The crew of the Enterprise is once again setting off on a new mission at the end of the latest Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finale, and while we don’t know much about Season 4 — except there’s a puppet episode! — we do now have some teases from Celia Rose Gooding about what to expect for Uhura.

The communications officer has been through a lot just over these three seasons, including a heartbreaking loss, and her attempt at a romance got complicated (and not just because she’d been turned into a Vulcan when it came time for a date). So yes, as Celia Rose Gooding told TV Insider recently, Uhura could really use a vacation. Read on for more from the star about what’s to come on Strange New Worlds and why she’s refusing to say goodbye.

I know you’ve already filmed Season 4, but with where Uhura was at the end of Season 3, what had you wanted to explore with her going forward?

Celia Rose Gooding: Yeah, I think losing Batel [Melanie Scrofano], I think losing any officer in Starfleet or anyone in Starfleet is really hard on Uhura. She’s dealt with so much loss already, and I think everything piling up starts to get to her. I think what she’s looking forward to in the next season, in Season 4, is just downtime, a bit of relaxation and reprieve and being able to take in a really jam-packed few months that is Season 3. She’s been genetically modified, she’s been betrayed and confused, and she’s been romanced, but also very taken advantage of a little bit. She’s just been through so much, I think she’s looking forward to some time to journal a little bit, maybe meditate, have a cup of tea, just relax in a very human way as opposed to doing the Starfleet officer thing, which is getting drinks in the port galley in between life-threatening missions.

So are we going to see any of that in Season 4? What can you say about Uhura in Season 4?

I can say that Uhura gets a little bit of what she wants, maybe too much in a way that I think audiences will find very silly, but also in a way that scares her. And we see her really taking risks and big, big leaps for the character. We’re seeing her in situations that I don’t think any audience could have fathomed for her, but she continues to surprise herself and impress herself and impress her crew and continue to just understand her place in the wide world of Starfleet.

How is it preparing to say goodbye — perhaps just for now, you never know what the future holds to her — with the show ending with Season 5?

I’ve given myself permission to never say goodbye to this character. I don’t want to. I don’t have to, so I won’t. She is a part of me. I talk to myself to her, she talks back to me. I feel a little crazy, but every actor is. We have to compartmentalize ourselves and chop our personalities up into a bunch of tiny pieces and dedicate what works to a character and then abandon what doesn’t even if it is a very real part of you. And Uhura is, she reminds me of so many people, so many women, so many Black women that I know, and she reminds me so much of myself when I was younger. And also she inspires me to continue to take risks into becoming the person that I want to be. I have no interest in saying goodbye to this character because it would feel like saying goodbye to a piece of myself, and I don’t want to do that. [Laughs]

I love that. And there’s also now been talk about a Year One series about Kirk (Paul Wesley) on the Enterprise, and obviously Uhura would have to be part of that.

Yes, I guess.

So I’m assuming you would do that kind of show. Is there anything you would want to explore if you did?

I’ll do Star Trek until somebody fires me, and even then they may have to hire a team of very strong people to peel me off of the CBS Studio floor. Yeah, there’s so much Trek ahead of us that I haven’t even given a lot of thought to the idea of, what’s next? What’s next for me is Season 5 and getting through the intense journey that we’re getting ready to go through. And then, yeah, I don’t know, vacation? I’m learning what that is, which is really exciting. I don’t know.

I hope that we get to have a Star Trek: Year One and continue to know Kirk and continue to sort of fill in the space between the beginning of TOS and the end of Strange New Worlds. What we fill that with is not my choice, thank the sun and stars. I get to just show up and do the work that someone else has written out for me, which I find very helpful. But yeah, I think if I were to be so bold as to wish for anything, I think I would want her to explore her creative side. We’ve seen her as an intellectual. We’ve seen her as an academic. We’ve seen her as a linguist. I would love to see her as more of an artist because she is very artistic and very creative. She just hasn’t had the opportunity yet to really delve into that or show that off. And I would love for her to just relax. She’s overdue for a vacation, for sure. [Laughs]

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 4, TBA, Paramount+