With Star Trek Discovery (the first Trek TV series since 2005) due to begin shooting very soon, CBS All Access have begun the process of finalizing their cast for the hotly anticipated take on the iconic franchise.
They’d previously announced that Shazah Latif (Penny Dreadful) would be playing Klingon Commanding Officer Kol, but he’s now to be joining Starfleet as Lieutenant Tyler, with the Kol role taken by Kenneth Mitchell. Joining them are a bevy of new faces, with Rekha Sharma to be the Starship Discovery’s security officer, and Clare McConnell and Damon Runyan to be leaders in the warring Klingon Empire.
After the retro fetishization of the last three movies, the prospect of a new crew, ship and missions is an exciting prospect for Trekkies. Word is that this’ll be set roughly a decade before the original Star Trek, and will shake up the general format of the property by shifting the focus from Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) to Sonequa Martin-Green’s First Officer Michael Burnham. This will allow the series to “see a character from a different perspective on the starship – one who has different dynamic relationships with a captain.”
Though the show promises to be a bit of a change of pace from what we’d usually get from Star Trek, rest assured that it’ll still hit some of the old familiar bases. Spock’s father Sarek is confirmed to feature as a Vulcan Astrophysicist, with robots apparently due to feature and the tantalizing promise of “an incident and an event in Star Trek history that’s been talked about but never explored.” If anyone’s got any ideas what that could be, please let us know in the comments.
We don’t have an air date for Star Trek: Discovery just yet, but with shooting about to get underway, we’re sure to have more news from the set very soon.
