‘Star Trek: Discovery’: What’s Next After That Breakup, Plus Will New Number One Adapt to Crew?

Another change? The U.S.S. Discovery‘s new Number One: Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie), formerly captain of the Antares. And the adjustment? It’s not an easy one for him.

“Left to his own devices, he’s going to do his own thing. He’s doing what he was told. He’s just not doing it the way he was told,” Rennie says. Take, for instance, his way of meeting the crew: having each one come to him and tell him something about themselves in 20 words or less. As he sees it, that gives him the information he needs … though the actor does acknowledge that it doesn’t give his character enough time to get to know each member of the crew individually.

“He’s done research. He knows facts about them. He doesn’t know them in any deep way because he hasn’t been there long enough,” he says. “I’m pretty sure that on the Antares he knew everybody very, very well. Nobody likes to be told how to be something you’ve already been for a long time. And now he’s been put into a position where he’s supposed to learn things as well and he’s supposed to learn about people. And in that context, of course, he would be resistant and he’s doing the most basic thing he can do. He knows facts about them because that’s all he is going to know until they go through some kind of crisis together where you’ll see the true quality of each individual.”

Tilly (Mary Wiseman) calls him out, using her 20 words to remind him he’s on a new ship, fresh off a demotion, and trying to hide how hard that is. He then admits he knows he didn’t get off on the best foot, but for him, it’s important to keep the distinction between leadership and friendship clear. Analyzing the crew isn’t the same as connecting with them or showing them respect, and that’s important for them all to know.

Tilly’s starting to get through to him “because she’s bold and she sees through the presentation of what has worked for a long time,” explains Rennie, who praises Wiseman’s work. “He wants to keep people distant from a position of power and fear and she doesn’t buy it and he knows it. And she’s poking holes in it.”

And he will “slowly open up bit by bit to how things are different” now that he’s on the Discovery, Rennie says. Before that, “he needs to know that he’s not running the ship anymore, and I don’t know if he knows how to do that yet.”

Elsewhere, also on Trill, Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz) goes through quite the experience, allowing his body to be host to another’s consciousness as part of the mission to find the Progenitors’ power. “How much fun for an actor, I have to tell you,” Cruz raves. “I was just like, ‘Yes, let’s do that.’ It did drive me crazy, and I went a little insane trying to figure him out.”

After, he wonders to Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), how it’s possible he both was and wasn’t there and how he begins to explain that. Maybe he can’t with the science they have now, she suggests. His abuela used to tell him that not everything has to have an answer, but he’s not sure he’s okay with that. So how does that, being unable to fall back on science, shape Culber’s arc for the rest of the season?

“I think that really is his journey this season, is as a man of science that there are going to be questions, existential ones that will never get an answer to, and really getting to a point where you’re comfortable with the fact that not every question will have an answer, that there are some mysteries that need to be mysteries,” says Cruz. “I think that’s true for all of us. And if we can accept that, we’ll have a lot less anxiety, which I work on daily, and some acceptance over our current circumstances. It also allows him to continue to be in awe of life, of this life that he’s been given and this second chance at it.”

Star Trek: Discovery, Thursdays, Paramount+