When is Star Trek: Discovery season 2 released? Who is in the cast, and what's going to happen?
Everything you need to know about the next season of the latest Star Trek series, airing on CBS in the US and Netflix in the UK
All systems are go for Star Trek: Discovery season 2.
Showing on Netflix in the UK and CBS in the United States, the new season sees some personnel changes, with a couple of major deaths in season one likely to affect things this time around – though some of the deceased characters may come back in one way or another...
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Find out everything you need to know about Star Trek: Discovery season 2 below.
When is Star Trek: Discovery season 2 released on Netflix?
Season two began on 17 January 2019 in the USA, and was released on Netflix in the UK less than a day later on 18 January 2019.
Future episodes will be released weekly.
Who is in the cast?
*Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery season 1 to follow*
"Death is not an ending," was the message from showrunner Aaron Harberts following the controversial killing of Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz) in season one - and he seems to have meant it. Cruz posted on social media to announce that he was beginning filming on season two, so evidently we have not seen the last of him.
The same could possibly be said for Jason Isaacs' Captain Gabriel Lorca, who was stabbed and thrown into a ship's reactor in the season one finale. Kurtzman told Entertainment Weekly that he could return to the show "somehow" - and Isaacs is said to be open to a return.
Lorca's killer, Michelle Yeoh's Captain Philippa Georgiou, has been confirmed to return in the series' second trailer.
Meanwhile, all of the USS Discovery crew, including Sonequa Martin-Green's Michael Burnham, Saru (Doug Jones), Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), are set to return.
Shazad Latif's Ash Tyler will also be back, after the reveal that he was the Klingon Voq, alongside Klingon Mary Chieffo's L'Rell.
Furthermore, stand-up comedian Tig Notaro (below) has been confirmed as a surprise guest star. She will play Chief Engineer Denise Reno of the USS Hiawatha.
Meanwhile, Inhumans star Anson Mount will join the cast as Pike, captain of the USS Enterprise, from whom Discovery answered a distress call at the end of the season one finale. Pike was the captain of the USS Enterprise before Captain Kirk in the original 1960s series, and in real life was the original central character in the series pilot.
Joining him on the USS Enterprise will be Rebecca Romijn as Number One, another character from the original Star Trek pilot who was cut before the main 1960s series began in earnest.
And it's also recently been revealed that iconic Star Trek character Spock, as played by the late Leonard Nimoy onscreen, will make his Discovery debut in the new series. Young Spock, who is the adopted brother of series lead Michael Burnham, is set to be played by Ethan Peck.
What is going to happen?
The USS Enterprise is set to play a major role in the new season. The series is set 10 years before the events of the original Star Trek series - meaning that Pike is Captain Kirk's predecessor, and we should get an insight into the adventures he and his team have been on in the second series of Discovery.
According to the first trailer, said adventures including tracking down some mysterious outer-space anomalies, which may or may not have a connection to an iconic Star Trek character...
And while Enterprise won't feature all of our old favourites, a young version of Spock (originally played by the late Leonard Nimoy) is set to feature in a series of flashbacks. Jonathan Frakes revealed this at El Paso Comic-Con - he might appear alongside a younger Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Spock’s adoptive sister.
It has also been revealed that Section 31, an evil organisation that first featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, will be a "massive part" in the new season. Actor Alan Van Sprang, who played Leland, the leader of Section 31, in a deleted scene from last year's finale, says that while he is still in the dark as to where it is all going, he is "definitely a big part of season two.
"I know it's going to be a massive part of it, but I honestly... and it's not like I'm holding any secrets, like Jason Isaacs sitting here saying, 'Oh I knew who I was, and what I was doing,' no, I really have no idea," he says. "But I'm definitely a big part of season two."
Without going into detail, Harberts has promised that season two will feel a bit more like the Star Trek TV series we know and love. "We have time [in season two]—we have time to do things like more away missions, newer planets," he says. "These are stories that might fall a little bit more into a framework of allegory that people love to get from Trek. But we will always continue to have that overarching serialised thread."
When is Star Trek: Discovery filming?
Co-creator Alex Kurtzman said as much in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter back in September of last year. "We want to take the right amount of time and don't want to rush," he said, touting "the early side of 2019" as a likely window.
Filming began in mid-April 2018. Actor Doug Jones (better known as the fish-man in Guillermo del Toro's Oscar-winning drama The Shape of Water) announced the beginning of production on Instagram, forlornly saying goodbye to his head of hair as he prepared to don the Kelpien prosthetics of Commander Saru once again.
Is there a trailer?
There sure is, introducing us to Captain Pike of the USS Enterprise and hinting at some new adventures for the crew.
A further trailer was released on 7th October.
