The Star Trek prequel series takes places roughly a decade before the events of the Original Series, chronicling the story of Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who is the adoptive human sister of Spock. While the show’s first season flirted with some tangential aspects of TOS, like Sarek and Harry Mudd, the season 1 finale promised a much bigger interaction with the original series when the USS Enterprise showed up, commanded by Captain Christopher Pike (who Anson Mount will play in season 2). The show’s producers have been coy about whether or not we will see an adult Spock in season 2, though Star Trek luminary and Discovery director Jonathan Frakes has gone ahead and confirmed that a young Spock will appear in flashbacks (at the least).


The video also shows off a very quick shot from behind of Mount as Pike, and some fleeting glimpses of the Enterprise itself. How Discovery reconciles its decidedly modern aesthetic with the retro ’60s look of TOS will be interesting, and likely a cause for fan debate, which Discovery is no stranger to. The series’ first season proved to be polarizing, as its radical reimagining of the Klingons had few advocates, and the show’s narrative seemed difficult to reconcile with the events of the existing series (though the producers have said season 2 will address some of those issues).

Discovery is clearly attempting something of a course correction for season 2. The producers have already promised a more traditional Star Trek style of storytelling after the first season’s dark, violent, highly serialized war story divided fans. The end of the Klingon war and the arrival of the Enterprise certainly suggests stronger ties to the franchise’s iconography, but at this point we know very little about the actual story that will unfold in the new season. It seems likely that Mirror Georgiou and Section 31 will rear their heads, and we will get more insight into Burnham’s past. Even if we don’t know what stories Discovery is preparing to tell next, we at least know those stories are going to look a lot more like Star Trek.