Star Trek: Starfleet Academy EPs Tease What's On Tap For Season 2 — And Which Two Characters Won't Be Back
"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" wrapped up its maiden voyage last week, but the executive producers are already looking ahead to its sophomore run.
The latest "Trek" offshoot earned a Season 2 renewal at Paramount+ before it premiered, and the second season has already reportedly finished filming. So what can we expect when "Starfleet Academy" opens its doors again? A pretty sizable shake-up, EP Alex Kurtzman hints.
"In every season, you need to introduce a brand-new element that shakes it up and changes it," Kurtzman tells TV Guide. "And you're going to see the introduction of a character, and some characters, that are really going to shake up our group and send ripples through it that are going to force different kinds of relationships." Plus, "you're going to see romances between characters that you didn't necessarily think were coming."
Those romances might involve holographic cadet Sam, fellow EP Noga Landau tells Goldderby, now that Sam has been reborn and rebooted: "We really get to live in the fun and the complexity of Sam 2.0 in Season 2... She gets to do things that Sam 1.0 didn't get to do. For example, Sam 1.0 didn't have feelings of attraction, because how can you at a couple months old? But in Season 2, Sam 2.0 does start to experience feelings of attraction for the first time in her existence."
Two key cast members won't return for Season 2
What we won't see in Season 2, though, is more of Paul Giamatti's villain Nus Braka or Tatiana Maslany as Caleb's mother Anisha. Neither actor will return to reprise their roles in Season 2, Kurtzman confirms to Collider: "I will say you will not be seeing them in Season 2." But that doesn't mean they couldn't come back if "Starfleet Academy" gets renewed for a third season and beyond: "Their storylines are not complete... We would love nothing more than to bring them back and certainly have plans for that."
But we will see Caleb and his fellow cadets continue their journey of self-discovery in Season 2, Kurtzman notes to TV Guide: "Caleb's journey in the first season was the discovery of who he actually is and the understanding that he's part of Starfleet. That's just the first step, though. What it means to actually now embrace your destiny as a Starfleet officer when you never could have imagined yourself as that is a larger question of 'Who am I? And what am I capable of and who do I want to be now, when I could never have imagined being any of those things?' So that's a lot of what Season 2 is."
We can also expect more standalone episodes in Season 2, Landau reveals to TV Insider: "There's some really big concept episodes in Season 2 that really invoke 'Trek' at its best that I'm so excited for the audience to watch... People really do love these episodes that are sort of close-ended stories that really feel like a complete meal. And that's really cool because that's what 'Trek' always did so well in the past. And we continue to really do that in Season 2."
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