Paramount+ has officially pulled the plug on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
The series will end with its already completed second season, which is currently in post-production. CBS Studios and Paramount+ confirmed the cancellation Monday, while the show’s producers also released a lengthy message framing the decision around Gene Roddenberry’s vision and the themes they say the series set out to explore.
Starfleet Academy ends with Season 2
The writing had been on the wall, and now it’s official. There will be no Season 3 for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The show only recently wrapped its first season on Paramount+, while the second season had already been filmed before the cancellation news dropped.
CBS Studios and Paramount+ said in a joint statement that they are “incredibly proud” of the work that went into the series and thanked Alex Kurtzman, Noga Landau, Gaia Violo, along with the cast and crew, for expanding the Star Trek universe with a new group of characters and familiar faces.
Kurtzman, Landau, and Violo address the cancellation
Kurtzman, Landau, and Violo also confirmed that Season 2 will be the show’s last.
“We are in post-production now on what will be the second and final season,” they said in their statement.
The trio used the announcement to defend what they believe Star Trek stands for, leaning hard into Gene Roddenberry’s ideals about diversity, tolerance, and a future free from war, hate, poverty, disease, and repression. They also closed with Roddenberry’s “Live Long and Prosper” message aimed at “every future cadet in Starfleet Academy.” Read the full statement below.
It’s been my and Noga’s joy and privilege to help carry Gene Roddenberry’s extraordinary vision forward with Starfleet Academy, thanks to the hundreds of hardworking humans who pour every ounce of their talents into the work daily with imagination and reverence. We are in post-production now on what will be the second and final season. We’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished together on this show, and the world will get to see the work of these extraordinary artists when season two airs. We will finish strong.
Whether you’re working on Star Trek or part of the marvel that is Star Trek fandom — its very heart, soul, and conscience —the joy comes from adventuring across boundaries of time, space, and the humanly possible in service to Roddenberry’s transformative vision of the future. That incomparable vision was fueled by an inexhaustible optimism. Star Trek places its bet on the best in human nature. It dares to imagine a society of “infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” free of war, hate, poverty, disease, and repression, and dedicated to the spirit of scientific inquiry and respect for all life, whether carbon or silicon-based, green-skinned or blue.
But make no mistake: Gene Roddenberry wasn’t some starry-eyed dreamer. He was a decorated Army bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater. He had seen first-hand the grim consequences of the worst of human nature. And his vision of the future wasn’t just a promise of hope. It was also a warning. In a fraught, frightening time of intolerance and violence, Star Trek said: Look! We made it! But just barely. First, we had to put all those ancient scourges behind us. It said that what makes us glorious as a species, and gives us hope for the future and the galaxy is inextricably linked to what makes us dangerous to each other, to this one world we presently inhabit, and to ourselves. That dual message—of hope and of warning—isn’t just a pretty dream but a call to action, to think about who we are in a different way.
Please don’t take our word for it. Take Gene’s:
“Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”
With enduring hope that his vision of the future is possible, for our children, their children, and every future cadet in Starfleet Academy:
Live Long and Prosper.
