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Jason Isaacs named as starship captain in the new Star Trek TV series – Discovery

The British-born actor joins a diverse cast in a new series set about a decade before Captain Kirk’s five-year mission

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The next Star Trek series – Discovery – will feature Jason Isaacs as the captain of the eponymous starship.

Very few details of the upcoming science fiction show are available as yet. It airS on CBS All Access, a streaming video-on-demand service in the US, and on Netflix in the rest of the world.

Discovery’s showrunners are Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman. Kurtzman, who like Isaacs is Jewish, was co-writer and executive producer on the 2009 Star Trek reboot film as well as a slew of other hit film and TV properties. Fuller also has some Trek history, with writing credits on both Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

Unusually for a Star Trek series the captain of the ship – Isaacs in this case – is not intended to be the main character in the action. Instead we will follow the stores from the point of view of Rainsford, a lieutenant commander newly assigned to the USS Discovery, who will be played by Walking Dead alumna Sonequa Martin-Green.

In a promotional video announcing the show, Fuller said “We’ve seen six series from the captain’s point of view; to see a character from a different perspective on the starship — one who has a different dynamic relationships with a captain, with subordinates, it gave us richer context.”

Isaacs will come to Discovery hot from another Netflix sci-fi success, The OA, and fans who can’t wait to see him when Discovery launches some time in the Autumn can see him in Weinstein Co.’s upcoming Hotel Mumbai and Armando Iannucci’s all star Death of Stalin which is co-written by David Schneider.

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