‘Star Trek: Discovery’ season two: 10 things to know

Before you jump into season two, here’s what to know about the main characters

If season one of Star Trek:

Discovery was set against the grim and action-packed but ultimately weary backdrop of the Federation-Klingon war, season two marks a return to familiar Trekkian territory, one of gentle exploration and hardcore diplomacy. And while the spectre of that recent war still hangs over the crew of the Disco, as both the show and the eponymous starship are affectionately called, there’s room for more humour and lighter moments in the course of this new season, which picks up a new central mystery to solve and the re-introduction of a quintessential Star Trek character.

Not only do we come face-toface with an all-new Spock, the iconic half-human, half-Vulcan Starfleet officer made famous by Leonard Nimoy and more recently Zachary Quinto, we get

to meet him in a much younger avatar and finally find answers to the nature of the relationship between him and his foster sister Michael Burnham, the face of Discovery.

As to the aforementioned ‘mystery’, season two trailers and show notes indicate the appearance of seven red signals that appear at the same time, spread across 30,000 lightyears. The USS Enterprise, Starfleet’s flagship starship, suffered a shipwide shutdown after tracing one of the signals, forcing one Captain Pike (another old Star Trek character played now by Anson Mount) to take the helm of Discovery to find the cause of these energy bursts.

Adding to the unstable situation is the vision of the Red Angel, a winged apparition that appears only to Burnham and Spock, and is somehow connected to this whole seven signals business.

Before you jump into season two, new episodes of which drop every Friday on Netflix in the UAE, here’s what you need to know about all the main characters, where we left them at the end of season one and where we expect them to boldly go now.