Robert Picardo Campaigned for Starfleet Academy Season 3 to Revive a Classic Star Trek: Voyager Episode

Well, here we go again: another Star Trek show bites the dust, and the franchise’s plans for fun callbacks and legacy cameos get tossed out with the warp core trash. This time, it’s Star Trek: Starfleet Academy—officially cancelled after two seasons, even though season 2 has already wrapped filming. And as always, the best what-might-have-been ideas come out after the axe has fallen.

Starfleet Academy’s Lost Doctor Episode

Here’s something Trek fans will either love or hate: if Starfleet Academy had managed to stick around for a third season, producers were apparently seriously considering a direct sequel to one of the strangest, most memorable episodes of Star Trek: Voyager: the season 4 episode 'Living Witness'.

In case it’s been a while, 'Living Witness' did that classic Trek thing and jumped centuries into the future—the 31st century, to be exact—where the Doctor’s backup program gets resurrected in an alien museum. He clears Voyager’s name, sticks around for centuries as a surgical bigwig, and then eventually sets off to (presumably) find his way back to the Alpha Quadrant. The episode ends wide open, with a lot of fans speculating about what happened next.

Robert Picardo’s Pitch: Double the Doctor, Double the Snark

Fast-forward to now (or, more accurately, the short window when Starfleet Academy was actively in development): Robert Picardo himself has been pushing for a follow-up. He talked about it recently on the D-Con Chamber podcast, mentioning that he pitched the idea to the Academy producers—and they were into it, just not immediately.

As Picardo explained:

'I wanted to do an episode—now we can talk freely about it, because the show's cancelled—I wanted to meet my Voyager backup, my old self, and be as I looked at 41 and play off myself at 71. So I wanted to play opposite my younger self and basically have my younger self ruthlessly insult my older self, saying "why would you possibly want to alter your appearance, why would you want to look like that?"'

So, yeah—Picardo was hoping for some classic sci-fi magic: two versions of the Doctor, at radically different life stages, hashing it out on screen with all the expected sarcasm and existential angst. He imagined the characters as ‘technological brothers’—the same base program, but with wildly different journeys. One resolved his, let’s say, childhood trauma; the other, not so much. And after 800 years, those ‘daddy issues’ are still going strong.

Honestly, it would have made for a pretty wild episode (and probably a digital VFX nightmare). But sadly, the show’s cancellation means this Trek oddity won’t be happening. If Starfleet writers are reading: the fans probably would’ve eaten this up.

What’s Left for Star Trek on TV?

• Starfleet Academy, Season 2: Already filmed. Ten more episodes coming; official word is this will wrap the whole show.
• Strange New Worlds: Still alive and well, with two more seasons confirmed.
• Everything else: Who knows? Paramount+ and CBS aren’t talking.

The official studio quote for the cancellation is nothing you haven’t heard before: 'We’re incredibly proud of the ambition, passion, and creativity...', yadda yadda, 'pushed storytelling boundaries', 'spirit of Gene Roddenberry', and so on. You get the idea—they’re glad they made it, sorry it’s gone, hope you love season 2, etc.

So with Starfleet Academy over after season 2, and Strange New Worlds keeping the nacelles hot (for now), we’re probably in for another dry patch when it comes to new live-action Trek. Unless they manage to resurrect some other nostalgia-driven pitch (Picardo vs. Picardo, anyone?), we’ll just have to enjoy what’s left and speculate about what could've been.