Star Trek: Discovery wrapped its second season last night, with the finale offering a huge shift in the status quo. Not only did Anson Mount’s Pike and Ethan Peck’s Spock return to the U.S.S. Enterprise, but the Discovery and its crew travelled through a wormhole and were sent a 1,000 years into the future. As such, in season 3, Discovery will truly go where no other Star Trek series has gone before.
While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Alex Kurtzman – who’ll share the responsibilities with Michelle Paradise for season 3 – was on hand to give us the first details of the series’ next run. The big question is why he and his team decided to move the show to a whole new place in the timeline, and in explaining that, Kurtzman said that’ll allow Discovery much more freedom in terms of adhering to canon, much like the use of the alternate Kelvin timeline in the modern Trek movies.
“We love playing within canon. It’s a delight and a privilege. It’s fun to explore nooks and crannies of the universe that people haven’t fully explored yet. That being said, we felt strongly that we wanted to give ourselves an entirely new energy for season three with a whole new set of problems. We’re farther than any Trek show has ever gone.
I also had experience working on the [J.J. Abrams] films where we were stuck with canonical problems. We knew how Kirk had died, and we wondered how we could put him in jeopardy to make it feel real. That’s what led us to go with an alternate timeline; suddenly we could tell the story in a very unpredictable way. That’s the same thought process that went into jumping 950 years into the future. We’re now completely free of canon, and we have a whole new universe to explore.”
This is Star Trek, though, so there’s bound to be connections to other parts of the franchise, right? When asked if more familiar characters might be on the way in season 3, Kurtzman played down the possibility, but promised that there will still be easter eggs for the fans.
“There will be canonical references to everything that has happened in the various shows; we’re not erasing that. But we’re so far past that point that all of that is a very distant memory. We’re very excited to see how you put the elements of Star Trek in an entirely new universe.”
With Control taken care of, what will be the next big threat for the Discovery crew? Kurtzman wouldn’t be drawn on that, but teased that even bigger problems await our heroes in the far future.
“All I can tell you is that Control is officially neutralized, but there will be much bigger problems when they get to the other side of that wormhole.”
Moving the Discovery to a different place in history should ensure season 3 stays fresh, though some fans have criticized the move as the writers sweeping the issues with canon under the carpet by simply shunting the ship out of the way of The Original Series. They may have a point, but let’s see what Star Trek: Discovery season 3 has in store for us first before we judge.
