Warning! Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 10, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.”The Expanse quite clearly takes a lot of influence from the Star Trek franchise, and now the decades-old space opera is returning the favor by borrowing one of the stars from the underrated 6-season epic. Thomas Jane, best known in sci-fi circles for playing Josephus “Joe” Miller in The Expanse, is jumping from one interstellar adventure to another. Although the casting announcement was made in December 2025, it’s taken until now for it to feel real.
Originally played by DeForest Kelley in The Original Series, and then by Karl Urban in the Kelvin Timeline movies, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy is one of the biggest names in Star Trek‘s 23rd century. So, it’s a huge responsibility for Jane to inherit the role. Bones is most routinely portrayed as the Enterprise’s Chief Medical Officer, but that position is currently held in Strange New Worlds by Dr. Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun). However, it won’t be long until it’s time for a change.
Bones Gets His First Shout-out in the ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 4 Finale
“Tomorrow’s Enterprise” partially takes place one year into a possible future for Celia Rose Gooding’s Lt. Uhura and company, allowing a glimpse into the lost era of Captain Kirk’s (Paul Wesley) first year in command. Those future sequences really drive home how little time Captain Pike has left in the Big Chair, with the crew becoming more and more like the one we know and love from The Original Series. While the only doctor we see aboard the Enterprise in the near-future scenes is Phil Markinson’s Dr. Phil Boyce, a somewhat throwaway comment from Scotty (Martin Quinn) while in the shuttle bay confirms that Bones is also onboard.
“I like Boyce and McCoy, but I still prefer the weeks when M’Benga’s on board, you know?”
– Scotty in “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.”
It sounds very much like the CMO position is currently in flux, with M’Benga on a temporary assignment to Vulcan that’s becoming increasingly more of a priority to him, while Boyce and Bones hold down the fort back on the Enterprise. While it might seem like a competition is heating up between Boyce, the former interim CMO, and Bones, an Enterprise newcomer, we know from established Star Trek lore that Bones is the one who ultimately snags the role. As such, Jane’s character is working hard off-screen in “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” to make sure that happens.
When Thomas Jane Will Show up as Bones in ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’
Exciting as the thought might be of our first glimpse of Thomas Jane as the Star Trek icon, it’s probably best that expectations be tempered. Sure, he has been officially cast to play Bones, but only in an incredibly limited capacity. At present, he’s only touted to appear in the 2027 Season 5 finale, the last-ever episode of Strange New Worlds overall. This certainly makes sense, what with Dr. M’Benga still needing a proper send off, but it’s a shame that Jane’s Star Trek role will be so limited.
Still, Bones is still a major missing component of the crew we see serve with Kirk in The Original Series, and so it’s necessary to introduce him so that the Paramount+ prequel can more fully bridge the gap between the two projects. Similarly, this is why Kai Murakami will be taking on the role of Hikaru Sulu, replacing George Takei in the same episode where Jane will play Bones. All that being said, I’d be surprised if the new versions of both Bones and Sulu weren’t in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 5 trailer, whenever that may land – if so, the wait to see them firsthand might be a little shorter.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2027-00-00
- Network
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Paramount+
- Directors
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Dan Liu, Amanda Row, Maja Vrvilo, Akiva Goldsman, Dermott Downs, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Jonathan Frakes, Jordan Canning, Leslie Hope, Valerie Weiss, Sydney Freeland, Christopher J. Byrne, Rachel Leiterman
- Writers
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Onitra Johnson
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