Paul Giamatti Is Playing an Alien Bad Guy In ‘Starfleet Academy’

Ahead of Star Trek‘s usual blockbuster panel inside Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con, Entertainment Weekly has lifted the lid on the next new Trek show, Starfleet Academy—and with it, our first look at Paul Giamatti’s mysterious villain.

In an extensive preview, Entertainment Weekly revealed a few more intriguing details about the show, which has largely remained hidden ahead of this weekend’s blowout appearance at Comic-Con. Set in the 32nd century after the events of Star Trek: Discovery—and at a time when the Federation and Starfleet are still in a period of recovery after fracturing into an extended period of isolation in the wake of a cataclysmic event called “The Burn”—Starfleet Academy will revolve around the first new class of cadets to enlist at the titular school in 120 years.

While details are still pretty slight, we do get to see that there’ll be a whole bunch of Star Trek species among the new class and familiar faces from across the franchise, from Discovery‘s Tig Notaro and Oded Fehr as Jett Reno and Admiral Vance, respectively (they’ll also be joined by Discovery alum Mary Wiseman as Tilly), and Voyager‘s Robert Picardo as the Emergency Medical Hologram (the same one, it seems, as co-showrunner Noga Landau teases that Starfleet Academy will “continue his story forward in a way that fans of Voyager are going to find really satisfying”). There’s also series lead Holly Hunter, who is playing a Starfleet captain acting as the academy’s chancellor, with a special connection to one of the new cadets in Sandro Rosta’s character.

But just because Starfleet Academy is set at a school and not on a Federation starship doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any conflict. And while we’ve known for a while that Giamatti would star in the series as a villain, we now have our first look at him… and some very interesting hints as to both who his character is and what his motivations are. Giamatti was cast in the series after Landau and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman reached out to his agent in the wake of Giamatti repeatedly expressing his love of Star Trek, and his desire to play a Klingon, during the press tour for The Holdovers.

Turns out, he might be getting his wish, in a way. According to EW’s report, a major alien presence in Starfleet Academy is a race of “Klingon hybrid species,” and Giamatti’s character is heavily hinted to be, if not explicitly confirmed, potentially one of those hybrids. Another image shows Karim Diane’s character, another young cadet at the academy, looking much more like we’d expect a Klingon to look compared to Giamatti’s villain, but there are certainly Klingon-esque elements that blend Discovery‘s original (and controversial) spin on the Klingons with more traditional Trek elements.

Whoever or whatever Giamatti’s baddy might be, though, according to Kurtzman, his aims reflect an uneasy attempt by the Federation to reintegrate and reconnect in the wake of the Burn, and Giamatti’s character “represents a tide that has swept across the [real] world in a very profound and upsetting way.”

“I say this without taking a political stance. That is part of what it means to invite everybody into the tent,” Kurtzman added. “One of my favorite things about Star Trek is that it reaches across the aisle. People on all sides of the political spectrum love it for different reasons. That is something that we really wanted to hold true to here.”

“One of the things that we see all across the world now is how much hate is relied on to sow division between things that connect us as human beings and how hate is used as a bludgeon to destroy empathy, which I think is ultimately what Star Trek is about,” Kurtzman concluded. “At its core, it’s about: We may not look the same, but we are the same. Finding that common ground and figuring out a way to understand our differences is at the heart of what [Star Trek creator Gene] Roddenberry was talking about.”

Head on over to Entertainment Weekly to see plenty more pictures from Starfleet Academy—and of course, stay tuned to io9 for our coverage of all of the Star Trek news out of Hall H at SDCC this weekend!

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