‘Star Trek: Discovery’s Spock Intro Included a Major Original Series Tease

Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery “Light and Shadows” past this point.

We knew we’d eventually meet Young Spock (Ethan Peck) on Star Trek: Discovery. And finally, on this week’s episode he appeared, though very different from the classic character we knew from other TV series, movies, books, and more. But the biggest surprise wasn’t the Vulcan’s (re)introduction, it was where he and Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) are headed next… A classic Star Trek location that loops Discovery all the way back to the origins of the franchise.

But first, a quick recap of how we get there. While Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) are dealing with a time anomaly related to the season’s big mystery, the identity of The Red Angel, Burnham heads back to Vulcan to try and track down the missing Spock. Turns out, her mom has been hiding the possibly insane Spock pretty much this whole time. He’s muttering lines from “Alice in Wonderland,” the book she read to both Michael and her son when they were growing up, and scratching numbers and pictures of The Red Angel in a cave wall straight out of Game of Thrones.

Michael takes him to Section 31, but finds out they want to essentially suck his brain out to find out what he knows about the Red Angel (and the Starfleet officers he reportedly murdered). So she rescues him, and heads off in a shuttle, eluding both Section 31’s black ops ships and all of Starfleet. There, she feeds the computer the code numbers Spock was scratching in the cave wall, and they pump out one known location: Talos IV.

The planet is instantly recognizable to any hardcore Star Trek fan, but for those of you more casual, the gist is that this is the first planet ever visited in a Star Trek series. Sort of. In the original, scrapped Star Trek pilot “The Cage,” the starship Enterprise is captained by none other than Christopher Pike, along with his science officer Spock and a helmsman interestingly named José Tyler (among others). Receiving a distress call, they head to Talos IV and discover the vicious, psychic Talosians, who throw them into a human zoo. They escape, which is great, except the original pilot was scrapped, along with almost all of the crew except Spock. In fact, the episode didn’t see the light of day until decades later, in 1988.

But Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry wasn’t ready to let go of the ideas, and in a two part episode late in the first season of The Original Series, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) brought Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew to the seeming rescue of a radiation-poisoned Pike. Over the course of the episodes, Pike was eventually brought back to, and left on, Talos IV to live out the rest of his life.

So, here’s where things get tricky. Technically, “The Cage” takes place in 2254, which is two years before Discovery begins in 2256. “The Menagerie,” the two-part episode, by the way, takes place in 2267. But the Spock and Pike we meet in Discovery haven’t experienced “The Cage” yet. Since the episode never really aired, it’s not technically in continuity, which means things can be futzed with a bit, and that’s what seems to be happening here. Either we’re about to get a rough remake of “The Cage” with the Discovery crew, or we’re teeing up a later adventure as seen in “The Cage,” which will now take place a few years down the road (Pike is canonically Captain of the Enterprise until 2262).

Of note, when asked about the timeline at a press day before Season 2 premiered, Mount told reporters that, “This is 10 years before the Original Series, so he’s 10 years away from [The Cage].” Which would set “The Cage” in 2266 by Mount’s math, which is four years after Pike leaves the Enterprise so he’s definitely wrong about that. But the point is, what is happening now in Discovery happens before “The Cage” and before Pike visits Talos IV.

The other possibility, since we are dealing with a time-traveling entity in The Red Angel, is that the whole timeline is about to change. Or be repaired. Or something. Before my brain starts to hurt too much, I’ll wrap up, but suffice to say going back to Talos IV is a big deal that ties into the thus-far murky origin stories of Spock and Pike. And in any continuity, the Talosians are bad news.

Fingers crossed Burnham and her brain broke bro make it out of this one alive.

Star Trek: Discovery airs Thursdays at 8:30/7:30c on CBS All Access.

Additional reporting by Meghan O’Keefe.

Watch Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access