star trek discovery inconsistencies

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Explaining star trek: discovery's biggest canon inconsistencies & plot holes.

One of Star Trek: Discovery's biggest criticisms has been an inconsistency with established canon. We explore how the show might close the loop.

Here are the biggest canon inconsistencies in Star Trek: Discovery and the possible ways they could be explained in the narrative. Since debuting in September 2017, Star Trek: Discovery has experienced a very mixed reception from both fans and critics. On one hand, the series has received some very positive reviews and boasts a stellar cast that have delivered a truly modernized iteration of the Star Trek formula. On the other, a vocal section of the fandom haven't warmed to Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman's series, a feeling perhaps magnified by the fact that U.S. viewers can only watch Star Trek:  Discovery on CBS' own in-house streaming service .

One of the overriding criticisms of Star Trek:  Discovery 's first season was the show's apparent deviation from accepted  Star Trek canon. Fans of the franchise are renowned for paying close attention to details and aren't afraid to point out when a new release contradicts established Trek lore. With the arrival of Discovery , these fans have had their work cut out. Set only a decade prior to the original series starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy , Discovery has somewhat written itself into a corner in terms of how heavily it can impact the fictional history of the Star Trek universe without consequences rippling through the rest of the franchise.

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Star Trek: Discovery 's showrunners are not ignorant to this criticism. Producers have not only acknowledged the fact that the series doesn't quite line up with Star Trek canon, but have also promised fans that what appear to be inconsistencies will in fact be addressed in future episodes. With the second season of Star Trek: Discovery soon to air, here are the biggest continuity issues facing the show and some plausible explanations that could solve them.

• This Page: Klingon Inconsistencies In Star Trek: Discovery
• Page 2: Changes Star Trek: Discovery Has Made To Spock
• Page 3: Is Star Trek: Discovery's Spore Drive A Plot Hole?

Star Trek: Discovery's New Klingon Design Contradicts Previous Series

The first sign that Star Trek: Discovery might be taking a few liberties with canon came when images were released during development that showed radically redesigned Klingons . Devoid of their trademark wild hair and sporting more pronounced ridges, these new Klingons were virtually unrecognizable from those seen in any previous big or small screen entry into the Star Trek franchise and there was an immediate backlash, despite the show's reasoning that different Klingon houses may have altered appearances.

While Star Trek:  Discovery 's Klingons were one of the first targets for criticism, they also provided the first sign that there may be more to the show's inconsistencies than simple oversight or a lack of respect for the official timeline. Glenn Hetrick , Discovery 's head of makeup effects and one of the figures responsible for the Klingon redesign, suggested that the reason for Klingons' baldness comes from the tale of Kahless the Unforgettable, in which the titular warrior dips a lock of hair into a lava pit to create a Bat'leth and, ever since, the Klingons have only grown out their locks in times of peace.

Whether or not this explanation fits into canon is certainly up for debate and there are numerous examples of Klingons waging hairy war elsewhere in the franchise, but Hetrick has also promised that there are other reasons for the Klingons' new look that will be explored later in the narrative, stating " I think people are going to freak out when this unfurls in front of them."

Related: Why Star Trek 4 Has Been Canceled

Interestingly, Star Trek:  Discovery season 2 has released images of Mary Chieffo's L'Rell with a brand new mane of hair. Whether fans buy into the " bald in war, hairy in peace " explanation or not, it certainly seems like criticism of the initial design is being addressed in season 2, bringing Discovery 's Klingons closer to what viewers know and love.

The Federation-Klingon War Doesn't Fit The Timeline

It isn't just the design of the Klingons that clashes with canon in Star Trek: Discovery , it's also their role in the series. Much of Discovery 's debut voyage centers around a tough and bloody war between the Federation and the Klingons that almost results in a full-on invasion of Earth. For such a monumental event, it's strange that there's no mention of this war elsewhere in the franchise, particularly The Original Series , which takes place only ten years later.

However, some fans have pointed out elements of the older Star Trek adventures that do hint towards a recently concluded major conflict. These include (via  Inverse ) Kirk's immediate wariness and distrust of the Klingons during their first encounter, Starfleet's relatively small selection of ships in the  TOS era, and the existence of a Klingon Neutral Zone that is located in the same region of space as Discovery 's Battle of the Binary Stars. Not everyone will be convinced that these details can justify Discovery adding a huge war to Star Trek canon so close to The Original Series , but it certainly adds some consistency between shows.

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A further issue with the Federation-Klingon war is the Klingons' use of cloaking technology . In TOS , it's heavily implied that the Romulans are the first race to cloak their ships, or at least the first encountered by Starfleet. While this conundrum certainly poses a challenge to established canon, Discovery wasn't the first culprit, as cloaking actually appeared in Star Trek: Enterprise , a show set in Starfleet's distant past. While there's no obvious explanation as to why Kirk and Spock and so confused by cloaking, Star Trek:  Discovery is arguably only setting a precedent set previously by Enterprise .

Page 2 of 3: Changes Star Trek: Discovery Has Made To Spock

Spock never mentioned his sister before.

Out of all the colorful characters in Star Trek , no one is more synonymous with the franchise than the Enterprise's first officer, Spock. From the very first pilot episode to J.J. Abrams' movie reboot, Spock has never been far from the Star Trek story but, in all that time, not once has the Vulcan ever mentioned having an adopted human sister.

And yet that's exactly who Sonequa Martin-Green's Michael Burnham was revealed to be and, unlike her brother, she's not shy about her family connections. Immediately after this was revealed ahead of Star Trek:  Discovery 's debut, fans began to question how they could accept such a deep connection between this new protagonist and Leonard Nimoy's Spock when the latter had never acknowledged Burnham's existence. In all of Spock's arguments with Kirk and Bones about human behavior and emotion, did he really not think to bring up the fact he had a human sibling ?

This concept may not be as far-fetched as it appears. In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , it is revealed that Spock has a half-brother called Sybok who, once again, had never previously been mentioned, although, in fairness, Sybok was exiled from Vulcan and Spock's reluctance to reference him could've emanated from shame. It's also worth noting that in "Journey To Babel," Spock fails to mention that the Vulcan ambassador who just beamed aboard the Enterprise is actually his own father, Sarek. Only when Kirk suggests Spock beam down to his home planet to visit his family is this revealed.

Related:  These Awesome Star Trek: Discovery Theories Turned Out to Be TRUE!

Clearly, there is a typically Vulcan disconnect between Spock and his family and it is plausible that, throughout the franchise, Spock would never mention Burnham in conversation because it was never logically necessary. However, producer and creator Alex Kurtzman has promised that this piece of continuity will be addressed in season 2, so there's likely to be a more involved explanation.

Federation Mutiny and Sarek

Never being mentioned by her famous brother isn't the only inconsistency surrounding Michael Burnham. Right at the outset of Star Trek:  Discovery 's story, Burnham commits mutiny on the U.S.S. Shenzhou, attempting to overrule the orders of Captain Georgiou after giving her a Vulcan nerve pinch. Following this incident, Burnham becomes infamous for being Starfleet's first mutineer. This event essentially triggers the entire Discovery story but ignores the fact that in the original 1960s series, it was stated that there had never been a record of mutiny on a Federation ship. Even though Burnham is pardoned by the end of Star Trek:  Discovery 's first season , it would surely be inconceivable that every officer would forget her crime within the space of ten years.

The other significant inconsistency surrounding Burnham concerns the characterization of Sarek. James Frain's version of Spock's Dad is undoubtedly more compassionate, kind and arguably more human than other incarnations, particularly when it comes to his relationship with Burnham. Of all Discovery 's inconsistencies, this is perhaps one of the least notable, but it still contributes to the array of issues surrounding Burnham's inclusion into the Star Trek franchise.

Issues that would all be solved if Star Trek: Discovery concluded with Burnham being erased from history. With all the mirror universe , time-bending science going on in Discovery , it's not inconceivable to think that a person could somehow write themselves out of existence.  Discovery 's producers have promised that the show will sync up to canon at some point and one of quickest ways to do this would be deleting Burnham from time, most likely as the tragic consequence of saving the universe. This would explain why Spock never mentions her, why there's no record of a mutiny and why Sarek seems less compassionate in  TOS than in  Discovery . Such a move could also be used to explain away the Federation-Klingon war, as Burnham wouldn't have been on board the Shenzhou to trigger the conflict.

Page 3 of 3: Is Star Trek: Discovery's Spore Drive A Plot Hole?

Is star trek: discovery's spore drive a plot hole.

Produced half a century after Star Trek began, Discovery was always going to look more technologically advanced than previous series and many fans accept that this aesthetic update isn't a plot hole in its own right. However, several pieces of tech have turned up in Discovery that some argue is beyond what should be available at that point in the timeline. This accusation has been regularly aimed at Star Trek: Discovery 's use of hologram technology, such as battle simulations and holo-communications, as these elements were not present in TOS . They were, however, somewhat present in both Enterprise and The Animated Series , although it is questionable whether the latter should be considered canon.

Undoubtedly the most significant example of Discovery 's overly-advanced tech, however, is the Spore Drive engine. The Spore Drive essentially allows the ship to teleport to a specific location via the Mycelium Network and this has opened up plenty of storylines and points of discussion for Star Trek:  Discovery to explore. The Spore Drive certainly would've been useful during Picard's battle with the Borg or when the Voyager spent several seasons trying to find its way home but, unfortunately, this technology was nowhere to be found and isn't mentioned elsewhere in Star Trek lore.

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Discovery has already explored the negative impact of the Spore Drive on its navigator, namely Paul Stamets, and there is perhaps an implication that the engine would eventually be deemed unsafe and banned by Starfleet. Combine this with the fact that the Spore Drive was developed in secret, and a possible explanation for its absence in later series begins to emerge. Given the power of this technology, however, there are certainly many points in Star Trek history where use of the Spore Drive, even with its inherent risks, could've saved many lives and its introduction in Discovery remains out of sync with the rest of the Star Trek story heading into season 2.

While these explanations offer in-universe explanations for Discovery 's changes, the real-life reasons are far more obvious. The challenge of creating any new television series is tough, but being restricted by over 50 years of fictional history makes the task virtually impossible. This is ultimately why the J.J. Abrams movie series takes place in a completely different timeline . Whatever your opinion on Star Trek:  Discovery , there's no doubt that it's easier to enjoy the series when you ignore the rest of Trek 's timeline and focus solely on the events taking place on screen.

However, it could also be said that adhering to canon is a key part of building a lasting, successful franchise and that Star Trek wouldn't be the cultural behemoth it is today without its rich and detailed fictional world that fans invest so heavily into. It's a fine balance and one that Star Trek: Discovery clearly hasn't got quite right just yet. Still, the show's producers insist that Discovery will make canonical sense eventually , although this might be very difficult to achieve without a big, show-changing reveal along the lines of Discovery actually being set in a third mirror universe . Viewers will soon see whether Star Trek: Discovery season 2 brings the series closer to canon, or pushes it further away.

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Star Trek: Discovery season 2 premieres January 17th on CBS All Access in the U.S. and 24 hours later on Netflix internationally.

Why 'Star Trek: Discovery' deserves more credit as a barrier-breaking series

Starship Discovery will soon be ending its mission, and what a journey it's been.

“Star Trek: Discovery,” which premiered in 2017, is entering its fifth and final season Thursday on Paramount+. And you’ll need the Captain’s Log to remember all the twists, turns and transformations the show has gone through since it began.

One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the hate the series has received from some Trek fans. (“Discovery” has an overall audience score of 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, a stark difference from the 87% critic rating.)

While the show is far from free of legitimate criticism, many of the complaints seem unfairly — though perhaps tellingly — placed on the show’s focus on a Black woman commander, its LGBTQ+ stars and allies and its inclusive storylines. “Woke agenda” and other dog whistles frequently surface on Reddit and social media posts about the series.

That so much of the negativity is rooted in a backlash against inclusivity raises questions. After all, the "Star Trek" franchise has long emphasized and celebrated culture, diversity and humanity coming together and preserving the integrity of beings they meet across the galaxy.

"It doesn't make any sense, because (these fans) say they love this franchise," series star Sonequa Martin-Green says in an interview. The show “has always been about breaking those boundaries. It's always been about diversity and equality. And our world has changed since the last iteration of 'Trek.' We have a responsibility to push that needle forward and to stay true to that."

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The series is originally set before the events of NBC's original “Star Trek: The Original Series” (later jumping to the future) and follows Michael Burnham (Martin-Green), who became the starship’s captain, and the rest of the crew of the USS Discovery: first officer Saru (Doug Jones), chief engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), lieutenant and now Starfleet Academy teacher Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), medical officer Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), courier and Burnham’s love interest Cleveland “Book” Booker (David Ajala) and ensign Adira Tal (Blu del Barrio).

Many more characters have stood on the bridge, battled with Burnham or otherwise make up the world of "Discovery." The series had some trouble finding the right footing, but it’s always had heart, especially in its recurring theme of redemption. And it deserves more support for what it has meant for the entire "Star Trek" franchise.

Here’s why “Star Trek: Discovery” deserves more credit.

Prioritizing diversity and inclusivity

A Vulcan philosophy (and one espoused by “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry) is IDIC, or “infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” and many of the related series, movies and books underscore this belief. “Discovery” also has diversity at its core: the show focuses on a Black woman who becomes captain. Stamets and Culber are an openly gay couple, engineer Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) is a lesbian. And the show introduced a few franchise firsts: Adira Tal as the first nonbinary character in "Star Trek ," and their boyfriend, Gray ( Ian Alexander ), is the first transgender character , both introduced in Season 3.

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Starting a new age of Star Trek

“Discovery” helped launch the CBS All Access streaming platform, a CBS subscription service that would eventually become Paramount+, as well as a new era of "Star Trek" series including “Lower Decks” and “Picard.” Before “Discovery,” the last Trek series was “Star Trek: Enterprise,” which ended in 2005.

Exploring strange new worlds

The second season of “Discovery” also served as a launching pad for the well-received spinoff, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” which resurfaced popular characters from the original series including Spock (Ethan Peck), Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn).

Finding time for the simple things

In a few scenes scattered throughout "Discovery," we see characters like Culber and Stamets sharing a meal or talking about their day while brushing their teeth. It’s almost mundane, but there’s also something so lovely about watching LGBTQ characters who rarely are the focus in movies or television simply living their lives, being their whole selves. Burnham rocking braids at the beginning of Season 3 speaks cultural volumes. The subtle amid the big battles and overarching plots do have meaning, especially for those whose voices often go unheard.

Going boldly

The first season of “Discovery” went out of its way to highlight its connections to the original series: Burnham is Spock’s adopted sister, and there's a brief appearance by Spock’s father, Sarek. But it wasn’t always so neatly woven, sometimes seeming more like it was using franchise lore as a crutch. But “Discovery” wasn’t afraid to try new things, turning itself around after an overcomplicated first season and again after a very “TOS”-inspired second, slowly building up its own universe without relying too heavily on the old. 

The first episodes of Season 5 are a little rocky before it settles into a comfortable speed. 

"This time around, we wanted to bring in some levity," Martin-Green says. "But there's a grand sort of epicness to Season 5, even though we didn't know it was our last season when we were shooting it. I think looking back on it, and when we share it with the world, it'll seem that way because the season is so big. So people can expect a lot of fun. They can expect it to go really fast." 

It will be interesting to see if “Discovery” sticks the landing through the remainder of the season.

“The good outweighs the bad,” Burnham says in an upcoming episode about a mission, and that’s also true of “Discovery."

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery" (two episodes now streaming, then weekly on Thursdays), streams on, Paramount+.

Why ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Built Season 5 Around a Classic Episode From a Legacy Series

By Adam B. Vary

Adam B. Vary

Senior Entertainment Writer

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SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 5, Episode 1 of “ Star Trek : Discovery,” now streaming on Paramount+.

By the end of the episode, however, the mission has pushed Burnham and her crew to their limits, including slamming the USS Discovery into the path of a massive landslide threatening a nearby city. Before they risk their lives any further pursuing this object, Burnham demands that Kovich at least tell her why. (MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW.)

Kovich’s explanation evokes the classic “ Star Trek: The Next Generation ” episode “The Chase” from 1993 in which Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) — along with teams of Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians — learn that all humanoid life in the galaxy was created by a single species that existed billions of years earlier, and seeded thousands of planets with the DNA to pass along their legacy. (Along with presenting a profound vision of the origins of life, the episode also provided an imaginative explanation for why almost all the aliens in “Star Trek” basically look like humans with different kinds of forehead ridges.)

Kovich tells Burnham that the Romulan scientist was part of a team sent to discover exactly how these aliens — whom they call the Progenitors — made this happen; the object they’re seeking winds up being one part of a brand new “chase,” this time in the 32nd century, to find the Progenitors’ technology before it can fall into the wrong hands. 

“I remember watching that episode and at the end of it just being blown away that there was this huge idea where we all come from,” Paradise says. “And then they’re going to have another mission the next week. I found myself wondering, ‘Well, then what? What happened? What do we do with this information? What does it mean?’”

Originally, Paradise says the “Discovery” writers’ room discussed evoking the Progenitors in Season 4, when the Discovery meets an alien species, the 10-C, who live outside of the galaxy and are as radically different from humans as one could imagine. “As we dug deeper into the season itself, we realized that it was too much to try and get in,” Paradise says.

Instead, they made the Progenitors the engine for Season 5. “Burnham and some of our other characters are on this quest for personal meaning,” Paradise says. Searching for the origins of life itself, she adds, “feels like a big thematic idea that fits right in with what we’re exploring over the course of the season, and what our characters are going through.”

That meant that Paradise finally got to help come up with the answers to the questions about “The Chase” that had preoccupied her when she was younger. “We had a lot of fun talking about what might’ve happened when [Picard] called back to headquarters and had to say, ‘Here’s what happened today,’” she says. “We just built the story out from there.”

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After four seasons, 'Discovery' still isn’t interested in being a “normal” Star Trek

It is the michael burnham show, after all..

The following only contains slight spoilers for the first episode of season four of ' Star Trek: Discovery .'

Since its debut back in 2017 (and even before then , really), Star Trek: Discovery has been a divisive show. There was a long laundry list of complaints: the series is too dark, everyone is mean, everyone cries too much, the Klingon designs suck, it shouldn’t be set before the original series, Michael Burnham is an unlikeable main character. While some changes have been made to the show over the years to smooth these rough edges, the elevation of Michael Burnham to the captain’s chair for season four has made it clear that Discovery is still largely going to do its own thing, regardless of what the fandom thinks.

In the past, season four for Star Trek series has always been a turning point, the moment when a show finally figures out what it wants to be. Season four of The Next Generation started with the riveting “The Best of Both Worlds,” and produced a number of classic episodes like “Family,” “Clues” and “The Drumhead.” Deep Space Nine added Worf to its crew in its fourth year, while Voyager got Seven of Nine. Enterprise ’s final season is generally considered its best. So fans were curious to see if the pattern would continue in the Kurtzman era of Trek.

Things certainly looked promising at the end of last season. The crew of Discovery had jumped 900 years into the future, to a galaxy where dilithium fuel for space travel was in short supply and the Federation was in tatters thanks to an event known as “The Burn.” Burnham and the rest of the Discovery crew figured out the source of the disaster and solved the problem in last year’s finale, opening the doors to a show dedicated to rebuilding the Federation and its ideals. After three seasons of war, it finally looked like the USS Discovery could finally get down to Starfleet’s long-stated mandates of science and exploration.

Season four begins five months after the previous episode, with the Federation now in high gear reaching out to old members and allies. That’s where we join the USS Discovery , as Burnham and Cleveland Booker are attempting to give a shipment of dilithium to a species new to the Star Trek audience. The mission quickly goes awry, strongly reminiscent of the madcap opening of Star Trek Into Darkness .

The parallels to the weakest of the three Abrams-era films are not entirely an accident or even a homage: both Into Darkness and this week’s season premiere were co-penned by Star Trek head Alex Kurtzman . They exhibit some of the excesses of modern Trek like an emphasis on frantic action and quippy dialogue — at least there’s less lens flare this time around. And everyone seems to be in a good mood, a contrast to when everyone was just worn down in the 23rd century by years of war and secret experiments.

The season opener is largely dedicated to showing off a new optimistic status quo, with Starfleet Academy being reestablished, Booker traveling to attend his nephew’s coming-of-age ritual and a new Federation president getting sworn in. It all seems rather staid, but Star Trek has always had its share of pomp and circumstance so it was actually a nice change of pace for the program. But things do go awry when the Discovery is tasked with rescuing a station crew and have to make a few hard choices, thus the title of the episode: “Kobayashi Maru.”

For those unfamiliar with Star Trek lore, the Kobayashi Maru is a test that all command-track cadets must take at Starfleet Academy. In the simulation, the cadets are faced with the choice of rescuing a ship stranded in enemy territory. To cross the border to rescue the craft is to risk war, but to preserve peace means to consign that crew to death. It’s been called a “no win” scenario,” and the Academy is interested in how a cadet reacts to it rather than the actual outcome. Kirk is known as the only person to have actually beaten it, because he reprogrammed the scenario; he cheated.

Like Kirk, Michael Burnham also doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario. She always does what she feels is best, and it’s made her crew unfailingly loyal to her over the past few seasons. But it’s earned her a share of detractors off-screen, because Burnham often disobeys orders and ignores good advice. She’s the rebel cop who plays by their own rules. Except this is Star Trek, a franchise about teamwork. Michael’s actions — and the fact that they always succeed — often undermine her superiors and even her own crewmates.

Placing her in the captain’s chair should have alleviated some of this issue, since Burnham is now the one her crew has to listen to. But even then the show felt it needed some sort of conflict, bringing the Federation president along to question Michael’s judgment in front of her crew. I couldn’t help but be reminded of how before the show aired, the producers and writers were bragging about how they were going to break one of Gene Roddenberry’s key rules for the series: No inter-crew conflict. Watching that in action in this episode, however, was mildly uncomfortable and even a little embarrassing to see.

Not everything is rosy by the end of the adventure, but it’s still a better outcome than we’ve seen at the end of many Star Trek outings. But the new “happy” status quo is thrown out the door by an anomaly at the end of the episode. As seen in previews, this anomaly will be an ongoing concern for the USS Discovery and the entire Federation — not just as a threat to life, but as a threat to the Federation’s efforts to pull itself back together.

Unfortunately, this also means that Discovery won’t be doing a lot of discovering in its fourth season. Fans who love “planet of the week” adventures and were hoping for the show to embrace that format will come away disappointed for now. However, while episodes one and two are involved in setup for the ongoing anomaly plot line, episodes three and four still make room for some vaguely one-shot adventures, albeit ones designed to further character development.

But while Discovery doesn’t seem all that interested in changing how it does things, the environment around it has changed. It’s no longer the only Star Trek show on TV, thanks to the premieres of Picard and Lower Decks in 2020, last month’s kid-oriented Prodigy and the debut of Strange New Worlds next year. All of these shows tackle the Star Trek universe in their own way, and are not required viewing to understand what’s happening in other shows (though there are some references to Picard in the first episodes of Discovery ). Viewers can choose the Trek that suits them best, removing the pressure from Discovery to be all things to all fans and making it even easier to just do its own thing.

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Tv review: 'star trek: discovery' ends its disappointing voyage.

I have a soft spot for the original "Star Trek" series and believe "The Wrath of Khan" is a genuine classic. "Strange New Worlds," which debuted in 2022, is one of the best adventures in the franchise's history. But I'm no Trekkie. My attempts at a Vulcan salute would probably be interpreted as a gang sign.

So maybe a die-hard fan could explain to me why "Star Trek: Discovery" was such a hit. The series, which starts streaming its fifth and final season Thursday on Paramount+, never tries to wrestle the moral dilemmas with the same gusto that its predecessors did. Capt. Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) takes her cues from James Bond instead of James Kirk, never missing an opportunity to deliver a quip. There's more onboard romance on a "Love Boat" cruise. And the plot in the final episodes seems like a rip-off from "The Avengers," with the rather bland crew racing across the galaxy to locate puzzle pieces.

There are some clever references to past series during these last 10 episodes, but they're reminders that "Discovery" was never in their league. Let's hope the next "Trek" mission is a little more enterprising.

Also this week

'the incomparable mr. buckley'.

William F. Buckley Jr. was a prolific writer who churned out novels and columns for his National Review magazine with spitfire speed. But this "American Masters" edition is most interested in examining the late conservative as a creature of TV, one whose facial expressions were as lively as a Broadway musical. Clips of his series, "Firing Line," make you long for the days when political debate could be entertaining without turning into shouting matches. 8 p.m. Friday, TPT

'Two for One'

Hollywood hotshots are showing their support for Turner Classic Movies by curating some very special double features every Saturday through the end of June. The series kicks off with Martin Scorsese introducing "Blood on the Moon" and "One Touch of Venus," both from 1948. Future guests include Spike Lee ("A Face in the Crowd," "Ace in the Hole"), Patty Jenkins ("The Fisher King," "Synecdoche") and Steven Spielberg ("Jailhouse Rock," "Forty Guns"). 7 p.m. Saturday, TCM

'Dave Attell: Hot Cross Buns'

Nothing is taboo for the New York comic, whose latest special has him riffing on Jeffrey Dahmer, Cracker Barrel and the Jan. 6 riots. The uproarious insults come at such a fast and furious pace that Attell appears to run out of material, filling the last 10 minutes with some tooting on a recorder. Those elementary school instruments are even more annoying when the San Francisco audience joins in. Let's hope Attell keeps the music to a minimum when he appears at Treasure Island Casino on April 26. Netflix

'The Beautiful Game'

Bill Nighy stars as an enthusiastic soccer coach determined to make a good showing at the Homeless World Cup, despite the fact that his best striker never learned that there's no "I" in team. The action scenes aren't as riveting as the ones in "Bend It Like Beckham" or even "Victory," in which we come to believe that Sylvester Stallone could play goalie. But this movie shines when it focuses on the off-the-field interplay among the underdog players. Netflix

Neal Justin covers the entertainment world, primarily TV and radio. He also reviews stand-up comedy. Justin is the founder of JCamp, a non-profit program for high-school journalists, and works on many fronts to further diversity in newsrooms.

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The urgent mission, the briefing for which takes place in the “infinity room” — aka “that white void from in The Matrix ” — is to recover an item from an 800-year-old Romulan science vessel that was found at the edge of the Beta Quadrant, and to do it fast . The mission has Red Directive priority, which you can tell just from the sound of it is serious business, and Kovich (David Cronenberg) is coming along to supervise.

Unfortunately, Discovery is scooped by two scavengers — the human Mol  (Eve Harlow) and her mystery-alien counterpart L’ak (Elias Toufexis). Side note, if L’ak’s voice sounds familiar it’s because you’ve played a videogame before — almost any videogame, with Toufexis’ long resume!

Thinking the ship might already have been stripped, L’ak suggests the pair cut their losses and go find somewhere to make themselves comfortable together for the night, but Mol wants to stay the course and L’ak agrees without hesitation. This is the only glimpse we get into the nature of their partnership; before and after, they’re two people in lock-step and on a mission, and even here when they do disagree, it’s quickly resolved. If there is a romantic relationship between these two, it is not a priority.

Discovery soon arrives and sends a small boarding party of its own over to the Romulan vessel. Burnham, Rhys (Patrick Kwok-Choon), and Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) poke around a bit, at first finding nothing but an open vault and the desiccated corpse of a Romulan wearing a noticeable Next Gen -era uniform. Not too long after, they also find Mol and L’ak, who trap Rhys and Owosekun in forcefield bubbles, removing them from the action before they even get a chance to really be a part of it.

Burnham catches up with Mol and L’ak and tries to talk them into handing over the artifact, but unsurprisingly this doesn’t work — it also contradicts the “shoot to kill” order Kovich gave the away team, though it’s to be expected that Burnham wouldn’t rush to use violence. The two thieves get away to their ship, Burnham gets blown into space, and the episode catches up to where it started: with Burnham surfing a ship through a warp slipstream while Discovery trails close behind.

Then, suddenly, a third ship arrives! The USS Antares , a sleek, four-nacelled beauty that gives echoes of a 32nd-century Stargazer , swoops in between Discovery and Burnham, tractoring the fleeing mystery ship. Her captain, Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie), refuses to let go, even when it’s clear that the Antares is doing more harm than good with its tractor beam.

This sequence is visually gorgeous — the wide shots of all three ships stacked in a close line with the swirls and eddies of the warp stream flowing around them are beautiful — but the action itself is otherwise static and goes on a little too long. The back-and-forth between the two captains serves to establish Rayner’s character as someone who is stubborn, gruff, and has a different command style than Burnham, but for quite a while nothing’s actually happening.

When Rayner finally does back off the mystery ship escapes, as he said it would, but not before it sends out 20 decoy warp signatures. Thankfully, Book (David Ajala) is able to arrive pretty much immediately — the galaxy remains a very small place on Discovery — and using his years of experience as a courier, pinpoint which of the warp signatures is likely to be the correct one. How does he know? Because there’s a dealer on this particular world, Q’Mau, known to specialize in old things.

Turns out the dealer, Fred (J. Adam Brown), specializes in old things because he himself is an old thing… a Soong-type android in the — well, not the flesh, but the bioplast.

I have to say, Fred threw me for a loop! This is not the first time we’ve seen a Soong-type android in the last few years, after the events of Star Trek: Picard , but it’s the first time in recent memory that I can recall seeing one thoroughly Data-like. Fred has different emotional expressivity than Data, and doesn’t have all the same physical mannerisms, but he doesn’t use contractions — and visually he looks more like Data than any of the other androids from Coppelius.

Long story short, I forgot all about the Romulan lockbox for a hot minute because I was sure that this near-Data was the real mystery. I was wrong, of course, as he is quickly killed by Mol and L’ak, but not before he easily opens the puzzle box and speed-reads through the handwritten notebook found inside.

Burnham, Book, and Rayner find Fred’s body and have it beamed aboard Discovery for analysis and then rush to find Mol and L’ak as they make their escape. This leads to an anti-grav sand runner chase through the desert as our three heroes try to catch up with Mol and L’ak’s ship, which is heading for the nearby mountains instead of back into orbit.

As with the earlier ship surfing scene, the action feels like it should be more exciting than it actually is. Part of this is because it’s a long sequence without a lot that breaks it up visually. But it’s also that there’s simply a lot of dialog, both between Discovery and the landing team and between the members of the landing team themselves as they shout at each other over the noise of their dirt bikes.

There’s an argument between Burnham and Rayner about whether to risk a sand avalanche by firing on the mountain to prevent the ship’s escape, which the Antares eventually does without incident. Then there’s the continuation of a conversation between Burnham and Book that started the moment he beamed aboard, one about who froze out whom and the nature of their relationship — and there’s another argument after the fleeing ship deliberately triggers the avalanche that the Antares avoided. Can Discovery stop the avalanche before it wipes out a city of thousands? Only with help from the Antares which Rayner is reluctant to give.

The move they pull to stop the avalanche — both starships slamming saucer-first into the desert and creating a joint shield bubble — which is exciting, unlike the sand chase that preceded it, is so “Uh, can they actually do that??” but also such a spectacle that you have to just sit back and say “Well, I guess in the 32nd century they can” and leave it at that.

Meanwhile, while all this has been going on, Burnham had put Tilly (Mary Wiseman) on the case to hack into Kovich’s files to find out more about the Romulan ship and its long-dead occupant. The cut back to Tilly is, to put it mildly, abrupt. She’s in a set that’s never been seen — generically Federation, but otherwise totally absent of any context clues — and I spent most of this scene simply trying to figure out where the heck she was:

There’s a guy with Tilly and she’s acting nervous and the cutesy music is obnoxiously childlike for a scene between two grown adults who maybe are flirting with each other. Is this where they work? Is it Starfleet Academy? Maybe it’s a classroom. Oh he’s leaving, okay. Maybe this is Tilly’s office. Oh there’s a bed, in the middle of this huge, bright, round room. Are these her quarters? She’s laying on the bed, I guess these are her quarters. Her very sterile, incredibly impersonal quarters half a quadrant away from the immediately previous scene. Got it. Okay what are we doing here again? We’re hacking something. Can we get Tilly a dimmer switch and some decorations and maybe a window while we wait?

Tilly gets caught, but Vance intercedes because he’s tired of being kept in the dark on this mission too, and the two of them look on as the personal log of our dead Romulan, one Dr. Vellek (Michael Copeman) begins to play. It’s too degraded to make out much, but the phrase “…in the shadow of the twin moons…” is clearly audible. Combining this information with the visual record of the notebook as contained in Fred’s positronic brain, Burnham identifies a location – the V’Leen System. But she still doesn’t know what it is Kovich has them chasing, or why.

Finally, realizing Burnham has the final piece of the puzzle, Kovich relents and lets her – and us – in on the secret, and ho boy what a secret it turns out to be!

Dr. Vellek was a member of the Romulan delegation in TNG ’s “The Chase,” the episode that explains why virtually all the aliens in Star Trek look like humans with forehead appliances — a progenitor race seeded the galaxy with genetic material that connects all humanoid life. The new piece for Discovery is that after the events of “The Chase”, Vellek found the location of the progenitors’ technology, which he recorded only in his notebook.

With the star system Burnham identified, Starfleet knows the location too — and now the chase is really on.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Season 5’s opening credits have some new imagery, including moons in orbit of a planet, a rotating gear, the “infinity room” access device, Mol and L’ak’s ship, and a field of rotating geometric shapes.
• While a new classification of Starfleet mission, the term “Red Directive” is similar to the Omega Directive, overriding normal protocols and taking top priority over all other objectives.
• The drinks served at Starfleet Headquarters, called “Tonic 2161,” feature floating stars which taste like Bajoran jumja sticks.
• Stamets reports that Starfleet’s attempts to replicate the Spore Drive have come to a close as focus shifts to the new Pathway Drive system. This means Discovery will remain the only starship with the special propulsion system.

• Speaking of the Spore Drive, this episode gives us a unique view of a jump, looking out the open cargo bay door while the ship transitions locations. (Close that freaking door, already!)
• Shoutout to the Tholian Republic and Breen Imperium for continuing to be a thorn in the Federation’s side even after all these centuries. That’s some impressive staying power.
• The Romulan science vessel is designed after the original studio model seen in Next Gen’s “The Next Phase.”
• The interior of the Romulan ship is a redress of the  Discovery mess hall set.
• L’ak’s face has an interesting shimmering or morphing effect for a few seconds when he first removes his helmet aboard the Romulan ship, almost like it’s changing shape or smoothing itself out. I wonder what that’s all about?
• Thanks to programmable matter, a standard issue Starfleet phaser can extend into a heavy-duty phaser rifle with a twist of the wrist. Cool!

• Vellek wears a passable recreation of the  Next Gen- era Romulan military uniform, but where are those crazy shoulder pads?
• Burnham is taking saxophone lessons… every captain should have a hobby!
• Fred’s serial number is AS-0572Y, with “AS” seeming to refer to Altan Soong.
• Like Data in “The Royale,” Fred reads the Romulan book at a lighting-fast pace.
• The puzzle box is identified as a tan zhekran , a type of Romulan object introduced in Star Trek: Picard’s “The Impossible Box.”
• Along with the box, Mol and L’ak also bring Fred a set of  Picard -era isolinear coprocessors, P icard -era Romulan communicator — and most valuable of all, a self-sealing stembolt.
• Other props seen in Fred’s lair include and early-season Discovery  hand phaser, a  Zhat Vash phaser rifle, a Season 1 era Klingon bat’leth,  and a Klingon cloaking device like the one from the HMS Bounty.
• Kovich notes that the Progenitors designed “life itself,” which not-coincidentally is the title of  Discovery’s Season 5 finale.

So what’s in store for this, Discovery ’s final season? Are Mol and L’ak still looking for a buyer, or did they just want Fred for his excellent puzzle-solving skills? The latter, I think. Will Book and Burnham reconcile? Probably! Will Discovery and her allies succeed in saving all life in the galaxy? Surely yes, unless the producers have some very dark plans for the series finale.

It looks like we’re in for a fun ride to find out how it all comes together. “The Chase” provides some huge storytelling opportunities, but as an all-time episode of Star Trek also some pretty big shoes to fill…. but I think Discovery can do it.

(Also, Saru and T’Rina are getting married: cue the heart emojis!)

Our review of the second episode of  Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, “Under the Twin Moons,” can be found here — but please keep the discussion below limited to “Red Directive” only!

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‘Star Trek: Discovery’ S5 Review: Final Season Is Its Best

This season has a brisk pace and the sense of fun that in the past has been crushed under the weight of grave galactic stakes..

Star Trek: Discovery occupies an interesting place in the celebrated franchise. It was the first Trek series of the streaming era, the first to debut behind a paywall, the first produced after J.J. Abrams’ big screen reboot, and the first to put a woman of color in the captain’s chair. Discovery redefined the look and feel of the franchise on television, bringing Trek into the modern world of feature-level photography, effects, and pace of story. It blazed a trail for a new generation of Trek media, like direct spin-off Strange New Worlds and the upcoming Section 31 TV movie. It is also not terribly popular amidst the old guard of Trekkies, nor is it a mainstream hit or a critical darling. Discovery has struggled to find its footing from the very beginning and is still uneven after years of retooling. I do not consider its cancellation after five seasons to be a tragic loss for television. However, Discovery may still have one “first” left to achieve: It may be the first Star Trek series whose final season is its best. 

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(A quick personal note to the handful of Trekkies who just clutched their pearls: Season 4 of Enterprise is not better than Season 3, it merely has more familiar stuff for fans to point at with childlike glee. And you’ve likely already read my thoughts on Picard ’s final season .)

Even as a critic of the show, I have to acknowledge that every season of Discovery has started with a bang. It’s the nature of a serialized, season-long story arc to kick off with something resembling the first act of a feature film, and Season 5 is no different. The opening chapter, “Red Directive,” is a fast-paced space adventure packed with flashy action set pieces. The illustrious Captain Michael Burnham ( Sonequa Martin-Green ) and her crew are on the trail of Moll (Eve Harlow) and L’ak (Elias Toufexis), a spacefaring Bonnie and Clyde who have stumbled across a secret with enormous implications for the future of the galaxy. Just like the previous three seasons, this sets Team Disco off on another cosmic scavenger hunt, jumping to a new world each week to find the next clue to the season’s grander mystery. 

Historically, this is where Discovery has run into trouble. While each chapter tends to have its own contained adventure plot or even a classic Trek “message of the week,” they’re rarely that memorable and they advance the season’s overarching storyline without adding much depth. This season, though, has a brisk pace and a sense of fun that, previously, has been crushed under the weight of grave galactic stakes. Paramount has promoted this season as having an Indiana Jones energy to it , and that’s a fair comparison. The characters are enjoying themselves more, and for the first time since Season 2, the story isn’t built around some unfathomable tragedy. T o my best recollection, none of the episodes provided in advance to critics feature any crying. That’s four consecutive episodes, possibly a new track record.

This is not the only way in which Discovery ’s new season throttles back on the show’s occasionally cloying sentimentality. The season premiere introduces a new character, Captain Rayner ( Callum Keith Rennie ), a gruff pragmatist who serves as a contrast to Burnham’s soft-spoken, personable, firmly feminine command style. At first, Rayner appears to be a straw man representing aggro, entitled white male authority, a trope Discovery goes to often. As the season progresses, Rayner acquires some depth and even some likability. It’s fun to watch this grumpy old guy interact with a cast full of characters who are totally in touch with their feelings. Most importantly, Rayner provides something that the series has needed ever since Burnham took command of Discovery: a professional peer with whom to disagree and occasionally compromise. It’s an essential role that her first officer, Saru ( Doug Jones ), has become too adoring and loyal to play. Burnham has earned the devotion of her crew, but watching her gracefully manage dissent only enhances her aura of strength and leadership.

Even though production was wrapped before Discovery was canceled (with additional shooting after that announcement to tie up loose ends), Season Five feels like a finale from the very beginning. A few characters are moving on with their lives, pursuing new interests and relationships. There are more fun, non-intrusive callbacks to Treks past than in the last two seasons, which makes it feel a bit like a victory lap for the streaming era’s flagship show. Above all, there is a sense of ease, as if the cast and crew have finally got their engine running smoothly and can cruise to the finish line. It’s the energy a series possesses at its peak, a point to which fans will often look back and say “They probably should have stopped there.” Barring a significant misstep in its final six episodes, Star Trek: Discovery will never be past its prime, and that’s a distinction its creators can wear with pride. 

• SEE ALSO : Hank Azaria On What It Takes to Change

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Discovery Season 5 is Taking a Huge Swing With Star Trek Canon

Get out your space history books.

Why do so many Star Trek aliens look like humans? The real-world explanation is that way back in 1964, Gene Roddenberry said the format of Star Trek would focus on stories that took place on “parallel worlds.” This didn’t mean Trek was an alternate universe-hopping show, but that allegorically, the people encountered by the Enterprise were humanoid, thus making the stories easier to write and understand (and, from a budget perspective, easier to make). But there’s an in-universe explanation for this, too.

In 1993, Star Trek: The Next Generation devoted an episode to answering this big question. And now, 31 years later, Star Trek: Discovery is doubling down with a Season 5 storyline that serves as a direct sequel to that story. Here’s what this means and why it matters. Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episodes 1 and 2.

The return of Star Trek’s Progenitors

The Progenitor’s message in the Next Generation episode “The Chase.”

At the end of Discovery Season 5, Episode 1, “Red Directive,” we learn that the data the crew has been assigned to protect is connected to discoveries made by a Romulan scientist in the year 2369. Season 5 happens roughly 820 years after that date, but as Kovich (David Cronenberg) tells Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), this information has been kept hidden for centuries. Why?

Well, in “The Chase,” Picard, Crusher, and the Enterprise-D crew — along with representatives from the Cardassians, Klingons, and Romulans — discovered an ancient message coded within DNA that revealed everyone descended from the same ancient aliens. The Progenitors, as their message explains, “...seeded the primordial oceans of many worlds, where life was in its infancy. The seed codes directed your evolution toward a physical form resembling ours.”

Captain Burnham is floored by this information, which makes sense since she’s originally from the 23rd century, and her pre-time travel adventures in Starfleet predate Picard’s by about 100 years. But Burnham’s ignorance of the Progenitors isn’t because she and the Discovery crew are time travelers. There’s another reason why this has all been classified.

Discovery’s new God-mode tech

Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is racing to find the most powerful Trek tech of all time.

The fact that most humanoid-looking life in Star Trek descended from an ancient alien species isn’t a new revelation to longtime Trek fans. Even Original Series episodes “Return to Tomorrow” and “The Paradise Syndrom” hinted that several species originated thanks to some kind of organized panspermia . What is new is that the technology the Progenitors used to create life on thousands of worlds has been found.

In Discovery’s “Red Directive,” the journal left by the Romulan scientist is just the first piece of the puzzle. The larger mission is to find the technology the Progenitors developed millions of years ago, and so Discovery has revealed the most powerful technology in all of Trek canon to date. In The Wrath of Khan , we got the Genesis Device , a tech capable of instantly terraforming planets. In Voyager’s “Year of Hell,” the Kremin weapon ship pushed entire planets out of the spacetime continuum, altering history in the blink of an eye.

But those examples of super-tech were unstable. What’s interesting about the ancient Progenitor tech is that it obviously works . Discovery’s imperative to find the tech is classic Trek: if the ability to seed life on a planetary scale falls into the wrong hands, the galaxy could be changed forever. In the grand tradition of Star Trek, the biggest superweapons aren’t planet-destroying superweapons, but something that could redefine and rewrite life itself.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 airs on Paramount+.

Ryan Britt's new book on the history of Star Trek's biggest changes. From the '60s show to the movies to 'TNG,' to 'Discovery,' 'Picard,' Strange New Worlds,' and beyond!

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What's Canon and What's Not in Star Trek: Discovery

Star trek: discovery takes off on sunday, september 24th..

Star Trek: Dicovery - Key Art

Not Canon: The Books... Mostly

Adapted canon: original klingon designs, star trek: discovery first trailer.

Not Canon: The

Adapted canon: the philosophical core of star trek, the great canon debate, in this article.

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7 of Star Trek: Discovery's most controversial changes to canon

Spock's beard, bald Klingons and Michael Burnham's entire existence.

Putting out a prequel some 50 years after the original is always going to be a tricky proposition, even more so when it comes to science fiction. The challenge is to sync up not just characters and storylines so that continuity remains intact, but also the look and feel of the two different projects.

Kurtzman's insisted that, across its second season, Discovery will "sync up with canon" – but what exactly are the problems that need (or needed) fixing? Here are the most illogical contradictions so far.

1. The Discovery's very existence

If Discovery is set a decade before TOS , why has the show's titular starship never featured, or even been mentioned, in shows set later in the timeline?

Spin-off web series Short Treks , a collection of short films set in the 'verse, did reveal that the Discovery eventually ends up abandoned in space . The short 'Calypso' was set "more than a millennium" after the events of Discovery and saw the craft found in the recesses of the cosmos.

That might explain why the original ship never reappeared, but not why we never saw a different iteration of the ship – a la the second version of the Enterprise that featured in The Next Generation – or why it never cropped up in conversation.

2. The Spore drive

If the Discovery is in possession of a powerful Spore Drive, which enables the crew to teleport huge distances using the Mycelial network, why was this astounding piece of tech never used in the earlier (or is that later?) Trek series?

Given the damaging effect that using the drive was having on its 'pilot' Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), Starfleet decided to decommission it in season two of Discovery until a non-human interface could be developed.

Did they just never succeed, leaving the Spore Drive on the scrapheap?

Maybe, but given that Captain Pike has already employed the drive once since the ban, in response to an emergency situation, how come its use was never deemed necessary again?

3. Spock has a sister

Just a little thing, this.

Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is the protagonist of Star Trek: Discovery . She's also the adopted sister of Mr. Spock , so it's a little old that ol' pointy ears never thought to mention her in any of his various appearances across the various Trek TV shows and movies.

The latest Discovery episodes have, of course, reintroduced Spock (now played by Ethan Peck, in the role first played by Leonard Nimoy), and, according to Alex Kurtzman, a big part of the Vulcan's arc will be about " understanding what that relationship [between him and Michael] is ".

Fine, but Spock's sibling self-contradictions don't end there.

4. Where's Spock's brother?

Spock might've gained a sister, but he's apparently lost a brother.

Sybok was Spock's elder half-brother, the son of Sarek and a Vulcan princess, and appeared in 1989 film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , played by Laurence Luckinbill.

It's established that, following his mother's death, Sybok was raised alongside Spock by Sarek, but he's not featured in any of the flashback scenes in Discovery that see a young Spock meeting and interacting with Michael.

Maybe he was a shy kid?

5. Spock's beard

Spock has a beard in Discovery. He didn't have one in the Original Series .

Sure, he might just possibly have found time to have a shave at some point in the intervening 10 years. But the face fuzz has proved controversial with the Trek hardcore, who argue it's not in-keeping with Spock's carefully controlled persona.

Ethan Peck has even acknowledged that the beard is "controversial", but has argued that it, and Spock's shaggier hairdo, reflect the character's inner turmoil at this point in his personal history.

"This is a time in Spock’s life when I think the deep inner conflict of human versus Vulcan really comes to the surface… so I think it’s an expression of his state of mind," he told TVLine .

6. Starfleet fashion

The crew of the Discovery notably sport different uniforms to the ones worn by Kirk and company in The Original Series. The original thinking behind this, apparently, was that the costumes would reflect a mid-point between the look of the characters in Enterprise (set 100 years before Discovery ) and TOS (again, set 10 years after).

"We looked at Enterprise ," then-executive producer Akiva Goldsman explained. "We looked at The Original Series , at that point in canon, and we tried to pull across the color palette."

Confusing the issue slightly was the arrival of Captain Pike in season two of Discovery. The character (originally played by Jeffrey Hunter) was created for Star Trek 's original unaired pilot episode 'The Cage' in 1965, in which he sported the classic gold pullover.

When he was reintroduced to the franchise (now played by Anson Mount), he initially wore those same duds, before switching them out for the Discovery blues when he takes temporary residence onboard that ship.

The best explanation we've seen doing the rounds for this costuming conundrum is that different uniforms are worn onboard different ships, with a Constitution class craft like the Enterprise requiring a snazzier look.

7. Bald Klingons

Discovery gave vintage Trek villains the Klingons a dramatic physical overhaul in its first season: not only did they appear less humanoid than ever before, but the flowing locks of classic Klingons like TNG 's Worf were nowhere to be seen.

The race was given another " completely new look " for Discovery' s second season, a change that Alex Kurtzman admitted was made following fan backlash to the bald look .

"The idea is that because the Klingons are not at war and not at wartime [in season two], they grew their hair," costume designer Gersha Phillips later told Digital Spy . (Think of it like how soldiers joining up with the US military shave their heads.)

To be fair, there's precedent for the Klingons to change their look: Klingons in The Original Series appeared physically much closer to humans, without the forehead ridges that became the trademark of later versions. This discrepancy was explained away on Enterprise as being the result of an "augment virus" that altered the appearance of certain Klingons.

Continuity quibbles...nothing new for Trek !

Star Trek: Discovery is streaming on CBS All Access in the US, and Netflix in the UK.

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Star Trek: Discovery is cracking open a box Next Gen closed on purpose

The USS Discovery is on a mad chase across the galaxy for one of Star Trek’s biggest secrets

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Calling back to a single 30-year-old episode of television is a time-honored Star Trek tradition , one that’s led the franchise to some of its most fascinating detours. And in its two-episode season premiere, Star Trek: Discovery seems to be kicking off an entire season calling back to one particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

And not just any episode! The 1993 installment of Next Gen in question delivered a revelation so seemingly earth-shaking that it should have rewritten galactic politics on a massive scale. But then, as was the way in the 1990s era of episodic TV, nobody ever mentioned it again.

At least until now.

[ Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 5.]

Writer Michelle Paradise and director Olatunde Osunsanmi lay out the connection at the end of the first of two episodes released this week, “Red Directive.” Discovery’s mission is to follow a series of ancient clues leading to a cache of ancient technology, and to get there before a couple of professional thieves, Moll (Eve Harlow) and L’ak (Elias Toufexis), do.

The technology, as Doctor Kovich (David Cronenberg) explains, belongs to the so-called Progenitors, a barely understood ancient spacefaring species that “created life as we know it […] every humanoid species in the galaxy.” Presumably such tech holds the key to understanding how the Progenitors did that, and how that power could be used again.

The Progenitors are from the Star Trek episode “The Chase”

Kovich also calls up a helpful video presentation of the moment the Progenitors were discovered by an assembled group of Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian captains, including Jean-Luc Picard. But you don’t have to be a Star Trek lore nerd to know you’re actually just looking at clips from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Specifically, from the 20th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s sixth season, “The Chase,” in which Picard and crew discover pieces of a computer program hidden inside the DNA of species from dozens of different planets. Questions abound: What does the program do? And what kind of entity could have been so ancient and powerful that it had determined the genetic legacy of most of the known galaxy before sentient life had even evolved here — and then left no trace of its existence except the genetic codes themselves?

In a nutshell, the mysterious death of Captain Picard’s old archeology professor (did you know that if he hadn’t gone into Starfleet, Jean-Luc was studying to be a space archeologist? Well, now you do) sets the captain and the Enterprise on a search for the missing DNA fragments necessary to complete his unfinished work.

The action of the episode becomes a grand chase, as Klingon and Cardassian captains come to believe the program must be a great weapon or dangerous secret. Eventually Picard and his rivals all discover the lonely planet with the final DNA strain — and when they get there, some Romulans who’ve been secretly following all of them show up, too, just to make things even more tense.

In the end, the program isn’t a weapon or a secret, but a message from an ancient race of humanoids that apparently created sentient life in our galaxy as we know it.

Actor Salome Jens appears as a Progenitor hologram, and delivers a speech that’s stirring by any standard of Star Trek monologues, telling the story of a race of sentients that took to the stars and found them empty. They had evolved too early to meet other forms of sentient life, and knew that their time was too limited to ever expect to.

“We knew that one day we would be gone; that nothing of us would survive, so we left you,” Jens’ Progenitor explains. The Progenitors seeded humanoid life across the galaxy in their own image; life that tended to evolve into bipedal, tailless, largely hairless creatures with two eyes and two arms and five fingers on each hand. And they left clues in the genetic signature of their work, broken up among the stars.

Wait, was this really all about lampshading the limits of Star Trek’s alien design?

Kinda, yes! The writers of “The Chase,” Ron Moore and Joe Menosky, were inspired by elements of Carl Sagan’s Contact , but also by Menosky’s pet fascination creating an in-universe explanation for why all the common alien species in Star Trek are basically shaped like humans (albeit with latex on their faces).

In other hands, it would be hokey and trite, but even under heavy makeup, Jens sells the hell out of her single scene on voice and stance alone — it’s no wonder she was asked back to the Trek fold to play a major antagonist role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .

“It was our hope that you would have to come together in fellowship and companionship to hear this message, and if you can see and hear me, our hope has been fulfilled,” the Progenitor hologram concludes, with gentle compassion. “You are a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence. That was our wish: That you, too, would know life. [...] There is something of us in each of you, and so something of you in each other.”

But though “The Chase” carried a sweeping revelation, nothing ever really panned out from it. You’d think that a message of togetherness that fundamentally rewrote the origin of life in the universe would have to have tweaked Star Trek’s galactic politics a bit, right? Seems like this would give the Star Trek setting a radically different understanding of the origins of life than we have in the real world — this is literally intelligent design! At the very least there’d be some other characters talking about how humans and Vulcans, Klingons and Romulans and Ferengi and Cardassians and Trill and Bajorans, all share the same genetic ancestor.

But nope: The Pandora’s box of Progenitor lore remained closed. Gene Roddenberry’s successor and Trek producer Rick Berman seems to have been disenchanted with the episode’s reveal — and you can’t really blame him for not wanting to rock the whole cosmology of Star Trek in an episode that’s mostly about explaining how if you turn the DNA snippets like this they make a cool spiral. Now look at this computer screen with the spiral :

Except now, Star Trek: Discovery is opening the box and rocking the boat. This new mad, puzzle-box chase around the galaxy promises to expand on the Progenitors, an idea so big that not even The Next Generation was willing to touch it. It’s a tall order, but Discovery has never been more free to shake up Star Trek continuity than it is right now — we’ll have to wait for more episodes of the show’s final season to find out how free it intends to be.

Star Trek: Discovery is finally free to do whatever it wants

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Prime, Kelvin, or something else - Which universe is Star Trek Discovery actually in?

Is Star Trek Discovery in the Prime or Kelvin timeline? Why nothing adds up in the latest TV show

One of the biggest questions around Star Trek Discovery has been what universe it’s in? That’s actually not as easy as you might think to answer, despite what the showrunners and cast might say. Star Trek is a world where anything could happen because... physics. There’s a Prime timeline, a Kelvin one, the Mirror Dimension and more time travelling and universe hopping than several other shows combined. 

For example, Beverly Crusher once spent an episode of The Next Generation on a version of Enterprise that existed in a pocket universe only 705 meters wide. While, canonically, Spock has existed on four separate timelines: the Original Series, an animated series timeline where time traveling saw him die as a child, requiring him to nip back in time to pretend to be his own cousin to fix it. Plus , the J.J. Abrams reboot’s divergent timeline where a future and current version of the same character co-exist. 

The series has ripped reality apart for dramatic impact over the years and then scrambled to explain away the inconsistencies. And let’s not forget Discovery is built on lies regarding the whole Tyler/Voq story arc and casting . The creative team behind Discovery has been very careful in stating how the show will “respect canon”, but often outright avoid saying explicitly that Michael Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery occupy the same specific universe or dimension as the Archer, Kirk, Picard, Sisko, or Janeway we know and love. Technically the Kelvin timeline and Prime timeline coexist and run concurrently together, so why not other variations? (More on this in a moment.) 

First things first

Establishing what universes actually exist is probably the best place to start. In the beginning, there was just Star Trek, now referred to as The Original Series (or TOS). That’s the Prime timeline - along with the Mirror Universe (the evil dimension where everyone’s bad), first introduced in a 1967 TOS episode called Mirror Mirror. Star Trek, Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise, all take place there. 

Then there’s the Kelvin timeline which was established in J.J. Abrams’ first movie when the Romulan, Nero, travelled back from the future and destroyed the USS Kelvin a little under 30 years before TOS originally took place. In doing so he created a divergent timeline that was subtly different to the Prime one (and cleverly explained why so much was different in the reboot). There are many notable differences: Kirk’s father died on the Kelvin, and he joined Starfleet three years later than in the Prime timeline. The Enterprise was built a decade later, the Vulcan homeworld was destroyed, Chekov’s birthday even slipped a few years. 

It’s basically like the bit in Back to the Future when Biff gets the almanac and messes up the future by creating a new one alongside the old one. 

As I mentioned a moment ago, like Doc’s chalkboard drawing, both the Prime and Kelvin timelines coexist in the same universe, the latter a quantum reality existing alongside the former. This is something more or less signposted in an early draft of the first Abrams’ movie, which includes dialogue where a young Spock is asked what the main assumption of quantum cosmology is and he answers, "everything that can happen does happen in equal and parallel universes." 

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Star Trek Discovery - every Easter egg and secret reference hidden in season 1

Co-writer for the 2009 Star Trek movie Roberto Orci backed this up in an interview when asked if the new timeline had wiped out the old one, answering, “it continues. According to the most successful, most tested scientific theory ever, quantum mechanics, it continues.” In that same interview he also points to The Next Generation episode Parallels (where Worf slips from one reality to another after passing through a quantum fissure). There, Data again talks about how “all possibilities that can or could happen, do happen in alternate quantum realities.” That episode sees numerous, slightly different versions of the Prime reality, separated by imperceptible differences (the colour of a cake, for example). 

The implication is that there could be numerous Prime and Kelvin realities, basically identical, but separated by a haircut here, or a coffee instead of an Earl Grey there. In fact, 2009 film writer and Discovery producer Kurtzman has explained the Prime and Kelvin’s similarities and improbable coincidences as “the timestream’s way of trying to mend itself” a line that was at one point written for Prime Spock in the movie when he impossibly meets Kelvin Kirk in a cave. The idea floated is that there is a ‘most probable’ version of reality that happens more than others, despite minor differences. 

So, where the hell does that leave Discovery? Early Tweets from Anthony Rapp, who plays astromycologist Lieutenant Paul Stamets in the show, seemed to clearly state Discovery is Prime timeline

Yes it is in the Prime timeline. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. September 15, 2017

While author David Mack who was ‘in the loop’ during Discovery’s development also said the show’s Prime, while adding that “‘discrepancies’ will be addressed/resolved.”

What Anthony said. Yes, Discovery is in the Prime timeline. It fits w/canon. Apparent "discrepancies" will be addressed/resolved. It works. September 15, 2017

That might seem cut and dry if it wasn’t for the fact that these tweets went out before the show aired, as fans reacted more to the look of the show than the content:

Have faith; look past the surface, past the superficialities of aesthetics. See the HEART of @startrekcbs: it's real STAR TREK to its core. September 15, 2017

There’s no arguing that Discovery is ‘Star Trek to its core’ but there’s still so much that doesn’t add up. On the surface, the appearance and some of the more advanced tech matches the Kelvin timeline, with its more contemporary uniforms and more advanced ship. Plus, there are some huge inconsistencies with either timeline beyond the basics of Burnham being Spock's previously unmentioned half-sister, the fundamentally different looking Klingons (especially as this is the peak time for the more ordinary looking Klingons of the TOS, explained by a virus created from augmented human DNA), or the apparent near destruction of the Federation. (I barely even want to mention the Spore Drive, as it's so canonically inconsistent.)

Some things are clear contradictions. For example, at one point in Discovery we see Burnham replicating a uniform, the fabric being constructed at an atomic level. This contradicts previous canon that Replicators were a Next Generation era technology - Captain Janeway, in an episode of Voyager, states that in Captain Kirk’s time there were “no replicators. No holodecks.” There were devices called protein resequencers that could make food, essentially organic 3D printers, but these were a world away from the teleporter tech apparently forming Burnham’s clothes atom by atom. Janeway’s statement obviously also makes the holodeck training program we see Lorca and Ash using slightly awkward. TOS did have Rec Rooms that were capable of holographic projections but these were more movie-like projections that simulations. 

Such huge discrepancies have been waved away by fans saying the Discovery’s status as a military vessel gave it access to technology other ships of the time didn’t have. It’s a stretch though. The Next Generation establishes that replicators weren’t really on ships until the 24th century, some 110 years after the events of Discovery. (There was replicator-like tech in TOS but it was used by aliens or entities from the future.)

While we’re talking about time periods it’s worth mentioning just how cleverly the show is set to avoid specifically identifying a Prime or Kelvin timeline outright. The attack by Nero that created these two divergent realities happened in 2233, the end of season 1 sees the Discovery make contact with the TOS-era Enterprise in 2257 when Commander Pike is still captain. This date’s beautifully placed, as it’s just close enough to some big events without clearly picking a side. 

In the Prime timeline Kirk doesn’t take over the Enterprise until somewhere in the 2260s when Pike is promoted, before the TOS episode The Menagerie brings him back hideously disabled in 2267. However, in the Kelvin timeline Kirk is on the Enterprise in 2258 when Nero attacks Vulcan, and Pike is later killed in 2259 by KHAAAAA… sorry, Khan. Remember that in the 2009 film, while the Enterprise’s maiden voyage was in 2258, a year after it meets Discovery in the show, all ships go through ‘shakedown’ - a series of test flights and voyages to rattle the bits and make sure nothing falls off before being declared operational. A malfunction there would certainly fit in with the priority one distress call the season ends on.

“You have to understand the timelines and what the different universes were and how they all worked together.” Discovery co-creator, Alex Kurtzman

So season 1 interestingly ends juuust at the point where it would have to conclusively prove which universe it’s in. As I mentioned before, series’ co-creators, like Alex Kurtzman, have been very good at talking around settings without being completely definite. “You have to respect canon,” stated Kurtzman in this interview . “You have to understand the timelines and what the different timelines were and what the different universes were and how they all worked together.” In the same interview he also says “we are adhering to a timeline and sticking to the rules”. In another interview he also says, “We’re certainly endeavoring to be entirely consistent with Original Series canon.” 

All that talk of “respect” and “consistency” still leaves room for surprises. And, after the Ash/Voq twist and Lorca’s Mirror Universe reveal, it’s pretty clear the show isn’t afraid of pulling some pretty big twists. But if we’re going to get any answers it’s going to happen in season 2. You don’t end on a ‘meeting TOS-era Enterprise’ cliffhanger without people expecting you to deliver the goods. The question is what that’s going to be?

Season 2 you say?!! Sounds good to me!! CAN’T WAIT to see what comes next!! #StarTrekDiscovery @StarTrekRoom @startrekcbs 🤣❤️🖖✨ pic.twitter.com/LJhGhKYwIf October 23, 2017

Interestingly, when interviewed about season 2 , co-creator Alex Kurtzman addressed the idea of who might be on the Enterprise, stating “I think there will be some surprises there. We will maintain consistency with canon, but there will be surprises.” That would seem to suggest an unexpected, but familiar name or face, although he also goes on to say, “if we bring in characters from the Original Series, they have to adhere to canon. So anything that’s been mentioned in TOS, either storyline or character-wise, we have to stay consistent with.” Note that he still doesn’t actually say the show is the TOS universe, just that they might use characters from it. Technically, even the Kelvin timeline Sarek is ‘a character from the TOS universe’, first appearing in the 1967 episode Journey to Babel. 

The practical upshot of all this is that, yes, all the talk seems to say that Discovery is in the Prime timeline. Although we’re still really lacking any real definitive event or character to incontrovertibly prove it - there are huge inconsistencies we’ve still yet to see explained and all the talk from the showrunners still leaves room for a new universe or timeline. Perhaps from an event yet to happen in season 2 that creates a third timeline, and will finally explain the inconsistencies. Whatever happens, season 2 has reached a point in Star Trek history where Discovery will have to decide once and for all. 

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for guides, which means I run GamesRadar's guides and tips content . I also write reviews, previews and features, largely about horror, action adventure, FPS and open world games. I previously worked on Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website. 

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Star Trek: 12 Inconsistencies Between The Old And New Shows

Star Trek: Discovery and Picard are quite polarizing, especially since they have many inconsistencies with the older shows.

Star Trek has been around for over fifty years. In that time, it's carved out a place for itself among the most thoughtful science fiction properties ever, tackling complex themes regarding the human condition, social relations, and ethical dilemmas. These messages have carried the franchise through numerous TV shows that started with The Original Series , continued with The Next Generation , and finally into current shows like Strange New Worlds and even cartoon spinoffs like Lower Decks .

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Though they each have their issues, fans have enjoyed all of these series to varying degrees, and some of the recent Star Trek shows have rubbed many of these fans the wrong way. Critics claim the new material has gone beyond artistic license,​​​ overlooking several details within the continuity, and completely overhauling key themes. Is it fresh, new, and exciting, or has it made the products practically unrecognizable as part of the same franchise?

Updated October 28, 2022, by Kristy Ambrose: These days, the controversy between Old Trek and New Trek is just another part of the media entertainment world, with the fanbase and creators taking some interesting liberties with Gene Roddenberry's old formula. There are plenty of ways the vintage shows are different from the new ones, but it seems to be the realm of storytelling and character development that rile up fans the most. On the other hand, some of the new features on the show were obvious and even welcomed. How much a fan wants to fight about it is a matter of personal opinion.

12 The Tech Aesthetic

This is hardly a fair critique, but hindsight is still a funny thing . Some of the original Star Trek technology can't help feeling out of date in appearance. The mess of knobs, dials, plastic screens, and cumbersome communicators contrast wildly with the touchscreens, holographic displays, and minuscule devices that most sci-fi fans know nowadays. It's no surprise that Discovery looks so much sleeker despite taking place before.

The creators obviously felt that this would more accurately reflect a modern vision of the future. It seems odd to think of a Star Trek show with a very limited budget, but the early versions of Star Trek were intended for a niche audience and weren't expected to get a lot of attention. The show didn't exactly have a huge budget, so it was limited in what it could do.

11 Higher Production Values

An extension of the previous idea, this isn't just a feature in movies anymore. The early Star Trek movies were serious investments for the time, but the price tag on modern Star Trek shows makes the budget of Old Trek look like Tribble fuzz. Star Trek started out as a subversive show and had a modest budget to match its niche audience.

Now, producers are confident that the band is powerful enough to return any investment they make, regardless of the story quality. It's a practice that encourages bad and even lazy behavior when it comes to writing the plot, but on the other hand, there are all kinds of cool visuals and event-based twists for the audience to enjoy.

10 Picard Is A Completely Different Character

In contrast to the brash-yet-personable Kirk, Picard was a methodical and closed-off captain. His authoritarian attitude may have seemed cold, but his efficiency and intelligence often got the job done. He was respectful of other cultures and had a talent for negotiation and diplomacy, and during a mostly peaceful era, this made him one of the most valuable officers in Starfleet.

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The recent Picard TV show has come under fire for painting the titular character as an emotional wreck with nothing to do but mope around his chateau. The script chalks some of this up to PTSD from his Borg brainwashing, but he supposedly got over that in The Next Generation and there was no mention of that in the movies. Other puzzling additions include his newfound fondness for Data. Sure, many people change throughout their lives, but this is practically a 180-degree flip and it's completely different from the old character.

9 The Vulcan Hello

Discovery shows how different it will present the mindset of these aliens in the very first episode. A tense standoff with the Klingons leads Michael Burnham to seek advice from adoptive father Sarek, a Vulcan ambassador. He reveals that his people previously used preemptive strikes to quell potential threats. It happened so often that it came to be called "the Vulcan Hello."

This would provoke the enemy, especially a warrior race like the Klingons, but Sarek knows that and seems to think the Klingons will respect a show of aggression. Sure, the Vulcans have a somewhat primal past, and they are primarily a peaceful and intelligent species, but they're logical above all else. Deliberately starting a war is most illogical but we are dealing with Klingons here, and if the most logical reply is to fire, a Vulcan would do so.

8 The Elitist Federation Of Planets

Star Trek has always been about hope. Its central organization--the United Federation of Planets--stands as a testament to cooperation and kinship with countless other races, regardless of their beliefs. By contrast, the Federation in these new shows is colder and less accepting of other worldviews. They see themselves as the supreme arbiters of who lives and dies, evidenced by their refusal to help the Romulans in their hour of need.

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For comparison, they were perfectly willing to help the Klingons out of a similar jam in The Undiscovered Country . The creators made these changes to critique the Trump-era United States, but this goes against what was previously established by the Federation. Granted, Deep Space Nine also challenged this idyllic image, but it was never this blatant or extreme.

7 The Klingons

These battle-ready warriors have changed several times at this point. In TOS they just looked like humans with Fu Manchu mustaches and gold body paint because the original show's budget prevented much else. Thankfully, starting with the first movie and continuing for all subsequent appearances, the Klingons looked hardier, often hairier, brows and all, and generally more intimidating.

Their burly frames, armored craniums, and long hair made for an imposing sight akin to Vikings or Mongols, and these old stereotypes are why they had to change. Discovery made a few bold moves here but not for the better. Not only have most of these Klingons lost their lustrous hair, but they have so many disgusting details prosthetically piled on that it limits the actors. Their faces barely move, and their teeth prevent them from speaking clearly. In short, the old warrior race is now little more than spluttering, puppet-like monsters.

6 The Trills

These dotted denizens assert in Discovery that they've never forced a separation between a host and symbiont, but that retcons the lore from other shows. Setting aside the obvious improbability of that statement, what about Joran Dax? This murderer was such a misfire on the Dax symbiont that the Symbiosis Commission tried to cover it up. He didn't call for a forced separation?

Joran's presence also reveals that symbionts aren't as picky as everyone thought. About half the Trill population are viable hosts and the Commission simply keeps this quiet so as to root out the "most worthy" candidates. On the other hand, Discovery states that a galaxywide destructive event wiped out a chunk of their people, including most of these hosts. However, it's pretty unlikely that they still wouldn't have enough viable Trills, especially once they started reproducing. They're turning into the MacGuffin race of Star Trek .

5 The Romulans

Most major powers seem to have a shadow organization or spec ops unit to operate behind the scenes or take on the toughest tasks. The Federation has Section 31, the Cardassians have the Obsidian Order, and the Romulans have the Tal Shiar and Zhat Vash. These are the Zhat Vash, and they're supposedly a more deep-seated organization for combatting androids and other synthetic life.

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Theoretically, these Romulan agents should have surfaced before now, but it would have only exposed how redundant they are and that isn't even the only problem. The whole idea of Romulans being averse to synthetic life isn't just pulled from nowhere, it's totally contradictory to how the Romulans were presented in their earlier incarnations in the franchise. It would have been better to make a whole new race than ret-con one that already existed to this extent.

4 Blame Section 31

Speaking of spies and secret societies, one of the few ideas that are unique to modern Star Trek , with virtually no mention of it in the previous canon, is Section 31. This is the covert arm of Starfleet's intelligence operations, and the idealistic vision of Gene Roddenberry didn't consider the need for such an organization. Modern writers, however, who grew up during the Cold War and know how well advertising and propaganda work, have another perspective.

It's a realistic vision as opposed to an idealistic one, which veers away from the ideas in the original series where human society had evolved into a veritable utopia that didn't even have dirty words. However, the callbacks to the Mirror Universe that pop up whenever Section 31 is involved remind the viewer of the old idea that humans are not inherently good, and that the galaxy might have evolved differently.

3 Replicator Technology

The folks in Discovery sure are lucky to have replicators. These handy machines can materialize food and drinks seemingly out of thin air, but there's a problem with this. They shouldn't exist yet. It may seem like a nitpick, but this crucial detail hurts the immersion factor and wrecks the timeline. Replicators didn't come into fashion until The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine .

The crew in The Original Series still used rations and food pellets. Discovery supposedly takes place before this, so where'd these guys get the replicators? Did they go forward in time and steal them? It could have been a butterfly effect of the time travel antics in J.J. Abrams's Star Trek flicks, but those are in an entirely different timeline.

2 Hold Your Hologram

Another familiar piece of tech in Discovery is a common tool in sci-fi : a holographic communicator. Characters casually talk to each other over great distances by projecting images of themselves to connecting devices. Just like with the replicators, though, the guys in the new show should have no idea what these things are.

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Holographic communicators were nowhere in The Original Series and Deep Space Nine specifically says that they're a newer piece of technology. Yet, Discovery constantly throws them around decades prior. Don't tell Chief O'Brien about it. He was really proud of his new toy.

1 Swearing, Sex, And Violence

The dialogue in these new Star Trek shows is anachronistic. The characters talk in modern lingo and make jokes with contemporary slang. At least the writers could have tried to write some 24th-century cruses words. Trying to push the envelope to compete with the modern trend of fantasy horror, the shows also throw in a slew of swear words, sex scenes, and gruesome violence.

Star Trek was never this down and dirty, even during its darkest moments. The characters tried to approach situations intellectually, sex mostly occurred offscreen, and combat was clean and efficient when it did need to happen. The stories didn't dwell or depend on any of this. Be it due to budgetary limits or not, these shows demonstrated a different time, one where intellect triumphed over baser instincts.

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Star Trek: Discovery's Most Glaring Offenses

Star Trek has never had a fan community known for real consensus. It's always been about the debates: "Kirk or Picard?" "JJTrek—good or bad?" Or "theme to Enterprise —redeemable?" And the sixth, most recent series in the storied franchise— Star Trek: Discovery,  the first new show to be released in 12 years—is proving just as divisive as anything Trek -related ever produced. 

Depending on who you're talking to, Discovery shows the franchise either in a resurgence or a death spiral. Viewers are battling it out across comment sections, forums and subreddits just as they used to fight in letters to fanzines or over IRC.

Nine episodes into Star Trek: Discovery 's first season, it's still hard to judge it as a whole. It has its ups and downs, and almost every  Trek series started out with a relatively lousy first season. As things stand now, some critics are wholly supportive, others are jumping off, and whether or not they're enough to sink the show, some consistent arguments have emerged on the side of the show's detractors. 

Some of these issues may be dealt with as the show continues through its first season and beyond , but others could prove harder to work around. Read on to see what fans of Star Trek are calling new kid Discovery 's most glaring offenses against the series canon.

Looking backwards

The original sin of Star Trek: Discovery , for detractors, is its status as a prequel to the events of the original series. Not only is it not the first show to do this—the last new Star Trek series, Enterprise , pulled the same trick, and that's no one's favorite show—the series also positions itself only ten years before the events of the original, even featuring some of the same characters. 

Not only does this chronological overlap irk people thirsty for original content rather than visits from characters from the 1960s—hey everybody, it's Harry Mudd again!—it also opens the door to all manner of plot and character inconsistencies between shows.

In the original plan for Star Trek : Discovery , the show was to be an anthology series , with each season taking place in a different era of warp-capable humanity. The first season would have been a prequel, but future seasons would have jumped around.

The decision during development to axe this plan has elicited a lot of criticism. According to one writer, the motivation to go with the setting was largely due to a " gap in the chronology ," which is hardly as satisfying a motivation as "we had a killer story in mind." People instantly criticized the superficial lack of continuity between costumes and tech , and feared the further implications of potentially sloppy prequel work. As a creative decision, it feels unnecessary, and invites a lot of arguments that the show probably can't win.

The divisive pilot

Right from the jump, Star Trek: Discovery 's two-part premiere may be one of the most divisive installments of any  Trek series to date. The two episodes, "The Vulcan Hello" and "Battle at the Binary Stars," were an action-packed adventure, an expensive production of CGI ship battles and gorgeous outer space effects. Some called it exciting, but for others, it was everything they'd hope the show wouldn't be—a blasty, shooty adventure instead of a showcase for the slower, more contemplative stories Star Trek  has spent decades exploring.

Reactions were split more or less straight down the middle , and the divide in the fanbase still persists. One viewer's "interesting and engaging" is another viewer's "unrecognizable and awful," and there's enough material to make an argument for either side.

Even some of those who liked the episodes found them to be an odd way to introduce a new series, especially considering that—spoiler alert—almost everything the audience gets introduced to in the first episodes is turned on its head by the end, with the captain dead, the ship destroyed, and the lead demoted from first officer to lifelong prisoner. Even if the story was exciting, it's a weird way to start an ensemble cast Star Trek show. As one commentator put it, "we have watched the first two episodes of a TV show. I don't feel like I've seen a single episode yet."

Why so Spock-centric?

One of the biggest, most buzzworthy facts about Discovery in the lead-up to its release was that its main protagonist, the human woman Michael Burnham, was basically the adopted sister of classic series character Spock. Right away, fans started cracking the spines of their expanded universe books and canonical addenda, calling foul on the entire concept, much the same way they'd called foul on Spock's secret brother Sybok when he showed up in the much-maligned Star Trek V: The Final Frontier .

For some fans, the modification of a core original series family was playing too close to established canon to feel comfortable. While Spock himself doesn't appear, his father Sarek does, having an intensely close and at times combative relationship with Michael, his human ward. One episode, "Lethe," filled in some blanks about Sarek's relationship with Spock that don't mesh with how it's been portrayed in other series.

While not necessarily a bad thing, putting the show in a position where it invites these contradictions is a bizarre act of self-handicapping on the part of the creators, and constantly calls attention to the friction between old shows and the new. Obviously the writers can't travel through time to change what already exists in old scripts, so why did they invite the ire of one of the most detail-oriented, canon-obsessed fanbases in the history of television? 

The distant lead

Another divisive point among viewers revolves around the main character Michael Burnham, portrayed by The Walking Dead 's Sonequa Martin-Green. While some are fans of the driven, moody, and complex former first officer, others have found her character to be distant and even unlikable. 

It's not a completely unjustified reaction. After all, she  is responsible for kicking off the Klingon-Federation war that dominates the series in its early going—it's a pretty hard thing to charm your way back from that one.

Michael's cultural Vulcan-ness as an aloof logician also makes her as difficult a character to root for as she probably is to work with. It's not the fault of Martin-Green that some people aren't coming around—as a performer, she's doing a good job, and her character does have her moments. But she shoulders the burden of being disliked in-universe and distant from audiences, and since she's such a focus of the show, the rough edges of her character are that much harder to ignore. 

Meet the... Klingons?

Another strike against Discovery revolves around the show's portrayal of the long-established Klingons. This is a species that's been around since the '60s, but when they first appeared as the central antagonists of Discovery , many viewers couldn't help but notice how the Klingons looked, and acted, completely different  than they ever had before. Gone were the noble, Shakespearean qualities they exhibited in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country or the strategic cunning of their flat-forehead TOS days. Instead of being compared to their previous incarnations, these iterations of the species have drawn comparisons to the violent and more feral Uruk-Hai of The Lord of the Rings .

Speaking of those foreheads, it's not the first time the Klingons have gone through a redesign, gaining their ridged-forehead look in 1979's  Star Trek: The Motion Picture . Enterprise even went to great pains to reconcile the two looks in the series canon with a two-part episode that served just to explain the flat-vs-ridged forehead issue. Now there's a whole new wrinkle to the Klingon canon. Does it matter? Some fans would argue that it used to.

Casting shenanigans

Woe to any TV show that tries to keep a secret these days. The internet never met a puzzle box it couldn't solve, and it's increasingly looking like the most ruthless hive mind this side of the Borg may have figured out one of Star Trek: Discovery 's biggest narrative twists weeks before the creators wanted them to.

So what's the big secret? It all revolves around Ash Tyler, played by Shazad Latif. Tyler was introduced to the show midway through its first chapter of episodes, making his first appearance as a POW on a Klingon ship who miraculously hadn't died despite allegedly suffering months of torture.

Commentators immediately began drawing a line between his conspicuous appearance and the sudden disappearance of a Klingon character named Voq—and alarm bells really started going off when it was discovered that Voq's performance was being credited by the show to an actor who appears not to exist . 

Further, Latif's casting announcement originally stated he'd be playing a Klingon—is it possible he still is? Many viewers think so. Reviewers and recappers are openly discussing the theory as a foregone conclusion, expressing disappointment that the show may be building up to a predictable storyline that the franchise has trafficked in before. Klingons have been altering their appearance to infiltrate Starfleet since the original series, and the longer the show teases out this very likely plot turn, the weaker the reveal will probably be.

A grim tone

To heck with " frak " and " gorram "—in Star Trek: Discovery,  we're going full-on F-bomb . Which isn't a bad thing so much as it's just weird. It's one indication among many of the show's overall darker tone when compared to series past. 

Gone are the color-coded costumes, bright ship lighting, and relatively carefree personalities of older installments of Star Trek —everybody on this ship looks like they want to kill somebody. Sure, the storyline has them stuck in a time of war, but so did Deep Space Nine , and those guys still had time to take a load off with a game of baseball . 

Star Trek has always been more optimistic and inspirational than Discovery 's been so far, with dark deviations like the movies Nemesis and Into Darkness going down mostly poorly with the fanbase. There's a tongue-in-cheek corniness to typical  Star Trek that this series doesn't have enough of. 

As a result, many Trek fans are singing the gospels of The Orville , a show built around a tone of levity and sense of adventure that knows its primary colors, even if its jokes don't always land. Meanwhile, on Discovery , a crew member of the ship has evidently been the victim of cross-species sexual assault while held captive by the Klingons. It's a topic Trek has never really touched before, and indicative as anything else of the show's darker, TV-MA tone.

The captain is a madman

There's really no getting around this one—that Captain Lorca guy is kind of a psycho. Stern, distant, and militant, he's another aspect of the show that feels more in line with the desperate world of Battlestar Galactica  than the "we're figuring this out together" world of Trek . 

In the first nine episodes, the captain has drawn a phaser on an admiral, abandoned a man to die by Klingon hands, and tortured a sentient alien to power his ship. After that creature escaped, he was totally cool with switching the power source for his ship from an inarticulate alien to a straight-up human being—a volunteer crewman, but still .

Starfleet captains have always just felt more innately righteous than Lorca appears to be so far, even when they're outwardly cold. It's the admirals who are supposed to be evil , right? We even have an example in the show already of a good Starfleet captain in the deceased Philippa Georgiou, whom point-of-view character Michael ended up indirectly getting killed as a result of her vengeance-driven mutiny. Even just compared to her, Lorca is an aberration—and it's weird.

Past captains have been tough on their crews, but they made the hard decisions for their crews, whereas Lorca seems to be out mostly for himself. We'd almost rather be stuck aboard Janeway's lost, stranded hell-vessel than under this guy's command. Almost.

Advanced tech and the prequel problem

The complaints about Star Trek: Discovery 's technological inconsistencies go beyond aesthetics and into actual examples in the story, like a functional holodeck , a fully holographic method of communication, and the immensely powerful spore drive that allows Discovery  to leap anywhere in the universe across the span of a vast mycelial network. 

Kirk and company could have used a few of these things, so if this show takes place ten years before the original series, then what happened to all that technology, right? You get the idea. In the show, it's not consequential, but taken all together, it all stacks up as part of the argument against making this a prequel to begin with. The franchise's past is limited, the argument goes. The future, on the other hand, would have been all opportunity.

The voyage home

On October 7, after three episodes of Star Trek: Discovery had aired on CBS All Access, executive producer Akiva Goldsman insisted that the show's creative team was aware of the apparent contradictions between its world and the established Trek timeline.

"We are wildly aware of everything that appears to be a deviation from canon," he said, according to TrekMovie , further promising to "close out each of those issues before we arrive at the 10-year period and hit TOS ."

Some of those inconsistencies, though, already appear irreconcilable. As a result, some have been floating the theory that the entire show takes place in a war-torn mirror universe not unlike the one introduced in the Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror," and there have indeed been hints of parallel dimensions taking place within the context of the show. 

If Discovery really is revealed to be taking place within an entirely different universe, it would render most of these complaints moot. It would be a curious creative decision, and a daring one to keep hidden, considering how keeping that fact a secret risks driving viewers away. 

Can  Discovery  overcome these issues? Of course it can—while these points do cause friction, there's a lot about the show to recommend, from its uniformly gorgeous visuals to its diverse and talented cast. With an entire second season guaranteed to come, there's plenty to look forward to—and to argue about. Disagreement doesn't doom the show—really, it wouldn't be  Star Trek without it.

• April 4, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Embraces Second Chances In “Under The Twin Moons”
• April 4, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Returns With New Vitality And A Lore-Fueled Quest In “Red Directive”
• April 4, 2024 | Watch The ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5 Premiere For Free On YouTube In USA
• April 3, 2024 | Paramount Reportedly Close To A Deal With Skydance
• April 3, 2024 | Zoe Saldana Is Still Holding Out Hope For ‘Star Trek 4’

Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Embraces Second Chances In “Under The Twin Moons”

| April 4, 2024 | By: Anthony Pascale 30 comments so far

“Under the Twin Moons”

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 2 – Debuted Thursday, April 4, 2024 Written by Alan McElroy Directed by Doug Aarniokoski

The new season continues strong with more action and a focus on characters and Trek themes.

Meet the captains.

WARNING: Spoilers below!

“Power of creation, here we come”

Captain Burnham has a moment to consider philosophical questions about the meaning of life as Discovery gets all that sand from Q’Mau removed. The profound stakes of her mission to find the Progenitors’ power have her pondering if she will find new purpose. Her mood could also be due to this being Saru’s last day as first officer. Before they can head off to find the next clue, Michael is summoned to a heated tribunal for Captain Rayner, called to the space carpet for his reckless actions in episode 1. Michael doesn’t want to be a squealer but when pressed, admits she disagreed with Rayner and told him so. His Burn-era cowboy ways aren’t cutting it with Admiral Vance and President Rillak, and once he accuses them of sitting on their “asses” ignoring threats, the Kellerun’s future in Starfleet is not looking good. After Vance checks in with Michael to make sure Book isn’t a distraction, she makes sure her ex (and Grudge) are settling in, keeping it friendly and profesh. He is to work with Hugh and Paul to sort out clues left behind by Dr. Vellek. She also gives him (and Grudge) a cute holo-mouse toy, so they’re going to be fine.

Arriving at Lyrek, Adira and Tilly (on loan from SFA as a “science specialist”) brief Burnham and Saru on how the shadow of twin moons points to an old Promellian necropolis, but an energy field means they will have to hoof (literally for Saru… ha!… sorry) from the beam-in spot. In tactical gear, Michael and Saru take a beat to acknowledge their “last dance” and appreciate the serene beauty of this garden spot before heading to the biggest pyramid. The pair takes this time to joke about Reno giving the Kelpien the nickname “Action Saru” and reminisce about how far they have come together. The former USS Shenzhou shipmates are way past their early sibling rivalry, now seeing the best in each other in this sweet moment that feels like a goodbye. Saru offers advice on his replacement as first officer, suggesting she find someone who stands their ground, not unlike Book… but not actually Book. The stakes rise when they spot a very old skeleton, but it still leaves time for Saru to drop a “grave disappointment” dad joke. A spike in the EM field has Tilly concerned, Michael assures there is nothing to worry about… oh, except the killer drones that just emerged from a giant collapsed four-eyed alien statue head. Run!

Action Saru… complete with Kung-fu Quills!

“We are running out of body parts here ”

On the Disco, Adira and Tilly struggle over how to help the landing party, now hiding under a giant stone foot as the drones fire on them, and then blow up on suicide runs (only to be replaced by more drones). As the flustered nerds run through a series of unworkable options, Rayner holograms himself into the situation—because he’s been secretly watching from HQ, but that’s totally not creepy—and starts guiding them towards a solution that factors in how the ancient Promellians would power an automated security system. The solve is to overload a phaser inside the giant statue head, the source of the drones, which sort of seems obvious, but still, teamwork! Michael wants to take the tough job of target distraction since Saru is about to get hitched, but he reminds her he is stronger and faster and T’Rina would expect him to do his duty. So off he goes like a Kelpien Steve Austin , dodging fire (actually getting hit once) and dispatching drones with his quills. Action Saru, indeed! Michael drops the phaser bomb, buying them time—by now it’s clear why Dr. Vellek chose this ancient graveyard to hide a clue. Sneaky Romulan.

While everyone else is dealing with the danger forest, Book and Culber are building a profile of this season’s adversaries. Moll and L’ak are dangerous but not inherently violent. Moll is human, but L’ak is a mystery. Book sees they are in love, and their actions in episode 1 show him they are “thrillseekers” having a bit of fun as “Sui” couriers who take the most dangerous jobs. This gives him the idea to reach out directly via “dark coms,” using cringy courier slang. They take the bait and have a not-so-friendly chat via hologram. The former couriers have figured out what’s at the end of Vellek’s rainbow, so his diary is no longer for sale. Book tries to scare them with the Starfleet boogeyman, but the cocky duo relishes the challenge. They question if he is a real courier but seem impressed when he reveals his identity as Cleveland Booker before they hang up the (untraceable) call. Yet Book spotted something—and after de-aging Moll’s image (thanks, Zora) he realizes he knows her. Real name Malinne, she is the daughter of Cleveland Booker IV, his mentor and namesake. He never actually met her, but figures she is “the closest thing to family” he has. Wow.

How is it I am answering to all these primitives from 900 years ago?

“You held my hand and I was not afraid.”

Back on the forest planet, Michael and Saru are under a ticking clock before the drones power up again as they arrive at where the clues pointed with no ancient power source to be found. Curiously, the stone pillar they do find has fresh phaser scorching… There must have been more clues but Moll and L’ak beat them to it! Thankfully SaruSuperVision TM  detects iridescent traces of writing in the form of a Romulan “revlav” poem. Michael deploys her old xenoanthropology powers to determine there are only four verses on the pillar, so where is the fifth? It must be hidden because Romulans are sneaky. They find the final verse under the pillar, which Moll and L’ak don’t have. She also finds a hidden object. Score! They beam out at literally the last second (naturally) before the EM defense field restarts. In the science lab, it turns out the thingie they found matches a mysterious symbol from the diary Stamets has been struggling with. Thanks to Zora creating a nice little stand, it’s now clear they have the first of five pieces of a map that will lead them to the Progenitors. And the poem tells them where piece number 2 is. “A world like no other where two souls entwine, joined as one.” Adira nails it: “We’re going to Trill.” Oh and Moll and L’ak only have the first four verses, which point to the wrong planet: Betazed, where hopefully the locals will passive-aggressively mock them telepathically.

Michael visits Saru as he packs up his very moist quarters. They reminsce again, recalling how in this very room she helped him through Vahar’ai . He offers her more parting advice to “trust the journey.” It’s one of those “it’s been an honor” kind of conversations and you can be forgiven for getting choked up, especially as Saru honors his friend, his family, with a Kelpien forehead embrace. Michael checks in with Vance who gives her the thumbs up on the day’s mission. As for Rayner, he has been asked to retire. She defends his actions and has the twinkle of an idea. Burnham finds the grumpy now former captain staring longingly at her ship. “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore,” he notes, which could be said about him. He is not willing to back down from his principles even if they did get him drummed out, but he regrets not anticipating what Moll and L’ak did on Q’Mau, putting all those people at risk. He seems lost, so Burnham offers him a lifeline… as her new XO. She’s impressed with how he helped out on the Lyrek mission even when no one asked him to. And he deserves a second chance like the one she got from Saru. He won’t be her “yes man,” and she’s counting on that. Zip up, it’s time for this mopey Kellerun to get back to work. Cue the music and fade to black.

Is that smell the swamp kelp?

Goodbye and hello

The second episode of this new season comes in just as strong as the first. With the premiere doing the heavy lifting of setting up the new tone, stakes, and plot arc for the season, episode 2 had more time to explore the characters and their arcs. A strong theme of second chances was woven into these character stories told mostly in pairs, with Michael and Saru getting top billing. Doug Jones was a standout on his last day on the job (thankfully not falling into the “ retirony ” trope) as he and Sonequa Martin-Green took a stroll (almost literally) through a memory lane of their series-long arc from rivals to family. Action Saru was a lot of fun and it was nice to see Discovery remember some of his cool Kelpien abilities. For the most part, the pacing kept things flowing between the character beats, although the show still has a thing for literally stopping the action for feelings sidebars. This can easily be forgiven as the production itself was gorgeous, with the second visit to a unique alien location. This season may have a new Indiana Jones tone and style, but this episode reminds us of the core Trek themes with messages like: “I think the world is bigger than our corner in it.”

Episode 2 also showed us what to expect from the new quest-focused season, laying out a map and clues that can form a nice structure that allow for standalone adventures which still fit into the big picture of the search for Progenitor gold. And even with that mystery thankfully revealed in episode 1, this episode presented us with some nice new ones like L’ak’s background and Book’s connection to Moll. This episode had more time to give almost everyone something to do and also clued us into their season arcs, although Stamets still gets the short end. Some of these characters are a bit lost, especially Book and Rayner, but we also see hints of how they will be found. Episode 2 was particularly good in defining Rayner, including his history with Vance, his drive and helpfulness on the mission, and the vulnerability under his gruff exterior. Callum Keith Rennie continues to impress as this great addition to the series. And it might be just a canon nod, but sharing the Grankite Order of Tactics honor with James T. Kirk is a hint at what they are going for with echoes of that legendary captain finding himself out of touch in post-Praxis 23rd century . No one can replace Saru (and he isn’t really leaving, just moving to Starfleet HQ), but the prospect of Rayner as Disco’s first officer opens up a whole new world of fun possibilities.

So do you get dizzy when the saucer spins around?

The visit to the planet and fighting off those drones certainly brought “ The Arsenal of Freedom ” vibes, but the ancient graveyard was actually another deep cut to the Promellans from “ Booby Trap .” These types of things along with using bits of Romulan lore from Picard , like secret doors, shows how Discovery is fully embracing canon without indulging in nostalgia porn. Episode 2 also had more 32 nd- century worldbuilding tidbits, including talk of Breen infighting and Orions (presumably Emerald Chain) regrouping. Hopefully these nods, along with some from episode 1, are part of a longer game of fleshing out this century and building upon the big season arc. Moll and L’ak now know what they are looking for and it’s likely they can start a bidding war with the various factions. That said, the show still ignores offering details on things that seem important, like what exactly is a Red Directive… and how has Rayner already done seven of them? And of course, keeping track of what programmable matter (which is essentially magic at this point) can and can’t do will only drive you crazy. But these are just nitpicks and in no way distracting from the overall enjoyment of the season so far.

Vance is disappointed his FedNet updates are flooded with “Zaddy” comments.

Final thoughts

Season 2 is off to a great start with an episode that is debatably better than the first, especially if you love these characters. The show has successfully pivoted without losing what makes Discovery , Discovery . After getting two in one day, it’s hard to have to wait for more.

Okay, but I am not moving into Saru’s swamp.

• “Under the Twin Moons” was released simultaneously with the first episode of the season ( reviewed separately ).
• Captain Burnham’s personal log was Stardate 866274.3. The last confirmed Stardate was 865783.7 in episode 411 “Rosetta.”
• The mention of the sands from Q’Mau from episode 501 having “unknown radiative properties” feels like something that could pay off later.
• Programable matter bracelets can make multiple phasers, in case you lose one or in this case, use one as a bomb.
• The Starfleet Corps of Engineering got their first shoutout for the 32nd century.
• Jett Reno came up with the nickname “Action Saru,” inspired in part by how he dealt with Zareh when the Discovery first arrived in the 32nd century in “That Hope Is You, Part 2.”
• Book, Moll, and L’ak trade a lot of 32nd-century slang, including “kav’kar,” which sort of means BS.
• Moll says since Vellek was a Romulan, his diary is out of the Federation’s jurisdiction, but the Romulans reunified with Vulcan to form Ni’Var, who have joined the Federation so ipso facto, it is their jurisdiction.
• Vance’s ( previously unnamed ) daughter is named Charlie.
• Saru’s quarters are going to be left as is, a microcosm of his swampy home planet Kaminar .
• It’s unclear why, but do not touch Kelpien swamp kelp when it is in bloom.
• Among the items Saru packs is the Kelpien knife used to cut off his threat ganglia in “An Obol For Charon.”

I hope T’Rina likes things misty.

More to come

Every Friday, the TrekMovie.com All Access Star Trek Podcast  covers the latest news in the Star Trek Universe and discusses the latest episode. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,  Pocket Casts ,  Stitcher and is part of the TrekMovie Podcast Network.

The fifth and final season of  Discovery debuted with two episodes on Thursday, April 4 exclusively on Paramount+  in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Austria.  Discovery  will also premiere on April 4 on Paramount+ in Canada and will be broadcast on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada. The rest of the 10-episode final season will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays. Season 5 debuts on SkyShowtime in select European countries on April 5.

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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Second episode was really good as well and i enjoyed the scenes with Burnham/Saru and Tilly/Adira they were sweet.

I love how the story so far is collecting pieces of a puzzle to find the Progenitor home world and their tech as i really enjoy puzzle stories.

I really like the characters of Moll/L’ak they are very interesting adversary especially Moll who book eventually realizes that she is the daughter of Cleveland Booker the 4th.

I really liked Raynar in this episode and it will be interesting to see him as Burnham’s first officer.

I have to admit I read these mainly for Anthony’s descriptions under the cut-scenes. I always get a chuckle. Thank you, Sir. 😊

I watched the prologue earlier this morning and after getting over the usual “no alpha hetero” males in command of Discovery, I thought the intro was very good. I also liked the crew hanging out together as friends. The only negative so far is the action scene with Burnham – IMHO something no captain of a Starship should be doing, but the producers or studio probably demanded some form of ridiculous and expensive action sequences. The opening 6 minutes also made me ponder that the spore drive would have been much more accepted if it had somehow been introduced along with other 32nd century tech like the detached warp nacelles and personal transporters. Even the social evolution taking IDIC to the next level, tries to envision what society might look like 1100 plus years from now. Of course, having more mixed race humans and aliens might be more realistic, but that is a whole other issue. At least we have Saru. So far I have seen a couple of spoiler free reviews and they are making me “cautiously” optimistic about S5. We shall see if that feeling is warranted two months from now. For now, I look forward to watching the first two episodes later this evening.

I don’t see the problem with Discovery not having a straight man in command… even though they have had three in previous seasons, if we include Saru.

Why would we not include Saru?

Because I think the OP was mostly talking about human men. And to be fair, we don’t know if Kelpeins have defined sexualities or whether they just go with the flow!

Trek just isn’t Trek without a straight white man in charge. Gotcha.

I feel sorry for you, that you have to ‘get over’ the “no alpha hetero” males. The life you must lead. Such struggle.

😭 No “alpha hetro males”. 😭

The spore drive continues to be a pet peeve (of many this show has). I find it stupendously unbelievable that no one followed up on the spore drive tech over the ensuing 900 years. Much less still using dilithium for warp drive. Speaking of tech, I still find just being in the 32nd century problematic because it’s just impossible to even guess what kind of tech would be like that far out. Just look at how far humanity advanced from 1120 to 2020. Now increase that rate. Yeah. Pretty mindboggling. Just the next 100 years is a tough guess.

It felt the technobabble was especially heavy in this episode, almost as if they needed the show to be a bit longer, so threw in an extra science problem followed by an immediate solution whenever they could!

It’s a science fiction show that uses advanced technologies to move the plot along. The characters were problem solving and it didn’t distract from the scene. It certainly wasn’t TNG level of technobabble.

I thought this was the better of the two episodes, personally, and I’m looking forward to more with Rayner in the future.

Here too. Rayner is currently what is making the show watchable.

Saru is really gone 2 episodes in? Interesting choice

He’s not gone. He’s gone from the ship.

I have a feeling he’ll be back. He’s shown in the promo in scenes not yet seen.

ok – the use of the phrase “Doug Jones last day on set” in the story made it seem like he was actually wrapped

They didn’t say that. It was a plot point, Saru’s ‘last day on the ship’.

The 32nd century world building they’re doing might also set up some stuff for Star Trek: Academy. To some extend – at times – it feels they’re back-door piloting (for the lack of a better word) certain stuff, like the mention of the Breen and some of the the new sets built for season 5. It’s subtle, but I feel it’s there.

I agree but I am glad they are starting to embrace it. We haven’t had much exploration of planets or species since they jumped forward so I like that we are getting brief glimpses of these things.

The writers have also done a better job giving more characters the chance to contribute to a solution this season. It’s not always a huge scene but they are there and I like it. Stamets, may be a character that’s struggling, but I like the idea that he specializes in “ancient” tech. It works given the time period he is from and it gives him a much needed presence in the show.

Burnham and Saru did a great job in their scenes together. This show was a great wrap up for his role as her number one. Vance and Burnham’s mentorship is also moving along quite well. I like that he listens to her and yet guides her when she starts to go down the wrong path. Such as when he reminded her to answer a direct question posed by the Federation President. Burnham is still quite rebellious by nature so his guidance helps to reign her in and remind her of the obligations she has to the rule book. Even if she doesn’t always like it. Glad she is paying her own second chance forward by giving Rayner a second chance.

The revelation, that Book knew Moll, was an interesting addition to the show. This mission is definitely getting very personal for him.

Unfortunately the 32nd century setting really should have been jetisoned. My personal preference would have been post TUC. But any time from there to Picard’s time frame would have been better. Sadly that show, which I was not entirely against the concept of, is not starting out on good footing.

The problem with prequel timelines is that you either walk all over canon or are somewhat restricted by it if you want to bring in big changing events. I was all for the time jump and at the time was greatful that it wasn’t another pre Kirk timeline but they certainly didn’t make the most of it in seasons 3 and 4. Looking forward to watching Discovery season 5 this evening. I have a feeling this will be a good final season.

Agree with this 100%.

Was never into the idea of Discovery being a prequel so was super excited with the time jump.

Unfortunately it mostly felt squandered in the last two seasons. But this season is showing real promise and hopefully will make the 32nd century feel more lived in and interesting.

I am more hopeful about the future now (pun intended ;)).

I thought these are two of the most satisfying, hopeful episodes of Discovery in terms of causal fan accessibility and potential rewatchability. This really feels like, “Start here!”

Saw them both with the audience organized by Paramount and NYC Away Team – fun despite complete downpours for the hours approaching the screening. Radiant SMG, Wilson Cruz and one of the season’s directors was there – so hopefully they got the idea that we liked this a whole lot.

In the season trailer it looks to me like they’re inside the sickbay from Pike’s Enterprise.

OK, I don’t know what’s going on, but where the hell is The Ready Room? It seems to have disappeared from Amazon Prime (which is where I watch my Paramount+ subscription).

And I’m not just talking about no RR for the Disco fifth season season premiere and episode two… I mean that ALL of the Ready Room episodes from all of the other series and seasons have vanished from Amazon Prime.

Is it just me, or has anybody else also noticed this?

Better. But I think that can be chalked up to Rayner. Which means I can expect something awful to happen to him before the season runs out.

But… As I noticed in the first episode they are still clinging to that ridiculous habit of having conversations at the most inappropriate moments. I guess that’s their schtick so it’s not going to stop.

Debris hits Burnham while she floats in space. Burnham says a funny line….

Yeah…. Thats Star Trek Discovery. Bad Style over substance.

It is a shame, that a show that diverse is written as poorly, generic and infantile as a saturday morning Cartoon.

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Star Trek: Discovery

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 2, Episode 14: Virtue Signaling

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By Sopan Deb

• April 18, 2019

Season 2, Episode 14: ‘Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2’

The season finale of “Star Trek: Discovery” was true to form: alternately impressive and head-scratching; a visual marvel and yet muddled; nostalgic and fresh. And by the end of the episode, Spock suggests that Starfleet should essentially erase the existence of the Discovery. Unintentionally, Spock was voicing the thoughts of a vocal segment of “Star Trek” fans.

Much of the episode, at least for me, recalled “Star Trek: Nemesis,” one of the more reviled Trek movies. There is an intensely long battle in which the Enterprise (and the Discovery, in this case) are massively outgunned by an enemy with the upper hand. The future of humanity is at stake. There is even an extended — and a bit pointless — boarding party when Leland beams over to the Discovery.

But this battle played to a strength of “Discovery”: Olatunde Osunsanmi, who directed the episode, knows how to create riveting tension. The fast cuts, combined with the shaky cam, provided constant visual stimulation, almost taking the viewer on a roller-coaster ride. And unlike many “Trek” battles, this one, featuring a fleet of possessed Section 31 ships led by Leland against the Enterprise and the Discovery, felt realistic. In many starship fights in “Trek” lore, an enemy ship will fire one or two shots, and suddenly, one of the most powerful ships in the Federation will have its shields down — like in “Star Trek: Generations.” Here, both the Enterprise and the Discovery both take and deliver a wallop.

I was riveted by the episode — the stakes felt real and drawn out — until the Klingons and the Ba’ul fighters showed up. This is where it went off the rails for me. I’ve been harping on this quite a bit this season: Ash Tyler is not supposed to be alive in the eyes of the Klingons. His existence nearly cost L’Rell her chancellorship before it got off the ground. And there he was on the bridge of a Klingon ship next to L’Rell. The notion that L’Rell could pull this off without significant opposition from other Klingons — or even from her own crew members — is questionable at best. And somehow, the Ba’ul and Klingons are able to come lend a hand, but no other Starfleet ships?

Certain inconsistencies you can live with. Here, I was distracted.

Particularly when Burnham and Spock solve another grand mystery, which is when Burnham sent the red signals. It turns out it was never from the future. She sent them from the present to bring them to this point, so that afterward, they can go into the future.

This was another instance that confused me. From my understanding (and please email me if I’m incorrect!), Control (i.e. Leland) was coming for the sphere data and wouldn’t stop until they had it. This is why the Discovery has to go into the future. It’s very existence is the problem, as Spock said in the first part of the episode. Yet, in the finale, Georgiou, following a long fist fight, tells the bridge that Leland has been killed.

“Control has been neutralized,” she tells Saru.

So why does Discovery have to go into the future? Why not put a pin in that plan? The sphere data is valuable. To push an entire Starfleet crew into the future seems like a drastic step if the deadly enemy has been offset — even if temporarily. It would also deprive the Federation of key assets: a time suit, the spore drive and some of its best officers. Spock also mentions that the time crystal shows a version of the future that can apparently be avoided. So why was it such a big deal for Pike to take a crystal out of Boreth? Wasn’t Pike told he was locked into his future?

I liked that the episode was more of an ensemble effort: Every crew member had a moment of some sort, even Cornwell, although her death seemed unnecessary. And knowing “Discovery,” she’ll find a way to have survived the blast.

But the ending is where I found myself very baffled: Why did the Enterprise crew, and those associated with it, decide to lie to Starfleet about what happened with the Discovery? There didn’t seem to be a logical reason to. Spock, in particular, given his character history, would seem to have a hard time not telling the truth about this. The Discovery just saved the universe! Why hide their contributions? Maybe Starfleet would authorize the construction of a new time suit to bring back the Discovery crew. (And Spock, who suggests that everyone who knows about the existence of Discovery should keep quiet, closes the episode with a personal log which would reveal, or at least, acknowledge the falsehood. What if someone got a hold of it?)

It was an uneven finale for an uneven show. Season 2 was certainly an improvement on the first season but overall, “Discovery” still felt like it was trying to find its footing. Ethan Peck was always going to have difficult shoes to fill with Spock. Over the course of the season, Spock went from petulant to showing a warmth for Burnham, exhibiting a range that felt to me out of character for the Spock we’ve come to know. (I did think it was a nice moment when Burnham and Spock said good bye to each other.)

But that’s where we leave off: The Discovery is presumably in the future. Spock is on the Enterprise. And what about the Control-As-Borg theory?

Speaking of which …

Odds and Ends

• Lots of “Discovery” fans were convinced that Control is the origin story for the Borg. We don’t get definitive resolution on that in the finale. But maybe next season?

• We know there is going to be a Season 3. We also know Anson Mount is leaving “Discovery” after this season. So where does the third run of the show take place? In the future? Does it center on Spock?

• A shout out to Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn (Number One), who is also saying bon voyage to “Discovery.” They were both charismatic assets for the show. I’d love to see Tig Notaro come back next season as well.

• Thanks for following along this season. It’s much appreciated.

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Star Trek: Discovery recap: 'Despite Yourself'

The Discovery faces a new paradigm as it embarks on the second half of its debut season.

The U.S.S. Discovery returned Sunday night after nearly two months away — for viewers, at least. At the end of midseason finale “Into the Forest I Go,” the crew had notched a major tactical victory against the Klingons and deployed the controversial spore drive a final time to travel to Starbase 46 with a coveted Klingon cloak-breaking algorithm in hand. But Lt. Stamets convulsed while facilitating the jump, leaving Discovery adrift in a mysterious chunk of space with no Federation outpost in sight.

“Despite Yourself” explains that absence: Discovery has crossed into a parallel universe where the Federation doesn’t exist. But while it’s unfamiliar territory for the ship’s crew, the alternate reality has appeared in iterations of Star Trek since the franchise debuted in the ’60s.

Before Discovery premiered in September, its creators told EW that the show would allegorically tackle contemporary political issues through the conflict between the Federation and the Klingons. However, the decision to revisit the Terran Empire — which Spc. Michael Burnham describes in “Despite Yourself” as “an oppressive, racist, xenophobic culture that dominates all known space” — marks a bolder, more effective attempt to achieve political resonance. As some decry an alleged global rise in fascism , it’s savvy for Discovery to revisit the fascistic, human-only organization that Trek first deployed in 1967’s “Mirror, Mirror,” just over two decades after the conclusion of the Second World War.

The crew doesn’t immediately realize where they’ve arrived, of course. Upon completion of their ill-fated jump, Capt. Gabriel Lorca and his colleagues have little time to process the wreckage of a Klingon ship that surrounds them before a Vulcan vessel appears and opens fire. What the Discovery believes to be the U.S.S. Cooper soon arrives and neutralizes the threat. “Spooked by rebels, Discovery?” its captain inquires via an audio-only transmission. “You’re losing your edge.”

Off the bridge, Lorca explains to Burnham and Cdr. Saru that he and Stamets had suspected the mycelial network could lead to parallel universes. The 133 spore drive jumps Discovery has taken, he estimates, “filled in the gaps” and made travel to such an alternate reality possible. To begin to grasp their surroundings, Lorca sends Lt. Ash Tyler on an exploratory mission to retrieve a data core from the Klingon wreckage.

Upon its retrieval, Burnham analyzes the core and learns about the Terran Empire. The existence of the human-only organization explains certain inconsistencies — like why Vulcan and Andorian bodies littered the Klingon wreckage. In this universe, alien species have allied to fight back at the oppressive human regime.

The episode gets a little whimsical from there. When the Cooper reappears and opens a communication line with Discovery, Burnham prevents Lorca from speaking because in the Terran Empire, he isn’t the ship’s captain. Awkward, oversharing Cadet Sylvia Tilly occupies that role, and is forced to masquerade. “What the heck! Hold your horses!” she exclaims in a hilarious scene before handing off to Lorca who, in an homage to Scotty, pretends to be the ship’s Scottish engineer.

In order to pass as Terrans while they figure out a way home, the crew rebrands. “To successfully crash a party you have to look like you belong,” Lorca explains in a voice-over. “You must project confidence. Every detail of this so-called Terran Empire must be replicated exactly — and where we may fall short, we have to get creative.”

The subsequent transformation is a little far-fetched — beyond renaming themselves the I.S.S. Discovery, the crew does things like renovating the bridge’s interior and making replica Terran uniforms — but also thrilling. Going off rebel intelligence, Burnham explains to Tilly that to Terrans she’s a ruthless captain known by monikers like “the Slayer of Sorna Prime,” “the Witch of Wurna Minor,” and “Captain Killy.”

But if Tilly’s captain, what does that make Lorca and Burnham? As Burnham tells Lorca, they’re crucial players in the Terran Empire. Or, were. The Terran Lorca initiated a rebellion against the despotic emperor, killed Terran Burnham when she attempted to intervene, and struck out on the lam. “Amazing, isn’t it?” Lorca tells Burnham as the duo gazes out at the stars. “Different universe, but somehow the same people had a way to find each other. The strongest argument I’ve ever seen for the existence of destiny.”

Other destinies continue to unfold elsewhere on Discovery throughout the episode. A cloudy-eyed Stamets spends nearly the entire episode unresponsive in the sick bay as doctor and lover Lt. Cdr. Hugh Culber cares for him. Lorca visits Culber to apologize for ordering Stamets to make excessive numbers of spore drive jumps — but when Culber suggests Stamets’ “well-being falls to me now,” the captain informs him that he’s ordered another doctor to handle the case, as “medicine requires professional objectivity.” Culber flags Lorca’s hypocrisy: “Suddenly you care about protocol?”

Meanwhile, Tyler visits the still-imprisoned L’Rell, who was both his lover and torturer while he was in Klingon captivity, in the brig to inquire about his increasing bouts of PTSD. The Klingon convinces Tyler to release her; when he does, she begins to speak in her native tongue and triggers Tyler to respond to her in Klingon. “What did you do to me?” he says when he snaps out of it. “I’m not myself.” As L’Rell laments that the prayer she uttered hasn’t worked as planned, Tyler locks her back up.

Despite temporarily holding off L’Rell and her mind games, Tyler eventually succumbs. He visits sick bay later in the episode to ask Culber if the doctor can identify any odd experiments the Klingons may have performed while he was in captivity. When Tyler leaves, Stamets has a moment of clarity where he warns Culber, “Be careful, the enemy is here.” The caution’s warranted. Upon Tyler’s return, Culber tells the security officer that the Klingons performed “bone-crushing” procedures on him that have transformed him both mentally and physically — and Tyler snaps his neck. While it’s unfortunate that Stamets and Culber, two of Discovery ‘s most compelling characters, appear to have been sidelined (at least for the time being ), those plot developments have given the show some real stakes.

After offing Culber, Tyler arrives at the transporter chamber, where he meets Lorca and Burnham. The trio’s preparing to transport to the I.S.S. Shenzhou after concocting an elaborate plan. As Lorca and Burnham explain to Saru, they’ve discovered that another Starfleet vessel, the U.S.S. Defiant, previously stumbled into the Terran universe. (Trekkers know this story from Enterprise ‘s “In a Mirror, Darkly” arc.) By accessing Terran databases, they can ascertain how the Defiant returned to its proper timeline. How to do that? A risky gambit where the presumably dead Burnham returns to the Shenzhou — a ship she’s the captain of in the Terran Empire — with the “captured” traitor Lorca. A better-prepared Tilly initiates contact with the ship and its new captain, Danby Connor (Sam Vartholomeos), to set the plan in motion.

Once she transports aboard the Shenzhou with Lorca and Tyler, Burnham asserts her dominance over Connor, per Terran custom, refusing to let the officer or his crew take possession of Lorca lest they take credit for the fugitive’s capture to curry the emperor’s favor. She intends the move to protect Lorca from excessive Terran torture, though even she can’t figure out a believable reason to spare her companion from “the finest agonizer booth” the Shenzhou has to offer. And when Burnham finds herself alone in an elevator with Connor, he attempts to murder her to solidify his command and the fealty of his underlings. In a harrowing scene, Burnham kills him in defense — and when the door opens to the bridge, Connor’s dead body falls to the floor as Shenzhou’s officers begin to chant, “Long live Capt. Burnham! Long live the Empire!”

The episode ends in this dystopian gray space. Tyler visits Burnham in her quarters aboard the Shenzhou, and she tells him she hasn’t yet found an opportune time to research the Defiant. Unaware that he’s compromised by the Klingons, she begins to make out with Tyler as the show cuts to a final scene of Lorca in an agonizer booth.

While “Despite Yourself” went heavy on exposition, it provided some promising strands for the forthcoming five episodes that’ll conclude Discovery ‘s debut season. For one, the show has abandoned the extensive Klingon scenes that hindered its initial run, without excising some of its most fascinating plot elements. And the Terran Empire story line exhilarates in a zany, Trekkian way while achieving contemporary relevance and paying homage to the show’s storied past.

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10 Star Trek Time Travel Stories That Changed Canon

After 60 years, Star Trek's timeline has become complex. From Yesterday's Enterprise to Past Tense to Future's End, these stories changed the canon.

With the third wave of Star Trek series on television, some fans are concerned about how these new episodes change the canon from what previous series established. Some Trekkers can simply suspend disbelief, chalking inconsistencies up to what happens when a storytelling universe continues for six decades. However, since Star Trek has more than its fair share of time-travel, the Prime Timeline has been changed before in subtle ways.

Time-travel was responsible for the alterations to Star Trek history that resulted in the Kelvin Timeline, too. In Star Trek: Discovery , the Guardian of Forever suggested the notorious Mirror Universe was also an alternate timeline that branched off from the Prime Universe. Typically, when time travel changes something in Star Trek , it's the timeline itself that changes, often without its inhabitants even knowing about it. While this sci-fi side effect can happen on and off-screen, there are ten episodes that have changed the Star Trek canon right in front of audiences' eyes.

10 'The City on the Edge of Forever' Set the Time Travel Rules

Why star trek: the original series was canceled and brought back.

Acclaimed science fiction author and curmudgeon Harlan Ellison wrote "City on the Edge of Forever," but what aired was a rewrite by Steven W. Carabtasos, Gene Roddenberry, and Gene L. Coon. The episode introduced the Guardian of Forever, a gateway to time and space. Dr. McCoy, suffering from an overdose of cordrazine leaps into the past and erases Starfleet and the USS Enterprise. Captain Kirk and Commander Spock must travel into the past to fix history.

This episode is important because it was the first time Star Trek established the past could be rewritten. In saving Edith Keeler, McCoy changed the future by altering the past. Even though things returned to the way they were, Kirk and Spock further altered history. Their future wasn't exactly the same as before, establishing the rules of time travel in the Star Trek universe.

9 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Changed the Past Again

While Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise traveled through time more than once, the voyage that had the most impact was " the one with the whales ." A probe from an unknown alien culture arrived on Earth looking for humpback whales, which are extinct in Kirk's present. Traveling on the HMS Bounty (a stolen Klingon Bird of Prey), Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov and Uhura traveled back to 1986 to rescue two humpback whales. They returned home with the breeding pair and the probe went back where it came from.

A lot happens in the past that could've affected the future. Chekov is captured by US military officials on the nuclear-powered battleship the USS Enterprise. When he escapes, he leaves behind his Starfleet identification, a communicator and a hand-phaser, the latter two of Klingon origin. Earlier in the film, Scotty gives a 20th Century manufacturer the formula for "transparent aluminum" years before it should be invented. This technology could have been studied and caused further advancements that never should've happened.

8 'Yesterday's Enterprise' Showed the Effect of Timeline Changes

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History will never forget the name "Enterprise," in large part because the USS Enterprise - D met the USS Enterprise-C, which was supposed to be destroyed defending Klingons from a Romulan attack. However, it traveled through a temporal rift and created an alternate timeline before the audience's eyes. Instead of peace, the Federation and Klingons were at war. The ship returned through the rift and history was set right, but like in "City on the Edge of Forever," it wasn't the same history.

Lieutenant Tasha Yar died a "meaningless death" but was restored to life in the alternate timeline created by the Enterprise-C's arrival. She ended up traveling back with the ship and was one of the crewmembers who survived the fateful battle. She was taken prisoner by the Romulans and, ultimately, gave birth to a half-Romulan daughter named Sela, who was crucial to Spock's mission to begin the peace process between Romulus and Vulcan.

7 The Bell Uprising in 'Past Tense' Made Captain Sisko a Part of History

On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , an accident sends Captain Sisko, Dr. Bashir and Jadzia Dax back in time to 2024 to the site of an important citizen movement called the Bell Riots, led by Gabriel Bell. The revolutionary leader was killed trying to protect Sisko and Bashir in a "Sanctuary District," essentially an open-air prison for the poor. This was before the nuclear World War III that decimated the Earth and led to Zefram Cochrane's first warp-capable vessel.

After Bell's death, Sisko had to step in as Bell to ensure the timeline wasn't changed, erasing the future they knew. Originally described as the most violent and destructive civil uprising in American history, Sisko seemed to be a better Gabriel Bell than the original. While not explicitly stated, more people seemed to have survived than before. Similarly, at least two of the Sanctuary District guards began to sympathize with the people and the US began to address its social failures leading to the utopian future of the Federation.

6 'Future's End' Revealed Starfleet Accidentally Created the Internet

Star trek: prodigy's connection to voyager, explained.

While traveling through the Delta Quadrant, the USS Voyager encounters a 29th Century timeship piloted by Captain Braxton who wants to destroy the vessel. He's drawn there because of a bootstrap paradox. His timeship is stolen in the past, piloted to the future and explodes, threatening to destroy reality. He mistakenly believes it's Voyager's fault, even though they prevent the disaster. However, while in the past, a man named Henry Starling takes possession of the crashed timeship, using it to start a computer company.

Just like what could've happened with the transparent aluminum, Chekov's communicator and phaser, the 29th Century technology in the past is used to change the future. Starling creates a company that Janeway and Chakotay realize created the computer age of the late 20th Century. Since, as Janeway says, it shouldn't have happened, this could explain why Strange New Worlds has advanced technology compared to Star Trek: The Original Series . While the USS Voyager saved the future, the changes made to the Star Trek canon during their time in the past aren't undone.

5 The Next Generation Crew Helped Make Vulcan First Contact Happen

Mere weeks in real-time since Voyager's adventure in the 1990s, the crew of the USS Enterprise were sent back to 2063 to stop the Borg from assimilating Earth in the past. When Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy met Zefram Cochrane in The Original Series Season 2's "Metamorphosis," he is genuinely excited by Kirk' description of Starfleet and the Federation. This suggests the first time around, he didn't meet Data, Geordi and the rest of The Next Generation crew who told him similar stories.

This likely means when he first launched the Phoenix , he didn't have Commanders Riker and LaForge riding along with him. He also didn't see the USS Enterprise-E out there in space. While Star Trek: Enterprise still had Cochrane disappear, First Contact changed the canon. He seemingly remained on Earth rather than settling on "Alpha Centauri" as he did in The Original Series .

4 Enterprise's 'Storm Front, Part II' Ended the Temporal Cold War

By ending Season 3 on a cliffhanger, Enterprise's producers forced Paramount into greenlighting Season 4, instead of canceling it. The two-part season opener put the NX-01 Enterprise back in an alternate timeline in World War II, in which Nazis and aliens invaded the United States. At the end of the episode, Captain Archer is sent to an ethereal plane with a Starfleet time agent named Daniels, present throughout the series. It was a visual effects representation of the timeline righting itself, preventing the Temporal Cold War arcing through the series from going "hot."

However, the timeline that continued on from that moment was markedly different from the NX-01 mission Captains Kirk or Picard would've learned about. Earth was attacked, and Starfleet went to war with the Xindi . There were conflicts with the Sulaban, an alien race Starfleet wasn't supposed to meet so soon. Every incursion seen on Enterprise in the Temporal Cold War (and those that happened off-screen) changed the prime timeline. "Storm Front, Part II" saved it.

3 Parting Is Such 'Sweet Sorrow' In Star Trek: Discovery Season 2

Star trek: discovery sets premiere date for fifth and final season.

Throughout Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 , a mysterious time traveler known as the Red Angel sent the ship, commanded by Captain Christopher Pike, on chase around the galaxy. In the final moments of the season, Michael Burnham realized she was the Red Angel all along. What's unclear is if she changed the timeline or if the USS Discovery always existed, and this is why no Star Trek characters ever mentioned it before. The ship, its crew and its fate were classified and unable to be discussed.

The most important detail for the Prime Timeline is that Captain Pike learned of his fate which fans saw in Star Trek: The Original Series "The Menagerie." He spent much of the first season of Strange New Worlds trying to outsmart his destiny, but ultimately accepted his fate when a future version of himself showed him that Captain Kirk needed to be the one in command of the USS Enterprise when it first encounters the Romulans. The first Red Angel was Burnham's mother, so it's possible there was an interation of the timeline in which Burnham wasn't Spock's sister, First Officer of the Discovery and everything else.

2 In Saying 'Farewell' to Q, Picard Changed the Past to Preserve the Future

The Admiral, Seven of Nine, Raffi, Dr. Jurati and Cristobal Rios spent most of Star Trek: Picard Season 2 in the early 21st Century. It's all part of one of Q's games, his last time trolling Picard before he dies. While Q does this to help Jean-Luc , there are consequences to the timeline. Beyond the odd bit of alternate timeline 25th Century technology left behind, Rios also stays behind in the past because he's fallen for Teresa Ramirez. Together they work in a group called "Mariposas," Spanish for "butterflies." It's safe to assume that Rios's time in the past had more than a few butterfly effect moments.

The true aim of their visit into the past was to ensure Picard's ancestor took part in a mission to Europa, which discovered a sentient microbe that apparently helped Earth solve climate change. Yet, it also created the Jurati Borg, who are standing guard at an ominous wormhole in Federation space.

1 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow' Finally Answered Star Trek's Khan Question

The biggest history problem in Star Trek stemmed from its most famous villain, Khan Noonien Singh. In Star Trek: The Original Series , Spock says Khan's rise to power happened in the 1990s, but in the Voyager episode, Khan and his augments are nowhere to be found. They aren't mentioned in "Past Tense" either, though there are ambiguous mentions to "trouble" in Europe. When the last salvo in the Temporal War changes the timeline so that Starfleet is just the United Earth, La'an Noonien Singh and James Kirk have to travel back in time to stop it.

This episode revealed that Khan's rise to power didn't happen until a decade or more after the late 2020s. A Romulan time agent revealed she arrived in the 1990s to kill Khan, but all the temporal shenanigans erased him from existence. Yet, like in Across the Spider-Verse , Khan's rise to power is a canon event that time will ensure happens no matter what. La'an saves her evil ancestor, and that impact on the Prime Timeline's future remains to be seen.

Time travel is a big deal in the Star Trek universe, responsible for some amazing, classic stories. However, as this list makes clear, those stories make an impact on the future and sometimes the franchise's past. Just because Strange New Worlds looks very different from The Original Series , it's all still the Prime Timeline.

Every Star Trek series is streaming on Paramount+, save for Star Trek: Prodigy now streaming on Netflix. The first ten Star Trek films are currently on Max.

The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series' voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there's a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

Why Star Trek: Discovery Chose That Classic Next Gen Storyline To Explore In Its Final Season

Shields up! This article contains major spoilers for the season 5 premiere of "Star Trek: Discovery."

Who knew that "Star Trek: Discovery" would be saving its biggest reveal for last? After being responsible for kickstarting the new era of "Trek" on streaming , the fifth and final season is signaling the beginning of the end for the flagship series. But as fans would expect, the opening episode proves the writing team has no intentions of taking its final bow without crafting one last adventure worthy of Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Mr. Saru (Doug Jones), and the rest of the Discovery crew. (For more on that, you can check out /Film's "Discovery" season 5 premiere review by Jacob Hall here .) So perhaps it was inevitable that the biggest twist of the young season would have its roots in one of the most game-changing hours of "Trek" lore ever.

Trekkies will no doubt remember the classic "Next Generation" episode "The Chase," which first introduced the extinct race known as the Progenitors. Responsible for seeding humanoid life throughout the galaxy, these ancient beings were meant as an in-universe explanation for why almost every alien race encountered by Starfleet looked mostly like, well, ourselves ... give or take a few random ridges on foreheads and such. This also had the side effect of linking even the biggest enemies — humans, Romulans, Cardassians, and even Klingons alike — on a foundational genetic level.

"The Next Generation" mostly breezes past this revelation and reverts to business as usual in later episodes, despite the startling implications, so leave it to "Discovery" to pick up this major dangling thread and weave it into the fabric of this new season. At the season 5 world premiere, producer Michelle Paradise addressed why the show's creatives went back to this  storyline in particular.

'Huge ideas and huge themes'

How do you raise the stakes even higher than the time-traveling shenanigans of "Discovery" season 2, the mysterious dilithium "Burn" of season 3 that caused the breakdown of Starfleet, and the impossibly advanced species of extraterrestrials that put the entire galaxy at risk in season 4? Well, going all the way back to the origin of life as we know it is definitely one way to get the job done and end things with a bang.

It took until the closing moments of the season 5 premiere for the full picture (or part of it, at least) to round into shape, but what a twist it is! As it turns out, the pair of scavengers who absconded with an item of top priority to Starfleet couldn't have possibly picked a more important piece of "Trek" lore: the leftover Progenitor tech that helped them create humanoid life in the first place. So why tie things back to that underrated "The Next Generation" episode , of all things? At the SXSW premiere of "Discovery," producer Michelle Paradise had this to say:

"'The Chase' is an episode that had stuck with many of us because it addresses such huge ideas and huge themes. Where do we come from, the creation of life. And then it was this one episode, and then that was it [...] And it just left us with many, many questions."

That's putting it mildly. Even for a sci-fi franchise like "Star Trek," those are some incredibly heady ideas to attempt to tackle. It's one thing for a random episode in the early 1990s to suddenly establish such a massive change to canon. It's quite another for "Discovery" to double down. According to Paradise, however, this was done with character and theme in mind.

Tackling the big questions

Arguably more than any other ongoing series, "Discovery" has always worn its heart on its sleeve. That doesn't appear to be changing in season 5, but it's only fitting that the final adventure for this cast digs deeper into the psyches of the characters than it ever has before. The biggest question on the minds of the creative team, as it turns out, revolved around ideas of meaning and purpose for Burnham, Saru, and all the rest. According to Michelle Paradise, those are existential topics that translate naturally from the events of "The Chase," set hundreds and hundreds of years before the future timeline of this current season of "Discovery." She went on to say:

"And so when we were thinking about this season in particular and what we were going to be doing thematically and our characters looking at questions of meaning, questions of purpose. It felt like that was a really great place to go back to as a launching point for this adventure and that it was going to have that resonance."

For a crew that's been stranded in the future and cut off from everyone they used to know, these are poignant issues that previous seasons of "Discovery" have sought to explore. After having rebuilt Starfleet to something close to its former glory and putting the officers of the Discovery through the wringer, the rest of season 5 is now primed and ready to push these characters where they have never gone before.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5 premiere on Paramount+ every Thursday.

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Published Sep 3, 2023

How Spock's Human Side in Strange New Worlds Fully Explains The Original Series

We love Spock because of his feelings, not in spite of them.

StarTrek.com

We need to talk about Spock . He’s smiling. He’s making jokes. He’s eating bacon in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds .

As Captain Kirk once put it, Spock has recently shown “a regrettable tendency you've been showing lately toward flagrant emotionalism.” But here’s the thing. Kirk made that comment in The Original Series , at the end of the classic episode “ The Menagerie .” So, Spock’s emotional outbursts are hardly new. And as counterintuitive as it sounds, the rational, cold hero of the final frontier is often most interesting when he seems to be losing it.

From “ Amok Time ” in The Original Series to “ Charades ” in Strange New Worlds Season 2, Spock’s emotionalism is central to our shared love of this supposedly unemotional character. And thanks to Strange New Worlds , the story of Star Trek is offering a new, utterly revelatory way of understanding the inner struggle of Spock, which, in the final analysis, is perfectly logical.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Spock the Human

Way back when Leonard Nimoy filmed “The Cage,” in 1964, the character of Spock hadn’t been fully formed. At that point, Star Trek series creator Gene Roddenberry actually conceived of Number One as the more guarded, stoic unemotional one.

In 2019, with the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “ Q&A ,” writer Michael Chabon attempted to reconcile this, by making it clear that Number One had a big influence on Spock’s overall development. But, that was Spock’s first day on the Enterprise and only the beginning of a bigger process. Starting with Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, and throughout Strange New Worlds , Spock is on an emotional journey, one that has an end point with how we find Spock in The Original Series. As SNW co-creator Akiva Goldsman said in 2023 , “Something happened between ‘The Cage’ and ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before.’”

Goldsman is right. But, putting Spock on an emotional rollercoaster isn’t something SNW randomly invented. Spock has gone on several emotional journeys prior to SNW . In the Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover, “ Those Old Scientists ,” Chapel says Spock is “going through a thing.” But, when, if we’re being honest, has Spock not been going through a thing?

"Amok Time"

Throughout The Original Series, the classic films, and even The Next Generation , Spock, as played by Leonard Nimoy, changed his emotional presentation quite a bit. In the classic series, he was openly frustrated by human emotions, but after the events of The Motion Picture , and his failure to purge his emotions via the Kolinahr, Spock eventually loosened up, and became comfortable with his illogical human allies. The level of comfort Spock has with Kirk and Bones in The Wrath of Khan is drastically different from the guy we met in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” So, in order for classic Spock to mature, and grow, there had to be a baseline, a specific foundational personality to build upon. This is where Strange New Worlds comes in. Because it’s here that we’re finally seeing how and why Spock’s emotional cocktail was mixed.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Hot Spock

In “Those Old Scientists,” Boimler and Mariner — time travelers from the 24th Century — are borderline horrified by Spock smiling and attempting to make bad jokes. Cleverly, Strange New Worlds uses what seems like canon inconsistencies to actually make a point about how people change. Boimler believes that a smiling Spock is not really the character. Just like fans being jarred by Spock smiling in “The Cage” or flashbacks from “The Menagerie,” emotional Spock can read as a mistake, rather than a nuance. Boilmer, as a cipher for a confused fan says, “This is just like what a phase and he’ll get over and get back to like his serious, real self soon?”

In some ways, Boimler is right. What we’re seeing in Strange New Worlds is new, but, it’s also a fallacy for us to believe that “serious” Spock is also “real” Spock. In 1966, “ The Naked Time ,” was only the fourth episode of Star Trek ever aired, and the seventh episode ever filmed. This means that extremely early in Star Trek canon, we got an episode in which Spock was openly crying like a baby. Within the canon of Trek , it seems pretty likely that Kirk didn’t put all of that into his logs, out of respect for Spock, which is also probably doubly true of Spock yelling at people at the beginning of “Amok Time.”

"The Naked Time"

Relative to their perception of “smiling Spock,” Boimler and Mariner lack something we have as fans. We have an overall idea of “serious” Spock in our minds, but once we start looking at individual Spock stories, all from the classic era, Spock “acting out of character” becomes the basis of his character.

As Ethan Peck put it earlier in 2023 , “It’s possible that ‘normal’ Spock doesn’t exist.” But for Mariner and Boimler, they’re really only going off of history books, which were almost certainly influenced by Pike, Kirk, and others, just selectively leaving information out. Although Mariner and Boimler are somewhat obviously very aware of Pike’s tragic fate at the start of “The Menagerie,” it’s possible that they’re not aware of how that story ended for Pike. “The Menagerie” concludes with Pike living out, happily on Talos IV. But who put him there?

"Those Old Scientists"

If Spock hadn’t acted out of compassion, and stolen the U.S.S. Enterprise to get Pike to Talos, that happy ending couldn’t have happened. At the very end of that episode, that’s when Kirk confronts Spock and drops that “flagrant emotionalism” line. Spock cuts him off saying, “I see no reason to insult me, sir; I believe I've been completely logical about the whole affair.” When Boimler and Spock discuss Spock’s more stoic future reputation, Spock says, “I have no choice but to stay true to the path I have chosen in this time. If you sway me, then my future will have been altered, is that not logical?”

It’s a mic-drop moment that Boimler can’t deny, and represents one of many times this season that Spock has stood up for his human heritage a bit more than he did in The Original Series. Because even if Boimler did sway Spock a tiny bit, what this journey of self-discovery proves is that only Spock knows what’s right for Spock, and our shared definition of his character doesn’t just come from our projections or perceptions — of which there are many! Instead, the defining feature of Spock’s character isn’t coldness or emotionalism, but rather his struggle between the two. And the choices he makes aren’t about canon or the timeline. Spock’s choices to become himself in Strange New Worlds reaffirm what Kirk said in The Wrath of Khan . Of all the souls we have known in Star Trek , Spock’s is perhaps the most…human…of them all.

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Ryan Britt (he/him) is the author of several nonfiction books, most relevantly, Phasers on Stun! How the Making and Remaking of Star Trek Changed the World. He writes for a variety of publications, including Inverse, Den of Geek!, and Esquire. Ryan is a proud WGA member and a senior editor at Fatherly .

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, South Korea, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In addition, the series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada and on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1 through 4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe. In Canada, the series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel. Star Trek: Discovery is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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Star Trek: Discovery Will End with Season 5 — Here’s When It Will Air

Keisha hatchett, staff editor.

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The Star Trek: Discovery crew will embark on one last journey.

The Paramount+ series starring Sonequa Martin-Green will end with Season 5, TVLine has learned. The final season will arrive in early 2024.

“As lifelong fans of Star Trek , it has been an immense honor and privilege to help bring Star Trek: Discovery to the world,” executive producers and co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise said in a statement. “The ‘Trek’ universe means so much to so many — including us — and we couldn’t be prouder of everything Discovery has contributed to its legacy, particularly with representation. If just one person sees themselves, or the possibilities for their future, in a new way because of Discovery , then we think we’d have made Gene Roddenberry very proud.”

The duo continued, “To the fans around the world, thank you for joining us on this incredible journey. Your love for these characters and your excitement for every episode, every season, has meant the world to us. We can’t wait for you to see what we’ve been working on for this final season; we appreciate your patience in the meantime and trust us when we say it’ll be worth the wait. We love you all! LLAP”

After convincing Ten-C to stop using their galaxy-destroying DMA at the end of Season 4 , the farewell run finds Captain Burnham (Martin-Green) and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that “sends them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries,” per the official description. “But there are others on the hunt as well, dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.”

Season 5 cast includes Martin-Green as Captain Michael Burnham, Doug Jones as Saru, Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets, Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly, Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber, David Ajala as Cleveland “Book” Booker and Blu del Barrio as Adira.

Three have been added for the upcoming season, including Callum Keith Rennie ( The Umbrella Academy ) as Rayner, a “gruff, smart Starfleet Captain who holds a clear line between commander and crew;” Eve Harlow ( Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D .) as Moll, a former courier-turned-outlaw equipped with an impressive strategic mind and a sharp wit; and Elias Toufexis ( Shadowhunters ) as L’ak, who is “impulsive and fiercely protective” of his partner Moll. Streaming TV Scorecard: Renewals, Cancellations and Premiere Dates View Gallery 9 Images

Paramount+ launched the Discovery spinoff Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — centered on the adventures of Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck) and Una/Number One (Rebecca Romijn) — in 2022; the show landed an early Season 2 renewal ahead of its debut.

A second spinoff centered on Michelle Yeoh’s mirror universe Philippa Georgiou/Section 31 — a top-secret division first introduced in Deep Space Nine — remains in development .

How do you feel about Star Trek: Discovery ending? What do you hope to see in Season 5? Sound off in the comments. 

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54 comments.

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Well, bummer, I like this show quite a bit…the fact that I get to see Angel so many years later after ABC did My So Called Life Dirty makes me very happy every week.

I’m glad in a way. I enjoyed the first season but it’s gotten worse and worse. I hope this will free up budget for another show that is closer to Strange New Worlds. It should feel like actual Star Trek!

Respectfully disagree

Respectfully agree.

Thanks, you nailed it.

Season 2 was my favorite. I kinda found season 1 the weakest (I didn’t like the way they did the Klingons.)

Agreed. This show always felt like an odd, alternate reality from Star Trek. And there were some really amazing people and elements of the show (Saru, the Saru-Burnam familial relationship, Stamets/Culber, etc.) but too much of it never felt like the Trek I wanted.

Not surprised they are wrapping it up.. but not coming out till 2024? That is a long wait between seasons.

The Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Curb Your Enthusiasm, just to name a few, would like to wave “hi.”

Yeah, and it was stupid then too. The Sopranos used to go on hiatus for 1-2 years at a time. By the time it returned, you forgot what happened in the previous season and no longer cared.

oh i’m sad to see it go. i know people were pretty divived about this show, but i loved the approach they took with the storytelling and the characters, so this bums me out. just hope they got the heads up early enough (are they still filming?). but season 5 in 2024?? why do we have to wait so long, it’s already been a year since season 4 came to an end.

Filming wrapped in November and the show was expected mid-yearish. After the cancellation, they were allowed reshoots it to give it a proper send off.

2024? oh wow

Something weird is going on here.

Such an enjoyable show. Too bad we won’t be getting more after 2024.

I really loved the first two seasons of this show. The episodes all had a story with beginning, middle and end and yet came together beautifully at the end of the season. After that, they seem to have completely lost track, Michael went from resourceful and resilient to crying about everything and it got more caught up on Twitter talk than do what Trek does best: explore those exact social themes through sci-fi and metaphor. But Strange New Worlds is good and there’s a lot they can do.

I wholeheartedly agree with this comment. Seasons 3 and 4 have been all over the place – and not in a good way – with both character development and narrative story.

That’s a shame, but these days 5 seasons is a good run for a streaming show.

Season 4 was a chore to watch, it just wasn’t very good. 2024 though, wow. By then will anybody care?

Star Trek Discovery was the reason I signed up with Paramount +. Very disappointed.

As much as I have loved and still love this show, it *did* jump an itty-bitty shark by leaping three million years (hyperbole) into the future. That sort of cuts through the relatability threshold and moves straight into super-duper-maximum-ultimate sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi territory. I look forward to an entertaining conclusion to the series.

Big thanks to Discovery for relaunching the Star Trek universe. Been an absolute blast! The wait will go quick with SNW and LD filling the rest of 2023. Glad they decided to not wear out their welcome. (Maybe we can get a series that fleshes out post Kirk and pre Picard Enterprise A to C. That would be cool.)

5 seasons/65 episodes is a good run. I am glad Tilly is still part of season 5, as I feared she was be written off. She gives the show heart. Now, Section 31 is a show I really want to happen. Yeoh was fantastic as mirrorverse Philippa.

everything everywhere is ending all at once. very disappointed to read this.

I still enjoy the show but just about every season tends to spin off the rails halfway through, so I’m fine with it ending. Tilly is my favourite character, so I’m excited to hear Mary Wiseman will be back.

Thank you! See I enjoy the show too but it does have issues every season. I like the cast and a lot of the main characters. But yeah it goes off the rails every time.

I don’t know why they would make it a section 31 show. Especially with the way they showed her in her last episode. I would make her join the same organization that Gary Seven was part of, that that’s the group calling her. and that makes sense because he’s from a branch of humanity that evolved outside of the Earth. and she’s from a different reality. that works well together

Never connected with it or the characters, didn’t have the lighter feel of the original and tng, really hasn’t been a great star trek since those two.

Great! Send the “U.S.S. Discovery” to explore “The Undiscovered Country”…

Just not fair! TNG and DS9 both had 7 seasons and each of those had 24-26 episodes per season. Granted, not every episode of Discovery was great, but then neither were some episodes of TNG or DS9.

Just sayin!!

Discovery cannot hold a candle to the proper Trek of TNG – Enterprise.

Hated Enterprise. Discovery is not my favorite, but it still ranks higher than that dreck.

Star Trek Discovery is one of my favorite shows, been a fan since the very first Star Trek came out in the sixties. I am so very disappointed that season 5 is its last.

Something doesn’t add up. Paramount Plus it seems promoted Discovery and that it was a major jewel in its crown. Now out of the blue it is cancelled. Seems to me that Paramount Plus was not bringing in the revenue that CBS/Paramount wanted and that had an effect on the value of the stock. So, something had to go in order to bring down costs & Discovery was on the chopping block. Discovery had gotten off to a rocky start. Season 1 was launched & the producers tried to add to Star Trek. Some things worked out and some did not. Season 2 was the beginning of a new start. Going far into the future there was a whole new canvas waiting to be painted. Inconsistencies with the canon were corrected by sending Discovery far into the future. Discovery had at least 2 more seasons to explore that far flung future. So many possibilities and now it ends just like that. That leaves Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks & Prodigy. It will be interesting to see what is next for Star Trek. Leaving Discovery to 2024 is a smart move for Paramount but not for the viewers. The costs of producing will have been absorbed. Many viewers will forget about Discovery since it will be almost 2 years since S4. Thus, not too many will complain about Discovery ending and for many it will not matter. Paramount by airing S5 in 2024 has killed Discovery in one of the worst ways possible, burning it off and letting it become a neglected show.

I’m actually disappointed they are ending Star Trek Discovery. It just seems so abrupt. I thought for sure we’d get at least 6 seasons with an opportunity for a 7th season. It’s a bit disappointing to say the least.

Maybe they figure Strange New Worlds will pick up the mantle

SNW already has. So. Freaking. Good.

We can only hope!! Such a boring and sad little show…

There is a God. STD is not Star Trek. Kurtzman and his dreck need to go next.

I agree, it’s more like the Honor Harrington series of books, and others. It was a different take on Star Trek, following one main characters development, but still in the Star Trek universe. I hope they give it a good send off.

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Discovery Will Be the First Star Trek Show in 50 Years to End Without a Jonathan Frakes Appearance

At least he's been behind the camera plenty enough over its five seasons, which is at least an honorary frakes appearance..

When you think of the most important people in Star Trek history, in terms of actors at least you might look to the legacies of people like William Shatner or Patrick Stewart. But the real answer to that question is probably Jonathan Frakes , who has been a part of pretty much all televised Trek since the ‘70s — and when Discovery ends in a few months, it’ll break the trend of his influence, at least in front of the camera.

Since starring as William T. Riker in The Next Generation , Frakes has made a guest appearance in almost every Star Trek series since, either as Riker or a facsimile of him, or his villainous transporter clone brother Thomas (responsible for the greatest fake beard reveal in television history, thanks to Deep Space Nine ). Just three series have gone without an on-screen Frakes appearance so far— Discovery , Prodigy , and Strange New Worlds —and now we know at least one of them never will.

When asked by Den of Geek at a recent appearance during SXSW whether or not Frakes would make an on-screen appearance in Discovery ’s final season, co-creator and producer Alex Kurtzman offered a very resoundingly flat “No.” It’s not surprising considering that, as Discovery is now so far into Star Trek ’s future, Riker is extremely dead at this point. At least it will always have a special connection to Frakes through his role as a similarly consistent Trek director—Frakes has been regularly directing episodes of Discovery since its first season, and will direct the penultimate episode of the show in season five. But it does indeed mean the end to a decades-long trend of making Frakes one of the most consistent Trek actors in the franchise history, and there’s something oddly sad about that.

Prodigy and Strange New Worlds both still have time to have their own Frakes appearances— Prodigy is set in 2385, while Riker was still in active service even after the birth of his son Thaddeus, for whom he would step back from active duty to try and help treat when he was diagnosed with mendaxic neurosclerosis in the run-up to the events of Star Trek: Picard . Strange New Worlds (which like Discovery has a Frakes connection through directing ; he shot the show’s fantastic crossover with Lower Decks , “ Those Old Scientists ”) being pre-original Trek would make a Riker appearance very difficult, but Frakes could still play some role, whether it’s an ancestor or an entirely new character.

We’ll have to wait and see—and behold what Frakes cooks up as his parting gift for Discovery— when season five begins streaming on April 4 .

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel , Star Wars , and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV , and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who .

'Star Trek: Discovery' opens its 5th and final season in unremarkable fashion (Red Directive recap)

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5, episode 1

Well, here we are. Again. It's the fifth and final time around for "Star Trek: Discovery" and the single biggest question every sci-fan will be asking themselves is, will this season actually be any good. The tragic thing is, no one can really remember what happened in season 4 and that speaks directly to the fact that "Discovery" is not exactly a high-scoring show when it comes to rewatchability.

It's been two years and two weeks, give or take a day, since we last saw the crew of the USS Discovery risk everything to save all life in the universe, again. During that time, we've seen a lot of sci-fi, both awesome and awful, including two seasons of " Picard " and " Strange New Worlds ," the third and final season of " The Orville ," season 1 of " Andor ," "The Book of Boba Fett," "Ahsoka" and the less said about "Obi-Wan Kenobi," the better. If you're wondering where to see all that Trek, check out our Star Trek streaming guide for Paramount Plus and more.

Not to mention, the vastly underrated second season of "Invasion" and "Halo" seasons 1 and 2, plus, the first mind-blowing season of "Silo" the second and sadly last season of " Avenue 5 " and two seasons of " For All Mankind ." The point is that the standard has, for the most part, been refreshingly high. And frankly before we even get into season 5 of "Discovery," it's worth remembering that what executive producers and showrunners Alex Kurtzman  and Michelle Paradise have given us up until now, has not exactly been a consistently high quality of sci-fi writing. In fact, it's been rather disappointing.

Related: 5 things Star Trek: Discovery season 5 needs to fix

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Are we in-store for another cookie-cutter season of what's-in-the-box plot threads that deliver misdirected build ups with unsatisfying pay offs...you know like we have for the past two seasons plus all three seasons of "Picard"..? Even "Andor," despite its peak and trough-style of repetitive set-piece storytelling, was impressive and that was down to how well those set pieces had been fleshed out along with well written character development and dialogue. Less can very easily be so much more. 

Moreover, now we're in the 32nd century and we've seen that transporter technology can be used to replace stairs and even change outfits, so to be perfectly honest, there really isn't a single story idea that cannot be solved by a simple combination of transporter and replicator technology. Not to mention smartmatter. Ah, hello smartmatter, my old friend. Because this is what happens when you throw three seasons of a "Star Trek" series 1,164 years into the future.

Regardless, it would seem that within the story, between four and six months have passed since the events of last season , where you may remember, the United Federation of Planets was desperately trying to save all life as we know from being accidentally exterminated by species 10-C, all while Ruon Tarka (Shawn Doyle) was still hell bent on using the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator to destroy the dark matter anomaly. Book (David Ajala) gets killed when his ship explodes then bought back to life before he faces repercussions for siding with Tarka. General Ndoye (Phumzile Sitole) seems to get away scot-free despite sabotaging the Discovery's warp drive and everyone lives happily ever after. 

Coming in at nearly 60 minutes long, the premiere episode is titled "Red Directive" and drops at the same time as the second episode, entitled "Under The Twin Moons." Michelle Paradise wrote the former, which could explain why it's so dull, and Olatunde Osunsanmi directed. The latter was written by Alan B. McElroy and directed by Douglas Aarniokoski, so fingers the second installment might be a bit better. Aarniokoski directed the season 3 premiere episode of "Picard" and while the rest of that was a disappointing, drawn out, nostalgia-fueled, 10-episode long epilogue to another series that ended three decades ago, the premiere installment was actually okay. 

The gang seems mostly all here, including Lt. Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Adira (Blu del Barrio) and there are some characters who don't seem to have made it back, some of whom will be very much missed, like Grudge, while others won't be. No sign of Zora yet either. It's also entirely likely that the amazing talents of Callum Keith Rennie, who plays a Starfleet Captain named Rayner, will be spectacularly underused, much like Todd Stashwick was in season 3 of "Picard."

Credit to the production team though, as they're are really making the most of their Volume-esque video wall soundstage. There are a couple of interesting choices in terms of editing, much like there were in the second season premiere where Alex Kurtzman showed us what he'd learned in the Vince Gilligan School of Cinematography. It's doubtful we'll ever see them again, just like we didn't before. 

To conclude then, the opening episode of the final season "Star Trek: Discovery" is a far, far cry from strong openings that this show has demonstrated it's capable of in the past. And that's a sentence we've had to write far too many times. The TNG throwback right at the end is...well, disappointing, mostly because of the extent that nostalgic fan service has been dialed up since the first episode of Nu-Trek aired in September 2017. However, it could still provide an interesting story thread — we will just have to wait and see.

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery" and every episode of every "Star Trek" show — with the exception of "Star Trek: Prodigy" — currently streams exclusively on Paramount Plus in the US while "Prodigy" has found a new home o n Netflix.  

Internationally, the shows are available on Paramount Plus in Australia, Latin America, the UK and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. They also stream on Paramount Plus in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In Canada, they air on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and stream on Crave.

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Where to watch Star Trek: Discovery free — Final season starts today

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The newest season of Star Trek: Discovery is officially underway. Season 5 marks the final season of the Star Trek spin-off, and it's shaping up to be an action-packed swang song. Whether you're looking to stream the new episodes or get caught up on the past four seasons, we've got everything you need to know about the show, including where to watch Star Trek: Discovery free via a TV channel abroad. 

Star Trek: Discovery premiered in 2017 and follows in the decades-long tradition of Star Trek stories. The series is set about five years before the original Star Trek, which chronicled Captain Kirk's five-year journey. In Star Trek: Discovery, the U.S.S. Discovery travels through space on a mission of exploration. Season 5 sees Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the U.S.S. Discovery crew on the hunt for an ancient power that others are also seeking.

The first two premiere episodes are currently streaming. Keep reading to learn how to watch the series no matter where you are in the world.

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Where to watch Star Trek: Discovery in the US

New Season 5 episodes of Star Trek: Discovery land on Paramount+ on Thursdays. The premiere week includes two episodes, and then one new episode will drop weekly after that. Episodes should be available starting at about 3 a.m. ET. All four past seasons are available to stream through the service. Subscriptions start at $5.99 a month and come with a one-week free trial.

Paramount Plus' Essential tier is a steal at this price and only has limited ads. It features tons of on-demand content from Paramount, CBS, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, and MTV. And you get NFL and Champions League soccer live streaming. There's a 7-day free trial, then it's $6 a month or $60 a year. The only way to ditch the ads is by opting for the Showtime bundle.

Where to watch Star Trek: Discovery in Canada

Paramount+ is also the home to Star Trek: Discovery in Canada. Plans start at CAD$6.99 and come with a one-week free trial. All episodes are available to stream here.

Where to watch Star Trek: Discovery in New Zealand

Star Trek: Discovery is available to stream for free on TVNZ+ . You'll need to create a free account to start streaming. In addition to new season 5 episodes, Seasons 1-4 are also streaming on the site. New episodes are available on Thursdays.

How to watch Star Trek: Discovery from anywhere

If you're not in New Zealand at the moment, you can access streams with a VPN (virtual private network). VPNs alter your electronic device's location so you can use websites that might not be available in certain regions. They're also solid ways to boost your online privacy. We recommend ExpressVPN , a user-friendly option with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Check out our ExpressVPN review for additional details and see below to learn how to use a VPN. 

With its consistent performance, reliable security, and expansive global streaming features, ExpressVPN is the best VPN out there, excelling in every spec and offering many advanced features that makes it exceptional. Better yet, you can save up to 49% and get an extra three months for free today.

How to watch Star Trek: Discovery with a VPN

• Sign up for a VPN if you don't have one.
• Install it on the device you're using to watch Star Trek: Discovery.
• Turn it on and set it to New Zealand.
• Go to TVNZ+ and create a log-in profile.
• Watch Star Trek: Discovery.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

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