STAR TREK: DISCOVERY: PUZZLING BUT WORTH IT

I had a genuine fangirl squeee! moment at the end of the long weekend of the Shore Leave Science Fiction convention in Towson, Maryland this summer. It’s taken me a while to tell you about it, dear readers, because I’m not usually a squee-ing fangirl, but also because I needed to have a bit more context for what was mostly a personal experience at the time. We’ll get to the context in a minute.

You see, I got to meet both Anson Mount, the actor who plays Captain Christopher Pike, and Ethan Peck, who plays in Spock, in STAR TREK: DISCOVERY on CBS All Access. I actually had an extended discussion with Ethan about his grandfather, actor Gregory Peck, his family history and a variety of other topics over the course of about two hours. He was charming and approachable, and, I have to say, our talk was the best ending to a con weekend ever!

Ethan Peck as Spock

Up to the moment I met these two very lovely actors, I’d been equivocating about shelling out the money to add yet another streaming service to my monthly TV bill just to see the latest iteration of TREK. But, of course, once I’d met them, I had to see them in action, so I ponied up. (One word of caution if you’re thinking of doing the same thing: if you already have Amazon Prime Video, use that service to sign up for CBS All Access. The CBS streaming service is extremely wonky, where Prime Video is smooth and without kinks, even streaming the CBS content. Don’t ask me why this is so; I’m not an engineer.)

Now we get to the heart of this post. After streaming all the episodes of both seasons of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, I’m really not sure what to make of it. And, what’s more, I have no idea where they can go from here, here being the last episode, which [SPOILER ALERT] leaves the good ship Discovery 930 years in the future from its original stardate, which was decades before the Five-Year Mission of The Original Series. Oh, and through a wormhole into another, uh, dimension? Place? God knows.

As Jim Kirk was wont to say, time travel gives me a headache.

Before we get to the problems with the series, let me say that there is a lot to like about it. The lead characters are intriguing, particularly the heroine, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). (Yes, her name is Michael. Why? I don’t know.) There is an endearing/annoying intern-soon-to-be ensign, Sylvia Tilley (Mary Wiseman), who comes perilously close to embodying the dreaded Mary Sue of fan fic days. She grows on you, though.

I also love a villain-turned-heroine Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) from the Mirror Universe of TOS fame. Sarek and Amanda, Spock’s parents from TOS universe play prominent roles. And, once we get to the second season, Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Spock (Ethan Peck) make their appearances.

There was a time in the TREK world when “pandering” to the fans was disdained. Brannon Braga, producer of STAR TREK: NEXT GENERATION, in fact, bragged that he had never watched even one episode of TOS. Not so with Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Fuller, and Michelle Paradise (joining the showrunners this season), who make a conscious effort to harken back to the series’ origins. There are brilliant echoes of TOS episodes in ST:D’s second season, particularly surrounding the tragic and self-sacrificing Captain Pike. In Anson Mount’s hands, Pike becomes a fully-formed character, one that is only hinted at in TOS’s The Cage/The Menagerie.

Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike

You could even say some of this mining of the gold of TOS hints at *gasp* fan fiction! After all, that is what we fan fic writers used to do when we took a thread of an episode, pulled at it and used it to weave a whole new tale. But, guess what? Fans LOVE those new tapestries woven from the old threads. I’m glad someone finally figured that out.
 

You know what else fans love? Romance, that’s what! There’s plenty of that here, too, though the happy ever after part is still a bit beyond the ken of mostly male television writers. Keep working at it, fellas, you’ll get there.

Diversity is one thing ST:D has gotten right 100 per cent. With a woman of color in the lead, a gay couple with a prominent storyline and lots of aliens scattered on the bridge, the ship actually looks like the future, as it should.

Still, the plot lines leave something to be desired. That is the problem with a prequel set before the Five-Year Mission of TOS. U.S.S. Discovery has a new kind of jump drive that we’ve never seen before. (I won’t explain—you wouldn’t believe me anyway!) And cloaking technology, too. That violates several instances of “canon,” the set of guidelines derived from TOS and the original movies that creates the boundaries of the TREK universe. (For the uninitiated, Kirk’s Enterprise uses warp drive, and Kirk himself had to steal the cloaking tech from the Klingon’s in an episode of TOS.) And I won’t reveal the biggest WTF of all, to be found in the backstory of the series’ heroine Michael Burnham.

On Discovery, with Commander Michael Burnham, right

All these questions have to be resolved somehow for the series to be a proper prequel to TOS. I don’t fully buy the resolution we’re given in the final episode of Season Two. Then, too, we’re to believe Discovery is just out there somewhere doing its thing 930 years on in Season Three. Hmm. That may be a leap of faith much greater than any jump drive can take me. But for now I'm willing to go along for the ride.

OUT FOR A WEEK, THEN BACK FOR MORE TV REVIEWS

I'll be on vacation at the beach next week, provided Hurricane Dorian has left anything of one particular South Carolina beach for me to enjoy. Edisto Island was right in the hurricane's path, like a lot of the southeast coast, so we have to wait and see if we have a vacation spot to go to. In the meantime, I have a couple of recommendations to make for new SF and fantasy shows to watch from the safety of your own home. Watch for that in two weeks!
   
Cheers, Donna