Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Reveals Its 'Legacy' Casting And Very Vulcan First Look
Four and a half Vulcans enter a transporter room, and Doctor Roger Korby is not yet an android.
We've known since March 2023 that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was coming back for a third season. In fact, it was renewed for a fourth in April 2024. Owing to the SAG-AFTRA strike (and understandably so), we've had a little longer to wait for the conclusion to the Gorn cliffhanger at the end of Hegemony, stunned into silence as much as Captain Pike, and expecting answers like the rest of the crew.
They were never going to tell us how that all gets resolved (and it will be resolved or there'd be no Worlds, New or Strange). What they did reveal, however, at San Diego Comic-Con will have you ooh-ing in canonical delight like the audience to Akiva Goldsman and laughing like a Lanthanite on hallucinogens!
He's not an android just yet, and Christine Chapel is made of tougher things. Before yet more heartbreak for her, future fiancé and current giver of fellowships, Doctor Roger Korby — featuring only via subspace message until now in Strange New Worlds — will be appearing in person in the series, to be played by Irish actor, and headshot dead ringer for a certain half Vulcan, Cillian O’Sullivan. Little more than both names is known at the moment, but O'Sullivan will be joining the cast as a "recurring guest star". Technically speaking, the 'real' Roger never appeared in Star Trek: The Original Series ("Dr Korby… was never here"), so one episode of SNW is already a lot more time with the character!
If you thought that was it, you ain't seen nothing, and holy hell that's a high head of hair, yet! The SNW panel also showed us a first look clip that was truly hilarious in a way only piercingly on-point logic over a sea of seething emotions (and a disappointed Pelia who's missing out) can be.
At the start of the clip, for reasons unknown other than to go on an away mission, we learn that Chapel has managed to "jury-rig the Kerkhovian serum [from Charades]" to turn herself, Pike, Uhura, and La'an (but not Pelia) into Vulcans! The result is… well, it's… "Fascinating!" From writhing around on the floor, unable to bear the sudden intense emotion, but played with all the finely camp comedy they could muster, the four go to stood serenely with pointed ear, carefully coiffed, and with quite the set of eyebrows! And is that the lilt of a Scottish accent I hear in the transporter room? Most excellent to see Martin Quinn back as Scotty! As executive producer Henry Alonso Myers told TVLine in August 2023, "we will see him more".
They might want to break out more of those lirpas, too, as it seems the effects of the Kerkhovian serum can't be reversed. Poor Spock might have to put up with being hazed by his formerly-human crewmates for a while longer! With this, the "Hollywood murder mystery" episode tease, and the fact that Strange New Worlds: The Musical might be coming to the stage, we're most definitely ready (Ready, ready) for season three, coming sometime in 2025!