Star Trek: Discovery, starring Sonequa Martin Green, Michelle Yeoh, Jason Isaacs, Doug Jones, Shazad Latif & Anthony Rapp.
Right up top, it’s getting a 15 episode order instead of 13. That’s good. That cast. Also very good.
The thing that’s bugged me since they first announced we’re going to barely pre-Kirk era Starfleet, is that we haven’t had a Trek take place in the in-universe future since 2002, when Nemesis came out. Everything since, from Enterprise, to Kelvin-verse (official name for the Abrams films), and now back to Trek-prime with Discovery is all prequel based. For a series, a franchise, that was so forward focused, so progressive, it’s a difficult pill to swallow seeing it so regressive. DS9 and Voyager handed the franchise the Gamma and Delta quadrants to explore, Voyager gave us the 29th century’s Temporal Integrity Commission to to explore, basically handing us 400 years worth of space exploration left untouched. Think about everything that’s happened since 1617. All the discoveries and exploration that was done. And we keep getting, “Yeah, Ferdinand Magellan was awesome, so was this other guy who was Magellan adjacent. By the way, we eventually go to the moon, but how ’bout that Magellan guy, huh?! HUH?! Sailing and shit.”
There was another announcement that came with the “Slightly Before Kirk” decision was that it was to be anthologized. Bryan Fuller shot that down, but now he’s gone, so who knows? But they won’t anthologize it because that’s not how Trek works. That screws up the human element of Trek. I don’t mean humans as a species, but human as in connecting with the characters. They also won’t because they didn’t with Heroes, like they were supposed to, because “Oh, Character A is popular, so let’s keep them around forever.”
The other thing that gives me pause is how much of an influence the Kelvin-verse films will have on the series. Not the stories told, obviously, but the storytelling. They were decidedly more aggressive, more militaristic. Lots of space battles, destruction, death, and violent ends. Not that I have a problem with that, but will that do away with the core of Trek, the aims at peace and understanding and utopia? Klingons were the villains in OTS, and were allies by TNG. TNG had the Ferengi, who joined the Federation by the end of DS9. The Borg were huge villains across 3 shows and a movie, but both TNG and VOY had episodes where they were trying to understand and come to terms with the Borg. The Romulans, the Cardassians… they were hinted at becoming friendlies at some point in the future. Of the prime-verse, not just some weird Mirror-verse. That’s not to say the path to peace wasn’t littered with conflicts, battles or wars. But there was still that path. And Kelvin-verse sort of ignored that.
I’m excited to have Trek back on TV. That’s where it belongs. That’s where it thrives. I’m just more than a little nervous for what they may do with it (knowing studio people) and this trailer does little to ease those apprehensions. But it does look pretty cool. And as a lifelong Trek fan, I’ll watch every episode as it “airs,” so to speak.
But my point still stands: Let’s explore more of the unknown, and less of what we mostly know. I’d probably be OK not having those gaps filled.
The Empty Theatre 
Leave a Reply