The second season of "Star Trek: Discovery" may have come to a close, but if you're still craving some Starfleet action, you could always download and start playing the game "Star Trek: Online." "Star Trek Online" is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online (MMO) game that allows players to explore the "Star Trek" universe from within, and it's available for PC, PlayStation4 and Xbox One.
Players can forge their own destiny as captain of a Federation starship, champion the Empire through the far reaches of the galaxy as a Klingon Warrior, rebuild the Romulan legacy as the commander of a Romulan Republic Warbird or carry out daring missions on behalf of the Dominion as a Jem'Hadar soldier. Captains can also explore iconic locations from the "Star Trek" universe, make contact with new alien species and battle alongside other players in customizable starships.
If that doesn't sound enticing enough, a large number of "Star Trek" actors have voiced their characters in the game, counting Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton), Worf (Micahel Dorn), Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), Quark (Armin Shimerman), Kira (Nana Visitor), the Emergency Medical Hologram (Robert Picardo) and even Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) among the cast so far.
Related: Nana Visitor of 'Deep Space Nine' Talks 'Star Trek' Past and Future
Different missions mean that players interact with different characters.The latest mission to be added to the game is called "Rise of Discovery," which means Wiseman will be joined by "Discovery'' castmates Capt. Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and his loyal chief of security, Cmdr. Ellen Landry, played by Rekha Sharma.
"My story is set about a month after the Battle of the Binary Stars," Sharma told Space.com. "Captain Lorca and I are still on the USS Buran and it's set around Priors World in the Beta Quadrant.
"You're going to find out what kind of trials and tribulations they have gone through together that makes her have that unwavering devotion [to him]."
After the first season of "Star Trek: Discovery" drew to an exciting close, many fans were left with unanswered questions about Gabriel Lorca. "Star Trek Online" players can now uncover the truth behind the Federation captain's past through the eyes of his trusted commanding officer, Ellen Landry.
"Rise of Discovery" takes place when both Lorca and Landry were assigned to the USS Buran, before they joined the USS Discovery. Players answer a distress call from the Federation starship after it sustains heavy damage from Klingon forces, led by J'Ula, the matriarch of House Mo'Kai. The attack leaves its sole survivor, Lorca, stranded on a desolate ice moon littered with Klingon search parties. Lorca's fate now lies in the hands of "Star Trek Online" players, who must team up with Landry to ensure his survival.
"They've really dialed out every detail of the story and now I've got it down to what it needs to be. Everybody wants to be a hero. Everybody wants to be part of Starfleet, and so you get to do that. A player gets to work with the good guys," Sharma said.
In the first season of "Star Trek: Discovery," we saw both Prime Universe Landry and her Mirror Universe counterpart, albeit nine episodes apart. Sadly however, the Prime Universe version tried to…er, tame the giant tardigrade with phaser fire and got squished in "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry" (S01, E04).
"Squished is a nice way of putting it," Sharma said.
Some might say that was a waste of potentially a really good character.
"Yeah. So ... agreed-ish," Sharma said. "Yeah. I don't want to offend the writers, but yeah. It was a story that I think we're going to come to understand why it was such a quick and brutal ending by understanding more of her origin story."
Sharma is no stranger to science fiction. She played a prominent role in Ron Moore's widely praised "Battlestar Galactica" reimagining, and she was also in the reboot of Ken Johnson's underrated alien occupation sci-fi drama "V," which sadly lasted only two seasons, plus movies like "The Core" and "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem." And she was familiar with "Star Trek," too.
"I actually watched TOS [Star Trek: The Original Series] as an 8-year-old girl," Sharma said. "Cookies and milk and TOS after school. My big brother got me into it and then I got older and quote-unquote 'cooler' and kind of forgot about it. Then, when 'Battlestar Galactica' came along, that really started to open up the whole sci-fi world for me.
"And I remembered why I loved it so much when I was a kid ... it was really the first experience I'd had of storytelling that appealed to my idealism," she added. "Gene Roddenberry created a world, a vision for the future. I was a brown girl growing up in a white neighborhood and it was mind-blowing to imagine a future where there wasn't racism."
Sharma's experiences with 'Battlestar Galactica' gave her even more of a look at the impact science fiction can have.
"It's amazing to be a part of it now, as an adult and I love the genre, because we can talk about big issues like we did in 'Battlestar Galactica,'" she said. "You know, I was just remembering the other day, we went to the United Nations! What show gets invited to have a conversation with the United Nations?!
"Ah, that was some really big storytelling, big themes, important themes that, honestly, if you put a lot of those big topics into another genre that wasn't sci-fi, it wouldn't work and it wouldn't be appealing, but you can talk about really important issues so much more effectively in sci-fi."
"Star Trek Online" can be downloaded at playstartrekonline.com.
Both the first and second seasons of "Star Trek: Discovery" are available to stream in their entirety on CBS All Access in the U.S. and Netflix in the U.K. "Star Trek: Discovery" Season 1 is available now on Blu-ray.
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