Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Showrunners Reveal Deep Space Nine Easter Egg (Exclusive)
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau chatted with SYFY Wire about Deep Space Nine’s architectural influence.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has more than one connection to Deep Space Nine.
Long before paying tribute to Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) in “Series Acclimation Mil,” Star Trek's wormhole-adjacent, deconstructed sphere-shaped space station had already been woven in the DNA of the franchise’s next chapter.
While envisioning Starfleet Academy’s central hub, showrunners Noga Landau and Alex Kurtzman looked to Deep Space Nine’s approach to placemaking with its trademark circular promenade, a thoroughfare featuring the likes of Quark’s Bar and Garak’s Clothier.
“I remember when we were first breaking season one, I was watching episodes of DS9 and seeing everybody walking through the promenade,” Landau explained in an exclusive interview with SYFY Wire. “All the intriguing characters that would pop up there for various reasons. Going to all the different places there. It definitely reminded me of how we've fashioned the world and the sets of our show.”
Just as Deep Space Nine did in 1992, Starfleet Academy moved away from variations on the franchise’s go-to premise of a “five-year mission” established by the original series.
The hallowed halls of the San Francisco campus—once traversed by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Captain Picard and countless other Starfleet legends—provided another chance to focus Star Trek in a centralized location.
“We have an incredible production design team led by Matthew Davies, who I think probably took a lot of inspiration from how DS9 organized itself in space,” Landau noted. “And then just basically took it and made what we have giant.”
In another DS9 parallel, Starfleet Academy boasts a multi-level standing set, but this class of cadets has even more room for West Wing-style walk-and-talk oners.
“We have one of the largest, if not the largest, sets in North America for the atrium of our ship,” she raved. “It's two stories. We're able to do things on this show that Star Trek has never done before.”
As for the aesthetic, the duo found ways to integrate present-day Ivy League academia sensibilities into their 32nd century training ground for promising Starfleet officers.
“We wanted to bring a sense of old East Coast, almost Harvard architecture to the space, as well,” Kurtzman shared. “You'll see a lot of wood that's integrated with more modern paneling. You see that Nahla’s office, for example, is very Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired, because that felt very San Francisco. It's an incredibly fun world to build.”
Season one of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy airs new episodes Thursdays, exclusively on Paramount+.
