Good news for Star Trek fans—and also people who simply remain deeply amused at the idea of Tig Notaro, Bona Fide Space Hero—but CBS confirmed today that its breakout streaming hit Star Trek: Discovery will return for a third season. As far as big shocking news goes, this pretty much isn’t; Discovery is the flagship of CBS and Paramount’s recent push to revive Star Trek as a going concern on TV—including two animated series, a short film anthology, and the Patrick Stewart Picard show—but it’s still nice to know that the adventures of Michael Burnham and her crew/captains will continue.
The second season of Star Trek: Discovery doubled down on the show’s narrative formula, which attempts to weld a modern-style “mystery show” structure onto classic Trek tropes, tantalizing audiences with clues about Burnham’s brother Spock, “Red Angels”, and also, again, Tig Notaro as a wry, badass Starfleet engineer. Trek movie writer (and, let us never forget, director of The Mummy) Alex Kurtzman took over as the series’ showrunner this year, after a contentious first season afflicted by the dreaded Bryan Fuller Bailing Syndrome. He’ll be officially joined as co-showrunner next season by The Originals’ Michelle Paradise, who signed on to Discovery during the second half of season two. Meanwhile, streaming-phobics might be in luck, too; the show’s producers have started expressing vague plans to run reruns of the show on CBS itself at some undefined future date.