When it comes to Spock, Star Trek: Discovery season 2 has been a slow burn. We’ve seen a young version of the character via flashbacks, heard a lot about him from Captain Pike, and even gotten a voiceover from adult Spock.
As of two episodes into season 2, we’ve yet to properly meet Star Trek: Discovery‘s version of Spock. However, it sounds like once we do, Spock will be sticking around. According to Discovery showrunner Alex Kurtzman, the Spock storyline will last the entire season.
“We’ve had the time of our lives this season,” said Kurtzman at today’s CBS Television Critics Association presentation. “How come Spock in all of canon has never mentioned his stepsister? We knew the answer to that question wouldn’t be a few episodes but an entire season.”
Whether this means that, once we meet Spock, he will stick around the Discovery for a while or simply that Burnham might be chasing him across the quadrants for much of the season remains to be seen.
Discovery executive producer Heather Kadin echoed the sentiment that the Spock storyline was not something the writers took on superficially, nor was it ever something that was going to be a brief cameo.
“We knew the middle of last season that [Spock] was something we wanted to do,” said Kadin. “We felt that there was a huge opportunity to fill in the blanks.”
The decision to bring Spock, one of the most foundational and iconic characters in the franchise’s more than 50-year history, into the Discovery fold has brought up some major questions about the new series’ relationship to canon—more than questions about the Klingon’s hair or the cut of the Federation suits ever could.
“There is 13 years essentially of Spock unexplored. I came in with a lot of humility and respect,” said Peck, during the TCA presentation.
“We certainly know that in order for Trek to live on, we will need to find ways to operate outside canon as well and create new canon,” added Kurtzman. “That’s part of the job.”
The creation of new canon seems to be an active goal for CBS moving forward. The studio is developing a host of new Star Trek series with varying relationships to existing canon, including: a Picard-centric reboot featuring Patrick Stewart, a series set at Starfleet Academy, an animated series about the “lower decks,” another animated series, and a Discovery spin-off starring Michelle Yeoh.
For now, though, we only have Discovery‘s interaction with existing canon to analyse, react to, and debate. And, with the Spock storyline set to play out over the course of Discovery‘s season 2’s 14 episodes, that’s more than enough material for discussion!
How have you felt about Spock’s (minimal) depiction in Discovery season 2 so far? What do you think about the news that his character is going to stick around?