'Star Trek: Discovery' Star Explains the Details of That Big Klingon Twist

Star Trek: Discovery revealed the truth about Ash Tyler and Voq, but was there ever a real Ash Tyler at all?

Discovery star Shazad Latif gave his thoughts on that matter to IGN. He believes Tyler was an actual prisoner of war that L'Rell used to manufacture Voq's human form.

"Yeah, I think L'Rell used a captured soldier," Latif says. "She took this guy and then used his body and his brain and his memories, with all the skill she has as a conscious[ness]-transferring scientist. It's amazing."

This makes sense since Lorca was able to bring up his cellmate's memories after they escaped. It was also part of the conversation between Latif and the producers.

"It was an ongoing conversation from very early, because, you know, stuff changes completely in 10 months as you write," he said. "The writers end up changing things to each actor, and they're writing scenes for them specifically. And everything changes sort of organically as you're going along. So ideas that were originally there in episode one might have completely changed, I think. So there was always different people's views, or producers -- you know, different people going, maybe this or this. And, everyone wants to understand the science of it anyway. But, yeah, that was the basic essence of it, that it was more like how it's done. But originally the idea was the same, that he was laid over the top of this core Voq body, and slight, certain organs were put in. And then the transfer of consciousness and memory."

Latif also commented on his original casting as a different Klingon, Kol.

"I was originally gonna play Kol, and then we switched to Voq and Tyler because the producers, we had time, and I got it, and it sort of all felt right," said Latif. "And I definitely wanted to play [it]. I know it was double the amount of work, but really, double the amount of rewards because it was just a beautiful, beautiful part for an actor to get involved with."

He also stressed that he never filmed any footage as Kol. That was all Kenneth Mitchell.

"Yeah, very soon in, as soon as [the] writing changed," he said. "You know, because ideas are coming out every day from the writers, and there's so many writers, so many things, and how you want to tell the story, and things might change day to day. So, as soon as I arrive in, I start reading. We're doing early versions of scripts, and they go, well, do you want to try out for this character? And [Discovery executive producer] Alex Kurtzman had always liked stuff from [Latif's series] Penny Dreadful, and so we got on really well, and it was just -- I was like, yeah. I'm definitely gonna want to double the workload, and yeah, let's do it, let's go for it. You know? All the better, because then Kenneth comes along and plays Kol way better than I could."

New Star Trek: Discovery episodes become available to stream Sundays at 8:30 p.m. ET on CBS All Access.