Star Trek: Discovery’s Jason Isaacs pleads “the fifth” on whether Prime Lorca could turn up in another Trek show

Pictured: Jason Isaacs as Captain Gabriel Lorca. STAR TREK: DISCOVERY coming to CBS All Access. Photo Cr: Jan Thijs © 2017 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.

One Star Trek fan question that refuses to die is, “Will we ever get to see Prime Lorca?” After the events of Star Trek: Discovery season one, when the man we knew as Captain Gabriel Lorca was revealed to be an impostor from the Mirror Universe, fans started asking Lorca actor Jason Isaacs whether he’d be back to play his Prime Universe counterpart.

Well, last weekend, TrekMovie brought us a report from the Dragon Con Goes Virtual panel with Star Trek: Discovery actors Jason Isaacs and Mary Chieffo. In the panel, Isaacs was asked (again) if his character would perhaps return on Strange New Worlds, Short Treks or the upcoming Section 31 series. The actor was decidedly noncommittal and said he was "Taking the fifth", as in the fifth amendment. You know, the one that says you can’t be forced to incriminate yourself. "The whole point of having a story told to you is that you don’t know what’s in the story,” Isaacs said. “It’s like asking when someone is going to tell you a joke: 'Give me the punchline and I’ll make my mind up.'”

During the panel, Isaacs took a moment to acknowledge fan concerns that the writers of Star Trek: Discovery had put the story between the proverbial “rock and a hard spot”. "Understandably, people were protective of this legacy of extraordinary stories,” Isaacs said. “There was some doubt that the people writing it really knew all about Star Trek, and that doubt must be gone now.” Isaacs showed great faith in the writing staff, saying, “There are people in the [writer's] room, however geeky you think you are, and whatever minutiae you think you can sit up all night discussing, they can do it to the power of 100.”

On his character, Isaacs said, "If they do bring back Lorca, or anyone else, it’ll never be token. They take it more seriously than you could possibly imagine, making sure [it] honors the legacy and gives them license to invent new and great stories.”

In other words, maybe we’ll see Prime Lorca at some point, and maybe not.