The future of the future has never been more mysterious. In season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, the beloved and seemingly immortal sci-fi franchise will go where it’s never gone before: 950 years into its own future. This week, at New York Comic-Con 2019, CBS will almost undoubtedly release the first trailer for Discovery season 3, which will certainly cause Trekkies everywhere to freak out. But, what will happen in this trailer, and by extension, the next season of Discovery?
Here are five big surprises that would be amazing to see in the new trailer, regardless of how absurd each idea might seem. So far, Discovery has done a fantastic job of subverting fan expectations, meaning the twists of the next season could be the craziest yet.
The following is all pure speculation. As of this writing, neither the writer nor anyone at Tor.com has any knowledge of what will happen in Star Trek: Discovery, season 3. Nevertheless, accidental spoilers may be ahead. (We’ve been right before! You’ve been warned.)
6. Control was the Borg after all
Late in season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery, it really seemed like the rogue A.I known as Control was going to be outright revealed to be some kind of precursor or cyber-cousin of the Borg. And now that the Borg are making a huge comeback in Star Trek: Picard, it’s feasible that dropping a Borg twist in Discovery season 3 could provide some connective tissue between the two new Star Trek shows. To put it another way, those Borg similarities seem too huge to just be a coincidence. In fact, the whole reason why Discovery had to jump into the future was to isolate Control for as long as possible, but what if that ended-up creating the Borg by accident? Trek canon tells us that the Borg have existed in the Delta Quadrant since at least the 13th century, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some kind of wibbly-wobbly time-travel origin in which the proto-Borg were conceived in the future, and then ended up traveling back in time after that. In fact, Leland’s last words before “dying” were “This doesn’t end here.” Maybe he was telling the truth; because a Borg ship in Disco season 3 would be a showstopper.
5. The Federation is gone
The fate of the Federation is obviously a huge question that needs to be answered in season 3 of Discovery, and right now, there’s no reason to believe it exists at all. According to the files of the time-traveling agent Daniels in Star Trek: Enterprise, some version of the Federation existed as far as 3125, but considering Daniels was involved in a literal time war, it’s tough to say if that’s accurate. And, even if it was, the USS Discovery jumped to the year 3187, which is well past any recorded version of the UFP existing in the Milky Way galaxy. One deep-cut fan theory suggests that the Federation might actually have become villains in the far future, but what if it just doesn’t exist at all? If the Discovery is the last Federation starship ever, the stakes for the new season could get significantly higher.
4. Captain Burnham
Oddly, one of the greatest secrets of season 3 is probably one a Discovery season 3 trailer should get out of the way really quickly. Just like at the end of season 1, the USS Discovery is now in need of a new captain. It seems like a trailer for the new series will have to be extra-thin to avoid telling us who this new captain is, so the best bet here is that it’s just Michael Burnham. In the very first Discovery episode ever, Captain Georgiou was prepping Michael to have her own starship, and now, it seems like it may actually happen.
These are all twists that follow up on previous Discovery episodes or Short Treks, though. You wanna get nuts? Come on! Let’s get nuts.
3. Voyager‘s Doctor Comes Aboard
While technically any artificial lifeform from the 50+ years of Star Trek could survive to the 32nd century, there’s only one who has gotten anywhere close to that timeframe during their onscreen adventures: The Doctor from Voyager.
In the fourth season episode “Living Witness,” a copied program of the Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram is awoken (well, his mobile emitter is activated by accident) on a distant planet in the Delta Quadrant in the 31st century, one hundred years before the events of Discovery season 3. The Doctor stands as witness to the “crimes” his crew mates inflicted on the planet 700 years ago; crimes that the Doctor knows that Voyager were actually trying to halt. The episode itself is a commentary on how the events of history can get completely inverted by unreliable narrators and the passage of time, and by the end of the episode the Doctor is successful in restoring the rightful version of events. In a coda at the end of the episode, we see that the Doctor’s restoration of proper events is itself an event being studied by that planet’s historians in an unspecified span of time beyond the 31st century, and that the Doctor left the planet long ago to seek out the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation, and any trace of his old ship.
That places the Doctor’s quest within the same time frame as Discovery season 3. Maybe he’s still in the Delta Quadrant (which we know Discovery is able to reach thanks to the spore drive) or bumming around the Alpha Quadrant. If the Federation is gone, he’d probably be very interested in the sudden appearance of a Federation ship.
CBS has reportedly reached out to Robert Picardo in regards to reprising his role as the Doctor. Speculation is that this would be for Picard season 2, which is rumored to begin filming in March 2020, and which already involves a bounty of artificial lifeforms along with his shipmate Seven of Nine/Annika Hansen. But what if CBS is actually looking to include him in Discovery? Or both?
2. Q shows up
Most legacy characters are off the table for season 3 of Discovery if only because almost none of them would still be left alive in the late 32nd century. Unless of course, that character exists outside the regular flow of time. With so much nostalgia for The Next Generation and Voyager happening with Picard, the idea that Discovery could bring on a character from that era would be kind of amazing. What if the very last scene of the Discovery season 3 trailer featured the return of John de Lancie as Q? It’s a long shot, and some would say a move like that would be too fan-service oriented. But come on, how much do you want to see Burnham have to shutdown Q? Even as Tilly geeks out over him? And Saru sighs? And Georgiou schemes? And how curious would Q be to see a Federation ship pop up well past the Federation’s heyday? If Picard can de-age Brent Spiner to reprise Data, Discovery can do the same with Q.
But. This isn’t the craziest plausible thing that could happen in Discovery season 3. That honor goes to…
1. Pike is back…because of original series canon!
Okay, so this is a huge longshot, but what if Pike is straight-up in season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery? Right now, hardcore fans are saying: That’s not possible, because we know what happens to Pike in the original series of Star Trek. In “The Menagerie”; after his accident, Pike ends-up living on Talos IV with Vina, where the Talosians give both of them the perpetual illusion of young and healthy bodies. The thing is, we have no idea how long those illusions could last. And since Talos IV is totally off-limits–it seems like nobody went back there after the year 2267–we don’t know what the limits of Talosian tech even are. It wouldn’t be hard to explain that the Talosians made it possible for Pike and Vina’s consciousness to continue to exist past the expiration of their bodies.
Meaning, the greatest twist for Discovery season 3 could be that Pike is back! But this time, he’s kind of a space god!
Ryan Britt has been a contributor to Tor.com since 2010. His writing is often featured with Inverse, SyFy Wire, Den of Geek!, Vulture, and Star Trek.com. He is the author of the book Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and an editor at Fatherly. He lives in Portland, Maine with his wife and daughter. He loves being right about his Star Trek theories but loves being wrong even more.
The Federation gone/turned evil seems pretty likely. It would allow Discovery to work with a concept Rodenberry played with several times: Genesis II, Planet Earth, Andromeda. There just won’t be anyone named Dylan Hunt and there are lots of time travelers to help restore the old ideals.
Isn’t Saru still Burnham’s superior officer? He would have to be captain.
Should be interesting but wasn’t Captain Michael Burnumm character in by far the best Star Trek movie… Star Trek IV “The Voyage Home” ?
A cameo for sure but it means she will be coming back from the future
As far as we know, Burnham is not the captain in Star Trek IV. I mean, I’d like to think the Trek universe is big enough to have more than one black female Starfleet captain, but this is the very small Discovery version of Star Trek we’re talking about here. So you never know.
Wait. Borg in Picard? Did I miss a trailer?
Captain Saru or we riot!
@5, Jeri Ryan/Seven of 9 is in Picard, and the plot seems to revolve around a magical teenage girl who is very important to someone but doesn’t know who she is. And Hugh is back (same actor). So probably it’s a Borgified series.
(Whether the Borg are also involved with Picard’s leaving starfleet after his greatest mission and greatest failure (or greatest disappointment) is unknown for now, I think. There’s no reason they have to be connected.)
This new program is more advanced in the Picard character. With TNG the writers had more time to have the Captain explore more than in the original series. With Picard, this new series will explore more of the Captains character than in the original series. Patrick Stewart is an awesome, highly skilled actor who’s good, very good at what he does.
My biggest surprise from season 3 would be to find a decent script.
No Borg! Please no Borg! Create a new enemy.
Personally I’m betting on a variant Blake’s Seven, Our Heroes fighting an EVILL Federation but without the nuance or a cool opponent like Servalen.
I’m a little confused about how this is supposed to relate to Roddenberry’s vision of a better future for humanity.
As soon as I saw the Control is Borg theory pop, I was done with this nonsense because of that nonsenses.
@11, Roddenberry’s vision is passe. These days we are into Dark and Gritty.
I’m afraid what’s hindered Star Wars (and a lot of other properties) is what’s hindering Star Trek as well: they’re too much about themselves and too afraid to go ‘where none have gone before.’ As this article illustrates, even when the Discovery is flung far away in time and space for a fresh start, there are still the nagging questions of how does ______ connect to ______. It’s the Spock’s sister syndrome. All that space and they do so little with it.
I want it to be about how Lorca somehow survives falling in the thingy and fights to win his empire back. Nobody cares about the Boring Universe.
@11/melendwyr:
I’m not convinced the last several iterations (post-ST:ENT) have had any vision beyond “make it cool! and fashionably edgy! to draw a desirable demographic of young people!” At the executive level, anyway — individual writers may have had uplifting, aspirational themes in mind.
More generally, I’m not convinced any recent live-action TV SF/F has had a unifying vision or theme. Cartoons, OTOH, have definitely been more message-driven; e.g., Star Vs. The Forces of Evil (season 4: allegory about racism), or Young Justice (season 3: media-driven politics) — possibly because they’re produced by smaller teams.
More and more, Star Trek reminds me of Ian Banks’ “Culture” – lots of people living happy Utopian lives, with a few people on the border doing terrible things to ensure that peace and safety. Which is a great way to produce drama, and Banks is a wonderful author. But it’s not what Star Trek is supposed to be.
As the people who own Star Trek probably don’t want to get the rights to the Culture, they seem determined to change the property they DO own into it.
I’m not sure why we can’t just enjoy it no matter what happens? It’s just a TV show. I think we many times put our personal restraints and ideas into and that automatically sets us up for disappointment. I watch this show, and all other before it, with one thing in mind – enjoyment and entertainment. I have been a Trek fan for 50+ years and I have enjoyed both seasons immensely. Just my 4 1/2 cents….
I really want Saru to be captain; I’d love to see an alien captain for a change.
They’re going into the future partly to get away from canon, so I hope there are no Borg, no Klingons, no retreads of old stuff. Give us new imaginings!
Discovery has wonderful actors, great sets, costumes, and special effects, and lots of resources. But all of those things exist to bring the story to life, and the writing — the story — has not lived up to all the effort that’s been put into illuminating it. I hope they hire some real science fiction authors — as TOS did — to perk up the writers’ room. Lots of SF writers are Trek fans; I’m sure plenty of them would be willing to write an episode. (Yes, I know about Michael Chabon, but he’s on Picard, and I’m talking about Discovery.)
Let’s just hope they don’t pull an ‘Andromeda Season 5’ on us,
stuck on one boring planet, in one boring star system. ‘How do we go home?’
Just relax and enjoy the fantasy. Roddenberry set us on a voyage back in the 1960’s, but that was a starting point. This is not a religion. I hope the writers let their imaginations take flight. Don’t try to weave a new future contorting it with relics of the past. There is absolutely no need to dredge up Q or doctor hologram. Keep it fresh. I will miss Ethan Peck in a space suit (thanks for that) and Capt. Pike.. I would definitely want to watch a Star Trek series with them. I can’t wait to see what the show runners have in store for Discovery. I love the show..
@20: If they’re going into the future to get away from canon, why did they go into the past in the first place?
But what if Burnham really opened the wormhole to 950 years in the past?????
Control becomes Borg
NO Federation, no support, prewarp societies to mess up?
If we see them coming are they big surprises?
As much as I’d love to see Q and the Doctor again, and as much as I can see the potential in a post-Federation (or evil Federation) galaxy, none of it will matter one jot if they don’t fix the writing.