There’s a chance the USS Discovery will be a Franken-ship when Captain Lorca takes command of the Starfleet vessel, possibly solving the ever-growing mystery of two captains and crews on CBS’s upcoming Star Trek: Discovery.
The Space Invader reported on February 19 that “sources close to” the publication had told the site that the USS Shenzhou and the USS Discovery are actually the same ship. While there’s no real proof to back this theory up, it certainly would solve the issue of having two main starships for Discovery fans to keep up with throughout the series.
The idea is that the Shenzhou would appear in the first episode but undergo some unknown, major duress, leaving it unfit for flight. The ship would be repaired and renamed the Discovery after the aforementioned mysterious duress, and the title of Captain would shift from Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou to Jason Isaacs’s Captain Lorca.
But then the question becomes: What happens to the crew of the Shenzhou? It’s a hell of a way to go if they all die in the first episode of the highly anticipated series. And that seems doubtful, considering how big of a deal the casting announcements of Shenzhou crew members have been. It wouldn’t make sense to introduce brand new characters and then kill them off immediately. Some have theorized that the crew of the destroyed Shenzhou would join up with the crew of the Discovery, or that one would be a rogue, adversarial crew with its own Fleet-licensed ship.
Either way, there’s a good chance Star Trek: Discovery will be like no Trek story told before.
Star Trek: Discovery doesn’t currently have a release date, but here’s everything we know so far.
