Carol Kane joins Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in its second season
She'll be joining Paul Wesley's James T. Kirk in the second season
It was a little easy to forget with all the, you know, everything else going on today, but it is Star Trek Day (the anniversary of when the first episode aired, not to be confused with First Contact Day, which is a separate Star Trek day that has in-universe importance), and that means there should be some fun Star Trek news. Luckily, it doesn’t get much more fun than finding out that Carol Kane is going to join Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as a character named Chief Engineer Pelia in its second season.
The series takes place a few years before the original Star Trek series and stars Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, the captain of the USS Enterprise who immediately preceded James T. Kirk (who will be played by Paul Wesley from The Vampire Diaries in the show’s second season). That means it’s potentially important that Kane’s character is listed as the ship’s chief engineer, because the chief engineer at the time of the original series is Scotty (originally played by James Doohan), so something is going to happen to Carol Kane’s Pelia at some point… even if it’s just “she enjoys a quiet retirement back on Earth.” Then again, Star Wars kept introducing new people in its prequels without hurrying to offer much of an explanation for where they went, so maybe nobody will really care.
Strange New Worlds, which also stars Ethan Peck and Jess Bush, airs on Paramount+. The first season ended earlier this summer, and season two will begin airing at some point next year. As for Carol Kane, she’s famous for a bunch of stuff: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Addams Family Values, The Princess Bride, Taxi in the ‘80s and Hester Street back in the ‘70s.