After a raucous Season 1, CBS dropped a first glimpse into the forthcoming Season 2 of last Friday at San Diego Comic-Con International. The season will begin January 2019.
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Season 1 of ended with the coming bow-to-bow with the most famous starship of them all, the .
The new trailer opens with a Michael Burnham voiceover, superimposed on a series of gorgeous images of stars and nebulae as it transitions into some new short scenes.
“We have always looked to the stars,” she says, “to discover who we are. And hidden there is a message. The secret made of space and time. Visible only to those open enough to receive it.”
And then, the music drops and we’re right back where we left off.
“Captain Christopher Pike requests permission to come aboard,” a bridge crewman says.
nerds will remember that this show is set a decade before the events depicted in , which means Spock should be serving on the years before Kirk takes command.
Yes, please quote Starfleet regulations to me
, of course, has been looming large over , which doubled down on one of its plot devices, the Mirror Universe. (I personally was never a fan of the Mirror Universe arc, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.)
Initial episodes of explored the strained relationship between Burnham and her foster-father, Sarek, the biological father of Spock.
Captain Pike’s character is little explored in canon , so he remains a good avenue for storytelling. In this version, Pike is portrayed by Anson Mount as sort of an ersatz Mitt Romney-Jon Huntsman hybrid. He gets right down to business as he materializes in ‘s transporter room.
“Well, Commander, this is awkward, but the best way to get into a cold stream is to jump right in,” Pike tells Saru, the acting captain of the , who seems not only stunned but also utterly baffled by the human concept of a handshake.
“I’m here to take command of the under Regulation 19, Section C,” Pike continues.
Saru looks back at Burnham, who betrays no emotion before the trailer cuts away to some overhead shots and a Saru voiceover.
“Your directive is only instituted when an imminent threat is detected,” Saru says in meek protest.
“Federation sensors picked up seven red bursts spread across 30,000 light years,” Pike explains. “These mysterious signals are beyond anything we understand. Is it a greeting, a declaration of malice? Let’s find out.”
And we’re off, with the first main plot of Season 2: mysterious signals! Aye, sir!
1998 is calling
The is seen warping away from the with Lenny Kravitz’ 1998 hit song “I Want to Fly Away” playing at length underneath. There are a lot of tense snippets of flying spinning pods, spacesuit-clad crew members with phasers drawn, and more. Cut to a brief celebratory scene with a newly commissioned Ensign Sylvia Tilley, who proclaims with a huge smile: “This is the power of math, people!” before high-fiving Lt. Cmdr. Paul Stamets. And then, finally, in minute 1:29 of the 2:35 trailer, things get serious.
“We may have someone in common,” Pike tells Burnham in a private conversation in a corridor.
“My foster-brother, Mr. Spock.” (Why Burnham refers to him with this honorific goes unremarked upon.)
Burnham is seen stroking what is presumably Spock’s uniform, in a storage locker on the for some reason. (She’s had it this whole time?)
“He took leave,” Pike says, likely explaining why Spock’s not on the . “It’s as if he’d run into a question he couldn’t answer,” Pike explains, while Burnham tries to access his personal logs on a computer screen.
“Spock is linked to these signals,” Burnham tells Saru. “And he needs help.”
OK, so Season 2 will be a “Search for Spock” of sorts.
Then…
“We’re on a collision course with a pulsar,” Burnham explains to a nameless crewmember. Then, the tension is defused with a well-timed arrival of real-world comedian Tig Notaro, portraying a crewmember.
“Oh, what a relief,” she says, in a classic Notarian deadpan. “I thought we were all going to die.”
Cut to more scenes and a Pike voiceover.
“Wherever our mission takes us,” he says. “We’ll try to have a little fun along the way.”
The trailer ends with a Saurian crewmember (a callback) in a turbolift, as Pike, Burnham, Saru and two others also step in. The Saurian talks to Burnham in an unintelligible click language, which she has no problem deciphering. He gestures that he’s feeling sick.
“Yes, I hear that’s going around,” she says.
And he promptly sneezes a substantive amount of green phlegm onto his fellow crewman. Cute.
And scene.
Quick hits
At ‘s panel at Comic-Con International—moderated by Notaro herself—Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman promoted . This series of short “stand-alone stories, each running approximately 10-15 minutes” is set to drop in December 2018 in the weeks leading up to the Season 2 premier.
As CBS noted:
Rainn Wilson will return to play Harry Mudd in a short he will also direct, and Aldis Hodge will star in another as Craft, a man who finds himself the only human on board a deserted ship.
Additional episodes include a deep dive into Saru’s (Doug Jones) backstory as the first Kelpien to join Starfleet and Tilly’s (Mary Wiseman) journey aboard the > and her friendship with an unlikely partner.
Kurtzman also told the panel: “I can tell you that, yes, you will be seeing Spock this season.”
Wilson Cruz, who played Dr. Hugh Culber (seemingly killed during Season 1), also confirmed that he was not “just here to say ‘Hello’.”
