Warning: Spoilers for the end of Star Trek: Discovery’s season finale follow…
The first season of CBS All Access and Netflix’s Star Trek: Discovery came to an end this week, and the closing moments of the season finale featured a very notable appearance, raising anticipation for what’s to come in season two in 2019.
If you’re yet to see the episode and don’t mind spoilers, it culminated with the crew of the USS Discovery responding to a distress call from a very familiar starship – the USS Enterprise, under the command of one Captain Christopher Pike.
Of course, this raises some questions, such as how big of a role the Enterprise will play in the second season, and whether we might see a young version of Spock, Pike’s second-in-command on board the ship. For the time being, it seems those questions are going to go unanswered…
“The show is called Discovery,” said executive producer Alex Kurtzman in an interview with Variety. “It’s not Enterprise. So yes, the Enterprise will play a part of Season Two but it will absolutely not overshadow Discovery. And I think with Enterprise’s arrival in the finale we recognize that the audience has a lot of questions about our synchronicity with the original series, which really means or synchronicity with canon. So the promise of the Enterprise holds the answers to a lot of those questions, including Spock’s relationship with his half-sister who he’s never mentioned. Which does not necessarily mean you’re going to see Spock, just that we owe an answer to that question.”
Showrunners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg also took part in an interview with THR, where they reiterated Kurtzman’s comments that Mr. Spock might not actually make an appearance in the show:
“We certainly aren’t confirming that we’re even going to introduce Spock and we certainly are not casting that role, either,” said Harberts. “We live a lot in memory and flashback. The center of our show is always Michael Burnham. We realize how incredible Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto’s performances were and what JJ Abrams and the original series were able to pull off with that character. Finding another actor that could even come close to what Leonard Nimoy did with the original portrayal, we’d never want to go down that road.”
Even without the Enterprise appearance, Spock is tied to Star Trek: Discovery through the character of Michael Burnham, the foster daughter of Sarek, and therefore the foster sister of the legendary Vulcan. With that in mind, it would certainly make sense to see him showing up in the series at some point, and if Paramount isn’t moving ahead with Star Trek 4, perhaps Zachary Quinto can find some time in his schedule to reprise the role…
The second season of Star Trek: Discovery is not expected to arrive until 2019.
