We’ve got just five weeks to go until Star Trek: Discovery season 3 finally arrives. Though it was filmed last year, the CBS All Access series was held up over the pandemic, but following the conclusion of Lower Decks‘s first season, it’ll start unfolding weekly. With the show’s return just around the corner, then, one crew member of the U.S.S Discovery has now teased that we can expect some fallout from the ship’s jump 1000 years into the future.
Anthony Rapp took part in a Star Trek virtual panel at Dragon Con over the weekend and was on hand to promise that season 3 will not sweep the consequences of the time jump under the rug and will properly explore the human impact of what it means to pull the Discovery crew so far from everything they’re familiar with. As he put it:
“Season three does delve into family dynamics. Not just literal family—obviously we delved lot into that with Burnham and Spock and their sibling relationship—but the family of the people who had to leave everything behind to go to the future. And it doesn’t take that lightly. So often in genre shows these crazy things happen and then it’s like you just wash your hands of it and then you just move on. They go, “Oh, you got zapped by lightning and have superpowers. Okay, great.” But our showrunners have really taken seriously that it’s an opportunity to explore the human part. Yeah, it’s full of cool, fun ideas that are fun to contemplate, but it also lets you examine resilience and grief and adaptability and courage and how do you keep going in the face of all those things.”
Rapp went on to say that he was happy with the material season 2 gave Lt. Cmmdr. Paul Stamets and his partner Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), after the latter’s resurrection, as it saw them deal with several “bumps” in their relationship that they had to work through. And we can apparently expect similar growth this run as well.
“I wouldn’t say that there’s the same kind of bumps. I think what we’ve been through now over the first two seasons has earned the right to have things feel more settled between them. As I was alluding to earlier, season three dealt very deeply with the sense of family and certainly Stamets’ relationship with Culber is a family dynamic that gets explored very, very richly in season three.”
We’ve previously been told that the jump into the far future will shear off some of the angstier edges of Discovery. With Starfleet and the Federation not being what they once were by this period, the crew will bring back some of that old-fashioned optimism to the organization. As Jonathan Frakes put it, there’s “more action-adventure and not so much pain.” But clearly there will still be some introspection and emotional upheaval for the characters.
Expect more Star Trek: Discovery news to arrive tomorrow during Star Trek Day. You can check out everything you need to know about the 24-hour celebration right here.
