We have now had four episode of the new third season of Star Trek: Discovery and the verdict is that Star Trek is back and hitting it out of the park.
The show has finally found it’s sea legs, and has gained it’s footing. Gone are the pacing problems and excessive flash camera moves of previous seasons. Each of these episodes has been a standalone story, yet as progressed a larger narrative.
The ship has jumped 930 years into the future, beyond the latest point of any previous Star Trek story including the Temporal Cold War depicted in Star Trek: Enterprise. The Federation and the Galaxy has suffered through The Burn where thousands of dilithium equipped ships where destroyed when the crystal went inert and then detonated all at one over 120 years previously.
Earth is no longer a member of the Federation. Dilithium marauders and shady trade couriers dot the landscape, scraping and clawing for scraps in a galaxy turned upside down. Things have changed, but there is hope. Hope is coming alive.
First of all let me address the primary complaint that has been logged against Discover, that it’s “Not Real Star Trek” because it’s not “Hopeful” enough. It’s always been hopeful, you just have to pay attention because they have spent the first two seasons challenging that hope, and challenging the essence of “Utopia.”
The entire point of season one was taking the show on a trip through difficult times only to have the ideals and hopefulness of the Starfleet and the Federation ultimately prove triumphant. In the first episode Commander Michael Burnam trusted the advice of her Vulcan adoptive father and relentlessly pursued a course intended to save her ship and Captain against their wishes and orders.
She failed in that endeavor.
As the show went on she fell under the sway of a new Captain who was secretly from the Mirror Universe who pushed to convert his ship of scientists and explorers into hardened warriors. Ultimately they journeyed to that Mirror Universe and that Captain was revealed as the fascist war-monger he always had been. In response the crew of Discovery rejected him, and rejected his approach even though in their desperation a losing battle with the Klingon Empire the larger Federation and Starfleet had adopted Captain Lorca’s brutal “take no prisoners” attitude and they found themselves pitted against the Federation itself in order to save it from itself. In the end, they prevailed, they maintained Starfleet values and were redeemed and decorated.
“We are Starfleet.”
In Season Two under the command of Captain Christopher Pike they attempted to piece together the mystery of the seven odd signals which had appeared across the galaxy and ultimately led them examine the connections between Burnam and her family, a young Lt. Spock, the enigmatic Red Angel. a cache of sentient interstellar data from a dying sphere of energy and power and the secretive Section 31 group within Starfleet. At the end of the season they were catapulted far into the future to escape the evil sentient AI of “Control” and have now found themselves in dire circumstances.
But, the universe is alive. The people of hundreds of worlds who had been threatened by Control have survived. The crew of Discovery have sacrificed themselves to save them all and have been vindicated.
Now they have to deal with the consequences of that decision.
They are alone.
The Federation appears to be gone, or substantially weakened. They’ve been traumatized. Burnam has been separated from the main crew for over a year and has learned to acclimate herself to this new time with a crusading courier named Cleveland “Book” Booker. She’s changed. She lost all of her angst and has grown lighter, but at the same time she has a tendency to go more rogue and buck authority by taking bigger risks and challenges. Saru is now Captain being the first alien Captain character to lead a major Star Trek show. Diversity. Burnam returns to command colors becoming his new #1 as first officer. Along the way they meet a human joined to a Trill symbiote name Adira, who is far more than what she seems. The more things change. Now in the future, Discovery is creating canon rather than struggling under it's weight.
They travel to Earth and find the Federation is gone. Moved. Gone somewhere safe. The crew has suffered loses, they’re stressed, concussed, traumatized. They have to find a way to pull it together, struggle on, find the Federation and continue the battle to improve the universe. All they have to rely on is each other and their Starfleet values.
It’s a noble struggle.
Rather than being a rehash of Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, Discovery season 3 has now become a combination of the ideas for Star Trek: Federation and the animated Star Trek: Final Frontier concept both of which were concepts developed independently of Andromeda by Bryan Fuller, Discovery’s co-creator.
Here’s a video that shows that Discovery — after struggling through it’s first two seasons — is NOW A HIT.
Here are a couple reviews of the latest episode.
And here is a behind the scenes look at that latest episode from The Ready Room with Wil Wheaton.