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Showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau explain how they turned a spaceship into “a training hospital” for Starfleet cadets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
The Star Trek: Starfleet Academy<\/em> creative leads preview Holly Hunter’s Chancellor Nahla Ake, who’s both captain of the U.S.S. Athena and head of the school.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n From an East Coast college vibe to trees on the spacecraft itself, Landau explains how “we’ve added elements that make it feel alive.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n There’s a reason why a show like Star Trek: Starfleet Academy<\/em><\/a> hasn’t been made until now. How do you follow a class of unseasoned cadets during their learning period but still make it feel like Trek<\/em> with regular space missions?<\/p>\n “It’s hard to come up with a circumstance and a buy-in where you can still have Star Trek<\/em> adventures with real stakes and real peril, but it’s also a school,” Noga Landau, a showrunner on the new series with Alex Kurtzman<\/a>, tells Entertainment Weekly<\/em>. “It’s really important that viewers know that these kids actually go on real Star Trek<\/em> missions and there is real Star Trek<\/em> peril and complex situations that they have to navigate.”<\/p>\n The duo since cracked the code with the U.S.S. Athena, a spaceship that doubles as the Starfleet campus when it docks on Earth. “We really did liken it to a teaching hospital,” Kurtzman says. “You can only learn by getting thrown into the fire.”<\/p>\n