‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau explain why this is the perfect series for Trek’s 60th anniversary (interview)

A long-gestating effort to bring a Starfleet Academy TV series from concept to reality has finally manifested itself, as the “Discovery” spinoff series’ Star Trek: Starfleet Academy debuted on Paramount+ with a two-episode launch on Jan. 15.

It chronicles the lives and loves of a fresh class of young Starfleet cadets in the 32nd century under the direction of school chancellor and USS Athena captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter). Executive producer and current “Star Trek” ringmaster Alex Kurtzman and series co-showrunner Noga Landau (“Tom Swift,” “Nancy Drew”) believe this was the ideal “Star Trek” show to bring fans to mark the venerable franchise’s 60th anniversary.

“For every ‘Trek’ show, they all reflect the moment in which they were made,” Kurtzman tells Space.com.

“They’re saying something about society in its different phases. And right now — and I’m speaking both as the showrunner but also as a parent — I see our kids inheriting a very divided, fractured world. And I also see that they’re able to hold onto this optimism still, that anything is possible. It’s probably the first generation that I’ve seen that’s able to do both of those things. And that felt like a beautiful reinforcement of Roddenberry’s essential vision.

“What a great reason to make a show, because right now they’re being bombarded with negativity all day long,” explains Kurtzman. “We wanted to be a compass that guided them back toward hope and possibility and a brighter future.”

Related: How to watch Starfleet Academy online and from anywhere

“We take on very real-world topics. All science fiction, but particularly ‘Star Trek,’ is always allegorical to something, and you get to read into it whatever you want. It felt like we got to talk about something very relevant now in this show. And that it’s not possible to learn without legacy. You have to learn from the past in order to understand the future and the present. To have a brand new generation and then several members of older generations there, I think it speaks to the spectrum of what is possible with ‘Star Trek.’”

With ‘Star Trek’ celebrating its milestone 60th birthday later this year, Landau is certain that there’s really never a wrong time to do “Starfleet Academy.”

“Our audience, some of them, have been waiting 60 years to be able to go to Starfleet Academy, and they finally get to do it now,” she adds. “For the look of the Athena, our ship has wings, and that was very intentional. It was important that the ship looks like classic Trek, but also looks like something we’ve never seen before.”

The design aesthetics and production logistics on “Starfleet Academy” were ambitious, and Kurtzman is excited for fans to experience this transformative moment in Federation history and the show’s impressive USS Athena mega-sets.

“We’re on the biggest stage in North America, it’s the first two-story stage we’ve ever built,” he explained. “We built it so that we could do long walk-and-talks that would start in the upper level, take you down the stairs, past the big time window to space, through the lobby, into a turbo-lift, down into a hallway, and keep it all continuous. That’s a really exciting thing.

“We wanted it to feel consistent with the language we’ve established for the 32nd century, but we also wanted to harken back to East Coast collegiate vibes. So how do you sprinkle some Harvard in there? Our production designer, Matthew Davies, and his entire team came up with the idea of marrying dark wood with all of this future aesthetic. If you look at Nahla’s office, as we’re based in San Francisco, it’s Frank Lloyd Wright-heavy. Very Mission furniture-heavy. And we lit the show differently and used different lenses than we’ve ever used on ‘Star Trek’ before.”

“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” is streaming exclusively on Paramount+. The two-episode premiere dropped on Jan. 15, with subsequent episodes releasing weekly on Wednesdays.