Star Trek Discovery

For the first time since the early 00s, we have a new Star Trek... TV?... show. One of the barriers to entry here is that CBS is counting on this show to carry their new streaming service as we see the world pioneered by Netflix fragmenting into a mess that will probably wind up eating itself up to the detriment of viewers until someone comes up with a new solution.

Ahem.

But the show:

This sounds like an advertising slogan, but this is very much Star Trek like you've never seen before. And that is going to probably generate mixed reactions.

There are two big differences in the way that Discovery works compared with other Star Trek shows. First of all, it is darker. Now, it's true that Deep Space Nine took us into some dark territories - introducing Section 31 and having Sisko tacitly order an assassination (or at least not do anything about it after it is done) - so you could argue that this isn't entirely unique. But Discovery has a sense of desperation and also mystery that we haven't really seen in Star Trek before.

That tone of mystery is tied closely to the other big change: this is a show with one clear protagonist. While the captains of the earlier shows (remember that Sisko gets promoted sometime in the middle of DS9) were always kind of at the center of their casts, the typical form was to give each of the major characters plenty of focus and never really make any declarative moves about who we should be looking at the most. This is not true of Discovery, where Michael Burnam is absolutely the lens through which we see the show.

And that allows for mystery, because after a two-part pilot in which she is court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison (though you've got to imagine the Federation has parole for good behavior, even in extreme cases,) Michael's prison-transport is rescued by the Discovery, which is a brand-new Federation ship doing some very mysterious things.

We get a bunch of odd moments as she's led aboard, such as crew members with black badges (in contrast, I think, with the gold, red, and blue designations that we've seen on other shows.) We also get a "Black Alert" while Michael is going to bed on her first night on the ship.

Even the technobabble is, in this case, meant to be confusing. What are they doing on Discovery? What is all the secrecy for?

We meet Captain Gabriel Lorca, who even jokes about how the lighting in his ready room (lowered due to an injury to his eyes) lends him an air of mystery. That mystery persists as he seems to be vetting Michael for a position on his crew, even though she's supposed to be going to jail.

Lorca eventually convinces Michael that they are working on research to bring a swift end to the war with the Klingons - one that she more or less started in the pilot - and that this largely takes the form of things with nonviolent applications - that he is furthering the mission of Starfleet.

But it becomes very clear by the end of the episode that something very different is going on, and that at best, Lorca is some Section 31 agent or at least someone in that vein. It's also highly possible that he's a deranged madman - the kind of character who is usually an evil admiral in the other shows. But this time, he's the captain of the ship on which this show will take place!

The first three episodes I think really function as the entryway into the show and establish the premise. It's not flawless - Michael is shoehorned in as Spock's foster-sister, which would raise some serious Mary Sue alerts (I believe the original Mary Sue was, in fact, from a piece of Star Trek fanfic) except that Sonequa Martin-Green balances her nose-to-the-grindstone Vulcan calm with a deep human drive to act when it is necessary. We have a really interesting situation where we'll have a principled outlaw working on a ship commanded by a captain who seems to be violating the central tenets of his position.