‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Showrunners Talk Recasting Spock

The first season of Star Trek: Discovery concluded with the Discovery coming bow-to-bow with the most famous Starfleet vessel of all, the USS Enterprise. Now some fans are wondering about one of the most famous Enterprise crew members, Mr. Spock.

Star Trek: Discovery takes place 10 years prior to the events of Star Trek: The Original Series. That means that the ship is currently under the command of Captain Christopher Pike and not Captain James T. Kirk. It also means that the ship has a different crew, but Spock would already be aboard the ship and serving as Pike’s science officer.

Spock has an important tie to Star Trek: Discovery. He is Michael Burnham’s foster sister and Sarek – Spock’s biological father and Burnham’s foster father – was aboard Discovery when the distress call from the Enterprise came in. Considering all of this, fans might assume that recasting Spock to appear on Star Trek: Discovery is inevitable. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the showrunners caution that fans shouldn’t get ahead of themselves.

Executive Producers Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts say introducing the Enterprise addresses the “elephant in the room,” but that it doesn’t necessarily mean Spock will appear in the show.

“You would have to have some sort of acknowledgment and interaction with this other ship and its inhabitants out there,” Berg says. “But our show is called Discovery and our main focus is always going to be on the people on Discovery. But we’re also living within the canon that is the entire Star Trek universe.”

Harberts adds, “We certainly aren’t confirming that we’re even going to introduce Spock and we certainly are not casting that role, either. We live a lot in memory and flashback. The center of our show is always Michael Burnham.

“[W]e realize how incredible Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto‘s performances were and what JJ Abrams and the original series were able to pull off with that character. Finding another actor that could even come close to what Leonard Nimoy did with the original portrayal, we’d never want to go down that road.”

That said, the showrunners didn’t rule out the possibility of seeing Spock on Star Trek: Discovery. Co-creator and executive producer Alex Kurtzman has expanded on the Enterprise‘s role in season two in a separate interview.

Star Trek: Discovery will return for a second season on CBS All Access.