I Watch TV: Star Trek: Discovery

 

Star Trek: Discovery

I’d intended to watch the first two seasons of this ahead of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and now here we are two and a half years later, having seen it all. What to make of this as a whole? It begins before Star Trek (Original Flavour) with a Klingon spiritual leader discovering a legendary site and using it to unify the squabbling Klingon clans against outsiders. First officer Michael Burnham mutinies against her captain and mentor Phillipa Georgiou when they disagree on how to prevent this becoming a full scale war.

Georgiou is killed, a full scale war breaks out (everyone blames Burnham, which is a little unfair as her mutiny never got off the ground, it was Georgiou’s plan that failed) and Burnham is made a prisoner. Later she is grabbed by Captain Lorca of USS Discovery. Discovery has an experimental spore drive that lets it travel anywhere instantaneously, or would if it worked and they need Burnham to get it to do so.

Over the first season they get the spore drive working, it has problems, they tangle with the increasingly complicated politics of the Klingons, they visit the mirror universe to discover what their evil counterparts have been up to and finally manage to end the war. Star Trek has usually been an ensemble cast show, but this is very much Michael Burnham’s story. Half the recurring cast only ever appear at their station on the bridge with maybe half a dozen lines of dailogue that aren’t about ship handling or science or scans or whatever. Exceptions include Saru, an alien who gets his own plots, and Lorca. Notable at the time was the gay marriage of Chief Engineer Stametz and Doctor Culber; Culber is of course killed, but then brought back in the second season when everyone who isn’t Burnham gets a bit more screen time to be a character.

In Season 2 they get a new Captain, Captain Pike. (Burnham’s trajectory from convict to Captain is in the middle of it’s swing). This is where they connect more deeply into Star Trek (Original Flavour). Pike appeared in the pilot episode, which was later turned into a two part episode of the show; he was Captain of the Enterprise before James Kirk. Pike and the Enterprise were away on a long exploration mission during the war. Their initial mission revolves around trying to find missing member of Pike’s crew, his science officer Spock.

The show has already established that Burnham was brought up on the planet Vulcan by Sarek and his human wife Amanda Grayson. This made her the step-sister of Spock. The introduction of Pike over-determines this, making this once again the Michael Burnham show, even though other characters do manage to develop their own stories. The season-long plot reveals that there’s a time anomaly; Burnham and Discovery travel forward nine hundred years.

In the 32^nd Century the show is freed from the constraints of canon and able to chart it’s own course. Which in each season is a galaxy threatening mystery the characters have to investigate and navigate. The show gets into it’s swing, with some episodes them being proactive, and others having to deal with obstacles. If there’s a flaw it’s that too many involve them trying to find the thing of the week, and discovering that the way to get it is to act with empathy and understanding, that by communicating we can find a way forward.

At it’s strongest when they have characters having to make difficult decisions with a science fiction twist, like all Star Trek, this also gives us the development of several interesting characters, and ongoing storylines that propel the series forward. Sometimes it flags, or they get diverted or they’re on a track that doesn’t compel, but they manage to get back and offer something like they promise. Flawed, slightly too pleased with being right on, yet good science fiction, good television and even good Star Trek.

Watch This: Star Trek, with all that promises, plus story arcs
Don’t Watch This: Star Trek, with all those flaws, plus never quite manages to get the ensemble working