Last week it was reported that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Michelle Yeoh had been cast as a captain in the new Star Trek TV series Star Trek: Discovery. This casting has now been confirmed by CBS, but the character is slightly different than initially reported. Yeoh will be playing the Starfleet captain of the starship Shenzhou, as previously stated. However, her character will be named Captain Georgiou and not Han Bo.

Also announced is that Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp have joined Yeoh on the cast. Jones will be playing a Starfleet science officer named Lt. Saru, who’s also part of an alien species new to the Trek universe. Rapp also plays a science officer, named Lt. Stamets, who’s an astromycologist and fungus expert.

Jones is one of the very best in the business when it comes to roles requiring heavy make-up, something it doesn’t sound like he’s escaping here. He played both the Faun and the Pale Man in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, and while David Hyde Pierce provided the voice for Abe Sapien in del Toro’s Hellboy it was Jones you saw on screen. He was also Billy Butcherson in Hocus Pocus, Silver Surfer in Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Cochise on the TV series Falling Skies, and The Ancient on del Toro’s vampire series The Strain.

Rapp is best known as the original Mark Cohen in the Broadway musical Rent, and also played the role in the 2005 film adaptation. His other notable credits include Dazed and Confused, Six Degrees of Separation, Road Trip, A Beautiful Mind, and my personal favorite, Adventures in Babysitting.

When he was still showrunner, Bryan Fuller, who is still a producer, stated that there would be a gay character on the show. Fuller himself is gay, and when he worked on Star Trek: Voyager once upon a time he received a pile of hate mail due to a rumor that one of the characters might come out. As Fuller put it “We’ve come a long way since then,” and we now know that Rapp’s Lt. Stamets is that gay character.

Though the cast for Star Trek: Discovery is beginning to take shape, we still await word on who it is who will be playing the lead role.

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[Source: EW]