The late night host and notorious Poindexter will voice a character on the upcoming Paramount+ series.
I am fascinated by the tone of the Daily Mail headline on this bit of geek goss, which weirdly and stridently trumpeted “Stephen Colbert reduced to VOICE acting job as his canceled show draws to a close“. That’s a hell of a way to frame a casting announcement, to my mind. The caps are theirs – I provide a linkback only as evidence. Don’t read their yellow journalism – read mine instead.
Which is essentially the same news in a less bitchy tone, as it happens. Stephen Colbert, namesake and outgoing host of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, has scored a sweet voice acting gig on the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series. Colbert, a nerd’s nerd who can rattle off Tolkien minutiae at the drop of a wizard’s hat, recorded a fun little announcement video for the crowd at New York Comic Con:
Colbert will be voicing the Digital Dean of Students, essentially an AI (complimentary, I guess?) daily bulletin for students at the eponymous school for spacefarers.
Colbert joked that he was looking forward to rattling off lines like, “Attention Ensign Krebs, you Talaxian Furfly has exited the replicator and is now mating with itself.” which he swore was from an actual production script. And to be honest, that seems as likely as not.
Set in the far future 32nd century that the last couple of seasons of Star Trek: Discovery explored (and so completely unknown territory for a lot of you), Starfleet Academy sees the vaunted Federation clawing its way back from one of those galactic fark ages that afflict most sci-fi settings on a long enough timeline. To that end, a brand spankin’ new Starfleet Academy has been inaugurated, and we’ll be following the first new class.
The students are a bunch of fresh faces, including Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Zoë Steiner, and Bella Shepard, but expect some familiar faces, too. Holly Hunter is on board as the Academy chancellor; Tig Notaro returns as Discovery engineer Jett Reno; and Oded Fehr reprises his role as Starfleet Commandeer in Chief Charles Vance. And in a real callback, Robert Picardo is once again playing the holographic Doctor whose blue uniform he wore for seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager. Crucially, he’s not playing another holographic Doctor, but the same one, now 900 years old. Science fiction, folks!
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is set for a January 15 premiere on Paramount+.
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