The long-rumored Starfleet Academy TV series will finally get made

There’s officially another Star Trek series on the way, and this time it’s one we’ve been hearing rumors about since 2018: Starfleet Academy.

Announced today in a press release and reported by Deadline, the CBS Studios-produced series will follow a group of teenage Starfleet Academy students as they come of age while enduring rigorous training for future interstellar missions.

The central characters will reportedly have to navigate friendships, rivalries, and romances as they face a new enemy that threatens the Federation.

Co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau issue this in-universe statement in the show’s announcement:

Admission is now open to Starfleet Academy! Explore the galaxy! Captain your destiny! For the first time in over a century, our campus will be re-opened to admit individuals a minimum of 16 Earth years (or species equivalent) who dream of exceeding their physical, mental and spiritual limits, who value friendship, camaraderie, honor and devotion to a cause greater than themselves. The coursework will be rigorous, the instructors among the brightest lights in their respective fields, and those accepted will live and study side-by-side with the most diverse population of students ever admitted. Today we encourage all who share our dreams, goals and values to join a new generation of visionary cadets as they take their first steps toward creating a bright future for us all. Apply today! Ex Astris, Scientia!

The announcement didn’t specify when the Star Trek timeline for the series will take place, nor did it name any characters or specific plot points.

Kurtzman is the current head honcho of Star Trek; he has overseen most of the work on all the franchise shows that have premiered in recent years. Before that, he worked on the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films and worked as a writer on the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and on the films The Island, The Legend of Zorro, and Transformers.

Landau is a television writer who first became known as a story editor on the TV series The Magicians—another action-adventure show set in a fantastical school with coming-of-age plotlines—and who later became showrunner for The CW’s Nancy Drew series.

This won’t be the first time Starfleet Academy has been explored in works of Star Trek fiction, of course. Beyond the obvious example of the Kobayashi Maru references throughout the franchise, there were substantial plotlines about the academy in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, among others.

Further, there were Starfleet Academy video games in the 1990s for various platforms. While the PC game with full-motion video with original cast members had enough features to recommend it, I always felt the SNES/Sega 32X Starfleet Academy game never got the love it quite deserved.

The Starfleet Academy TV series will begin production in 2024, and it will premiere on Paramount+ at some point after that.