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Where are the Star Trek: Discovery crew members?

Following their successful assault on the Klingon Ship of the Dead (where they used their ship’s instantly-teleporting spore drive to create an anti-cloaking device), it seems like things are finally looking up for the crew of the USS Discovery.

The War with the Klingons is all but over, Admiral Cornwell has been rescued and the ship is ordered home – but then everything goes wrong.

After months of piloting the spore drive personally Lt Samets (Anthony Rapp) has been feeling severe side effects, and his last jump to the safety of a Federation station instead pulls the Discovery into what seems like a parallel universe, trapping the crew a very long way from home and leaving Stamets in a poor, delirious state.

It’s a predicament nobody could have predicted – except maybe ruthless Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), who faced the loss of his command and psychiatric treatment when he returned to the fold, and could be spotted secretly overriding the ship’s trajectory towards the end of the episode…

Did Lorca intentionally dodge the consequences of his actions? Will Stamets recover? And how on Earth (or rather, in deep deep parallel space) will the Discovery crew manage to find their way home?

What else is going on?

Apart from the Discovery’s stranding, the other main dangling plot thread concerns Shazad Latif’s Ash Tyler, who many fans believe to actually be a Klingon warrior disguised through surgery and brainwashing techniques to look human (something Klingons have been shown capable of in other Star Trek series).

Evidence for the theory includes the fact that a Klingon character named Voq (who disappeared from the series with a mysterious mission just before Tyler first appeared) is played by an actor called Javid Iqbal, who not only has no prior TV credits but also shared a name with Latif, whose birth surname was Shazad Iqbal.

Anyway, after weeks of speculation Discovery’s mid-season finale hinted that Tyler may indeed be a transformed Voq, with his post-traumatic flashbacks including grisly scenes of surgery centred around his face and his tormenter (or second-in-command, depending on what you believe) L’Rell imprisoned on the ship with him as they jet into a new universe.

Suffice to say, it seems unlikely we’ve heard the last of this storyline, and you can read more about the whole thing here.

Elsewhere on the Discovery we may also continue to follow the burgeoning relationship between Tyler and Sonequa Martin-Green’s lead character Michael Burnham, Burnham’s own attempts to atone for her mutiny in the series pilot, First Officer Saru (Doug Jones) trying to overcome his nervous nature for the strains of command and Cadet Tilly (Mary Wiseman) working her way towards her lofty ambitions.

Who stars in the new episodes?

All the main cast are returning, including Sonequa Martin-Green, Jason Isaacs, Anthony Rapp, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman (pictured) and Shazad Latif along with recurring actors like Wilson Cruz and Emily Coutts.

How many episodes are there?

There are only 6 episodes in this part of the season compared to the 9-part first chapter of the series.

We also already know the titles of each episode, which you can read below:

• Episode 10: Despite Yourself
• Episode 11: The Wolf Inside
• Episode 12: Vaulting Ambition
• Episode 13: What’s Past is Prologue
• Episode 14: The War Without, The War Within
• Episode 15: Will You Take My Hand?

Will there be a second season?

There will indeed – Star Trek: Discovery has already been confirmed for a full second series, though it probably won’t hit our screens (or tablets) until 2019, so strap in for a long wait once these next six episodes are over. You might need an even stronger memory jog by then.

New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery will be released weekly on Netflix UK from Monday 8th January