'Star Trek: Discovery': "What's Past is Prologue" First Look Photos Released

01/30/2018 01:17 pm EST

CBS has released new photos from this week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery, titled "What's Past is Prologue."

The photos include new looks at Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs), Lt. Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), Emperor Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), and Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green).

Take a look at the attached gallery.

The official synopsis for "What's Past is Prologue" reads, "Lorca plans to move forward with a coup against the Emperor, propelling Burnham to make a quick decision to save not only herself, but the USS Discovery."

Last week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery, "Vaulting Ambition," revealed that Captain Gabriel Lorca is actually the Lorca from the mirror universe. He somehow ended up in the prime timeline after staging a failed coup against Emperor Philippa Georgiou. Everything he's done since then – bringing Burnham aboard the Discovery, convincing Stamets to use the spore drive, obscuring the truth about how the Discovery ended up in the mirror universe – has been part of his plan to return to his home and finish what he started.

This is just the latest in a trifecta of big reveals from Star Trek: Discovery's second chapter. Before revealing that Lorca was a mirror universe native, Star Trek: Discovery also revealed that Georgiou is the Terran Emperor and that Lt. Ash Tyler was actually the Klingon torchbearer Voq.

These twists are all part of a second chapter that the show's executive producers teased would please fans of the original Star Trek.

"It'll be fun for Trek fans," showrunner Aaron Harberts said, teasing a "nice nod to stuff from [The Original Series]...It's definitely again a war story, as far as how it'll play out, but our characters find themselves in a place where their identities are challenged. It's an emotionally wrought back half. Very intense. The cast has done some amazing work.

"The other thing that's a huge theme for us is taking the Federation from the darkness into the light. Everybody wants this optimistic version of Star Trek right out of the gate. And I feel that our show has a lot of hope in it from episode to episode, depending on storyline we're tracking. By season's end, people will see the Federation they've come to know and love from The Original Series on."

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

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