertaining as the previous attempts both in book and video game, we're in for a fine adventure to add more to Star Trek lore!