Veteran actor Robert Picardo has a new gig — or maybe a new take on an old gig. He’s playing the Doctor once again.
Before he was Richard Woolsey on Stargate, of course, Picardo enchanted science fiction fans as the Emergency Medical Hologram on board the U.S.S. Voyager. He recently returned to that role to voice the EMH in the second season of the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy, which just landed on Netflix. (You should watch it. It’s a great show!)
Now Paramount+ has announced that Picardo will be a part of the regular cast for the new live-action series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, reprising his role as the Doctor for a series set at the Academy in the distant future. He joins the previously announced Holly Hunter and (in recurring roles) Paul Giamatti, and Star Trek: Discovery’s Tig Notaro (also as a series regular). Discovery‘s Oded Fehr (“Admiral Vance”) and Mary Wiseman (“Sylvia Tilly”) will also join the show in a recurring capacity, as will comedian Gina Yashere.
Co-starring in the new show as Starfleet’s newest crop of cadets are Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, George Hawkins, Karim Diané and Zoë Steiner.
The news was announced in coordination with Star Trek’s Saturday events at San Diego Comic-Con, which also featured new trailers for Michelle Yeoh’s Section 31 movie (coming in 2025) and the final season of animated comedy Lower Decks, and a teaser from the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (which has also been renewed for a fourth year).
Picardo played the I.O.A. bureaucrat Richard Woolsey on a recurring basis from the seventh season of Stargate SG-1 through the fourth season of Stargate Atlantis. He then joined Atlantis‘s main cast for Season Five, and later put in a guest appearance on Stargate Universe (“Seizure”) — putting him in the relatively rare class of actors who have appeared as the same character on all three Stargate shows.
Joining the cast of the next Star Trek series also adds another feature to his cap: one of only two main cast members from a Star Trek show to also join the main cast of a different Star Trek show. (The first of course was Michael Dorn, who crossed over to Deep Space Nine after the conclusion of The Next Generation. Although I guess technically we might also count Anson Mount as a full-time cast member during Discovery‘s second season, which led to his spin-off Strange New Worlds.)
CBS Studios will begin production on Starfleet Academy next month at Pinewood Studios Toronto, with Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau as co-showrunners and executive producers.