Six years on from the revelation that his dream was to appear in Star Trek, Paul Giamatti’s upcoming character in the new Trek series finally has a first look. In 2019, Giamatti told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show that his most enduring professional wish has always been to play one of Star Trek‘s most popular aliens: “My dearest wish in the world as a child until this moment is to play a Klingon, basically. Or to be something. I sort of play a Klingon on Billions. But I would love to play a Klingon, or something. I’ve never – for some reason, those jobs don’t come to me.”
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That dream has now been realized, with an intriguing twist thanks to upcoming show Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which is expected to be released in 2026 (though no date is yet set). Ahead of the show’s hotly-anticipated panel at Comic-Con, EW has revealed first look images from Starfleet Academy, including a look at Giamatti’s unnamed alien. There’s a twist however, as it appears Giamatti is playing a Klingon/Vulcan hybrid, which may well be Star Trek‘s most intriguing alien evolution. A character whose moral core swings between cold logic and fiery aggression sounds like a contradiction in terms, and in Giamatti’s hands, it’s even more exciting. He could, of course, also be a Klingon/Romulan hybrid like minor character Ba’el in The Next Generation‘s Birthright double-header. Here’s the reveal:
Kurtzman reveals that Giamatti’s casting happened when the Oscar nominee spoke about his Star Trek dream again during the press tour for The Holdovers: “We looked at each other and we went, ‘Is he kidding?! Well, let’s call his agent and find out. Within, I think, less than an hour, [his agent] called back and said he would love to meet.”
The feature also reveals more details on the character, who “represents a tide that has swept across the 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. 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.”
The suggestion is that Giamatti’s hybrid will be a heavily politicized character, with a real world allegory thrown in, as Kurtzmann hints 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. 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.”
Holly Hunter’s New Captain in Starfleet Academy Revealed
There’s a lot of other character reveals in the EW feature, but the arguably the most important is the first look provided of Holly Hunter’s lead of the series, who is both the captain and chancellor of the academy. In the words of Kurtzman’s co-showrunner Noga Landau: “We’ve never seen a captain like this before.” Details so far have been less than sparse, but Kurtzman also revealed that Hunter’s character will have a key relationship with Sandra Rosta’s newly recruited cadet: “Once the cadet enters into the school and meets all the other cadets, the balance of the storytelling begins to shift slightly. By the end of the season, you really feel like you have this incredible understanding of everybody and how they function as a group.”
More details for Starfleet Academy will be revealed at the Star Trek panel at Comic-Con today at 12:30 p.m. PT.
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Image courtesy of Focus Features. -
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