Star Trek: Starfleet Academy may take place centuries after the events of Star Trek: Voyager, but that’s not stopping one of the characters from the latter show from appearing in the former. Robert Picardo will reprise The Doctor in the upcoming Star Trek TV show, with the hologram now teaching at the title institution. Needless to say that living through nearly a millennia would change someone, even an EMH. After having spoke with Starfleet Academy writer Kirsten Beyer, I’m excited to hear about the “very different place” The Doctor’s in when we reunite with him in the new series.
Although Beyer never wrote for Star Trek: Voyager during its seven-season run, she has written 11 Voyager tie-in novels stretching back to 2005. So because she’s goes way back with this corner of the Star Trek franchise, I inquired with Beyer during my interview with her about the new narrative podcast series Star Trek: Khan (which she co-wrote and executive produced) about getting to write for The Doctor on a TV show. She started off by sharing with me:
Well I'm in the writer's room all day on Academy. So we're constantly talking about his character, and I'm constantly providing information that I have in my brain about him. But also, his character is now in a very different place than I ever wrote him. So it's not as much an exercise in, ‘Well, this is a thing that happened to The Doctor’ as ‘This is who he might be now.’ He's existed for 900 years. That's a lot.
That’s a lot indeed! The Doctor’s time with the Voyager crew is now a blip on his long lifespan, with him now having met and lost so many other people since then. That’s a lot to handle, so of course The Doctor will have significantly evolved by the time we reunite with him in Starfleet Academy, including changing the way he speaks in the 32nd century. He made notable progress “being” human on Voyager, and I look forward to seeing how far he’s come since then.
It remains to be seen how much Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will delve into what’s happened to The Doctor post-Voyager, both in this first season and the already-greenlit Season 2. However, Kirsten Beyer also said this about how she reacted when she learned The Doctor would be included in the series:
I was delighted when the decision was made to include him. It’s funny because a lot of times these stories… it helps when you have characters that can bridge the gap, but this was a huge one from the last time we saw the universe and our heroes and where we are now, But understanding that it was gonna be helpful, but that also you would have this character who would have been on a 900-year journey, most of which you don't get to tell right up front. Only over time will some of those experiences be revealed. It's just really exciting for storytellers, to be honest with you.
While Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will mark Robert Picardo’s first time playing The Doctor onscreen since Star Trek: Voyager went off the air in 2001, he did voice the character in Star Trek: Prodigy (which unfortunately can’t be streamed with a Netflix subscription anymore). That animated series saw him acting as a mentor of sorts to those main characters while they were aboard the USS Dauntless. Now we’ll see how he does as an instructor to members of the first new class of Starfleet cadets in over a century following the events of Star Trek: Discovery.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is expected to premiere on Paramount+ sometime in early 2026. In addition to Robert Picardo, Discovery alums Tig Notaro and Oded Fehr will respectively reprise Jett Reno and Admiral Charles Vance as series regulars, and Mary Wiseman is reprising Sylvia Tilly as a guest star.
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