Star Trek: Discovery's Captain Rayner is an alien that you may forgot existed

Star Trek is bringing in several new characters for the upcoming final season of Star Trek: Discovery. Yet, the name that has brought the most interest from the fandom is the new character played by Callum Keith Rennie, who once played Leoben on Battlestar Galactica. Also known as No. 2, he played arguably the most vile and complicated of all the Cylons.

Now, Rennie will jump to Star Trek, where he'll play a new Starfleet officer, named Captain Rayner. Once fans saw him, many wondered if he'd be a Vulcan, due to his pointy ears. Yet, others surmised that he may be a Romulan, as the show is now set in the 32nd century and anything is up for grabs storywise.

Yet, it turns out Rennie isn't come on board to play any one of a dozen familiar characters, but a lesser-known alien. According to Michelle Paradise at SXSW (via ScreenRant) it was revealed that Rayner is in fact a Kellerun.

"[Captain Rayner is] a Kellerun. We were looking for a species that not a lot had been done with them. We definitely wanted another non-human on the ship and taking care of things. And Kellerun is one that had not been explored a whole lot. So we were able to also build some backstory for him and for his planet that we’ll come to learn more about later."

For those unfamiliar, the Kellerun only got one episode on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a season two episode called "Armageddon Game". The episode's depiction of them did in fact feature the obvious ears that we've seen in advertisements for the character, but also a far more outlandish hairstyle as well. The hair of the Kelleruns in the episode is dark black and pulled back, almost like a traditional Samurai bun.

Yet, we can clearly see that after 900-plus years, things have clearly changed. It'll be interesting to see what backstory has been added to this admittedly underutilized aliens.