Cosmos: Possible Worlds will debut on National Geographic channels March 9, 2020, and on Fox channels in Summer 2020, it was announced in November. Skeptical Inquirer readers may remember we were allowed to visit the set for part of the filming at Santa Fe Studios in 2018 (September/October 2018).

This is the long-awaited sequel to the 2014 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the thirteen-part television series created by Ann Druyan and narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Druyan cowrote the original 1980 Cosmos series with Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981, and also spearheaded the 2014 version. She is writer, co-executive producer, and codirector of the 2020 series, again narrated by Tyson. Druyan’s 352-page companion book of the same title is due out February 25.

Patrick Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, and Judd Hirsch will portray scientists in the series, and Seth MacFarlane (also executive producer) will join the cast as President Truman. Author Sasha Sagan, daughter of Druyan and Carl Sagan, will portray Carl Sagan’s mother in a recurring role.

“This third season of Cosmos: Possible Worlds is our boldest yet,” Druyan said in a statement. “The ‘Ship of the Imagination’ will carry us places we never dared to venture before: lost worlds and worlds to come, deep into the future and straight through that hole in the curtain masking other realities—and all of it rigorously informed by science and made real by lavish VFX.”