The Star Trek: Discovery panel at this year’s New York Comic Con was expected to be a big deal, but it turned out to be the biggest event as the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden was packed to bursting point to watch the crew of the USS Discovery talk about what fans could expect in season two.

Only moments after panel moderator Rebecca Romijn (who will play Number One) introduced the cast to the stage, Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman showed the fevered 5,500 gathered fans a brand new trailer.

In a similar manner to the first look trailer that was shown at San Diego Comic Con back in July, this one features a lot of footage from the beginning of the second season, but it also incorporates clips from episodes up to the half way point.

If you recall, at the end of Season 1, the USS Discovery was last seen in a rendezvous with the USS Enterprise, currently under the command of Capt. Christopher Pike. Apparently, Spock (who, coincidentally, has taken a leave of absence from the Enterprise so we don’t get to see him — yet) is connected to a significant new cosmic threat, with strange anomalies popping up throughout Federation space, necessitating an urgent response from the Enterprise and now the Discovery, which Capt. Pike takes command of.

The trailer begins with the USS Discovery – not the Enterprise – in an asteroid field, we even see some of the crew going EVA. It dramatically cuts to Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) carrying Saru (Doug Jones) who looks badly injured as sparks fly around them and red alert indicators flash through the corridors.

As we saw in the first trailer and was confirmed in the NYCC panel by Anson Mount, the first mission Captain Pike undertakes with the USS Discovery crew (while still in his USS Enterprise gold uniform), is into a dangerous area of space with nasty rocky asteroids to find the USS Hiawatha.

He reassures the Discovery bridge crew that no one gets left behind and off they warp.

Cut to Burnham once again as she tries to figure out what the seven symbols mean and how they are linked to Science Officer Spock’s (Ethan Peck) disappearance. Spock had a vision, so we are told, and he called it the “red angel.”

At first fans speculated that this might the icon for the Romulan Empire, fueling debate over whether this was in some way connected to the reunification between the Vulcans and the Romulans far in the future as we saw in the Star Trek: the Next Generation (season 5, episodes 7 and 8).

Now we see Burnham in distress and she is lying injured in an environment suit, surrounded by the burning wreckage of…something. Is it the USS Hiawatha? But she has a moment of clarity as an “unmistakable feeling that everything was going to be alright” washes over her.

We get a quick glimpse of what looks like a holographic projection of a Klingon K’t’inga class battle cruiser. And then we see what, at first glance appears to a changeling morph into Emperor Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) from the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe. However, what makes more sense given that she’s now been recruited into the clandestine arm of Starfleet, Section 31, is that she the she was wearing a holographic disguise…

The crescendo builds, phasers are drawn, people are panicking, explosions…er, explode. Pike says, “This looks bad.” And then…we get out first proper glimpse of the bearded Spock (Ethen Peck) as looks like a cross between Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Motion Picture Spock (Leonard Nimoy) when he’s on Vulcan failing the Kolinahr.

Needless to say, fans have been in a frenzy as this trailer seems to suggest we’re in for an even better season than the last one.

The second season of Star Trek: Discovery will comprise of 13 episodes with no mid-season break. It will premiere on Thursday, January 17, 2019, in the US and Canada, and in the rest of the world on Friday, January 18, 2019.

Scott Snowden is MyM’s US Editor. Follow him on Twitter.

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