Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Hugh Culber

One of the more unusual facts about Hugh Culber that might have passed you by is how he met his husband. The good doctor was sat minding his own business, humming a bit of Kasseelian opera, at a café on Alpha Centauri when a not so fun-guy fungi expert told him to "stifle it or sit somewhere else". Proving he had the patience of a thousand Deanna Trois, Culber sat next to Stamets instead.

The dancing scene in which Stamets recounts this story in Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad also marked the introduction of the Kasseelians as a species to Star Trek. Little is known about them, aside from their operatic oddities — their prima donnas apparently train their whole life for one performance and then dagger themselves in the heart after the last high 'E'. That would certainly have made one of The Doctor's recitals a lot more interesting!

Culber's love of alien arias proved equally important in life as it did in death. In Vaulting Ambition, Stamets encounters a version of his husband in their mycelial network quarters, and it is Kasseelian opera, an original piece composed for the episode by Jeff Russo, that Stamets plays to ward off his mirror counterpart. In a moving scene from the following episode, a vision of Culber instructs Stamets to "follow the music," allowing him to guide the Discovery back to the Prime universe.

Still, if in doubt, follow the Janeway rule: "No opera!"