The galaxy of Star Trek: Discovery might have a lot in common with the violent world of Westeros. The co-showrunner of the new series, Gretchen Berg, has revealed that the new Trek series can (and probably will) kill off main characters. So here’s the question: Who will be the first to go?
Possible spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery ahead.
On Friday, Entertainment Weekly published comments from Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts about the potential mortality rate on Star Trek: Discovery. Unsurprisingly, they referenced the influence of Game of Thrones. “They almost made it difficult to fall in love with people because you didn’t know if they were going to be taken away from you,” Berg said. “That show’s had an influence on all TV dramas that have come after it.”
With that in mind, it’s possible that Discovery could kill off one of its new lead characters sometime in its first season. And a lot of fans think that character is Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou. One YouTuber even went so far as to speculate that Captain Georgiou could be killed off in the pilot episode of Discovery. While this might sound outrageous at first, the death of Captain Georgiou would explain why Jason Isaacs’s Captain Lorca has been billed as the captain of the Discovery. In short, how can there be two Captains on the new Star Trek show unless one of them dies? (With that in mind, its equally possible Captain Lorca could bite it, and not Captain Georgiou.)
Although it’s not a perfect predictor, IMDb lists both Isaacs and Yeoh as appearing in all 15 episodes of Discovery’s first season, which seems to rule out an early death for either character. Unless, of course, one of the deceased characters appears in a flashback throughout the series. Even so, the Game of Thrones comparisons from Harberts and Berg obviously call to mind the specter of Sean Bean’s Ned Stark and his shocking death at the end of the first season of that show. Could the new Trek showrunners have something similar planned for one of their main characters?
Historically, Star Trek hasn’t shied away from killing off main characters. Spock died in feature film The Wrath of Khan. Lt. Yar was killed in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Jadzia Dax died in the sixth season of Deep Space Nine, and so on. And yet, those character deaths were never planned out by the writers from the beginning. In each case, situations arose with actors, necessitating that the characters be written out or killed off. If Discovery’s creative team plans on killing off main characters from the very start, it will truly take Star Trek where it’s never gone before.
Star Trek: Discovery will air on CBS on September 24.
