Star Trek: Discovery Showrunner Says He Sees It Running For A Long Time

Star Trek: Discovery didn’t have the most overwhelmingly positive of receptions when its first season debuted in 2017. Old school Trekkies didn’t enjoy the CBS All Access series’ attempts to make the franchise darker and edgier and also complained about how it tampered with long-established Trek history. Thankfully, the anticipation for season 2 is much more encouraging, as there’s a feeling that many of season 1’s mistakes have been fixed.

Part of the change in direction comes from the change of showrunners. Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts left the production after season 1, meaning Alex Kurtzman – writer and producer on the first two Kelvin timeline movies – took over as showrunner. And while speaking with Digital Spy, he voiced his hopes that the new, improved Discovery can last for many years yet.

“[The series] can go for a long time, a lot of the series have gone for a long time. The key is to constantly find a way to reinvent while also always delivering what people expect from the show.”

In the same interview, Kurtzman also spoke about how he wanted to use season 2 to sync up Discovery with the wider timeline in some major ways. We already know how it’s going to do this, too. For one, Ethan Peck’s joining the cast as a younger Spock, allowing the show the chance to explore who the Vulcan was at this point in his life – 10 years before The Original Series, to be precise.

What’s more, Anson Mount’s taking over the captain’s chair as Christopher Pike, who’s just the sort of courageous commander the crew needs after the treacherous Lorca. Likewise, X-Men‘s Rebecca Romijn is hopping aboard as Number One. Both characters are, like Spock, as old as Star Trek itself, first debuting in in the TOS pilot “The Cage.”

Star Trek: Discovery season 2 is now just around the corner, as it premieres on Thursday, January 17th, and it sounds like we’re in for one hell of a ride.