CBS All Access announced that a familiar character will be added to season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery. Anson Mount (Inhumans) will join the cast as Capt. Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise.
True Trekkies will know Pike as the captain of the Enterprise prior to (the best) Captain James T. Kirk. Fans of Discovery were expecting this move given his name was mentioned in the season 1 finale.
The character was first introduced on the original Star Trek pilot (“The Cage”) from 1966 and portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter. He was resurrected in a later episode (“The Menagerie”) and played Sean Kenney. In the most recent set of films in 2009 and 2013, Bruce Greenwood held the spot as mentor to a young Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine).
Anson Mount was most recently seen as Black Bolt on ABC’s Inhumans but the series has not yet been picked up for another season. Prior to that he was Cullen Bohannon on the series Hell on Wheels for its entire run.
Details of season 2 for Discovery have been pretty scarce. Co-showrunner Aaron Herberts noted back in January, “The second season is not a war season… we are very interested in tackling themes of science versus faith. We’ll be nine years before [Star Trek: The Original Series] and there are things from TOS that we want to do some nods to.”
Filming begins next month but no release date has been announced.