The fourth episode of After Trek kept things light with host Matt Mira welcoming Star Trek: Discovery’s notorious Klingon villains. Mary Chieffo (L’Rell) and Kenneth Mitchell (Kol) discussed episode five (“Choose Your Pain”) and what’s next for the Klingons. Executive producers Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg also made an appearance where they revealed details on the original idea for the Ripper the tardigrade and more.

Chieffo and Mitchell talk L’Rell, Kol and Klingon smoothies

Discussing “Choose Your Pain” Chieffo talked more about L’Rell’s capabilities including speaking other languages (like when she was torturing Lorca):

[L’Rell] is descended from spies. The Mo’Kai side of her family where her mother is from – they are known for being deceivers and weavers of lies. Like she says, language skills are highly important when you are interrogating…She is a good interrogator. She is infinitely full of surprises.

Chieffo also confirmed that it is what we think it is when it was said that L’Rell was “having her way with Ash Tyler.”

Kenneth Mitchell revealed a bit about what is next for Kol by paraphrasing a line from a future episode which hints that Kol might be continuing to unite the Klingon houses against the Federation.

“He wants to win the war. He wants to protect his culture from the Federation. I have this line I can paraphrase in a subsequent episode where he says, ‘All I see is another attempt by humanity to rob us of our identity’. […] He’s going to do whatever it takes to protect the Klingon culture.”

The Klingon actors also discussed the difficult logistics of working with the Klingon makeup, including how there is a nutritionist on set who makes them smoothies because the can only consume things through straws. You can watch that discussion in the clip below.

Discovery is Mudd’s origin story

The showrunners talked about the introduction of the TOS character Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson) in “Choose Your Pain.” Berg noted that the Klingon War brings out the best or worst in some people and that Mudd sees himself as a victim of the war. Aaron Harberts elaborated:

For us it was important to think about the origin of Harry Mudd. We have seen him in TOS and at that point he is already such a scoundrel. We were interested in exploring when did he begin that path. I really think that his monologue about how wartime has changed him and many others was an interesting piece of his history.

Tardigrade was originally Stamets’ boss

Executive producers and show-runners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg talked more about PaleyFest revelation that the tardigrade was originally planned to be a bridge officer on the USS Discovery named “Ephraim.” The character was to be Lieutenant Stamets’ boss. There were scripts written with “full on scenes,” including Ephraim talking to Michael Burnham “about the meaning of life, spores, and the beauty of mushrooms.”

A special bridge station was designed which he “leaned over” and there was also a special “sash” uniform for him as well. Harberts said having a tardigrade as a character on the ship was “pretty trippy,” and “fantastic.” But, in the end it just wasn’t feasible due to the CGI costs involved.

You can watch a clip below from After Trek showing how scenes with the final version of the creature were done on set, including actors in greenscreen suits running around in its place.

Deep Mempa

One of the segment of the show dove into the Mempa Sector map that was shown during “Choose Your Pain,” which identified many of the known Star Trek locales on it including K-7, Acamar, Rura Penthe and Starbase 157. It’s nice to see After Trek do these easter egg moments and talk about other Star Trek shows.

Other bits from After Trek episode four

Other members of the House of Kor will also have warpaint like Kol.

Berg confirmed we will discover how Lt. Stamets and Dr. Culber met.

Stuart, Mudd’s pet, was originally called “Bugsy” and was renamed Stuart after the character on The Big Bang Theory.

Admiral Cornwell has a background in psychiatry and has a history with Lorca and she is keeping an eye on him.

Claire McConnell Who plays the Klingon leader Dennas will appear in episode six, “Lethe.”

There appears to be an increasing amount of tribbles on the After Trek set.

“Lethe” Clip: Disco shirts and something wrong with Sarek

As they do every week, After Trek featured a clip from the upcoming episode of Star Trek: Discovery. The clip from episode 6 “Lethe” showed Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Lt. Tyler (Shazad Latif) meet and have a nice chat in the mess hall, at least until Burnham has some kind of painful vision about Sarek. Looks like that Katra is acting up again. The scene also reveals that the “Disco” shirts seen worn by some of the creatives on the show are actually worn on the ship.

After Trek Ep. 3 Clips: Apparently Airiam isn’t a robot

CBS also released some belated clips from episode 3 of After Trek. In the first one you can see a segment where they ID various bridge officers including the mysterious Airiam who had been previously described as a robot, but is now being described as an “augmented alien.”

They also released episode 3’s chat with Rekha Sharma (Commander Landry).

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Star Trek: Discovery is available exclusive in the US on CBS All Access with new episodes released Sundays at 8:30 pm ET. In Canada Star Trek: Discovery airs on the Space Channel at the same time. Discovery is available on Netflix outside the USA and Canada with new episodes made available Monday at 8 am BST.

Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery news at TrekMovie.