News Starfleet Academy Why Starfleet Academy Used Our Town to Bring Back Mary Wiseman’s Tilly It turns out both Mary Wiseman and Tilly have connections to Our Town By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 27, 2026 Photo: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Paramount+ Quite a lot happens in Starfleet Academy’s excellent 8th episode “The Life of the Stars,” but the adventure is arguably highlighted by two occurrences: unexpected rehearsals for a performance of the 1938 Thornton Wilder play Our Town and the return of Mary Wiseman’s Lt. Sylvia Tilly. As it turns out, the two things are closely related for reasons beyond what we see in the episode. “Looking at the episode and at the trauma through the eyes of these two young women felt very important… how we can use stories to heal also meant something to us as a writers’ room,” says Starfleet Academy creator Gaia Violo in an interview with TV Insider. “Our Town just sort of felt like this perfect, simple, rich story about the human experience and about time.” Interestingly, Wiseman herself has a pretty notable a connection to the classic play. “We realized as we began to talk to Mary Wiseman about coming back to play Tilly, that when she was at Juilliard, she played Emily in Our Town,” says executive producer Noga Landau. “So as a person, as an actor, it meant a lot to her to come back and now play this role teaching these cadets about Our Town.” Yet, Wiseman says that the script for this episode existed before the crew knew just how connected to Our Town the actress was. “It’s crazy! Noga and Alex came to me with it,” Wiseman told Fangirlish regarding the episode. “They had already written it. I was just floored. You have no idea how hard you’ve hit the nail on the head. I can’t believe this. I was so psyched to get into it. It was just kismet; it was like they knew, but I don’t know that they did. It was a really happy coincidence, I think.” Beyond the benefits of her own experience with the text, Wiseman believes there are reasons why Tilly is uniquely capable of guiding the students through such a seemingly unusual exercise. “She’s been through big loss and kept going, which I’m sure all the teachers who work in Starfleet Academy have had some version of that,” Wiseman says. “I also think that Tilly is a person who’s pretty tuned into what’s going on with other people. I think she’s pretty good at reading other people and is very empathic, but also has learned through her own journey how to be tough… So I think that she’s the person for this job because she can dynamically read what’s going on with these students and respond in a way that she thinks will push them to the place they need to go in order to actually face what’s happened to them and move through it and learn from it. As some of you may recall, though, Tilly was originally expected to be a bigger part of Starfleet Academy. After all, we learn at the end of Star Trek: Discovery that she went on to become a professor at the Academy, which seems to have been the perfect set-up for her to become a recurring character on this new show. While it’s still not clear what happened behind the scenes that may have prevented Tilly from becoming a series regular (if that was indeed ever really the plan), Wiseman says she was told what Tilly is up to in this universe that keeps her away from the main cast this season. “My understanding is that Tilly works with the third years,” Wiseman says in an interview with Screen Rant. “So that’s why she’s not present in the school on a regular basis.” If you really want to read into that further than is probably advisable, Tilly teaching the third year cadets means that she could theoretically end up teaching the Starfleet Academy cast once they reach their third year in school. However, that’s far from a guarantee, especially since Starfleet Academy hasn’t been approved for a third season as of the time of this writing. As for the recently wrapped second season of the show, everyone is playing it coy at the moment regarding the possibility that Tilly will return. “Well, I can’t say any spoilers for Season 2,” Landau tells TV Insider. “But I will say that Mary Wiseman, who was with us at our premiere, is always close to our hearts and we want her as much as possible.” [end-mark] The post Why <i>Starfleet Academy</i> Used <i>Our Town</i> to Bring Back Mary Wiseman’s Tilly appeared first on Reactor.