Star Trek: 10 Things We Now Know About Agent Daniels (aka Kovich)

After the initial shock of the reveal that Doctor Kovich was Daniels (and vice-versa), we all began to wonder if, like that infinity loop bringing us back round again, the end (for Kovich) had all been planned from the beginning. Fortunately, the wait for answers was decidedly more finite. In an interview with CinemaBlend's Mick Joest, which I also referenced in a recent news article on the topic, Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise gave a few details on the big reveal:

It's something that evolved. The way David [Cronenberg] plays Kovich is so interesting and mysterious, and we found ourselves any time he was on screen just leaning in and wondering like, what is this character?

Paradise then went on to add that,

I don’t remember if it was season four or five. It may have been season four. Two of our writers. I think it was Carlos [Cisco] and Eric [J. Robbins] pitched, 'What if it was Daniels?'

As Paradise also noted in the interview, at least as far as season five of Discovery is concerned for definite, there are "Easter eggs" to the Doctor's 'true' identity placed throughout, such as his old-timey habit of "writing with pen and paper". Perhaps even Captain Archer himself picked up that legal pad for Daniels/Kovich in Detroit?

One of the most evocative of those now in-hindsight links is the 'Infinity Room,' introduced in Discovery's fifth season opener Red Directive. Time travel might well have been outlawed by the 32nd century, or so we are told, but Kovich's secure hideout had all the hallmarks of a Daniels-style Temporal Observatory, if decidedly more monotone.

"A bit theatrical for my taste, but some like that sort of thing," Kovich noted to Captain Burnham and Admiral Vance about the place. A nod, perhaps, to the fact that in his youth, with the technology afforded to him as a temporal agent, Daniels certainly liked to put on a show!