Based on the massive twists and turns we’ve seen in this season of Star Trek: Discovery, the remaining two episodes will offer enough surprises to fill not one, but two starships. It’s now no secret that the USS Enterprise is returning for the big finale episodes, but what does that mean for the canon of the original series? We know Rebecca Romijn will return as Number One—the first officer of the Enterprise—but who else? Could other classic characters from The Original Series be hanging around the Enterprise? Could we get a glimpse of them in this episode? Or even a passing reference?
Based on the timeline, here are eight characters from Star Trek: The Original Series who could feasibly be on the USS Enterprise in the last two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 2.
Warning: Speculative spoilers could follow. When this list was compiled, the writer of this article had not yet seen Discovery season 2, episode 13, “Such Sweet Sorrow.”
8. Dr. Boyce
In the original pilot episode “The Cage,” Dr. Boyce was the chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise. He was known for making Captain Pike warm martinis and dropping some solid advice (none of which Pike really took until he got kidnapped by telepathic aliens, but whatever). We know Boyce must have left the Enterprise sometime between the events of Discovery and the Original Series, mostly because Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy takes his place permanently. Still, at this point in time, it’s reasonable Boyce is still onboard. Don’t think a passing reference to Boyce is possible? Well, in Star Trek Into Darkness, Boyce’s name was listed on a screen as the attending physician for Captain Kirk after all of the Cumberbatch-Khan action. Into Darkness was co-written by Alex Kurtzman who is the showrunner of Discovery.
7. Nurse Chapel
Famously, Majel Barrett played not only Number One in “The Cage,” and Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation, but also Nurse Chapel in the Original Series. When did Nurse Chapel join the USS Enterprise? We have no idea, but it’s not crazy to think she’s been there for a while. Could Chapel have served with Pike and Spock before Kirk took over? In some ways, this would make sense if only because you get the sense that she’s known Spock for a long time in the Original Series.
6. Dr. Piper
Oh yeah! You forgot about this guy, didn’t you? That’s right, after Boyce and before Bones, there was nobody’s favorite Star Trek doctor: Dr. Piper. In the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Piper has replaced Boyce as the chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise. Obviously, this is the only episode featuring this character, and why Bones eventually replaces him is the subject of a decent amount of non-canonical apocryphal reconciliation. Some examples: In the 1985 DC Comics story “All Those Years Ago,” Bones replaces Boyce as the chief medical officer of the Enterprise, but has to take a leave of absence because he’s going through a divorce. Bones’s divorce is also the reason given for his absence in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” in the novel Strangers From the Sky. In all of these scenarios, Piper was the temporary replacement for Bones. All of which could mean he’s temporarily serving on the Enterprise during the time of Discovery.
5. Gary Mitchell
In original series canon, Gary Mitchell was supposedly someone Captain Kirk personally requested for the Enterprise. So, in theory, there’s no way we could see—or hear about—Gary Mitchell on Discovery, if only because he’s not really supposed to be on the Enterprise, yet. But then again, all we know is that Kirk wanted Mitchell on the Enterprise, which could mean Mitchell was already there, and Kirk simply made sure he stayed on the Enterprise. It seems unlikely Mitchell is already on the Discovery, but you never know.
4. Kelso
Sitting next to Mitchell in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” was Lee Kelso. In some ways, this guy was destined to become one of Trek’s very first “red shirt” even though he was wearing a kind of off-salmon tunic. Anyway, Lee seems pretty familiar with the Enterprise in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” which means it’s totally possible he’s already on the Enterprise in these Discovery episodes.
3. Scotty
This is a big one. In the Discovery episode, “An Obol For Charon,” Pike mentions that the Enterprise has a chief engineer named Louvier. In the same episode, Pike says “I don’t think the Enterprise will ever have a chief engineer more in love with his ship.” Obviously, this is a foreshadowing joke about Scotty, who clearly will love the Enterprise more than whoever this Louvier person is. As Discovery has demonstrated this season, it’s common for a starship to have more than one engineer, meaning Scotty could be a junior engineer on the Enterprise at this point in time, serving under Louvier and loving the Enterprise really hard.
Weirdly, at this point in time Scotty could also be serving aboard…the USS Discovery. Why? Well, believe it or not, we’ve never actually seen the chief engineer of the Discovery. Stamets is an engineer, but not the chief engineer, and Reno is an assistant engineer, too. In the second season of Discovery, there have passing references to “the chief engineer,” but we’ve never actually seen this person. Plus, in the first season of Discovery, in the episode, “Despite Yourself,” Captain Lorca impersonates the chief engineer of the Discovery, by doing an impression of…Scotty! So, if Mirror Lorca knows about Scotty, it seems really likely Scotty is hanging around, either on the Enterprise or close by on the Discovery.
2. Sulu
This actually feels super-likely. Even if Sulu doesn’t appear or isn’t referenced in the final two episodes of Discovery’s second season, the notion that he’s already on the Enterprise feels very high. In, “Brother,” the first episode of Discovery’s second season, Stamets mentions he knows an “ethnobotanist” on the Enterprise. In the original series, Sulu is totally obsessed with botany, specifically in the episode “The Man Trap.” Plus, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” establishes that Sulu has had at least one other job on the Enterprise before becoming the helmsman. In “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Sulu was the head of the astrophysics department, clearly part of the sciences division.
1. Uhura
Of all the characters who could appear on the Enterprise in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, Uhura would be the coolest. In terms of on-screen canon, we don’t really know much about what Uhura was doing in Starfleet before joining the Enterprise in The Original Series. Meaning, it’s not crazy to think she was on the Enterprise during the transition between Pike and Kirk. Plus, like Sulu, it seems like the department Uhura worked for changed a little bit during her early years aboard the Enterprise. In “The Corbomite Maneuver,” Uhura wears gold, indicating she’s in the command section. But for the rest of the series, Uhura wears the red of the operations sections. So, again — like Sulu — did Uhura have a totally different job on the Enterprise prior to Kirk taking over? If so, seeing Uhura on Discovery would be the biggest treat for Trekkies, perhaps since the new series began.
The final two episodes of season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery air over the next two Thursdays — April 11 and April 18 — at 8:30 pm eastern time on CBS All-Access.
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and an editor at Fatherly. He is a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
Great speculations! While I don’t know that any of these would serve anything other than fans, they’d be fun.
I’d always thought that if John Mahoney were still with us, he would have been a great Dr. Boyce :)
By the way, there is precedent in the novels for Scotty being a junior engineer aboard Enterprise – if memory serves (rim shot), he is such in D.C. Fontana’s Vulcan’s Glory. Spends most of his time brewing hooch in the engine room, if I recall, which is kind of lame, but…
writermpoteet: I don’t like the idea of anyone who served with Kirk being on the ship when Pike was captain beyond Spock because if they had, it would’ve come up in “The Menagerie.” Certainly if Scotty had served on the Enterprise during the Talos IV mission — as Vulcan’s Glory postulated — he wouldn’t have been removed from the proceedings once they were sealed in Part 2, since he already knew about it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
My left-field suggestion is Dr. Richard Daystrom, who we find out is responsible for designing Control.
“In original series canon, Gary Mitchell was supposedly someone Captain Kirk personally requested for the Enterprise.”
No, he was someone Kirk “asked for […] aboard [his] first command” (Dehner in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”). If that had been the Enterprise, why call it his “first command”? It rather sounds as if he commanded a different ship first.
Hello Fellow ‘ST:DIS.’ Fans,
To be perfectly honest I don’t really care whether or not the final two episodes of ‘ST:DIS.’ feature any ‘ST:TOS.’ characters.
Since we all know (and so does he!) the tragedy that eventually befalls him and of course we all know that he’s strictly a one-season character in this show, for me it’s much more important that Anson Mount’s Captain Christopher Pike gets a truly heroic send-off from the show.
After seeing Anson Mount’s acting in the episode where Pike grasps the Time Crystal, Pike just HAS to have a special send-off!
Secondly; whatever happens on the final two episodes I hope it only adds to established canon rather than contradicts it.
And finally; this is just an observation but after the strong and thoroughly enjoyable but decidedly dark first season of ‘ST:DIS.’ (or at least the first six or so episodes of it), this series, although it still has its own distinct flavour, is, to me, finally starting to feel like bona fide ‘STAR TREK.’. Possibly because it’s no longer taking itself quite so seriously.
And I’ve said it before so I’ll say it again (even if I am showing my ignorance by missing something really obvious); if the Captain Gabriel Lorca that we met in ‘ST:DIS.’ Season One was the ‘Mirror Lorca’, then couldn’t the other, ‘real’ Lorca show up at some point?!
I don’t remember season one giving any explanation as to where or when the ‘real’ Lorca is… So why not?…
I think it’s heavily implied the Enterprise is his first command.
@1 writermpoteet
“Spends most of his time brewing hooch in the engine room, if I recall, which is kind of lame, but…”
You and I clearly have different notions of the definition of “lame” :D
I fully support CBS making the spinoff “Young Scotty: The Hooch Years.”
“in the episode, “Despite Yourself,” Captain Lorca impersonates the chief engineer of the Discovery, by doing an impression of…Scotty!”
I have no memory of this…
Scotty stated in “Relics” that the Enterprise “”was … the first ship I ever served on as Chief Engineer. You know, I served aboard eleven ships. Freighters, cruisers, starships, but this is the only one I think of…”” And he was an engineering advisor at Deneva per “Operation: Annihilate!” So, clearly there are a lot of other options out there to introduce him.
I also think Kirk, who was probably on the Republic around this time, really needs a lot of his backstory expanded, if done tastefully. It’s probably asking a lot, but he’s actually a character we care about.
Finally, some other options that would be nice to see that aren’t considered here are all of those commodores from TOS of note: Stone, Mendez, Decker, Wesley…
One problem with introducing any characters from Star Trek TOS is that in any situation where they appear to be in danger, we know that actually they simply cannot die. Of course when a character is a Star of the show, we also do not expect them to die, but we are mostly able to suspend disbelief and entertain the possibilty. But when we know for a fact what they will be doing years from now, it just becomes impossible, for me at least. That has the effect of making any scene where they are supposedly in danger just seem boring and silly.
So please, either no Captain Kirk, or at least make it very clear that this is an alternate universe timeline.
In “The Corbonite Manuever”…. Uhura is wearing gold shirt….
And Kirk is walking around shirtless as if he is posing for a tinder pic , lol
Archimedes: We know Pike’s and Spock’s fates, and it hasn’t stopped those two characters from being major reasons why season 2 of Discovery is as good as it is.
Then again, I’ve never had much patience with the “you can’t kill them so there’s no suspense” argument, as if that’s the only way to do drama. Said lack of patience is mostly due to it often being used as an argument to diminish tie-in fiction…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Krad,
It would of course be dumb for me to tell other people what they should or should not enjoy.
It just gets tedious to frame every one of my remarks with “the way I experience it” or “this is how it seems to me” etc.
But given how much Star Trek Discovery is not only not enjoyed, but actually attacked as if it should not be allowed to exist, I can appreciate where your remark is coming from (I think!).
By the way, the only tie-in fiction I have read was “Spock must Die!” I read it when I was young enough to think that he actually might!
@2/krad: “I don’t like the idea of anyone who served with Kirk being on the ship when Pike was captain beyond Spock because if they had, it would’ve come up in “The Menagerie.””
Not if the character in question died or left the ship prior to “The Menagerie”, like Piper or Kelso.
By the way, Chapel signed aboard a starship to search for her missing fiancé, whose last message was received five years before first season TOS (“What Are Little Girls Made Of?”). At the time of Discovery she was still a bio-researcher, presumably on some planet.
@6/MaGnUs: “I think it’s heavily implied the Enterprise is his first command.”
Whose, Kirk’s? I don’t remember anything to that effect, but if you do, I’d be interested to learn about it. Do you remember any specific episodes or lines?
For what it’s worth, The Making of Star Trek says this on the subject: “Kirk rose very rapidly through the ranks and received his first command (the equivalent of a destroyer-class spaceship) while still quite young.”
@10/Gvsualan: “I also think Kirk, who was probably on the Republic around this time, really needs a lot of his backstory expanded, if done tastefully. It’s probably asking a lot, but he’s actually a character we care about.”
I hope they stay away from Kirk, exactly because he is a character I care about. I don’t trust them to get him right.
I’d like to see a younger Dr McCoy, personally. He doesn’t have to interract with Spock. I’m remembering a certain female Trill commenting that she’d had a fling with him in a past life and how he had ‘surgeon’s hands’. We could have that [for instance].
Not TOS, but Guinan could reasonably be expected to be hanging around. She has a long history as mentioned by Q in “Q Who”.
ACDBill: Not just mentioned in “Q Who,” we saw her living her life in the late 19th century in “Time’s Arrow.” So she could easily turn up in the 23rd century….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Late to the party and pardon the stupid question but do we know if Discovery is TOS or Abrams timeline? Maybe it doesn’t matter but that break seems to have occurred in this time period, about the time Kirk was born? I get that some of the timey-whimey, wibbly-wobbly stuff here might be part of the Discovery plotline though.
Discovery is in the same timeline as all the other TV shows and the first ten movies.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@15 – Jana: It’s just that if it wasn’t, they’d mention his previous command explicitly at some point. In the books (non-canon), his first command was the E.
@18 – krad: Can we get a little CGI-ala-Captain Marvel to rejuvenate Whoopi?
@krad: we’ll see next week how convincing that is and how much of what’s been shown gets undone.
Spock is a witness to wormholes used for time travel, easily opened with an Iron Man Spacesuit that can be built in 2 hours. Then there’s the giant sore thumb of a planet full of time crystals which it’s guardians seem to give up fairly easily, despite the dire warnings from the Mother Chancellor. Space Stone + Time Stone. This could easily happen in the Marvel CU (which may not be an undesirable thing in the execs eyes).
Time/space travel has been made so easy on this show that it seems nonsensical that it wouldn’t be known by the time Kirk discovers the slingshot effect or runs into the Guardian. The Enterprise itself is at a massive space battle where ALL SENTIENT LIFE in the galaxy is at stake. It wouldn’t have such historical records in its databanks?
They’re going to need more than a crowbar to force all the errant pieces to fit.
KRAD: That episode should have come to mind. Argh. Off to Netflix to watch that episode :)
@21/MaGnUs: Of course The Making of Star Trek isn’t canon, either.
In The Autobiography of James T. Kirk his first command was the Hotspur (just like Hornblower’s!).
Anyway, people who may have been on the Enterprise before Kirk, but left prior to “The Menagerie”… Benjamin Finney?
@24. Jana: My favorite naval series of all time is Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series. It has the captain/doctor dynamic and friendship. No Spock-type, though an argument could be made that Maturin is also an early science officer type.
And the ship is named the Surprise, which rhymes with Enterprise.
Now if only the writing staff for Disc had some Surprises on board.
As for putting more TOS characters into STD I have only one comment: stop it! I really hate this thing of bringing back fan-favs to pump juice into a show. Either it stands on its own or it doesn’t.