Star Trek: Discovery Finds Its Lead With a Current Walking Dead Actress

TVGuide ^ | December 14, 2016

[SMGFan]

Star Trek: Discovery finally has its star. The Walking Dead's Sonequa Martin-Green will headline the first Star Trek series in over a decade for CBS All Access, TVGuide.com has learned. Martin-Green will play a lieutenant commander in the new series hitting CBS' streaming network in May 2017. This is the first time that a Star Trek series won't be anchored by a character playing a captain, but according to Entertainment Weekly, who first reported the news, Martin-Green's character's position as lieutenant will have "caveats."

Casting an African-American female to lead the series was a big priority for the show's original showrunner, Bryan Fuller, who left the show earlier this fall due to his other creative commitments. Sonequa Martin-Green's casting follows the announcement that Rent alum Anthony Rapp will also be playing the openly gay Lt. Stamets, an "astromycologist" and Starfleet Science Officer.

[Vince Ferrer]

Martin-Green will play a lieutenant commander in the new series hitting CBS' streaming network in May 2017. This is the first time that a Star Trek series won't be anchored by a character playing a captain

That's a step in the right direction. I have always wanted a Star Trek show called "Red Shirts." The show would never even show the captain or bridge crew, but instead would focus on lowly red shirted ensigns sent down to a planet to explore, only to be horribly killed by some creature. The rest of the show would focus on PTSD related issues in the crew.

[Rastus]

Yeah, but if the aliens weren’t messing with your brain, you’d know she was all messed up.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Will the captain be some nitwit man who can’t do anything right?

Why should it be any different then the last three?

[a fool in paradise]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Maidens

Star Maidens is a British-German science-fiction television series made by Portman Productions for the ITV network. Produced in 1975, and first broadcast in 1976, it was filmed at Bray Studios and on location in Windsor and Bracknell, Berkshire, and Black Park, Buckinghamshire. The series was partly financed by a German company, Werbung im Rundfunk (Advertising in Broadcasting).

The series presents a “battle of the sexes” and role reversal scenario in which male protagonists must escape servitude to women of an advanced civilization. The planet Medusa, home to a highly evolved and technologically advanced humanoid race, was already ruled by its women when a rogue comet knocked it out of orbit. Drifting through space, the planet's surface became uninhabitable, and the inhabitants survived by building underground cities. The series begins with Medusa's entry into Earth's solar system. At first heartened to discover Earth, the Medusans are disappointed to learn that the human men are dominant there. Two Medusan men escape by stealing a ship and flying to Earth.[1] Despite a successful escape, the two are pursued by the Medusan security forces. When the Medusans fail to re-capture the two men, they bring two human hostages—a man and a woman—back with them to their home planet. The series’ 13 episodes concern the two groups’ attempts to adapt to life on the different planets while brokering an exchange for the hostages. In the series finale, the Medusans’ ship is pursued by another spacecraft, this one belonging to an alien race that has hunted Medusans in the past. Despite their technology and the antagonism they displayed throughout the series, the Medusans prove incapable of actually fighting an enemy, and only the intervention of a Medusan ship flown by an Earth man defeats the enemy. The saved Medusans return home, likely with an altered opinion of men.

Regarded as something of a camp novelty, Star Maidens tuned in to the sexual equality revolution of the time, and features some female dominance elements. The series has some similarities with the British science-fiction series Space:1999, whose second season was in pre production at Pinewood around the same time. Although Star Maidens was shot at Bray Studios by a different production company and did not benefit from as large a budget, both series featured the work of production designer Keith Wilson, whose props and set designs from Space:1999 were adapted for Star Maidens, leading to a very similar look and feel. Even many of the sound effects from Space:1999 were used. Lead actresses Judy Geeson and Lisa Harrow appeared in guest roles in the first season of Space:1999, Geeson in the episode “Another Time, Another Place” and Harrow in “The Testament of Arkadia”.

[Vic S]

She’d make a good klingon.

[RinaseaofDs]

Hillary lost. Time to put this project into turnaround.

[vladimir998]

I have nothing against this actress, but I don’t think she’s a good enough actress to lead/carry a show.

[TomGuy]

Female centric science fiction is all the rage now and it sucks without exception. Will the captain be some nitwit man who can’t do anything right?

I have noticed what seems to be a developing trend: Strong (physical and personality) female as sheriff or former special forces married to a wimpy type male.

[Duchess47]

Okay, they are finally making a Star Trek I won’t watch. ~sigh~

[redshawk]

Darn, Sasha will be a walker by the end of TWD current season, she is fine actor. I agree that Star Trek is PC and I will avoid the show.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I met her way back in 1994 when she did the Trek Convention Circuit. She was a big booster for the Space Program.

[TheDon]

Same.

[TomGuy]

I watched the original and most of the spin-offs, but I just couldn’t get into StarTrek:Enterprise. I think I watched part of one episode.

NextGeneration was too PC. They would be on a trip to investigate warring planets, but would have to stop for a PC episode usually involving a malfunctioning holodeck or some such.

Voyager dragged on a bit too long.

[dangus]

Not far from it. A mycologist studies fungi, such as yeast.

[Duchess47]

I watched about half of Star Trek Enterprise. I just never could like the guy playing the lead. Watched all the rest although I didn’t like the lead guy in Deep Space Nine either. The rest of the cast made it watchable.

[StormEye]

"In "The Cage", I thought Yeoman Colt was more yummy:"

And according to the Talosians she has
"unusually strong female drives." Yeah..

[StormEye]

"Barret, Roddenberry’s 2nd wife, would be awfully old to have any kind of major role. She’ll be 85 before the show airs."

Yeah. Especially since she's been dead for a few years too.

[America_Right]

we’ve already soured on female captains.

I dunno. I'd follow Janeway into Hell. She pulled off some serious miracles without a Wesley.

[FredZarguna]

You are not the first to point that out. Evidently I missed the news of her passing. Not that that would be disabling in service of leftists causes.

[StormEye]

"I have noticed what seems to be a developing trend: Strong (physical and personality) female as sheriff or former special forces married to a wimpy type male. "

Yeah. This trend has been around since the "Cagney and Lacey" cop show.