The current word is that Michelle Yeoh is playing a Lt Commander and will be a starship captain in a recurring role but she is not the lead and not captaining the show’s featured ship.
So…Sulu’s Excelsior?
Wait a Lt. Commander that is in charge of a whole ship? Think there would be some Trekkies who would take issue with that.
Smaller ships used to have a lieutenant-commander as a captain. It would be a first for Star Trek though to have a captain that doesn’t actually hold the rank.
well Sisko was a commander with a ship and later on in the Dominion war Dax (Lieutenant Commander) became Captain of the Defiant (we also saw Worf as Captain of the Ship in First Contact). endnerdoutburst
This would not be unprecedented. The rank of Captain on a ship can be bestowed upon any rank and has even been bestowed on cadets in emergency situations. Benjamin Sisco was a Commander when he was Captain of the Defiant. Spock was a Lt. Commander when he assumed captaincy of the Enterprise. The rank of Captain is quite fluid.
Well not to get all “inside baseball” with this but I think we’re talking two different things. A lower rank taking command of a ship in some incident or emergency and becoming the “Captain” vs actually having the regular full rank of Captain in Starfleet. Also pretty sure Sisco got a promotion in a later season to rank of Captain.
Yes, but historically you don’t need to have the rank of Captain to be the regular commanding officer of a ship. The normal thing was to have lower ranks command the smaller ships (like a destroyer or light cruiser), but they would still be referred to as the Captain. However, I don’t think the Enterprise is supposed to be a small ship.
Yeah. The whole idea of the historical rank “commander” during the 18th and early 19th century Royal Navy was for the commissioned officer in charge of a vessel too small to merit a post-captain. Basically anything smaller than a frigate (with the rare exception of a post-ship sloop) was commanded either by a commander or a lieutenant, both of whom were called “captain” as a courtesy. And during this period commanders were only ever boat captains, they were never on board frigates or ships of the line as executive officers.
On the other hand, while lieutenant commander is a sort of tenure track grade today for an up and coming young officer, you wouldn’t ever have one in charge of a full-sized ship. Since the Federation navy is generally modeled on the USN, that suggests that Yeoh is in charge of nothing bigger than a corvette or a patrol craft of some kind.
Never a bad idea!
More cast news and we have Michelle Yeoh’s character’s name.
Apparently, the show is explicitly chasing that Chinese market money.
I do love both Michelle Yeoh and Doug Jones, so this is great.
It’s also cool that Anthony Rapp, whoever he is, comes from a theater background instead of television. I remember that being the case with a lot of really great Star Trek alums in the past. Like Nana Visitor, who played Major Kira, hadn’t acted in TV before, but had extensive theater background.
I honestly couldn’t remember where I’d heard the name Anthony Rapp before, so I looked him up. Rent, of course! He was amazing in that!
He was also one of the kids in Adventures in Babysitting.
Edit: Doug Jones as an alien? That brilliant contortionist/physical actor from the Hellboy movies and Pan’s Labyrinth and Billy from Hocus Pocus? That’s a great idea for a Star Trek show! Now if only they’d un-hire Akiva Goldsman, we’d really be cooking with gas.
Edit Edit: If Michelle Yeoh isn’t playing the lead, I predict that her character will die horribly after a few episodes, forcing our as-yet-uncast heroine into shouldering the burden of command.
[quote=“Telefrog, post:257, topic:77660, full:true”]Apparently, the show is explicitly chasing that Chinese market money.
[/quote]
Well, she is commanding the starship Shenzhou to boot. Can’t get more Chinese than that!
Lead actor cast.
[quote]
Unlike the previous series in the franchise, the main protagonist of Discovery won’t be a captain (at least, not initially). Fuller described Martin-Green’s character as a “lieutenant commander with caveats.” “We’ve seen six series from the captain’s point of view,” he explained. “To see a character from a [new] perspective on the starship — one who has different dynamic relationships with a captain, with subordinates, it gave us richer context.”[/quote]
And some Klingons!
[quote]
The show also cast three actors as Klingons: Chris Obi (Roots) as T’Kuvma, a leader seeking to unite the Klingon houses; Shazad Latif (Penny Dreadful) who will play Kol, a Klingon Commanding Officer, and protege of T’Kuvma; and the newcomer Mary Chieffo as L’Rell, the Battle Deck Commander of a Klingon ship.[/quote]
The only actor who has ever bothered me as a Klingon is Christopher Lloyd in Star Trek 3: Search for Spock. It is soooooo obviously Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future that I just can’t think of him as a Klingon. I want my Klingons to be unrecognizable as humans. I don’t want to think of them as humans with make up on.
I’m not sure I can remember any aliens in Star Trek who don’t look like humans with makeup on…
am I missing something here, or is it not rather late to be casting? A month before the series starts?