Doug Jones starred as Saru for all five seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. On August 27, Star Trek: Discovery – The Final Season and Star Trek: Discovery – The Complete Series are available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Portraying the first Kelpien in Starfleet and getting to create a brand new Star Trek alien race, Doug Jones turned Saru into one of Star Trek: Discovery’s most beloved characters. In Star Trek: Discovery season 5, Saru became a Federation Ambassador and played a key role in saving the galaxy once more. Saru also married his Vulcan love, President T’Rina (Tara Rosling) at the end of Star Trek: Discovery season 5.
Screen Rant had the pleasure of chatting with Doug Jones, who looked back on his favorite Star Trek: Discovery memories and considered what Saru’s Star Trek future could be.
Doug Jones’ Favorite Star Trek: Discovery Moment After 5 Seasons
“Were quite touched by Saru’s storyline when he went through Vahar’ai.”
Screen Rant: Congratulations again on five incredible seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this: Do you have a particular season of Discovery that stands out as your favorite?
Doug Jones: Oh, wow. I have favorite moments that appear in certain seasons. Going back to season 2, I think a favorite moment of mine that has stood out to me personally, and a lot of fans out there too were quite touched by Saru’s storyline when he went through Vahar’ai. He’s born into this prey species that is living in fear all the time, and the predator species culls us and kills us off before we go through Vahar’ai, where our threat ganglia get inflamed and we get sickly. And what we don’t know is that for generations and centuries, they have us duped into thinking that that’s the end of our lives, and they’ll do a mercy killing for us. When in actuality, that is where a Kelpien goes through adolescence and has a whole long adult life ahead of them, and our threat ganglia are replaced with quills that can shoot poisonous darts into people. So we are stronger and more mighty than we thought.
So realizing that he’s away from the predator species on a starship now as a part of Starfleet, he’s the only Kelpein who’s ever done so. So he’s going through Vahar’ai alone, and discovers this new life on his own. And now he has a quest to go back to his home planet and liberate everybody from the dominion that they’re living under. The Ba’ul. They were evil to do that to us, but now he went back, not to obliterate the Ba’ul, but he was very diplomatic in bringing them together, the two species together, to live in harmony and peace, finally. So that was a special moment for me, that season two could accomplish all of that.
What Would Saru & T’Rina’s Children Look Like?
Screen Rant: Yeah, that really was an amazing storyline for Saru that really changed and evolved the character in fantastic new ways. Saru and T’Rina, of course, got married at the end of the series. Are you curious what Saru and T’Rina’s children would look like? Whose genes are dominant?
Doug Jones: Inner species relation do bring up this question. What would our kids look like? And I’ll tell you, there is a fan slash cosplayer out there named Missy, Missy has shown up at conventions as what they call a Kelpican. So it’s part Kelpien, part Vulcan, it was kind of a blend. A little mash-up that kind of worked. It was not unattractive.
Screen Rant: I have a vision of pointed ears that can shoot quills.
Doug Jones: Right? (laughs)
Hope Is Star Trek: Discovery’s Legacy
“We face peril, but we get through it with diplomacy.”
Screen Rant: Deep Space Nine and Enterprise have been kind of reevaluated, and are even more appreciated now than during their first runs. I feel like Discovery will be the same in a few years. What’s something you want future audiences to understand about Discovery, as someone who lived it from start to finish?
Doug Jones: Yeah. I see what you’re saying, that it has a life while it’s being aired for the first time, and then on further review after binge watching in the future. I think Discovery will find its place as a show of hope in the midst of the entire franchise. Our show brings a lot of hope. Yes, we face peril, but we get through it with diplomacy. We get through it with a peaceful outcome, mostly. And we have conflicting personalities, conflicting species, finding a way to live in peace together. I think that is a message of hope that we all can live with, and we can all take into our hearts. Where the world’s going at the moment, and if the world keeps going that direction, our show will hopefully be more and more of a beacon of how it could be.
Screen Rant: Yeah, that’s one of the things I loved about Discovery. From the very beginning, it was a reassessment and a reclaiming of what Star Trek and Starfleet meant. And then you guys lived it, jumped into the distant future, and then brought it to a broken Federation. That story, I think, is just spectacular.
Doug Jones: I agree. When we jumped ahead 1000 years to find what’s become Federation now, we found it broken up and fledgling. Being a part of the rebuild and the reestablishing of what the Federation can be, and bringing all these planets back together. Like, Earth and Vulcan, now the planet Ni’Var, had left the Federation. Unthinkable in the the previous series and the previous timeline. And now, in the future, they found their own independence and got away from it all. So finding a way to hug everybody back together again was something our show accomplished with grace, I thought.
Would Doug Jones Return As Saru In Star Trek: Starfleet Academy?
Screen Rant: Mary Wiseman, Oded Fehr, and Tig Notaro were announced as part of Starfleet Academy’s cast. Is returning as Saru something you’re champing at the bit for, or are you more like, ‘You know, guys, take your time and call me a little bit later’?
Doug Jones: Well, you know, I have enjoyed being out of the rubber bits, I’m not gonna lie. I’ve worn a lot of rubber bits in my career of 38 years. And now, since I took Saru off for the last time, I have had the last year and a half of playing nothing but humans. A lot of humans in various forms. Whether they’re good guys, bad guys, funny guys, serious guys, I’ve been having a great time playing humans. But should someone have need for Saru in Starfleet Academy? I would never say never. That would be a fun guest star to do, for sure, but I haven’t gotten the call yet.
Saru: Besides Starfleet Academy, is there any other Star Trek show you fantasize about crossing over as Saru?
Doug Jones: Strange New Worlds is ongoing and that taps into everyone’s nostalgia with the Star Trek franchise, it seems. It would be kind of fun to show up in Strange New Worlds, and Saru is already familiar with Captain Pike and with Spock. We already had our interactions in season two of Discovery, where they launched from. So a nice little reunion would be kind of fun. He has to travel through time backward, though, to do that because we jumped ahead 1000 years.
About Star Trek: Discovery Season 5
The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery finds Captain Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well … dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.