‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 3 Trailer Welcomes You to the Future

“If things were easy…” says Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) towards the end of the brand-new trailer for Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery released as part of today’s Star Trek Day events. “…It wouldn’t be worth it,” says new character Cleveland “Book” Booker (David Ajala), finishing her sentence.

And that applies both to the challenges facing the crew of the Discovery when they find themselves stranded 930 years in their future, in the year 3188; and the challenges of finally releasing the third season of the series when it hits CBS All Access on Thursday, October 15. Filmed from July, 2019, through February, 2020, Discovery was originally expected to be released earlier this year. But due to coronavirus, all post-production on the effects-heavy series was done remotely. You can judge for yourself from the trailer above if it was worth it, but it’s clear the series isn’t shirking on the action, or locations, which added several days in Iceland to capture a locale never before seen on Discovery.

That’s part of the design of the season, which finds the crew reeling from their Season 2 decision to hide valuable data from an AI threat in the one place it can’t look for it: the future. With no way home, the crew discovers that not only are they in an unknown time period but the Federation doesn’t exist after a mysterious event called “The Burn.” Fans will surely speculate how “The Burn” relates to “Michael BURNham,” given that everything on Discovery always comes back to her. But casual fans might be wondering whether the crew will run into any other, familiar characters in this new era. While it’s always a possibility, the 32nd Century is a relatively untouched part of the Star Trek timeline: Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager mostly take place in the 2360s and 2370s. Even Star Trek: Picard doesn’t come close, with the first season of that series occurring in 2399. Point being, Discovery is far from allies, but it doesn’t mean they’re alone.

As the soaring, emotionally charged trailer continues, it becomes clear that Burnham doesn’t need to just reunite with her missing crew members, she also needs to reunite the Federation. And while Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) might be more concerned with kicking bad(der) guy butts as usual, the rest of Discovery is very much a family — and using that energy to heal the universe. It’s a far cry from the antagonistic strangers of Season 1, and though it’s been a long time coming, it’s pretty great to see them all hugging in engineering. Look, I’m sorry, I’ve been inside and without human contact for a long time, let me cry at Commander Saru (Doug Jones) enveloping everyone in a big, Kelpien embrace in peace.

In addition to the new trailer, Discovery also revealed a new logo that “reflects this season’s jump into the future.” One might also note that the logo switches the size of the two parts… In previous logos, the “Star Trek” was emphasized, while here, “Discovery” is clearly much larger. Is this a potential indication of the way overall branding for the franchise will go? We’ll have to wait and see what happens with Picard (which has been picked up for Season 2), as well as the in-the-works Discovery spinoff, Strange New Worlds.

In addition to a new time period and a new logo, new cast members will be joining the series. There’s the aforementioned Ajala, who looks to be a new romantic interest for Burnham now that her previous love Ash Tyler/Voq (Shazad Latif) decided to stick around in the Discovery‘s original timeline. But the series is also adding the franchise’s first ever non-binary and trans characters with Adira (played by Blu del Barrio) and Gray (Ian Alexander).

There will still be familiar faces, though, in the rest of the crew of Discovery. Along for the ride are Lt. Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), Ensign Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), and Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), as well as fan-favorite Jett Reno (Tig Notaro), who gets some killer lines in the trailer.

The 13-episode season will be released weekly on Thursdays on CBS All Access starting October 15. In addition, CBS regular access (aka, broadcast) will be airing the first season of Discovery starting September 24 at 10/9c.

Where to watch Star Trek: Discovery