See first look at season 2 of the CW's sci-fi show Pandora

The CW's future-set sci-fi show Pandora stars Priscilla Quintana as Jax, a young woman who enrolls at Earth's Space Training Academy after her parents are killed in a mysterious attack on an alien planet.

"She’s been orphaned, she comes to earth, and meets this bunch of friends who go on adventures with her," says the show's creator Mark A. Altman. "But there’s a secret that involves the fate of the universe and slowly we’re learning what it is that she has to accomplish but there’s huge huge stakes involved."

Season 2 of Pandora premieres Oct. 4 and Altman promises the new episodes will be literally out-of-this-world.

"Last season was sort of Harry Potter in the future," says the executive producer. "We realized that we wanted to go full-on Star Trek and embrace the space adventure."

Season 2 sees the regular cast of Quintana, Oliver Dench, and Ben Radcliffe, among others, expanded to include Akshay Kumar and Roxanne McKee, who played the character of Doreah on Game of Thrones.

"Akshay Kumar was a guest star last season and played Jet, a really horrible person, who did some terrible things and now he’s in search of redemption," says Altman. "We didn’t realize how topical it would be with cancel culture and everything — you know, does someone who’s made all these bad choices in their life deserve a second chance?" As for McKee, the EP teases that the actress "appears in a pivotal role as someone very close to Jax."

Altman is something of a Star Trek scholar having co-written the book The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored Oral History of Star Trek and admits the show has been a big influence on Pandora. "I like classic Star Trek tradition of using science fiction to examine who we are today, and use it as an allegory for exploring politics and exploring all these social issues. That, to me, is the most interesting aspect of the genre as opposed to quasars and pulsars and black holes."

Pandora was one of the first shows to start shooting following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, with the production returning to the Bulgarian capital of Sofia where the first season was also filmed.

"Really there was no roadmap for moving forward," says Altman. "We just had to embrace all the recommendations from doctors and scientists. We were testing multiple times a week and just being very very vigilant both on and off set. But still you didn’t know — were you doing enough? But we’ve been very lucky. Sofia is a beautiful city and it’s been very good to us, although the language barrier sometimes can be challenging. At one point, in the script it says, a character ‘drops their avuncular disposition’ and the prop master came to me, holding this very intimidating torture device and said, ‘Is this the avuncular disposition, Mark?’ I started laughing and he couldn’t understand why."

Exclusively see first look images from season 2 of Pandora below.

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