Star Trek: Discovery - Almost Half Term Report

Next week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery will be the ‘mid-season finale’, an oxymoronic term which simply means that the season has been split into two parts and will resume in early 2018. Doctor Who fans will know the curious frustration which mingles with excited anticipation that more is to come as outgoing showrunner Steven Moffat wanked about with season breaks for a bit to enable him to supersize his bank account writing another hit BBC show about some detective or other.

I digress. Discovery is unlikely to lose viewers due to the break as the season so far has exceeded expectations and given audiences the most grown-up version of Trek yet. Crew members swear (yup, no substituting the word ‘fuck’ for ‘frack’ here, Battlestar fans), they experience genuinely complex emotions - Burnham and Stamets especially - and most of the scripts have delivered dark, reflective science fiction fit to grace movie screens, let alone TV.

Jonathan Frakes has observed that the cast seem as tightly bonded as TNG were which can’t harm the show in the least. A tight knit crew often create something together which can reach beyond the sum of its parts. But it’s not just the actors, every interview I’ve seen with producers, writers, special effects people, stunt teams etc, has revealed a genuine love of what they’re working on. When Star Trek itself is half a century old and has inspired a generation or two to go into various sides of the industry, you’re bound to end up with a hell of a lot of Trekkies gravitating towards each new addition to the franchise.

Trekkies within the scriptwriting team also ensures canonical matters are dealt with in a dignified manner even when aspects of canon are being bent out of shape - Sarek raised an adopted child as well as his own son Spock? Well that’s new on us but by the end of the first two episodes nobody was griping about it. None of the Klingons look much like Warf but this is all taking place way before he’s even born and maybe he’s just a rare pretty one, eh?

The look of the show is incredible, again reaching cinematic levels due to a combination of advanced special effects, incredible set designs and presumably a far larger budget than TOS ever had.

Most importantly of all because this is Trek, despite the backdrop of war, despite the body count being rather high (especially when you factor in Harry Mudd repeatedly destroying The Discovery in his looped attempts to work out how the spore drive works), despite esoteric and occasionally mind bending sci-fi plotting, the show remains focused on the people at the heart of the action. The central characters are all multi-layered and it is already evident that it might take several seasons to fully explore individuals such as Captain Lorca, Saru and Michael Burnham herself.

I’m a fan. Not a given despite my being a Trekkie (I’m not hot on Enterprise and I can’t say I’ve seen every episode of DS9). In dark times we seek escape and inspiration in fictional heroes who are also undergoing hard, even traumatising circumstances. Discovery is the perfect Trek for the modern age; Michael Burnham is us - a flawed yet true-hearted person faced with impossible decisions and irrevocable choices on an almost daily basis. Only she has better hair and gets to cop off with the sexiest guy on the ship.

Star Trek: Discovery

Last week’s screening of the first and second episodes of Discovery followed a Trek tradition of introducing audiences to a new crew across a double hander. Only it was more like a two-part origins story in which quite a few of the new crew we got to meet were killed off courtesy of a space-tacular battle between the Federation and a spiky Klingon faction trying to reunite the 24 noble houses and defend their culture against dilution from Earthy/Vulcany/Whoevery infiltration.

Then came this week’s third episode (the first aboard the actual ship Discovery) and the audience’s discovery, if you will, that this promises to be a darker, more intense Trek than the small screen has ever seen.

Michael Burnham, the pivotal focus of this series, is not the captain. Indeed she (it can be a woman’s name, get over yourself) is a mutineer en route to a penal colony where she is meant to spend the rest of her born naturals. Which would be boring unless they wanted to do Orange Is The New Trek. They don't want to do that. They want to show a pre-Kirk era Federation at war with the Klingons. And weird science. And they sort of want to reference any and all good science fiction as well as nodding at Trek’s history along the way.

Episode 3 alone paid homage to Alien, Doctor Who, Minority Report, Serenity and possibly even Star Wars as far as my nerd-dar could make out. Oh and quoted Alice In Wonderland. Yup, Burnham falls right down the rabbit hole but such moments are the least satisfying in Discovery, seeming over-egged and hinting at eyebrows arched higher than Spock himself could ever manage.

Good he came up: Burnham was fostered by Spock’s parents after her own (both human) parents were killed by the previous last Klingon attack some years ahead of the opening twinisodes. No, that's never come up in fifty years of Trekking. No, the Internet doesn't seem to have completely melted down over it. Yet.

I could spoiler you right up if I wanted to. Like mentioning that bit where…and the…with a melon…

Not gonna. Get the heck on Netflix and catch up. When Star Trek first aired in its original form in the sixties is was intended as both a reflection of the times and a pointer to a better future, as sci-fi often is unless it's all dystopian and shit. Diversity was key, intergalactic harmony as a metaphor for international peace in the real world? With Discovery things are less flower-power optimistic, just as modern politics is more shit-coloured and subject to interpretation by whomever controls the media lens through which it is dispersed. It shines a light on us, not on a plausible future. Which in truth has always been Trek’s purpose. Long and prosperously may it live.