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The Star Trek franchise ushered in their next generation, with the unveiling of Starfleet Academy at San Diego Comic-Con 2025. Holly Hunter who plays Captain Nahla Ake greeted the crowd alongside five new cadets including George Hawkins (who plays Darem Reymi), Kerrice Brooks (S.A.M.), Bella Shepard) Karim Diane (Jay Dem Kraag) and Sandro Rosta (Caleb Mir) a human who we’ll be able to experience the series through. 

There are some recognizable faces from past Star Trek series like Voyager and Discovery and they’re likely to be instructors aboard the USS Athena. This makes sense to lure older Star Trek fans while placing the focus of the training on the cadets in hopes of pulling in viewers in the young adult range.

The series is set far into the 32nd century, and the galaxy is coming out of a 120-year mourning period after The Burn. Starfleet is finally moving forward and rebuilding. It’s way too early to tell which characters are going to pop off the screen, but everything we’ve seen of S.A.M. in the trailer shows that she has a different vibe than everyone else. She is smiling, she’s vibrant and she’s dancing. S.A.M stands for Series Acclimation Mil. She is listed as a Kasquian, but she has a wildly unique profile. 

“I am a photonic. I am a hologram,” Brooks revealed to the Hall H crowd. “So with that being said, S.A.M. is programmed to feel a certain age, but she was literally only created, like weeks ago. So she’s like a newborn.”

“Everything is so fresh to her and that is just the most magical thing to go from, because you’re back in a childlike state. Children, anatomically, your bones aren’t formed yet. Holograms don’t have bones, but emotional bones, you know what I am saying?” S.A.M. is the first hologram ever to attend Starfleet.

When one thinks of artificial intelligence and Star Trek, the legacy of Data comes to mind. Ricard Picardo will reprise his role as The Doctor on Starfleet too, but as an 800-year old hologram version, which basically makes him the oldest A.I. in the galaxy. So we can guess what we might get with The Doctor, but two sentient holograms, one of which is just weeks old and is sentient enough to become a cadet? As Spock would say, “fascinating.”

“(S.A.M) is just a fresh breath of air for me to play," Brooks explained. "She brings absolutely no baggage, so she’s like a freshly born to so many experiences. She brings such a freshness or levity to so many things. You know, when you grow up a certain way, you may react to certain things in a certain way just because of your environment and how that shaped you. Well, no environment shaped her. She’s literally being shaped in front of your very eyes.”

When the trailer ran, Brooks was jumping up and down in place; she was shot out of a cannon. After she was introduced, Brooks choked back tears a few times while answering a question, still buzzing from seeing the trailer for the first time and hearing the response from the crowd. So many of these panels are rehearsed to death, but this was a real moment of excitement and pure elation. And you can just see Brooks bringing that into her performances as S.A.M. That's a good thing for Star Trek.

One member of the audience screamed out, “We love your energy!” And it’s true. We do and we need to see more of S.A.M. right now. 

Unfortunately, we will have to wait until early 2026 for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy to launch on Paramount+.

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