Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is finally here, and as fans check it out with a Paramount+ subscription, they’re noticing a few things. Critics have praised the cast, and I’m not surprised considering the talent involved. Oscar winner Paul Giamatti lived his longtime dream and joined the franchise, though he had to clear the air about wanting to play a Klingon.
I’ve heard a lot about Giamatti wanting to play a member of that Star Trek alien species, and he gets that wish with Nus Braka in Starfleet Academy. The smuggler is a half-Klingon, half-Tellarite key character in Season 1. When I spoke to Giamatti and asked him about his long campaign to play a Klingon character, he admitted to CinemaBlend that it was a far-fetched pitch, as well as shared his thoughts on getting in prosthetics:
I mean, campaigning for it is a really like kind of fancy word for me, thinking it’d be funny if I said somebody should hire me as a Klingon. I didn’t think anybody ever actually would. I love wearing that stuff. I like it when they mold my head. When they put on, so I find it, yeah, I find it really relaxing. It’s weird. I find the whole process kind of meditative. It’s very peculiar.
Prosthetic work, especially for Star Trek, can be a real struggle. Jeffrey Dean Morgan nearly quit acting over it, and Colm Meaney griped about the one time he had to play a Klingon as well. It’s not for everyone, but apparently it’s something that Paul Giamatti seemed to enjoy when he was on Starfleet Academy. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given how he reacted to the prospect of not playing an ape in Planet of the Apes.
Giamatti continued, going a bit into his history with Star Trek with his father as a child. While he was happy to get prosthetics for the role, he was also thrilled to hear that he’d be playing a Tellarite:
When they said I’m half Tellarite, I was very excited, because as a kid. And I like the Tellarites who are not in it very much, but are these like kind of disputatious pig people. And I thought, that’s really funny. And I said, so I’m going to be a hyper-aggressive guy, because they’re two really aggressive alien species. So that was really fun, you know.
Nus Braka is every bit as hyper-aggressive as Giamatti said, and his destiny is interwoven with Holly Hunter’s Captain Ake and Sandro Rosta’s Caleb Mir from the very start. After seeing the first six episodes, I’d rank him as one of the best, if not the best, villains we’ve seen in the current Star Trek era.
While Paul Giamatti is a gem and a great addition to Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, his appearances are fleeting. It’s a good thing, then, that the rest of the cast is equally strong, with Oscar-winner Holly Hunter leading the story as Captain Ake. Take her, returning talent like Robert Picardo, and a fresh cast of young, but talented actors, and there’s a strong cast attached to this show.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy takes place in the 32nd century, and follows the lives of a new generation of cadets who join the Academy after “The Burn.” With warp-travel returning for the first time in a century, there’s a lot of work the Federation has to do to rebuild alliances and understand the new world, and these cadets will be in on the ground floor of all of it. I’m excited to see how the series evolves going forward and what other adventures lay in wait for this “next generation” of Starfleet’s finest.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy streams new episodes on Paramount+ on Thursdays. Stick with CinemaBlend as we cover the series throughout the inaugural season and speculate on what could be coming up in Season 2.
