'Star Trek Discovery' stars Spock's stepsister and the 'most f*cked up Captain ever'
That sound you just heard was the heads of every Star Trek fan exploding as details of their new show dropped at Comic-Con.
Not least of which was the fact that Spock now has a stepsister, and she's the star of the show.
Star Trek Discovery, premiering September, stars Sonequa Martin-Green (The Walking Dead) as First Officer Michael Burnham. But what wasn't known until Martin-Green just announced it is that Burnham was raised by Sarek -- a.k.a. Spock's dad -- played by James Frain.
"We're aware that Spock's stepsister is not canon," said producer Alex Kurtzman. "Be patient with us."
Meanwhile Jason Isaacs, who plays Captain Gabriel Lorca of the USS Discovery, teased the audience that in this PG-13 setting he was "not allowed to say that my Captain will probably be the most fucked up" of all the show's Starship captains going back to Kirk. "He has a lot of rough edges," Isaacs added.
And they're not the only two notables on what is shaping up to be a very diverse crew. Anthony Rapp, an actor best known for Rent, revealed that his character would be the first openly gay officer in the TV iteration of Star Trek -- and that his lover was another officer on the ship.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
The show's producers were at pains to point out the extent to which Discovery follows Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's vision of a utopian future.
"We're trying to show how conflict is solved by peace," executive producer Aaron Harberts said. "At the end of day it's about understanding each other."
As part of that ethos, the show's bad guys -- the Klingons -- will be shown in a more positive light than ever before. "They're not the thugs of the universe," said producer Gretchen Berg.
Good news, Trekkies: they'll be speaking Klingon with English subtitles.
As for online criticism of the show's diversity, its star had a succinct response:
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
