Star Trek: ‘Discovery’ Part I– The Past Is Prologue
Greetings & welcome aboard our Star Trek: Discovery recap. It’s been more than three seasons since the show started, and it’s time.
To give you a quick vibe check, this is a pro-Star Trek space. We want DISCO to succeed! We want all the Star Trek shows to succeed! They don’t always do that, but we’re putting positive (while also critical) vibes out there for our sweet, sweet United Federation babes.
Captain’s Recap Log: Stardate 2017-2019
That being said, before we start recapping, we’ve got to catch up on what’s happened so far. In this first post, we’re going to cover the first two seasons of DISCO.
If you’ve never seen the show before and want to start with the current season, we’re going to fill your Dilithium gas tank with all the context you need. That way, you can watch with us when the show comes back on February 10.
If you’re already caught up, think of this as a chance to remember what got us to season 4. It’s also a chance for us to get to know each other, one fan to another.
The Brief on DISCO
Our story is set during the times before Kirk captained the Enterprise, back when Christopher Pike held that position. The USS Shenzhou’s first officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) defies the orders of her mentor and captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh).
This results in the accidental triggering of a war, inciting event between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Philippa dies in the process and Michael becomes the first ever Starfleet officer to be arrested and jailed for mutiny.
Star Trek: Discovery Recap– Season One
The first season is the story of Michael Burnham. She’s seeking both redemption and a chance to prevent the Klingon war she’s set in motion. And she begins that journey by being assigned to a mysterious Starfleet vessel called the USS Discovery.
Discovery is captained by the morally-gray Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), who is effectively tasked with preventing war at all costs. To aide in that effort, he has a ship with an ultra powerful spore drive, which allows the ship to travel nearly anywhere instantaneously.
It’s crafted and controlled by the ship’s surly engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp). Stamets is married to the pragmatic and adorable Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), which marks the first time a gay, married couple has ever appeared on a Star Trek show. This will be very important later.
And Now Introducing… The Crew: Saru
Saru (Doug Jones) is Discovery’s first officer and part of an alien race called the Kelpians. Saru is the only member of his species who even knows there’s life beyond his home planet.
He was a member of the Shenzhou crew when Burnham’s actions cost Phillipa her life. As you might imagine, he does not trust Michael.
Saru is very tall and basically has the scaredy cat equivalent of Spidey sense. He has a lot of plants and is a good boy.
Sylvia Tilly
Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) is an ensign onboard Discovery who winds up bunking with Burnham. Does “Bunking with Burnham” sound like a delightful modern retelling of The Odd Couple? Well, good, because that’s basically what the pair’s relationship is like.
Tilly brings big Willow Rosenberg energy to Burnham’s Buffy-level drama. And just like Willow, we get the sense there’s an alternate universe where Tilly is very evil. This, too, will become important later.
Ash Tyler
Next, we’ve got Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif). While temporarily imprisoned, Lorca meets a Starfleet officer named Ash Tyler, who was captured and tortured by the Klingons. Or so we’re meant to think.
In reality, Ash Tyler is a false persona (and skin, hooray) grafted over the body of a Klingon named Voq. Voq had to escape after his attempts to unite the disparate clans of the Klingon Empire together landed him in hot water.
There was a real Ash Tyler, but he was killed. His DNA and consciousness were repurposed to create a temporary new vessel and personality for Voq until such time as he might return to take control of the Klingon Empire.
He and Burnham fall in love, which is sweet. But when the Voq personality reasserts itself, he kills Dr. Culber, which is not very sweet at all. This, once again, will become important (say it with me) later.
There are other members on board Discovery, but this is the core crew for season one. With us so far? Don’t worry if this seems like a lot already– it is!
A Broken Mirrorverse Means Seven Years Bad Luck
In addition to the Klingon plot, DISCO takes a temporary plot detour into Star Trek‘s fabled Mirrorverse. There, instead of a Federation, there’s a fascist, racist, totalitarian regime called the Terran Empire.
Through an “accident”, Stamets misuses the spore drive and temporarily traps the DISCO crew in the land of evil goatees. In order to survive, the crew must pretend to be their own evil counterparts.
The only person who doesn’t have to pretend is Lorca because he was from the mirrorverse, and, hence, evil all along. That’s a fact you likely surmised already since he’s played by Lucious ding-dong Malfoy.
The upshot of the mirrorverse arc is that the DISCO crew meet up with the Empress of the Terran Empire– a chaotic bisexual version of Philippa Georgiou. In DISCO‘s efforts to get back to their home dimension, Lorca dies. But don’t worry, he deserves it.
Return of the Yeoh and Season One’s Resolution
Emperor Georgiou gets taken along for the journey. Were you expecting me to write “this will become important later”? Congratulations, you have seen television (and read recaps) before!
Long story short, Emperor Georgiou helps the crew deal with the Klingon Empire in a pretty un-Federation way. Tyler/Voq’s personalities have combined to become on complicated dude. They give his girlfriend L’Rell (Mary Chieffo) control of a bomb they’ve placed in the heart of the Klingon homeworld of Qo’noS.
Armed with the power of total annihilation, L’Rell becomes the leader of a newly and begrudgingly united Klingon Empire. Ash/Voq remains by her side.
The season ends with Discovery encountering the Enterprise, where Michael’s adopted brother should theoretically should be on board. Did I mention that Burnham’s step-brother is Spock? More on that later!
The CBS All Access Conundrum
Star Trek: Discovery is very different from the Trek shows that came before it. For one thing, the show largely eschews the show’s previous typical episodic storytelling in favor of serial storytelling. Plus, the costumes, spore drive technology, and overall look of the technology make the show feel very different from the rest of the franchise.
In addition to being the first Star Trek series in a decade, DISCO faced a number of other major uphill battles. Some of which the show is still coping with.
The biggest is that, unlike every other Trek series before it, DISCO does not air on terrestrial television. Beyond its pilot, the entire show is only available through the Paramount Plus streaming service (previously known as CBS All Access). Fans are still mad that they have to pay additional money to watch the show. But that wasn’t the only complaint.
Chaos on the Bridge
The other major issue centers on chaos behind-the-scenes. Long-time Trek writer and creator Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal) was meant to be the lead creator for the series. But before a single episode aired, he had already departed.
He wound up not being the only person to take charge and then leave shortly thereafter. This created an ongoing rumor mill among Trek fans that the show was troubled.
The other elephant in the room isn’t worth talking too much about. But before even a single episode aired, some “fans” were mad that the show would be led by a Black woman and feature a married gay couple. There’s not really an argument to be made there beyond “that’s a silly thing to be mad about,” so we’ll leave it there.
There were valid gripes, too. The concept of a spore drive felt very out of place with the time setting of DISCO. And the idea of making Burnham and Spock siblings has always felt like an entirely unnecessary connection in order to ensnare classic Trek fans.
How Star Trek Buried its Gays
However, arguably the biggest critique that wasn’t “you mean I gotta pay extra for this” centers on Paul Stamets and Hugh Culber. A lot of hay was mad about featuring the first ever married gay couple in Star Trek.
As you might imagine, queer fans felt betrayed when one of the two people in that couple was brutally murdered. Fans called out the familiarity of this approach by citing a TV trope called “Bury Your Gays“.
This points out the tendency for queer characters to be killed off statistically more than their straight counterparts. Since DISCO was introduced in 2017, the decision to kill Culber was exacerbated by the fact that a number of other high-profile genre shows like The 100 and The Walking Dead also killed off their popular queer characters.
That’s a Wrap on Season One!
In short, DISCO‘s first season… phew! She messy. However, Sonequa Martin-Green remains an excellent lead. And the relationship between her, Tilly, and Saru had already grown into something worthy of building on.
Much like Kirk, Spock, and Bones, DISCO has a cast full of interesting characters. But the core trio are the ones that really bring the proverbial boys to the yard.
That’s season one. Feeling winded? Don’t worry. Now that we’ve introduced the main characters and conceits things get a little easier as we begin…
Star Trek: Discovery Recap– Season Two
There are two primary story threads the DISCO team attempts to cover in the show’s second season. The first is Michael’s relationship with Spock (Ethan Peck) vs. the fate of her birth parents, and, in the general sense, how Discovery fits into the larger Star Trek continuity.
On a long-term, franchise level, there was a desire to introduce Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), his Enterprise crew, and set up the possibility of them getting their own series. There were also whispers of spinning the Emperor Georgiou character into her own series, and we’ll see elements of that play out in season two as well.
Additionally, there was clearly a general desire to wrap up any leftover story/character stuff from season one. Showrunners also wanted to respond to the specific ongoing outcry over the death of Dr. Hugh Culber.
The Red Angel
The vehicle by which all of these needs were answered comes through one, major season mystery arc: The Red Angel.
Effectively, there’s a mysterious spatial distortion that keeps appearing throughout space, specifically during moments of crisis. The Enterprise is investigating what that spatial distortion is when the ship gets damaged in the long-term sense of the word.
As a result, Pike becomes the temporary captain of Discovery in order to continue the mission. Thus setting up the new, main dynamic on board the ship. Two things of note happen right away.
One, Michael sees a Red Angel inside the distortion. Two, we find out that Spock has gone rogue trying to understand the Red Angel because he’s having visions of it. He’s been having those visions since he was a child.
Sections 1-30? Nah. But Section 31 though!
In season one, we were aware that Michael was adopted by Spock’s parents Sarek (James Frain) and Amanda (Mia Kirshner). This is because Michael’s parents were murdered during a Klingon attack on a human/Vulcan science base.
This explains why she was so rash with the Klingons in season one. We also confirm that she has a tenuous-at-best relationship to Spock. On a character level, this makes the mystery of the Red Angel a personal one for Michael. She wants to help her brother and hopefully repair their relationship.
However, this is also a mystery which Starfleet wants resolved quickly. In addition to Discovery investigating, Starfleet also puts its Black Ops organization Section 31 headed by Captain Leland (Alan van Sprang) on the case.
The introduction of Section 31 provides a morally gray space for both Emperor Georgiou and Ash Tyler to inhabit. But it also introduces an AI called Control, which Section 31 has used for threat assessment. Hey! Guess what? Control will be important later.
From Sphere to Eternity
While investigating the Red Angel, Discovery comes upon an enormous, ancient, and sentient sphere. The sphere is dying and wants the sum totality of its knowledge and chill personality to be downloaded into Discovery. That way, all its experience and wisdom are not lost.
While this does work, it also sort of, kind of, maybe makes part of Discovery itself sentient. And speaking of sentience, it turns out that Control has also become alive and wants to use the sphere data from Discovery for its own nefarious purposes.
Along the way of gaining all this information, Pike, Burnham, and Discovery finally manage to find and save Spock from Control. With the help of both Spock and the sphere data, Discovery is able to capture the Red Angel and find out what is really going on.
It turns out the Red Angel is a human– and, not just any human. She’s Michael’s biological mother Gabrielle (Sonja Sohn).
Mrs. Burnham, I Presume
Before the Klingon attack, Gabrielle and her husband were working on a top secret time travel suit. When she’s nearly killed by the Klingons, Gabrielle uses the suit to escape. But she accidentally travels 900 years into the future where all life has ceased to exist.
As you may have surmised, the extinction event that yields this future is Control absorbing the sphere data and using it wipe out all life. Oops!
There are two additional catches to the circumstances Discovery finds herself in. Starfleet doesn’t know Control is bad, and, more importantly, Gabrielle isn’t actually the Red Angel we’ve been seeing all this time– Michael is.
So, in short, the season concludes with Discovery fighting off Control. She’s also using Michael in a secondary Red Angel suit to travel back in time and create breadcrumbs for their collective past selves to follow up until this point.
Then the entire crew of Discovery travels 900 years into the future to a point in time where Control can never reach them. Pike and Spock tell Starfleet that Discovery was destroyed and they are instructed to never talk about the ship or its spore drive to anyone ever.
Unburying Your Gays The DISCO Way
In addition to the main plot, there are two other plot threads that come out of investigating the Red Angel and the sphere.
One is the discovery that Hugh Culber isn’t technically dead. Thanks to Paul Stamets’ connection to the living mycelial network (that’s what the spore drive uses to travel so quickly) somehow Culber’s consciousness wind up in the network.
The whole thing is deeply convoluted. It’s a little hard to believe that it was always creative’s intention to bring Culber back from the dead. But with a season and a half of hindsight, it is just nice that they course corrected what was a deeply upsetting narrative choice for a lot of Trek fans.
Also, we get a new engineer character in the form of Jett Reno played to curmudgeonly perfection by stand-up comic (and Trek fan) Tig Notaro. Culber’s return and the casting of Notaro felt a little like the creative team really wanted the audience to know that they do not hate queer people, honest.
Just look, fans– we hired even more queer people! And we’ll keep doing that, promise! Honestly, that decision works a lot more than it doesn’t.
Back to the Saru-ture
The other big thing that happens is that Saru winds up Pokémon evolving and no longer being a scaredy boy. It turns out this is something possible for all Kelpians.
So he goes back to his homeworld, throws off the yoke of their collective oppression, and introduces them to the galaxy at large. Nifty keen, jelly bean. Good game. Well played.
Looking back on this season after many moons of having not thought about it, it’s really clear that the goal was to course correct. They also set up potential new shows so that Star Trek fans would get more for their streaming service buck.
Right from the first announcement of DISCO, fans were frustrated about the time period in which the show was set. Primarily because we hadn’t seen anything that happens after the events of Star Trek: Voyager.
Moving DISCO and its characters 900 years into the future gave fans what they wanted. It also gave the creative team the chance to completely reimagine the Federation and all the worlds therein. Plus, the Red Angel storyline explored two things Star Trek loves: time travel nonsense and evil robot shenanigans.
All Good Recaps…
There are fun scenes. Emperor Georgiou bisexuals as chaotically as possible which is always a delight. And Captain Pike was a vast improvement over Lorca because Pikes’s entire vibe is that of a deeply cozy Star Trek dad sweater.
There were some beautiful and emotional moments, too. Especially the ones between Michael and her mother and Michael and Saru.
Mostly, though, this season was about housecleaning and you can really feel that. The good news is that season three is all future, all the time. And we will talk about that in the next recap.
Until then this is your humble Star Trek recapper signing off. Computer end program.
You can stream seasons 1 & 2 of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ now exclusively on Paramount+.
