'Star Trek: Discovery' Star, Showrunner Discuss Chapter One's Big Death

Star Trek: Discovery shocked fans when it killed off a major character in its premiere, and one series showrunner has implied that it may not be the last time something like that occurs.

Michelle Yeoh played Captain Philippa Georgiou in the two-part premiere of Star Trek: Discovery, "The Vulcan Hello" and "Battle at the Binary Stars." Georgiou accompanied her mutinous first officer, Michael Burnham, in boarding the Klingon Ship of the Dead during the Battle at the Binary stars, but she didn't make it back alive.

"Well, I remember when we were talking about joining the Star Trek series and I very clearly said, 'If you kill me off, I don't want to do it," Yeoh recalls in a new featurette. "I've been a fan for a long time and it's very meaningful to join the family. So I said, 'If you kill me, thank you but no thank you.'"

Yeoh then laughs about it since she somehow ended up dying in "Battle at the Binary Stars" anyway.

"I've had people who have read the script, in fact, one of the cast members who went, 'Now way,' and they re-read it a few times to see if they were missing chapters," she says.

Co-showrunner Aaron Harberts says Georgiou's death shows how dangerous the world they've built for Star Trek: Discovery is.

"I'd say nobody is safe from the standpoint of in life nobody is safe," Harberts says. "You just don't know how fate intervenes. We've got brave people who are working in dangerous environments and coming up against dangerous situations and dangerous cultures and anything can happen."

Yeoh says the goal is to make fans, many of whom have likely been following the franchise for decades, feel like they don't know what's going to happen next.

"I hope they're going to be shocked and stunned," she says. "I think that's what we want to do. I think that's the interesting thing about this, the new series that we're doing. There's so much love, it's so well-understood, but what's the fun if you know everything, right? We would like to throw curveballs at you where you go, 'Huh, really?' and then 'Why is going that way?' and 'Okay, what's happening?" and I think it will be exciting in that way.

"But that's what you want from Star Trek," she continues. "It's like we're going where no man has gone before. In space, who knows what's going to look back at you?"

Star Trek: Discovery returns to CBS All Access on January 7, 2018.