The "Star Trek" lore has found its newest captain in Michelle Yeoh who is boarding the upcoming "Star Trek: Discovery" TV series.
This week, multiple news outlets revealed that the veteran Asian actress has signed on the project to play the lead role in the small screen reboot. Although a representative for the sci-fi program would not deny nor confirm the news, it is said that it is already a done deal.
While the casting may sound like Yeoh will be playing the main protagonist of the narrative, which happens to be a lady lieutenant commander for the Discovery, she will actually be manning a different ship in the USS Shenzhou. This new spacecraft is said to be pivotal in the overall story arc of the first season of the show .
Yeoh's casting seemingly acknowledges the ongoing campaign for more diversity in Hollywood by putting one of Asia's biggest stars at the forefront of a highly anticipated TV series. Furthermore, this is a welcome development with production becoming quite problematic these past few weeks rooting from Bryan Fuller eventually stepping down as the showrunner of the project.
The producer had been a huge part of the show pushing through as he was the one who created the concept of "Star Trek's" TV comeback. But after he was already able to lay out a solid foundation for the story of the program, he had to drop the project due to other commitments.
Plot details for "Star Trek: Discovery" is still scarce as of right now but Fuller previously said that it will tap into a specific time in the lore that has yet to be fully fleshed out.
"There's an incident and an event in 'Star Trek' history that's been talked about but never been explored. To do this series, we're telling a much more serialized story, to dig deep into a very tantalizing storyline. And we have a character who's on a journey, and in order to understand something that is alien, she first has to understand herself," the then-showrunner shared during this summer's Television Critics Association's press tour.
"Star Trek: Discovery" will be the first time the famed franchise will be back on the small screen after "Star Trek Enterprise" wrapped up in 2005. It was set to premiere sometime in January 2017 as the first series produced and developed for CBS' new subscription streaming service, All Access, but was eventually moved to premiere in May 2017. The show's pilot will be a two-hour bonanza with the first hour written by Fuller and co-creator Alex Kurtzman. The succeeding one, meanwhile, was penned by Nicholas Meyer.
