Spinning out of Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 is the new series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, officially announced by CBS All Access this past May. Reuniting Discovery cast members Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romijn as their classic Star Trek characters -- Captain Christopher Pike, Spock and Number One -- in the unexplored history between the Discovery Season 2 finale and the start of The Original Series era that launched the franchise in 1966.
As part of Comic-Con@Home's virtual programming, the main cast of Discovery Season 2 reassembled for an online table read of an excerpt from the Season 2 finale. As the cast transitioned to a Q&A session, with questions provided by fans ahead of the panel's recording, Mount, Peck and Romijn were asked how their characters' experiences in Discovery Season 2 would inform them as they moved on to Strange New Worlds.
"Spock's interaction with [sister] Michael Burnham, is essential for transforming into somebody who's been born on Vulcan and is half-human, but is taught to be Vulcan," began Peck. "I think Michael Burnham gives him the permission to be human and teaches him what it is to be human. So that is essential to the development of Spock as we follow along the conflict between his emotion and logic going forward into when we first see [original Spock actor] Leonard Nimoy in The Original Series. It's a huge character point for me and will dictate a lot of behavior for Spock because of his interaction with Michael."
For Chris Pike, Discovery Season 2 had offered him a horrifying vision of his own future, horribly burned in an accident while rescuing a crewman, leaving him confined to a wheelchair as he had been seen during the first season of The Original Series. Despite being offered the chance to change his tragic destiny, Pike chose to accept its inevitability to help save the others against Section 31. According to Mount, this vision and decision will continue to haunt Pike in the new series.
"I think the biggest thing, obviously, was seeing my future and, when you see how it's all going to end, that it's not so pretty, what do you do with that," observed Mount, "There's a reason that we can only see our past because we're a very neurotic species and we wouldn't know how to comport ourselves. And so, I think, ultimately the question comes how do you move forward? I think he's probably going to wrestle with how he can best utilize the rest of his life for the greater good of the world, the universe."
Romjin stated, "And I think a lot of it is also surrendering to the unknown, you know, together... Working as a team to surrender to the unknown." Mount then added, "I think he's probably not thinking about it as a team yet because he's wrestling with it himself. I hope he's going to learn to let other people let him wrestle with it."
Starring Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romijn, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is coming to CBS All Access.