Production designer Matthew Davies approached ‘Star Trek: Starfleet’ Academy with an architect’s eye, helping create a series that embraces light, openness, and community while honoring the franchise’s legacy.
“They wanted it to feel like it was on Earth as well as in space and not just a space adventure, but also reflecting the future direction of mankind and this inclusive society that was based on the idea that we all do better when we work together, not against one another, which is a lesson the world is still learning,” says Davies on what distinguishes the series from other ‘Star Trek’ movies and series.
Production designer Matthew Davies discusses how he helped shape the visual identity of ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,’ explaining how the series sought to move away from the darker, compartmentalized look often associated with starship interiors in favor of bright, open spaces inspired by architecture and community. Davies reflects on designing the massive Sato Atrium, reimagining the bridge layout, incorporating virtual production technology, and drawing inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Chicago-area architecture for Nahla Ake’s office. He also discusses balancing innovation with franchise tradition, hiding easter eggs throughout the sets, collaborating closely with cinematographers, and why he would welcome the opportunity to return to the ‘Star Trek’ universe in the future.
In ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,’ audiences are introduced to a new group of cadets coming together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism in an era after the Burn. Under their instructors’ watchful and demanding eyes, these cadets will discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers while navigating friendships, rivalries, first loves, and a new enemy threatening both the Academy and the Federation.
Created by Gaia Violo, the series stars Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins and Bella Shepard, plus Zoë Steiner, Tig Notaro, Robert Picardo, and guest stars Oded Fehr, Mary Wiseman, as well as recurring guest stars Gina Yashere and Paul Giamatti. Stephen Colbert voices Starfleet Academy’s Digital Dean of Students.
Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau serve as co-showrunners and executive produce the series alongside executive producers Gaia Violo, Aaron Baiers, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa and John Weber. The series’ premiere episode is written by Gaia Violo and directed by Alex Kurtzman.
All episodes are streaming on Paramount+. The series will return for a second season.
Awards Focus: How did you first become attached to working on ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’?
Matthew Davies: I think they probably spoke with a few designers. We were all asked to do a pitch for the show. I have some amazingly talented friends that are 3D modelers, Unreal Engine operators, and Photoshop wizards. I pencil sketched a load of designs for the campus, for the ship, for areas around the ship. They gave me a synopsis to work from, and I pitched those.
I think it was really Tunde, the creative director and executive producer, that spotted me and thought, Oh, this guy has a different take. I wasn’t particularly familiar with sci-fi, but I studied architecture and I love to design. I think he saw an aptitude for the show. I think that’s really where I was picked. But once I started, of course, they were like, That pitch you did? Yeah, don’t want that. Let’s start over. (Laughs) Nothing from the pitch was in the show.
But yeah, no, I think chemistry is really important. Creative chemistry—when you’re working with creative giants like Noga, Alex and Tunde—I think they wanted to know that I was really there, present, engaged, and really, really cared about the show. They had a lot of ambition for it because the show in the past had been these compartmentalized airlock spaces, one after the other. You never really had this kind of broad, expansive sweep of the sets. But for this, it was an ensemble piece. They really wanted to have air and light and warm materials and big open spaces that really could speak to the scale of the school and the student population, which made it more expensive to make—a lot of actors and a lot of costumed background to cater for. But we came up with the idea of the Sato Atrium that was scripted as a 20-story atrium in the middle of the ship, through the neck of the ship. It’s all on a slant and it’s vaguely a delta shape in plan and it twists as it rises. We kind of lent into the idea of creating essentially a three-story set with two practical levels with classrooms, bleachers, a mess hall, koi ponds, trees and blossom, perpetual blossom. That became the centerpiece of the ship.
AF: What do you feel distinguishes ‘Starfleet Academy’ visually from previous ‘Star Trek’ movies and series?
Matthew Davies: It was a very brave thing. They wanted to create a show that was unique, that felt familiar to ‘Star Trek’ fans, but also broke some of the rules that it wasn’t going to be this hyper-futuristic set of airlocked spaces that could feel very dark and oppressive. They wanted it to feel like it was on Earth as well as in space and not just a space adventure, but also reflecting the future direction of mankind and this inclusive society that was based on the idea that we all do better when we work together, not against one another, which is a lesson the world is still learning.
AF: Given how important it is for camera placement, how much collaboration was there with the various cinematographers?
Matthew Davies: Very. There was a very great deal of collaboration. Tommy Maddox-Upshaw, who was, I’d say, the principal cinematographer and that he was there for all of Alex’s episodes-we started with like an Alex double bill. He really wanted to flood the sets with natural light, which meant in the case of the atrium, because we were on two levels, we had to have a two-story window that would push light in from one end that was big enough that we could have 10Ks up there, driving light into the set. Because it’s such a large opening in the set, that held us towards building a three-story video wall so that we could have animated views of San Francisco and stars at warp and impulse. We could create all these conditions that would create motivated lighting. But the idea was that it wouldn’t just be artificially lit and that we wouldn’t have neon outlines everywhere, but it really was going to be more of an architectural space with architectural niche lighting, warm bounce light, and strong directional sunlight.
AF: As a production designer, how have the video walls changed how you do your job since it’s not necessarily a green screen like way back in the day?
Matthew Davies: Yeah, it’s complicated things, but in a wonderful way. In the old days, the production design would come on, we’d do our thing, we’d shoot against green, and we’d hope that visual effects did a good job of finishing it. Now we’re shooting everything in camera or the vast majority—not everything—can be done on the virtual production wall or with video backings. The idea was that we would shoot naturalistically in camera. The actors would be in these immersive environments, so they’d be motivated by all the right things and have those visual cues in their field of vision.
We have to prepare all those digital assets months out so that we can then basically refine them, have a look at them on the wall, look at the physical set against the virtual set, blend the borders between the two, and create a seamless reality. It does require a lot more coordination. The scripts have to be ready and locked earlier, and we have to respect the time frame that visual effects and basically the people who run the wall—Pixomondo in our case—so that they would have adequate time to really refine and basically adapt those assets for this big presentation at high definition. Everything from the atmospheric effects to fire effects and everything else had to be baked into those virtual set extensions, essentially.
AF: Was there any particular set that you found to be the most challenging to design?
Matthew Davies: Not challenging per se, but there were definitely some more high-risk sets, I guess.
Nahla’s office is dominated by a big stone wood-burning fireplace, not the most common thing to see in space. There was a strong Frank Lloyd Wright theme there, which again, I don’t think Frank Lloyd Wright in space had ever been done in a ‘Star Trek’ show. I could be wrong.
There was also the atrium, which was a colossus of a set. It was the biggest set built in ‘Star Trek’ history at the time it was standing. It was the biggest set in Canada and one of the biggest sets in the world in terms of sounding sets. It’s on the biggest soundstage in Canada. When it was built, it was the biggest soundstage in the world. A huge amount of rigging and labor went into creating that massive composite set.
The bridge was challenging from a different point of view, just because, historically, the captain would sit towards the front of the bridge and the crew would sit facing monitors around the walls. What it felt would benefit us would be if the crew were moved into the middle of the space so the camera could be really registering their faces, what they were seeing, what they were saying, without having to wild out monitors or walls to do it. We’d be looking across them to the captain who would be in the very center of the bridge on the highest tier, representing their status within the hierarchy of the command of the ship. It was designed in the round, essentially, so that we had this long darling platform to create these continuous camera sweeps wrapping around the crew, always with the captain at the center of frame.
You mentioned Frank Lloyd Wright. Were there any influences?
Matthew Davies: The Rogery House in Chicago was a big influence.
I was dating someone in Chicago, and I love Frank Lloyd Wright. That was the property that I always wanted to visit. Frank Lloyd Wright is just really its own unique language architecturally.
There were just so many aspects of the interior that I loved: the flow of space, the design lines of it, the variety of textures, material surfaces that created this beautiful movement of light through the space. We had different lighting conditions. We had stars at warp, stars at impulse. We have views of San Francisco when it’s parked up. We wanted a space that would ripple and move with the light. The ceilings were all polished brass, so they would reflect this warm glow of light. There were shafts of light in the middle of the space and above the fireplace that would allow for top lighting.
We had side light from the windows and then on the other side, so that Nahla could be backlit, which is always attractive on camera. We had a big terrarium with its own controlled artificial lighting. We created this plausible scenario where we could have all these mixed color temperatures and also motivate flattering lighting for our actors.
And then the furniture itself, originally we started off with Gustav Stickley furniture in the living room side of the space. Holly Hunter didn’t find it very comfortable. It really isn’t.
It’s all straight-backed wood. So in the second season, we designed her a beautiful custom sofa that it’s like a Swiss army knife where you could unplug pieces, move them around, almost like the Ramble Man that could just make an armrest or a place to park your drink, just appear. We built it for her height and we tested the seat pad thickness for her. We went the extra mile to create a beautiful custom sofa. I don’t know what happened to it. Hopefully someone got it.
AF: Did you feel any pressure to honor iconic ‘Trek’ designs?
Matthew Davies: Yeah. I love ‘Star Trek.’ It was the first show I ever remember watching as a kid. I looked at the history of every bridge that had ever appeared in a ‘Star Trek’ movie and television show. We talked about the lighting, the lens flares, the aspects that didn’t work. I went off and prepared a concept and we made a few tweaks and refinements. I really wanted a very adaptable space with not just two points of entry at the back, but really entry from four sides.
Like I said, it didn’t really seem important that the captain was up near a window looking out of it because it’s in the middle of the center disc of the ship. It’s not a literal view. It’s a view screen so essentially, it’s a communicated view from a camera that’s on the hull of the ship. It just felt as though it was more about the interreaction of the captain and the crew as much as it was about what you’re looking at on the view screen. The view screen is an expensive view because that’s a green screen replacement. Every other side of that space was either practical monitors or digital projection. It was live in camera and therefore a lot more affordable.
AF: Did you work to insert any easter eggs or callbacks that casual fans might not notice?
Matthew Davies: Yeah, although I don’t know if the show is actually long enough for everybody to pick up on them, but in Nahla’s office, the wallpaper was custom designed with metaphorical backings, but it had Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, all sorts of past ships there. The callbacks to other languages and even Nahla’s record player, if you look at it closely, on the sides of it are musical instruments that have been featured from previous seasons of ‘Star Trek’ and objects on her shelves. There are not just models of past ships, but books, callbacks to, and props from the ‘Star Trek’ archives that were callbacks to pevious episodes. It was a labor of love decorating those sets and trying to make sure that all those easter eggs were there.
AF: If the opportunity presented itself, would you want to work on a Trek project in the future?
Matthew Davies: Definitely. Yeah, it was a really joyful experience. It actually is an incredible family of people. They all really do care very much. I know that it’s hard to please everyone all the time, but they really do care about the show. They have tremendous love of ‘Star Trek,’ actually. Shows adapt and evolve like people do. Sometimes we don’t always warm to those attributes at first, but that was the nature of the original show. It was a show that got cancelled and came back by popular demand and found its audience a little bit further down the road. That is the nature of doing something that is courageous. It often feels a little bit too bold and too unfamiliar, but when you start to really appreciate it, it just takes time and audiences eventually come to accept and love it.
The thing of ‘Star Trek’ is that it always found its popularity on reruns and syndication. It took a long time to build that fan base.
AF: It was so nice getting to talk with you this afternoon. I’m bummed we’re not getting a season three, but I look forward to watching season two.
Matthew Davies: Yeah. Season one is very much about the setup. Season two, I feel we actually have even more interesting characters and storylines because we’ve done a lot of the hard work establishing the universe that we’re in in the first season. I think season two is actually something to look forward to.