Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 3 Episode 1 (That Hope Is You)

It seems that most television series and movies about the future seem to be dystopian.  The world has gone to pot.  There’s no law.  There’s no hope.  Roving gangs pillage what little is left.  It would appear that even Star Trek isn’t immune to that.

Michael Burnham has led the USS Discovery to the year 3188 and it doesn’t look good.  The Federation and, by extension, Starfleet are all but gone.  Interstellar travel and communication are nearly impossible.  Things look bad and something called The Burn is to blame.  No one knows exactly what happened, but the result is that nearly all dilithium is gone, which powers conventional warp drive.

When Burnham lands on a planet, she meets Cleveland “Book” Booker, who basically explains all of this for us.  He’s a reluctant source of information, as he stole something and the previous owner wants it back.  The important bit of information is that things have changed during the intervening 930 years.  Burnham has yet to make contact with Discovery; this could mean that the ship didn’t make it or that it will make it, but not show up for some time.

I will say that a time jump of nearly a millennium is one way to shake things up.  Discovery was set about a decade before Kirk’s Star Trek, which meant that the show would have had to deal with this eventually.  Of course, that’s not an issue now.  Discovery had to make the jump to prevent an evil AI from getting too much information at once.

Does this mean that Discovery, or at least the crew, won’t be going back?  Maybe they will, but at a point after the 24^th Century.  They may find themselves in the 26^th century or it may well be that they’ll stick around in the 32^nd.

The most pressing questions are where the heck the ship is and what exactly The Burn is.  It would appear that the next episode will answer that question.  I sincerely doubt that the show would dump all but one of the regular cast, especially considering that the opening credits still has a few of the same actors.  (With the exception of the recap, Burnham is the only regular from last season to appear in this episode.)

So, that leaves us wondering what this hard left was.  It would be too easy to blame it on Michael Burnham.  Yes, I realize the first four letters of her name spell Burn.  It could have been her mother, who was stuck in the future for the longest time.  Another theory is that it has to do with the omega particle, which would make sense.  I’m not even sure why it’s called The Burn, since a lot of the damage had to do with things exploding.  (When the dilithium went boom, so did most of the starships.)

It looks like we’re going to be treated to 13 episodes this season.  We’ve already had a few references to previous outings.  The Gorn are mentioned.  We even get to see a Lurian who looks a lot like Morn.  I’m still out as to whether or not it is him.  It’s not unheard of in Star Trek for a species to live hundreds of years.  A thousand isn’t out of the question.  It was implied on Deep Space Nine that Lurians normally have more hair, which would make this Lurian’s similarity to Morn all the more suspicious.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s episode.  I’m eager to see what becomes of the ship and the series.  It’s going to be a long three months.

 

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Star Trek: Short Treks -- Season 1 Episode 1 (Runaway)

I finally got around to getting CBS All Access, or at least the free trial, and I’ve already watched the first two seasons of Discovery.  After watching the new Twilight Zone, I came across the Short Treks and realized that I could now watch them.  They haven’t previously been made available on DVD, so All Access was my only option.

The first episode is Runaway, and served as a prelude to Such Sweet Sorrow, parts one and two.  It focuses on Ensign Sylvia Tilly and Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po meeting for the first time.  Po stows away on a shuttlecraft bound for Discovery.  She has the ability to turn invisible and goes undetected until meeting Tilly in the mess hall.

Rather than report the incident, the two talk and become friends.  Each has a tendency to run away.  We learn from a conversation between Till and her mother that Tilly would rather run away from the challenge of climbing a wall.  Dear mother feels that Tilly won’t withstand the pressures of the command training program.  Po tells Tilly that she’s running away from being queen of her people.  The two realize that running away isn’t the solution.

The episode comes off like an extended outtake.  Like, it was some dialogue that was cut from a main episode.  One of the advantages of streaming is that the rules aren’t as strict.  There’s no real time limit, since you’re not trying to fit into the network’s schedule.  If you have a perfect story for 15 minutes, then do it.

The Short Treks would seem to be perfect for someone who has a short break and wants to watch something.  It’s not long and it’s not too deep.  It deals with one narrative that probably wouldn’t work as an hour-long episode.  We get to see a little character development for Tilly and we get to meet a new race.  (I kind of get now why Tilly was a little better in the second season.)

No new sets are built for the episode.  It deals with two characters, one of which is new.  This was released between Discovery’s first and second seasons, but isn’t really necessary to enjoy Discovery.  When I watched Such Sweet Sorrow, I knew that I was missing something, but I could still follow that episode’s story.  Watching this now is more like finally understanding what Tilly and Po were talking about.

I kind of wonder why CBS doesn’t make stuff like this available for free.  It’s not a full Discovery episode and releasing one or two episodes on YouTube might encourage people to sign up.  It’s also not the kind of thing that’s dependant on a larger story arc, but it does give you an idea of what Star Trek: Discovery looks like.  It’s the perfect free sample.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 1 Episode 3 (Context Is for Kings)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was dark, but it was still Star Trek.  It showed that things weren’t always rosy in the idealistic Federation or Starfleet.  Being so far from the center of Federation space had implications.  Rules were stretched.  Sometimes, people did things they weren’t proud of.  But, it was still Starfleet.

Discovery started out dark, but seems to be coming around to something that looks like Star Trek.  It’s been six months since Michael Burnham turned against her captain and got her old ship destroyed.  She’s since been court-martialed and sent to prison.  While being transferred to another facility, her ship runs into trouble and is aided by the USS Discovery.  Burnham and her fellow prisoners are brought aboard temporarily.

Burnham finds several of her former crewmates are now serving on the Discovery, including Saru, who got promoted from science officer to Captain Lorca’s first officer.  Saru would be more than happy to help Burnham…get right back on that shuttle.  For the time being, he’ll have to settle for being polite to her.  He realizes that whatever else she might have been, she’s now someone who can’t be fully trusted.

Still, Lorca has a plan for Burnham.  That plan includes sending her to the Discovery’s sister ship, the Glenn, to retrieve classified technology.  When the away team arrives, they find the ship damaged and the crew badly mutilated.  Add to that Klingons that were viciously attacked by something.  The team gets what they need and discover the mysterious creature, which is resistant to phaser fire.  The crew makes it back to the Discovery.  The episode ends with Lorca offering Burnham a place on the ship, telling her what the secret project really is.  Oh, and it also turns out that he somehow got the vicious creature onboard.

I will admit that the show is getting more to the point where my questions aren’t as pressing.  The creature looks like a giant tardigrade, which is unusual, but I suppose not impossible.  Given that so many alien species look eerily human, it’s easy to imagine that a microscopic Earth-bound creature might be the template for a large creature of unknown origin.

Also, it’s revealed that the secret project is a new method of navigation that allows the ship to go anywhere instantaneously.  One might wonder why none of the other series had this technology.  That’s what Star Trek does.  One thing I remember from Star Trek: Voyager is lots of one-off technology.  (Voyager even had a species that had a personal cloaking device, if you can believe it.)  This aspect of the series is actually the most believable.

The one thing that gets me is that Burnham, who is usually quiet and logical (and is now more so after six months in prison) is given Cadet Sylvia Tilly as a roommate.  Tilly is a Chatty Cathy.  When she says that she talks when nervous, she’s not kidding.  I suppose that there’s a certain irony in this.  The one person that will actually talk to Burnham won’t…stop…talking!

I am kind of wondering what this black alert is.  It seems unnecessary.  Isn’t it enough to have red alert and yellow alert?  I guess I’ll find out what that is eventually.  (I just got the second DVD of the first season from the library.  Please explain if you can keep it spoiler free.)

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