NEW YORK — The Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden was packed to bursting with fans eager to watch the crew of the USS Discovery discuss Season 2 of the newest "Star Trek" series at New York Comic Con.
Only moments after panel moderator Rebecca Romijn (who will play Number One) introduced the cast to the stage, executive producer Alex Kurtzman showed the 5,500 fevered fans a brand-new trailer — and only the second, following the trailer that debuted at San Diego Comic Con back in July. [Where Should 'Star Trek: Discovery' Boldly Go in Season 2?]
Similar to that trailer, this new one features a lot of footage from first few episodes of the second season, but it also incorporates clips from episodes all the way up to the midway point.
If you recall, at the end of Season 1, the USS Discovery was last seen in a rendezvous with the USS Enterprise, currently under the command of Capt. Christopher Pike. Apparently, Spock (who, coincidentally, has taken a leave of absence from the Enterprise so we don't get to see him — yet) is connected to a significant new cosmic threat, with strange anomalies popping up throughout Federation space, necessitating an urgent response from the Enterprise and now the Discovery, which Pike takes command of.
The trailer begins with the USS Discovery — not the Enterprise — in an asteroid field, and we even see some of the crew on a spacewalk. It dramatically cuts to Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) carrying Saru (Doug Jones), who looks badly injured as sparks fly around them and red alert indicators flash through the corridors.
As we saw in the first trailer and was confirmed in the NYCC panel by Anson Mount, the first mission Pike undertakes with the USS Discovery crew (while still in his USS Enterprise gold uniform), is into a dangerous area of space with nasty rocky asteroids to find the USS Hiawatha.
He reassures the Discovery bridge crew that no one gets left behind and off they warp.
Cut to Burnham once again as she tries to figure out what the seven symbols mean and how they are linked to science officer Spock's (Ethan Peck) disappearance. Spock had a vision, so we are told, and he called it the "red angel."
At first fans speculated that this might refer to the icon for the Romulan Empire, fueling debate over whether this was in some way connected to the reunification between the Vulcans and the Romulans far in the future as we saw in the "Star Trek: the Next Generation" (Season 5, episodes 7 and 8).
Now we see Burnham in distress and lying injured in an environment suit, surrounded by the burning wreckage of…something. Is it the USS Hiawatha? But she has a moment of clarity as an "unmistakable feeling that everything was going to be all right" washes over her.
We get a quick glimpse of what looks like a holographic projection of a Klingon K't'inga class battle cruiser. And then we see what, at first glance appears to a changeling morph into Emperor Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) from the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe. However, what makes more sense given that she's now been recruited into the clandestine arm of Starfleet, Section 31, is that she was wearing a holographic disguise.
A barrage of action follows and we get our first glimpse of Romijn as Number One. Stamets (Anthony Rapp) proposes something alarming to Tilly (Mary Wiseman) while Saru looks on, and, using some kind of big old beam weapon, Stamets appears to yank something out of Tilly. Could it be connected to that easy-to-forget scene in the Season 1 episode "What's Past Is Prologue" (Season 1, Episode 13) where one of the spores seemed to embed itself in Tilly's back?
The crescendo builds, phasers are drawn, people are panicking, explosions…er, explode. Pike says, "This looks bad." And then,we get our first proper glimpse of the bearded Spock (Peck), who looks like a cross between Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) from "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" and "Motion Picture" Spock (Leonard Nimoy) when he's on Vulcan failing the Kolinahr, a ritual to purge himself of all human emotion.
This trailer has sent fans into a frenzy, as it suggests we're in for an even better season than the last one.
Share your thoughts in the comments section below and look for even more coverage of everything "Star Trek: Discovery" from this year's New York Comic Con.
The second season of 'Star Trek: Discovery" will comprise 13 episodes with no midseason break. It will premiere on , Jan. 17, 2019, in the U.S. and Canada, and in the rest of the world on Jan. 18.
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