Star Trek Discovery Cast Adds Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp

Beam 'em up, Scotty! Or, you know, whoever is in charge of Engineering in Star Trek: Discovery. Earlier this month, CBS announced it has cast Michelle Yeoh in a role believed to be the female lead. Now, fans have learned that the actress will be joined by two new co-stars, Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp.

It appears that Jones is set to play Lieutenant Saru, a science officer with Starfleet who hails from a new alien race. Rapp is said to play another Starfleet scientist Lieutenant Stamets who moonlights as an astromycologist and fungus expert. The character will also be the gay character that former showrunner Bryan Fuller mentioned earlier this year.

These two scientists will go on starship voyages with Yeoh's character Captain Georgiou. Fans are wondering whether other female actresses will be cast in leading roles, so fans are keeping an eye on the CBS All-Access flagship.

Earlier this year, Fuller talked about his work on Star Trek: Discovery and discussed how its title fit into the larger canon. "This ship is called the Discovery for a few reasons," Fuller explained. "Not the least of which is Stanley Kubrick's contribution to the Discovery on 2001: A Space Odyssey, NASA's vessel the Discovery, and also the sense of discovery." He added that the title of Star Trek: Discovery was also about "what the word 'discovery' means to Star Trek audiences who have been promised a future by Gene Roddenberry where we come together as a planet and seek new worlds and new alien races to explore and understand and collaborate with." Fuller went on to say that sense of discovering would manifest as the show reintroduces new and familiar aliens, ships, and technology to the Star Trek universe.

The ex-showrunner even teased that Star Trek: Discovery would delve into a missing part of the universe's lore which Trekkies have been wanting to see. "There's an incident and event in Star Trek history that's been talked about but never been explored," Fuller explained. "To do this series, we're telling a much more serialized story, to dig deep into a very tantalizing arc. And we have a character who's on a journey, and in order to understand something that is alien she first has to understand herself." The thirteen-episode first season will be heavily serialized, and he likens it to a "Star Trek novel."

Currently, Star Trek: Discovery is slated to debut in May 2017 after a short delay. The first episode will debut on CBS while all the remaining episodes will air on the network's paid streaming site, CBS All-Access.

[H/T] TV Line