Jason Isaacs OF “STAR TREK: DISCOVERY” ON CBS ALL ACCESS

Before signing up for “Star Trek: Discovery,” what was your experience with the overall franchise?

I come from a family of boys and we used to fight, or still do fight, all the time. And in England, when I was 8, there were only three channels, I think – and the thing we fought most about was which channel we were going to watch at night. And there was never an argument when “Star Trek” was on. The whole family crammed onto the couch watching “Star Trek.” The idea that I was ever going to be a spaceman ... I was probably going to play football from Liverpool. I don’t know that I thought about being an actor, but the notion that I would get to stand one day and say, “Energize,” and point phasers and run in exactly the same way they did 50 years ago? There’s no (computer-generated) way to look like you are being hit by a torpedo, other than an embarrassing way. It’s unimaginable that we are doing it and that we get paid for messing around like children in the backyard.

Do you think “Star Trek: Discovery” maintains original creator Gene Roddenberry’s philosophies about life and coexistence?

Yeah, I think we have manifestations of that. I mean, we live in troubling, dark times (and there is) this extraordinary prism of sci-fi and fantasy and Gene Roddenberry’s vision to examine the craziness that’s going on the nightly news. The world is getting more divisive and groups being pitted against each other, and we are separating and isolating. And I don’t know how to explain it to my children. I don’t know how to tell them why there are people in power who say and do these awful things and create this much division.