All About “Starfleet Academy, ”the “Star Trek ”Prequel That Never Was
- - All About “Starfleet Academy, ”the “Star Trek ”Prequel That Never Was
Meredith WilshereJanuary 18, 2026 at 6:00 AM
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William Shatner as Admiral James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Captain Spock in the movie, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." -
In the early 1990s, there were plans to make another Star Trek movie
The movie, Starfleet Academy, would focus on how Captain James T. Kirk, Spock and Leonard McCoy met as cadets
However, creative disagreements and fans' preconceived notions reportedly stalled and ultimately ended the project
After 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, there were a lot of lingering questions about how the Star Trek franchise would continue.
Producer Harve Bennett grappled with how the characters could remain on screens, proposing a feature-film prequel titled Starfleet Academy, also known as The Academy Years, he recently told Woman’s World.
“Every time they were going to make one of these Star Trek movies, the producers and the studio always ran into the same problem in getting the original cast together,” screenwriter David Loughery shared with the publication. “The reasons for that were money, power, creative differences, ego, health, unavailability… all of those things.”
So, producer Ralph Winter pitched the idea for Starfleet Academy, which would focus on how Captain James T. Kirk, Spock and Leonard McCoy first met as cadets, to Bennett.
CBS via Getty Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk, Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, George Takei as Hikaru Sulu and James Doohan as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in "Star Trek."
“We’d just demonstrated with Star Trek III that we could do a young Spock,” Winter explained. “We should see how these guys meet the first time… build something that would be a reboot of this with younger characters to pick up with when these older characters don’t want to do this as much.”
Bennett liked the idea of seeing Star Trek at its "beginning," so Loughery got to work on “a real coming-of-age story.”
The movie would be set at Starfleet Academy in Huntsville, Ala., following Spock, Kirk and McCoy as they navigated challenges as cadets.
“They begin as rivals and end up as friends and comrades, and in the final scene… we’re able to see the legends that they are going to grow up to become,” Loughery said of the script.
Bennett envisioned the film in two ways, noting that it "would have been a gift for the fans on the 25th anniversary" in the early 1990s.
"Part of the deal was for us to do a Star Trek VI, with the original cast after Starfleet Academy," he added, emphasizing that it would add onto the franchise rather than replace any of the original movies and members.
The series creator, however, Gene Roddenberry, admittedly “didn’t like it” and didn’t think it “fit in with the rest of Trek.”
“It wasn’t good. Some of it was like Police Academy,” Roddenberry told Woman's World. Roddenberry's disapproval had a heavy sway over the studio executives and fans.
According to Loughery, the fans thought the project was “a sort of spoof or a takeoff.”
Despite so many mixed opinions about the project, William Shatner, who portrayed Kirk, noted that Bennett was simply "striving to find an answer for the studio’s question: ‘Are these guys too old to continue?’”
CBS Photo Archive/Getty
Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk.
Eventually, the project was shut down.
“The studio kind of became reluctant,” Loughery said. “Then they started to think that they could squeeze one more Star Trek with the original cast.”
After Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the idea of Starfleet Academy quietly went away.
“When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, people said this will never work,” Winter told Woman's World. “But they achieved their own success. It could have been the same with a prequel cast.”
Starfleet Academy, the movie, has no relation to Paramount+’s new TV show Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
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