After nine years, Zachary Quinto is back as fan-favorite Vulcan Spock — just not for Star Trek.
Why is Zachary Quinto back in character as Spock?
With Star Trek 4 stuck in development hell at Paramount, the NBC medical drama series Brilliant Minds has decided to give the fandom what it wants. Quinto’s lead character, Dr. Oliver Wolf, dresses up as the Enterprise’s first officer in the show’s upcoming Halloween episode. Quinto isn’t the only Brilliant Minds series regular to get in on the Star Trek fun though, as Tamberla Perry’s Dr. Carol Pierce will be dressed as Uhura, Spock’s colleague/love interest in the Kelvin timeline movies.
ComicBook.com shared the first look at Quinto and Perry’s characters dressed as Spock and Uhura for the hospital’s Halloween festivities, which can be viewed below, courtesy of X:
Created by Michael Grassi, Brilliant Minds is centered around Quinto’s Dr. Oliver Wolf, a neurologist whose avant-garde investigatory methods often unearth hard-to-find medical truths about his patients. The medical drama series is inspired by Oliver Sacks’ books The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. Besides Quinto and Perry, Brilliant Minds stars Ashleigh LaThrop, Aury Krebs, Teddy Sears, John Clarence Stewart, Brian Altemus, and Al Calderon.
Quinto’s Spock reprisal should hopefully tide fans over until Paramount finally decides to move forward with a fourth Kelvin-set Star Trek movie, which has been in development since July 2016. Unfortunately, since the initial announcement, the movie has struggled to make any headway, going through several different creative teams. At the time of writing, Steve Yockey is reportedly writing the latest draft of the Star Trek 4 script.
Despite the development complications, Quinto remains interested in reprising his role as Spock for Star Trek 4, stating just last month, “I would absolutely love to do another Star Trek movie. I don’t understand why we haven’t done one yet, but hopefully now that the Skydance and Paramount merger is moving forward, Skydance was the financier of all the Star Trek movies that we’ve done so far, and have been great partners in those films, and I would love to revisit it.”
The Halloween-themed episode of Brilliant Minds Season 2, “The Doctor’s Graveyard,” will air on NBC on October 27, 2025.
