Starfleet Academy Inspired By Harry Potter & X-Men, Say EPs

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau reveal the new series’ Harry Potter and X-Men First Class inspirations. Kurtzman directed the first two episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which premiered on Paramount+ and is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, while Landau co-wrote the second episode.

Paramount+’s newest and most youthful live-action Star Trek series primarily takes place aboard the USS Athena, a starship that also doubles as Starfleet Academy’s campus. Upon arriving aboard, Starfleet Academy’s cadets and audiences are immersed in the gorgeously designed school, with classrooms, atriums, and pavilions named after some of Star Trek’s greatest icons.

At Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s press junket, ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley mentioned how Starfleet Academy evoked the feeling of attending Harry Potter‘s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and X-Men‘s Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau agreed and explained how Starfleet Academy is similar but also different. Read their quotes below:

Liam Crowley: What I love about this series is it’s reminiscent of some of my favorite mythological schools brought to live-action life. Hogwarts in Harry Potter, Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in the X-Men movies. Did you draw inspiration from any of the properties that came before that kind of had a similar structure layout? And also, what efforts did you make to make sure Starfleet Academy was different from the typical school structure we see in these fantastical worlds?

Alex Kurtzman: Great questions. First of all, those are two excellent references. And yes, X-Men: First Class as well as Harry Potter in general. I think the thing that was always, for us, really interesting about Harry Potter was how much we loved the teachers as much as we loved the students. And we knew that for this particular show, it was going to be critical to love the teachers as much as we love the students. But then it’s Star Trek. It’s its own thing. So you’re kind of looking at a template, but you’re not looking at the same details.

What I think we love about the show is that if you watch any other Star Trek show, you’re meeting characters who are actualized, fully actualized. They’re already on a ship, they’ve been assigned, they’ve chosen the course of their life. That’s not what’s happening here. You’ve got cadets who are coming in who often think they want to do one thing and then will end the four years doing something entirely different.

And that journey of self-discovery allows these characters to make mistakes that, typically, characters in a Star Trek show wouldn’t be allowed to make. And the fact that they’re learning in what is essentially a teaching hospital out in space and real-life Star Trek stories where the stakes are real, I think, gives this show its own special sauce.

Noga Landau: Something that’s really special about Starfleet Academy is that it existed as an idea before Hogwarts, before X-Men: First Class. It’s been out there forever, but no one’s really lived in it. No one’s really been able to see it yet. And so, I think that’s the most exciting thing. People have been waiting, some [for] decades, to be able to go to Starfleet Academy.

Alex Kurtzman is right that one of the strengths of the Harry Potter franchise was that the professors at Hogwarts were endearing mentors, as was Professor X (Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy) in the X-Men movies. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s viewers feel like they want to be taught by instructors like The Doctor (Robert Picardo) and the Chancellor, Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter).

As Noga Landau points out, Starfleet Academy is now being fully realized after only being occasionally seen in prior Star Trek TV shows and movies. While Landau is right that Starfleet Academy predates J.K. Rowling creating Hogwarts and the X-Men: First Class movie, Stan Lee did create the Xavier School in Uncanny X-Men comics in the early 1960s.

In just two episodes so far, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy makes viewers feel like students at school. Fans join the cadets at their Theoretical Physics course taught by Commander Jett Reno (Tig Notaro), combat training with Commander Lura Thok (Gina Yashere), and grab bites to eat at the mess hall in the James T. Kirk Pavilion, all of which take place in the stunningly designed sets of the USS Athena and San Francisco.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is filmed at the Star Trek Stage in Toronto on the largest sets ever constructed for Star Trek. As a result, Starfleet Academy is an eye-popping, fully-realized location, and it’s as appealing as a sci-fi and fantasy school as Hogwarts in Harry Potter and Xavier’s School in X-Men. For Star Trek fans, even more so.

Watch ScreenRant‘s interview with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s co-showrunners below: