‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Ends as an Underrated TV Trailblazer

First, a confession: although this column will offer a lot of discussion and defense Star Trek: Discovery as a pivotal show, it won’t spend much time talking about the series’ current final season or its finale episode, “Life, Itself,” which airs Thursday on Paramount+.

That’s because, for this reviewer, the final seasons of Discovery have been a little bogged down by the things that have always made it difficult to sell as hiking series: overly ambitious serialized plots that are unconvincing; new characters and environments that fail to impress; twists and turns that can be exasperating due to their lack of logic; big narrative shifts that can be both confusing and predictable.

The series finale features the culmination of a massive treasure hunt that saw the crew of the spaceship Discovery leaping everywhere, searching for clues leading to powerful technology developed by an alien race that created humanoid life throughout the galaxy. Their goal was to seize the technology before another race, ruthless and aggressive, could beat them to it, destroying everything.

It’s not a spoiler to reveal this DiscoveryThe Heroes of avoids this nightmare scenario, wrapping up its fifth and final season with a conclusion centered on Sonequa Martin-Green’s ever-resourceful Captain Michael Burnham, and good resolutions for a host of supporting characters (there’s even a space wedding !)

However, this rather good ending belies DiscoveryIt is status as a pioneering show that helped Paramount+ build a new vision for Star Trek in modern television – paving the way for more creative hit series like Star Trek: Picard And Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would follow years later.

And it all started with a singular character: Michael Burnham.

A version of Star Trek for modern television

Discovery debuted in 2017 on CBS All Access – the streaming service that would become Paramount+ – facing a significant challenge.

Like the first new hiking series in a dozen years, it had to chart a course that offered a fresh take on the franchise without going too far – carving out a new corner in the Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock universe shortly after release of Star Trek Beyondthe third JJ Abrams-produced feature film featuring rebooted versions of these classic characters.

Set of producers DiscoveryThe story of 10 years before the time of Kirk and Spock (originally shown on NBC for three seasons beginning in 1966). The new series would center not on a starship captain, but on his second-in-command: Burnham, a black woman who also happened to be the previously unknown adopted daughter of the Vulcan ambassador Sarek, Spock’s father (she would be promoted to captain of the Discovery). So much later).

A black human woman who was raised among the super-intellectual and emotionally controlling Vulcans? WHO hiking fans had never heard of it for almost 60 years? Before watching episodes, my own feelings ranged from cautiously intrigued to cynically pessimistic.

But then I saw the first episode, which had an astonishing first scene: Martin-Green as Burnham and Michelle Yeoh as Discovery Captain Philippa Georgiou walking across an alien planet – two women of color marking the first step forward for Star Trek on a new platform.

People once marginalized in typical science fiction stories were now taking center stage – a historic and exciting moment.

And it got better from there. At the time, hiking writers often felt paralyzed by creator Gene Roddenberry’s insistence that, in the future depicted by the series, humans were beyond social ills like greed, prejudice, sexism, war, l money and personal friction. The writers grew irritated, wondering: How on earth can we construct compelling stories on a spaceship where interpersonal human conflict doesn’t exist?

But Discovery found a workaround, placing Burnham in a position where logic led her to mutiny against her captain, attempting a strategy that ultimately failed – leaving the humans in open combat with the legendarily warlike Klingons. Discovery also featured a lengthy storyline that took place over an entire season, unlike many others before. hiking shows that tried to offer a new adventure every week.

The first season of the series was action-packed, with Harry Potter the ol’ Jason Isaacs emerges as a compelling and unique starship captain (to say more would be a spoiler; tune in to Paramount+ and check out the first season). Fans saw a new vision for hiking technology, taking advantage of stylish and visceral special effects and action sequences worthy of a big-budget film, with design elements inspired by several films in the franchise.

Later in his race, Discovery would debut Ethan Peck as Spock and Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, classic Trek characters who eventually got their own acclaimed series in Strange new worlds. So far, five other Trek series have emerged on Paramount+ from ideas initially incubated on Discovery – including a critically acclaimed season of Picard which brought together the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Not bad for a series 1 that television critics ultimately described as “the worst in the world”.hiking) the history of the franchise.

Discovery’s unsung legacy

Unfortunately, Discovery took some turns that didn’t work out so well. At the end of DiscoveryIn the second season of , the ship jumped nine centuries in time – perhaps to remove it from Strange New Worldchronology ? – place it in an environment only distantly connected to the classic hiking.

And while Discovery initially seemed cautious about the reference to the classic hiking in his stories, later series like Strange new worlds And Picard has learned the importance of delving into the legacy of the nearly 60-year-old franchise – regularly tapping into the series’ long-standing appeal, rather than twisting itself into knots to avoid it.

There are probably fans of Discovery who would disagree with this analysis. But I think it helps explain why the series never really got its due in the world of Star Trekinitially overshadowed by skeptical fans, then overshadowed by more beloved products.

It’s the perfect time to pay homage to a series that accomplished a lot – helping to prove that Roddenberry’s original idea still has plenty of narrative juice in the 21st century.