WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 9, "Terra Firma, Part 1," now streaming on CBS All Access.

Star Trek: Discovery’s third season has been loaded with references to past entries in the franchise. Among many other things, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock appeared courtesy of Captain Picard’s preserved personal logs, the USS Voyager was still in service amongst the greatly diminished Starfleet armada and beloved Deep Space 9 character Nog had a ship named after him. But now, Discovery has dropped another bombshell by formally acknowledging that the Federation is aware of the alternate Kelvin timeline started in J.J. Abrams’ 2008 Star Trek film.

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Following the Temporal Wars in Star Trek: Enterprise, time travel became forbidden. This led to all sorts of complications for the newly arrived Discovery crew, who put the Federation in a serious bind for breaking a rule they didn’t even know existed. Completely unaware of the Temporal Wars until being brought up to speed, the Discovery's crew is still learning the ins and outs of their new home.

"Terra Firma, Part 1" opened with Dr. Culber and another guest appearance from David Cronenberg's mysterious intelligence officer, Kovich. There, the two discussed Georgiou's deteriorating condition, with Kovich revealing that it is because she not only traveled across time but dimensions. To help prove his point, Kovich pulled up data on a soldier in the Temporal Wars named Lt. Commander Yor. He came to the Federation’s attention in 2379 when he died from the same condition currently afflicting Georgiou.

Kovich then explained that Yor traveled to the Prime Star Trek timeline from an alternate reality caused by a "Romulan mining ship." This is a reference to Nero's ship in 2008's Star Trek. The villain of that Star Trek film, Nero went back in time to get revenge on the Federation for its perceived inaction towards preventing the destruction of Romulus. Through this act, Nero created the Kelvin timeline by altering history on the day Captain Kirk was born by destroying the USS Kelvin and thus killing the original Star Trek captain's father. This later led to the destruction of the Vulcan homeworld followed by accelerated aggression from Section 31 and the Enterprise having to deal with dangerous war criminal Khan under entirely different circumstances.

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By having Kovich show this data, Discovery has confirmed the Prime timeline is aware of the existence of the Kelvin movies' universe. This is also the most explicit mention of the Kelvin timeline in any subsequent Star Trek series yet. Prior to this, Discovery made mention of the USS Yelchin, a ship named after Anton Yelchin, the actor who played Ensign Chekov in the Kelvin timeline who sadly passed in real life. But naming a ship after an actor is far different than what Kovich did by showing Yor’s records to Culber, which for the first time neatly ties the two timelines together in perfect Trek fashion.

Streaming on CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander Michael Burnham, Doug Jones as Commander Saru, Anthony Rapp as Lt. Commander Paul Stamets, Mary Wiseman as Ensign Sylvia Tilly, Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber, David Ajala as Cleveland "Book" Booker, Blu del Barrio as Adira, Ian Alexander as Gray, Tig Notaro as Chief Engineer Reno and Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou. New episodes of Season 3 air on Thursdays.

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