Actor Ethan Peck, grandson of Hollywood legend Gregory Peck, has been cast as iconic half-Vulcan science officer Spock in CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery.
The hiring sees the relatively obscure 32-year-old boldly go where stars Zachary Quinto and — most famously — Leonard Nimoy have gone before.
“Through 52 years of television and film, a parallel universe and a mirror universe, Mr Spock remains the only member of the original bridge crew to span every era of Star Trek,” executive producer Alex Kurtzman said in a statement.
“The great Leonard Nimoy, then the brilliant Zachary Quinto, brought incomparable humanity to a character forever torn between logic and emotion.”
The show launched in 1966 with a five-year mission “to boldly go where no man has gone before,” and became a multi-billion-dollar cultural phenomenon, adored by fans the world over.
Nimoy was introduced as Spock in the original series, as the first officer to Captain James T Kirk (William Shatner), and both Nimoy and Quinto took on the role in the 2009-16 rebooted trilogy.
“We searched for months for an actor who would, like them, bring his own interpretation to the role,” Kurtzman added.
“An actor who would, like them, effortlessly embody Spock’s greatest qualities, beyond obvious logic: empathy, intuition, compassion, confusion, and yearning.”
Peck — known for ABC sitcom 10 Things I Hate About You — will be unveiled in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, due for release in early 2019 on the CBS All Access streaming service.
Known for his quiet dignity, Peck’s grandfather was one of the great stars of Hollywood’s golden era, starring in such classic movies as Roman Holiday and Cape Fear.
He picked up five Oscar nominations, winning for To Kill a Mockingbird, and died in June 2003 at the age of 87.
The announcement comes days after British star Patrick Stewart, 78, revealed he would be reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard in a new CBS Star Trek series centering on the character’s life post Star Trek: Next Generation, which ran from 1987 until 1994.