Star Trek Discovery casts major Trek character… then postpones air date indefinitely

Talk about giving an taking away…

It seems that Star Trek Discovery, the new CBS Trek series, has just cast a major character in the shape of Spock’s father, Sarek, who will be played by Gotham’s Theow Galvan AKA Azrael, Jame Frain (below).

This is big news as Sarek has been a major part of Trek lore, recently appearing in the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie series too: “Sarek is an astrophysicist, the Vulcan ambassador to the United Federation of Planets and the father of Spock, who he had with his Earth-born human wife Amanda. The character appeared in the original Star Trek series, The Next Generation and in several of the films. He was most memorably portrayed by the late actor Mark Lenard”

Filming of the series will kick off in Toronto next week.

So that’s the good news.

The bad?

Well, the series was meant to first hit screens this coming May (it was originally February), although given that showrunner Bryan Fuller recently stepped away from the show, we’re not entirely surprised that it’s a little all up in the air, although we’re hearing new show runners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts are on top of things.

According to the latest report, the issues are may:

This switch has a few reasons behind it, a key one is that recently cast star Sonequa Martin-Green is on AMC’s mega-hit The Walking Dead, which is airing its current season through April. There’s a concern about marketplace confusion if CBS were to ramp up promoting her as the star of a new sci-fi show while her horror hit is currently on the air. The other reason is there’s still a lot of careful deliberation continuing to go into making Discovery special, from the choice of directors, to set design, to the special effects.

CBS Television Studios issued the following statement: “Production on Star Trek: Discovery begins next week. We love the cast, the scripts and are excited about the world the producers have created.  This is an ambitious project; we will be flexible on a launch date if it’s best for the show.  We’ve said from the beginning it’s more important to do this right than to do it fast. There is also added flexibility presenting on CBS All Access, which isn’t beholden to seasonal premieres or launch windows.”

So there you have it, the good news and the bad.

Would you rather wait for it to be spot on? Let us know what you all think…

Discovery takes place roughly a decade before the events in The Original Series, so its events predate Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk joining forces on the Enterprise. Last month, Martin-Green was cast to star as a lieutenant commander on the Discovery.

Also cast: Michelle Yeoh will play Captain Georgiou, the Starfleet Captain aboard the Starship Shenzhou; Doug Jones will play Lt. Saru, a Starfleet Science Officer and a new alien species in the Star Trek universe; and Rapp was cast as Lt. Stamets, an “astromycologist,” fungus expert, and Starfleet Science Officer aboard the Starship Discovery. The show also cast three actors as Klingons: Chris Obi (Roots) as T’Kuvma, a leader seeking to unite the Klingon houses; Shazad Latif (Penny Dreadful), who will play Kol, a Klingon Commanding Officer, and protege of T’Kuvma; and the newcomer Mary Chieffo as L’Rell, the Battle Deck Commander of a Klingon ship.

Source: EW