Rosta’s Caleb is front and center in the new trailer. We see him as a child with his mother (Tatiana Maslany), who is torn away from him by armed guards as Nus Braka cackles, “You hold on to how much you hate me right now, kid. It’ll keep you warm at night.” Cut to Captain Ake finding the now-grown Caleb and recruiting him to the Academy with a promise to help him find Nus Braka—presumably to exact some kind of revenge. We get to see instructors put the new cadets through their paces as they strive to be worthy of the Starfleet uniform. Love might be in the air for Caleb. And Captain Ake seems to have her own twisted history with Nus Braka.
As Ars senior editor Sam Axon pointed out in 2o23, there have been Kobayashi Maru references throughout the franchise, as well as substantial plotlines about the academy in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, among others. There were also Starfleet Academy video games in the 1990s for various platforms.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premieres on January 15, 2026, on Paramount+.
First look at Strange New Worlds S4
Let’s be honest, the third season of Strange New Worlds has been pretty uneven. But a course correction could be in the offing, judging by a four-and-a-half minute clip from the upcoming fourth season that was unveiled at NYCC. It’s an extended sequence in which Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and his crew respond to a distress signal from another ship, only to encounter a massive space storm that knocks out almost all their systems. They decide to take a shuttle to a nearby planet to gather some much-needed iridium to power their warp drive. (Is anyone else hearing echoes of Galaxy Quest and the hunt for a replacement beryllium sphere?)
Still, the tone does seem more of a return to form for the series. (For what it’s worth, producer Akiva Goldsman has attributed the S3 issues in part to production delays as a result of strikes and staffing changes.) The fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is slated for release sometime next year. The series has already been renewed for a truncated fifth and final season of six episodes.