‘Star Trek: Discovery’: Ethan Peck Explains Why Spock Has a Beard

Ethan Peck plays Spock in Star Trek: Discovery. One thing sets his younger Spock apart from Leonard Nimoy’s more than anything else and that’s his facial hair.

Spock is revealed to have a beard during the events of Star Trek: Discovery, leading fans to label him “hipster Spock.” Speaking to ComicBook.com at the TCA Winter 2019 Press Tour, Peck says the beard isn’t a fashion, political, or philosophical statement, but an external symbol of Spock’s internal turmoil.

“Well, I think it’s an externalization of what’s going on within him, which is he’s sort of a man apart, he’s unraveled, he’s had this traumatic experience with the Red Angel and it’s brought to light some things that he can no longer run from or compartmentalize with his logic,” Peck says. “It’s just we’re gonna have to deal with this human side in this season. And I think the beard is a nod to that, through his human side.”

Showrunner Alex Kurtzman spoke previously about the emotional state that fans will find Spock in Star Trek: Discovery.

“Well, obviously there was a lot of questions from the last season, right?” Kurtzman said. “How come Spock doesn’t ever mention his half-sister to Michael Burnham? And we owe the audience an answer to that. And one of the things that I’m most excited about with this season is that this is the untold chapter of Spock. So, this is Spock pre-TOS. He’s not actualized as the character you know from The Original Series yet. He has seen something that his logical brain and logical training cannot make sense of, and he’s emotionally ill-equipped to deal with it. So logic and emotion have failed Spock and he is trying to figure out who he is and what the signals mean and the red angel means. And it is through his relationship, his very complicated and broken relationship with Michael, that he’s able to actualize himself as the Spock we know from TOS, and that’s a big part of what the season’s about.

“Well, it’s funny because we pitched this season in some ways as, ‘This is the season about a human who learns emotion from a Vulcan and a Vulcan who learns logic from a human.’ So, it was an interesting barometer for how we wanted to gauge our relationship between the brother and sister.”

Are you excited to learn more about Spock in Star Trek: Discovery? Let us know in the comments!

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

Additional reporting by Scott Huver