Paul Giamatti isn’t just one of the big-name, Oscar-nominated stars of the next Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy (the other is Holly Hunter). He’s also a big Star Trek nerd himself, and he proved it to me when I chatted with him at the CCXP con in São Paulo, Brazil, this week.
“Seven years old, seven, eight years old,” Giamatti immediately responds when asked when his fandom began. “I watched it with my father, who was a fan from the ’60s, watching in the ’60s. So yeah, I go back, way back.”
Cut to half a century later, and the actor is standing in front of thousands of fans promoting his own Star Trek show on CCXP’s Thunder Stage – the Brazilian con’s version of SDCC’s Hall H. To rapturous cheers, Giamatti unveiled a clip from the latest series (this is the twelfth Trek TV show, give or take).
New Starfleet Academy Clip Revealed
In the new clip, the latest starship to take to the heavens, the USS Athena, is under heavy attack from an unknown force that seems to be engulfing the ship in a sort of cosmic sheath. As Hunter’s Captain Nahla Ake gives orders from the bridge, we see the young Academy students running to and fro in the decks below. Also spotted is Robert Picardo’s The Doctor, still swinging some 800 years after his time on the USS Voyager, as he attempts to corral the students (“Don’t panic! Breathe! Breathing is your friend!”) while acerbicly (of course) advising the captain to avoid any further direct hits to the ship. Suddenly a ship emerges in the space beyond the Athena, seemingly putting itself together from different pieces, and who appears but Giamatti’s villainous Nus Braka, who tells Captain Ake she looks “as radiant as ever” before adding that “payback’s a bitch.” End of clip!
Paul Giamatti’s Star Trek Fandom
The actor doesn’t mince words when it comes to what his favorite Trek series is.
“My favorite one probably of all of them is Deep Space Nine,” he says. “I like The Original Series. I like Next Generation. I like Voyager actually a lot. I’ve enjoyed Strange New Worlds a lot. Those would be top favorites. But Deep Space Nine’s probably my most favorite one.”
