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: Discovery -- Season 1 Episode 11 (The Wolf Inside)

WARNING: I will be giving out major spoilers ahead.



After Star Trek’s first dealings with the Mirror Universe, Kirk asked how Spock was able to identify his counterpart so easily.  Spock noted that it was easier for our Kirk to impersonate his alternate than it was for the alternate to impersonate Kirk.

Michael Burnham would find that of little comfort.  She’s had to take her alternate’s place and make some of the same decisions Kirk had to.  She’s tasked with wiping out a group of rebels, and the Terran Empire shows no mercy.  She manages to stall, saying that she’ll beam down to at least pump some information out of them or something.  She then gives them an hour to evacuate.

During this time, we learn several things.  Commander Saru’s counterpart is Burnham’s slave, which is a little troubling, but not unexpected.  Ash Tyler is also starting to lose it, which…is a little troubling, but not unexpected.  At the end of the episode, we find out who the mysterious Emperor is.  (This time, it’s not really that troubling and totally expected.)

One might say that the series is easing into the mirror universe.  I think someone had the idea early on to split the season between the two universes, not realizing how hard it would be to write for the Mirror Universe.  I can totally understand those that feel that the pacing is slow.  I can’t say that it’s unnecessary, as everything seems to havfe a purpose.  (For instance, Burnham lies to Saru about his having a Mirror counterpart.)

Also, whoever programmed Tyler did a horrible job.  Spoiler alert:  He’s a Klingon spy.  In the original series, we know that Klingons have done this at least once and that Tribbles will rat them out.  Granted, this isn’t for another ten years.  It’s possible that the procedure hasn’t been perfected yet or that the Klingon who did it this time was a hack.  Either way, there were some indications that something like this was coming.  I just wasn’t expecting this.  The one down side is that Samets was blamed for killing his husband.  (I would hope that all of that will be straightened out.)

It’s an interesting episode.  Tilly, the talkative cadet, has to play a confident captain.  She’s also shaping up to be Discovery’s version of Wesley Crusher.  She’s young and inexperienced, but seems to have some really great ideas.  At least the series seems to be playing that character a little better.  Tilly is a cadet and, as such, has had some training.  These are also unusual circumstances, meaning not many people would be qualified.  (In fact, the one person we know is qualified to help Samets is Samets, and he‘s in a spore-induced coma.)

So, some aspects of the episode are promising.  The show seems to be going the 24 route with each episode ending with a major revelation.  It gets a little tiring having to get excited each week.  (It was also odd that, on 24, major plot twists happened every hour on the hour.)  I’m still wondering what they’re going to do with the rest of the season.

IMDb page