Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 To Feature More Federation Species

Star Trek: Discovery co-showrunner Aaron Harberts revealed Andorians and Tellarites will appear in the series’ second season, responding “Definitely” to a question posed on Twitter.

Andorians and Tellarites are two of the four founding races of the United Federation of Planets, alongside Vulcans and Humans, two species already prominently featured in Discovery’s first season. We don’t know much about Season 2 of Discovery, but the addition of consequential Federation species points to a more diplomatic second season after the end of the Klingon-Federation war.

After a couple mentions in earlier episodes (first named “United Federation of Planets” in “A Taste of Armageddon”), the structure and diplomatic purview of the United Federation of Planets was first explored in Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Journey to Babel.” Conveniently, we recently wrote about it and Rocco made this handy GIF:

That’s them: Tellarite, Andorian, Captain Kirk representing the humans and Spock’s dad Sarek, the Vulcans.

Just like Vulcans, Tellarites and Andorians each have their own way of being alienating assholes. Andorians are militant, quick to anger, super suspicious of other species and hold death duels. Tellarites are whiny, stubborn, impatient and complaining. They’re also expert politicians and bureaucrats, but more incline to badger than engage in Socratic dialogue like the Vulcans.

Shortly after the Discovery premiere, before the official Season 2 renewal, Harberts said the arc of Season 2 wasn’t yet decided, telling TrekMovie, “Everything is sort of in the crock-pot, just plugged in.”

A week later, executive producer Alex Kurtzman described progress toward a Season 2 plot. “There is a certain point when you are working through the story arc of a season that you start to have ideas you fall in love with that you realize cannot go into that season. So, you start putting them on index cards and thumbtacking them to the board and then suddenly that becomes the next season,” Kurtzman said to TrekMovie. “We are about to start shooting the final episode, so late in the season a really strong emotional idea became clear to all of us and we decided that is what season two is going to be all about. If we get a season two, the seeds are going to be planted at the end of season one.”

They got a Season 2:

Since the first season will wrap up the Klingon-Federation War, and everything we’ve heard about Season 2 suggests it will follow organically from Season 1, we might be moving from war-time clarity of purpose to war’s aftermath and the diplomatic fallout resulting from a new galactic status quo.

It’s also possible the Andorians and Tellarites are just kicking around and have nothing to do with United Federation of Planets diplomacy. But chances are, if you’ve got Andorians and Tellarites, you’re going to be dealing with the Federation.