Star Trek: Discovery is making the most of its opportunity to tie into the wider world of Trek in its upcoming second season. Alongside Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn joining the cast as Christopher Pike and Number One – two characters who date back all the way to The Original Series‘ pilot “The Cage” – Ethan Peck is jumping aboard the U.S.S. Discovery as a younger version of Spock.
We’ve previously been told that Discovery season 2 will explore an unwritten chapter in the beloved Vulcan’s life, as the show’s set ten years before TOS. You’d think, then, that the series may have some interest in doing the same thing for Spock’s future best bud, James Tiberius Kirk. However, showrunner Alex Kurtzman has told The Hollywood Reporter that he has no “immediate plans” to introduce Star Trek‘s most famous captain into the mix.
“What Kirk was doing at this particular time is another question but we don’t have any immediate plans [for the character], I have not spoken to Shatner about it.”
One reason why Kurtzman might not be in a hurry to explore Kirk’s origins is that he’s already done so, albeit in a different medium and in a different timeline. That’s because he co-wrote the first two modern Trek movies, which take place in the altered Kelvin timeline and the first of which focused quite a bit on how the young, brash Kirk became the great captain of the Enterprise that we know him as.
This isn’t the first time that the captain’s been given the snub, either. Following the news that Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard is getting his own show on CBS All Access, we were told that there were no plans to bring William Shatner back into the fold and give him his own vehicle as well. Maybe someday, Shat, maybe someday.
Be sure to catch Star Trek: Discovery season 2 when it premieres on the aforementioned streaming service on January 17th.
