CBS has finally confirmed January 2019 as the official return of Star Trek Discovery with the release of their official Season 2 poster.
So far we’ve learned from the Season 2 Comic-Con trailer that at least the beginning of season two will focus on Captain Pike (Anson Mount) assuming command of the Discovery under regulation 19, section c, to assist him in talking down the origin of the seven mysterious red bursts spread across thirty thousand light years.
The poster of course makes up the classic Star Trek logo by joining the mysterious red dots. But something else jumped out at me immediately, the shape in the centre of the Star Trek logo. To me it looks like something that I didn’t think we’d be seeing in Discovery, the blurred logo of the Romulan Star Empire.
TEASER KEY ART for the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. Photo Cr: CBS All Access © 2018 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.
It doesn’t fit perfectly, but we’ve already seen Discovery take a few creative liberties (Read: Klingon’s), so this wouldn’t be a large departure by comparison.
But what could this mean for season 2?
On the surface it doesn’t appear that we can be ready to meet the Romulan’s, after all it’s made clear by Spock in The Original Series episode ‘Balance of Terror’ that no Human, ally (at the time allies would have been Vulcan, Tellarite, and Andorian) or Romulan had ever seen the other and that the neutral zone had always lived up to it’s purpose up until that point.
Of course were also dealing with Spock himself here also, as Michael Burnham looks to be off on her own quest to find out what happened to her foster brother, so it’s possible that during the course of the mission he is presently lost on he had needed to cross the neutral zone and discovered the truth about the Romulans being long lost Vulcans, and to preserve the treaty he had to hide the fact that he knew, even from his future Captain James T. Kirk.
This may also explain why Spock is later so interested in reunification and in knowing his Romulan counterparts. Imagine living with that secret for so long and not being able to share your foreknowledge even after the fact.
Other Possibilities…. There are many.
It’s also entirely possible the Romulans have also seen these mysterious red bursts, perhaps the closest is even in the neutral zone and both sides decide, via subspace radio, that they can both enter the zone to scan the area. They may not see each other face to face, even though the audience does.
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Or could this be the logo of another race? Perhaps the race behind the mysterious bursts, or as @TrekkieGirls pointed out on Twitter, could it be. The Starfleet medical logo?
I for one can’t wait to find out, what do you think?