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Season 1 – Star Trek: Discovery

Where to watch, star trek: discovery — season 1.

Watch Star Trek: Discovery — Season 1 with a subscription on Paramount+, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

Although it takes an episode to achieve liftoff, Star Trek: Discovery delivers a solid franchise installment for the next generation -- boldly led by the charismatic Sonequa Martin-Green.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Bryan Fuller

Alex Kurtzman

Sonequa Martin-Green

Michael Burnham

Jason Isaacs

Captain Gabriel Lorca

Shazad Latif

Lieutenant Ash Tyler

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Star Trek: Discovery

The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery finds Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well … dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Season four of Star Trek: Discovery finds Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery facing a threat unlike any they’ve ever encountered. With Federation and non-Federation worlds alike feeling the impact, they must confront the unknown and work together to ensure a hopeful future for all.

Follow the voyages of Starfleet on their missions to discover new worlds and lifeforms, and one Starfleet officer, Michael Burnham, who learns that to truly understand all things alien, she must first understand herself.

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Star Trek: Discovery - Episode Guide - Season 1

The result was a season that Star Trek fans and science-fiction hardcores loved, but was likely a tad too geeky for the mainstream viewer. Two things, though: Despite its too-heavy reliance on complex story lines, it’s till the best season 1 of any ST series yet. And damn, those effects are awesome.

Star Trek: Discovery episode guide – Season 1, part 1

1. The Vulcan Hello . Welcome aboard the starship USS … Shenzhou? In an early deviation from the ST norm, Discovery’s first two episodes are a prologue of sorts telling of the rise and fall of promising former First Officer Michael Burnham. In this debut episode, Captain Georgiou (the Picard to Burnham’s Riker) urges her longtime Number One to take command of her own vessel. The personal story soon takes a backseat, however, when a number of Klingon ships advance on Federation territory.

Adding to the differences in Discovery may be added the amount of screen time given to a cadre of Klingon characters; at center is T’Kuvma, the ambitious reported inventor of cloaking technology. He seeks to unite the squabbling houses within the Klingon Empire in the fashion of the great hero Kahless. Naturally, not all of his would-be comrades see T’Kuvma as the proper leader for such a consolidation of power…***

2. Battle at the Binary Stars . Burnham’s attempt at mutiny, so as to take over the Shenzhou and respond to the Klingons as she’d been taught from Vulcan history, proves short-lived. However, Georgiou concocts an alternate plan which doesn’t go quite as successfully as planned. Suffice to say, a war is triggered and Burnham, at the speed of warp, becomes a pariah throughout the Federation. ****

3. Context is for Kings . Amid a bunch of generally pretty silly episode titles, “Context is for Kings” is king. After Discovery rescues Burnham’s prison transport ship from disaster, ship’s captain Gabriel Lorca employs Burnham to contribute to a “scientific” assignment which involves the subduing of a interstellar beastie big and bad enough to crush a shipful of Klingons. Impressed with her skills mentally and physically – Commander Landry oversees a “minor incident” involving another prisoner in what may or ay not have been a test – enough to grant her a temporary commission aboard Discovery. ***

4. The Butcher's Knife Cares not for the Lamb’s Cry . See what STG was saying (writing?) about episode titles? In this lengthily-named episode, Burnham and Lt. Stamets are ordered to implement a “spore drive” engine system which depends on living matter, i.e. the “Tardigrade” captured in the previous episode. (Sheesh, did none of these guys see the Voyager episode “Equinox”? Bad stuff happens when you do this…) Discovery employs the drive and successfully defends a Federation colony from a Klingon attack. ***

5. Choose Your Pain . Harry Mudd returns to the Star Trek universe … or rather is introduced into the … reintroduced? Damn, prequels are tough on grammar…

In any case, Lorca is captured by Klingons and imprisoned along with one Lt. Ash Tyler and the infamous swindler Mudd. After several rounds of the Klingon game “Choose Your Pain,” i.e. at torture o’clock, a random prisoner must choose who will get the Klingon workover. With the Tardigrade dying, Burnham, Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culbert must figure a way to work the spore drive without, in order to rescue the captain. Stamets replaces the creature and thus begins a slow David Bowman-like descent into groovy madness… ***

6. Lethe . Sarek’s ship is attacked by terrorists, and he’s left nearly dead aboard his ship. Burnahm, who is in deep mental-spiritual contact with her adopted father, convinces Lorca to let her go on a rescue mission. Together with new crewmate Tyler and Cadet Sylvia Tilly, they manage to maneuver closely enough to Sarek’s trapped ship so that Burnham can overcome his Matrix-like mental defenses, metaphorically slap him back into consciousness, and learn a bit about her past. ***

7. Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad . Head trip for Burnham? Time paradox? The return of [redacted for spoilers]? Awesome. This is Discovery’s version of The Next Generation’s “Cause and Effect” and damn if it doesn’t feel enough like TNG to half-expect Commander Data to report on his level-3 diagnostic. Any ST fans not won over to Discovery by this episode lost their senses of humor probably sometime during season 3 of Enterprise. (Like so many of us did.) *****

8. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum . Since the universal translator apparently didn’t work on this episode title, STG can tell you it’s “If you want peace, prepare for war.” In Star Trek: Discovery’s first proper away-mission episode, Burnham, Tyler and Saru are sent to investigate an apparently natural phenomenon capable of broadcasting radio waves on a massive scale. Everything goes swimmingly until “new life” is found on the planet – and Saru’s behavior becomes disturbing for reasons we don’t learn until season 2 in “The Sound of Thunder”. ***

9. Into the Forest I Go . Many (many, not all) of season 1 storylines come to a head (not necessarily resolved, mind you) in episode 9. Among the story threads at play here are Admiral Cornwell’s fate, the future use of the spore drive, the discord among Klingons and Burnham’s personal road to redemption. Lorca finally – finally – gets to unleash his inner badass in a firefight with the Klingons and Lt. Stamets comes away as more of a hero than ever.

It all ends ominously with yet another character on death’s doorstep and the Discovery itself in territory unknown – though fairly obvious to those up on their ST history…***

Star Trek: Discovery episode guide – Season 1, part 2

10. Despite Yourself. The Discovery crew rapidly surmises they’re in a parallel universe and adapts accordingly. Tilly is fascinated to find out that she’s worked/killed her way up to captain already, and she bears the nickname Captain Killy. Burnham and Lorca get aboard the ISS Shenzhou, where the plan is for Burnham to reassume his counterpart’s command of the ship, passing Lorca off as her captive. Oh, and at the very moment when Dr. Culber starts acting like a proper Starfleet doctor, Tyler ices him, either due to his EEEEvil Klingon impulses or his sheer boredom of the character. ***

11. The Wolf Inside . Burnham and Tyler undertake a mission to destroy a rebel camp; among the rebels are Mirror-Universe versions of Sarek and Voq; upon seeing Voq, the penny finally drops for Tyler and he remembers all, nearly blowing Burnham’s chances at helping the rebels. Despite Burnham’s attempts to convince them to flee, they are wiped out from the air via the starship ISS Charon commanded by the Emperor of Earth, one Philippa Georgiou. ****

12. Vaulting Ambition . Onboard the Discovery, Stamets finally recovers – but not before he has a very trippy encounter with his mirror-universe counterpart within the mycelial network. Lorca’s true identity is revealed – though, again, guessed by most fans beforehand – after a long series of carefully maneuvered-through chatter between Georgiou and Burnham, in which the latter reveals the nature of the Prime Universe. Lorca escapes and kills his jailer…***

13. What's Past is Prologue . Lorca begins freeing his Mirror-Universe compatriots, including Commander Landry (Remember her?). Lots of cat-and-mouse – then deaths – ensue, but the Emperor is nevertheless overthrown. Burnham at the last second saves Georgiou’s life and both are aboard the Enterprise as Stamets pilots the spore-driven Discovery through some incredibly risky maneuvers to get back to the home universe – only for the crew to discover (sorry) that they’ve arrived nine months after they left and the war, as Jean-Luc Picard once said, is going badly for the Federation…***

14. The War Without, the War Within . Georgiou’s reappearance causes quite a stir among the Discovery crew, as does the news of Mirror-Universe Lorca to the now-aboard Admiral Cornwall. Cornwall, Sarek, Burnham and the rest are soon back to business, however. Unfortunately, they arrive too late at 1, finding only the destroyed base marked with the insignia of a Klingon house and left with a whopping 80,000 dead. What’s more, a Klingon fleet is heading straight for Earth and conquest. An offensive is planned with the help of Georgiou: Spore jump *into* Qo’Nos, the Klingon home planet. ***

15. Will You Take My Hand? Georgiou is given command of the Discovery, and her first stop takes them to an Orion outpost. Georgiou, Burnham and Tilly hit the black market in search of drone weaponry to map the surface of Qo’Nos, while the Discovery heads for that planet itself. The three appear to procure such a weapon, but Tilly discovers that Georgiou has instead gotten a hydrobomb capable of destroying an entire planet. So Burnham gives the bomb to L’Rell, who may use it to unite the Klingons’ warring houses. The war ends, various Discovery crew members get awards for valor and/or promotions, and they’re soon out there, responding to distress calls again – the first from Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise… ****

DIS Season 1

• View history

This page contains information specifically pertaining to the first season of Star Trek: Discovery , whose episode premieres were consecutively streamed on CBS All Access for the USA and broadcast on Space / Z for Canada from 24 September 2017 through 11 February 2018 , with the rest of the world following suit with one day delay through streaming service Netflix .

• 3 Background information
• 5.1.1 Special guest star
• 5.2.1 L.A. Unit
• 5.2.2 Jordan Unit
• 5.3.1 Unconfirmed
• 5.3.2 Production companies
• 7 External links

Episodes [ ]

Summary [ ], background information [ ].

• On 20 September 2016, CBS president Les Moonves boasted in a Variety interview that he had convinced streaming service Netflix to pay for all production costs of Discovery , sight unseen, in return for the worldwide exclusive streaming rights, North-America excluded. [1]
• Principal photography for the season began on 24 January 2017 , [2] and wrapped on 11 October 2017 . [3]
• Unlike previous Star Trek series, CBS All Access promoted the first nine episodes as "Chapter One", which concluded with " Into the Forest I Go " and was billed as the "Fall Finale". The remaining episodes of the season, which resumed with " Despite Yourself ", are collectively referred to as "Chapter Two".
• The title of " Descent " was shown during its teaser instead of act one; however, Discovery does not show title cards at all.
• On 29 August 2018 it was reported by Variety that each first season episode had a production cost-price attached to it of US$8 – 8.5 million, [4] the US$8 million figure also reported by the Los Angeles Times on 23 September. [5] This was already on 5 September implicitly conceded by CBS Television Studios itself, when the Variety figures were ad verbatim quoted on the CBS-owned ComicBook.com website , additionally stating that the show was therefore "one of the most expensive in television history". [6]
• The Los Angeles Times article also reported that Netflix paid US$6 million per episode for the exclusive worldwide streaming rights, dispelling internet rumors that have surfaced a short time later on social media, claiming that a by CBS overcharged Netflix had in effect paid for the series first season production in its entirety, [7] a claim that was also reiterated in a May 2018 editorial of financial magazine Forbes , [8] and contradicting the claim Moonves had made back in September 2016. Still, the 75% lion share of the first season production costs was covered by the license fee paid for by Netflix. While there were differences, this was not an entirely new phenomenon for Star Trek ; when broadcaster NBC picked up Star Trek: The Original Series in February 1966 for airing, they agreed to pay a license fee that consisted of two-thirds of the budgeted (and not a cent beyond) per episode production costs, followed – contrary to Netflix's lump sum payment for a license covering a pre-negotiated time period – by half of the original fee for each subsequent rerun by the broadcaster. ( These Are the Voyages: TOS Season One , 1st ed, pp. 38-39)
• The same Variety article has divulged the Klingon starship sets coming in at a cost of US$3 million.
• Characters which ' cross over ' from other incarnations of Star Trek : Sarek (" The Vulcan Hello "), Harry Mudd (" Choose Your Pain "), Amanda Grayson (" Lethe "), and the Human version of Stella Mudd (" Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad ").

Reception [ ]

The critical review site Rotten Tomatoes has given the first season of Discovery a score of eighty-three percent, with an average rating of 7.07 out of ten. However, it has also recorded an audience score of fifty-two percent, with an average rating of three out of five, indicative of a rift developing between critics and viewers/fans. [9] Rotten Tomatoes' audience findings were corroborated by the customer reviews on Amazon.com showing a very similar audience rating, but also an approximate and rather sharp sixty-forty like/dislike divide within the viewership/fanbase itself. [10]

Additionally, the critical review site Metacritic has further corroborated Rotten Tomatoes' critical findings by quoting a slightly higher seventy-two percent critics rating score for the first season – against Tomatoes' seventy-point-o-seven percent average rating – but also reported a more substantially lower viewership rating of four-point-six out of ten, along the same lines as reported by Amazon, but now with the like/dislike divide showing a rough fifty-fifty split. [11]

The sharp like/dislike divide provided an indication that the once more-or-less homogeneous Star Trek fanbase had become split, a development that had started with the advent of the alternate reality Star Trek films in 2009, with the discourse over Discovery waged with such vehemence on social media, that it baffled outside observers. [12] In an effort to explain the phenomenon after-the-fact in regard to Discovery , some critics likened this split in " Trekdom " to the divided response to the 2017 Star Wars film The Last Jedi , with a fandom previously assumed to have been dominated by white males, supposedly resisting and/or resenting the perceived centering of women and people of color. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] In the process these critics solely focused on Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation , thereby conveniently bypassing the fact that the primary cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was headed by an Afro-American male , whereas that of Star Trek: Voyager was headed by a female captain , with both series having been fairly well received by fandom in their day – particularly by people of color in the former case, and by women in the latter case – , the then relatively small, in comparison to Discovery , dissenting part of "Trekdom" notwithstanding, for reasons entirely unrelated to racial/gender bias. [18] [19] In the UK, Voyager even became the most rewatched Star Trek series on Netflix by the time Discovery premiered. [20]

Former VAM producer (and Original Series fan) Robert Meyer Burnett , coining himself a "canonista", sided with those fans, critical of the series for what they themselves perceived as canon /( Roddenberry ) philosophy/ (visual) continuity violations. [21] [22] Despite their assurances and emphatic assertions to the contrary shortly before the series debuted, [23] Burnett flat-out accused the Discovery producers in a podcast, put online on 3 March 2019, of not caring about Star Trek canon, and has cited Star Trek: The Motion Picture as a prime counterpoint example of reverence towards canon. Burnett was in particular enraged over a 2 November 2018 retweet from CBS Consumer Products head John Van Citters in which he had enigmatically postulated in response to the persistent fan accusations of canon violations, " WHAT IF...the multiverse is real and ALL Star Trek stories are canon?? " [24]

In the same podcast, Burnett also expressed his reservations about the "bad science" employed in the series, likening it to " Alice in Wonderland " and coining the series a "maddening cartoonish, dumbed down" version of Star Trek , even though he did concede that it was well made where visual quality was concerned. In this, Meyer echoed the stance taken by astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson – one of the first real world scientists speaking out against the dodgy science employed in Discovery , already in a 25 November 2017 blog entry on his StarTalk podcast website – , particularly where the "absurdity" of spore drive was concerned, pitting it against the scientific theoretical plausibility of warp drive as employed in Roddenberry / Berman-era Star Trek (scientific plausibility had been a prerogative for Roddenberry when he conceived his creation). [25] Tyson was later quoted ad verbatim from his 2017 book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry when Spock entered the quote " The universe is under no obligation to make sense to me " in his personal log . ( DIS : " Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2 ") It has yet to be confirmed whether or not the Discovery writers included Tyson's quote in retaliation of his outspoken stance against the series. Incidentally, like all Star Trek series preceding it, Discovery does employ a science consultant , Anthony Maranville . Ironically, longserving Berman-era science consultant André Bormanis is as such employed by rival franchise The Orville .

Announced and launched with much fanfare, industry award nomination announcements have followed suit in the wake of the series' first season, such as for the 2018 GLAAD Media Award on 19 January 2018 , [26] five Saturn Awards on 27 June 2018 , [27] and two of the prestigious Emmy Awards on 12 July 2018 . [28]

CBS Broadcasting made substantial efforts in the form of an elaborate mailer, online videos, social media, outdoor campaign and multiple events, to gain traction for their Emmy Award nomination chances, [29] [30] to no avail as it turned out as; much to their disappointment, only two nominations in minor technical categories were secured, neither of which won. Despite the efforts made, the series was not considered for any of the hoped-for major, or artistic, Emmy Awards; the ones in the various acting categories in particular none of the Star Trek television shows had ever won or had even been nominated for, when discounting three "Best Supporting Actor" nominations that Leonard Nimoy had received between 1967 and 1969. Adding insult to injury for Discovery was that the heavily Star Trek -inspired fourth-season episode "USS Callister ", of the British Channel 4 cautionary tale anthology series Black Mirror , was alone nominated for six out of eight fourth-season Emmy Awards, most of them in the major categories, of which it won no less than four, including the most prestigious one of them all, for "Outstanding Television Movie". [31] [32] However, Star Trek did win a consolation Emmy Award that year, the honorary "Governors Award", but that was for the entire television franchise , of which Discovery was at that point in time only a small part as "the new kid on the block". That award, though, was not presented at the highly publicized glamorous major Emmy Award ceremony, where Black Mirror received its, but at the as-usual virtually unnoticed "Creative Arts Emmys Show", the weekend prior to the "real" ceremony. [33]

Meanwhile, the Saturn Awards had started to distinguish between productions for (classic) television and those for streaming services , which applied for Discovery . This was exemplified by the circumstance that Seth MacFarlane 's Star Trek: The Next Generation -inspired science fiction series The Orville – which was rapidly becoming a franchise competitor – had won a "Best Series" award for its first season, though in its case in the original "Best Science Fiction Television Series" category.

In total, the first season of Discovery was nominated for twenty-three industry awards, of which it won three.

Credits [ ]

Starring [ ], special guest star [ ], l.a. unit [ ], jordan unit [ ], uncredited [ ].

• Marina Abramyan – Art Department Coordinator: L.A. Unit ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Sinan Marc Akdemir – Junior 3D Generalist: Pixomondo
• Dave Axford – Sculpture and Mould shop Artist
• Henry Banger Benvenuti – Scenic Painter
• Derek Barnes – Stunt Safety ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum", "Into the Forest I Go", "The Wolf Inside", "Vaulting Ambition", "What's Past Is Prologue", "Will You Take My Hand?")
• Pietro Berto – Character Artist
• Daniel Biagi – Assistant to Producers
• Matt Boardman – Render Coordinator/Graphic Artist: CBS Television Studios
• Blake Bolger – Costume Fabricator: Alchemy Studios
• Chris Bridges – Special Makeup Effects Artist
• Andrea Brown – Makeup Artist
• Steven Browning – Lead Modeler
• Chris Burgoyne – Makeup Artist
• Chris Byrne – Second Unit Director ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Roberto Campanella – Movement Coordinator/Creator
• Graham Chivers – Special Effects Makeup Artist
• Sophie Cloutier – Playback Operator
• Aaron Colman-Hayes – 3D Artist and Scan Technician
• Heather Constable – Background Set Supervisor
• Michael R. Currie – Render Assistant: CBS Television Studios
• Natalie Dale – Utility Stand-in
• Anton Demerjian – Second Assistant Camera Operator: Jordan Unit ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Pierre Drolet – 3D Modeler ("The Vulcan Hello"; "Battle at the Binary Stars"): CBS Television Studios (subcontractor)
• Joel Durham – Lead Texture Artist
• Rocky Faulkner – Key Special Effects Makeup Artist
• Adelaide Filippe – Concept Designer: FBFX ltd.
• Jordan Gagne – Composer: Additional Music
• Matthew Gore – Senior Visual Effects Producer ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Douglas E. Graves – VFX CG artist/digital model builder and texture artist ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Nour Halawani – Additional Sound Recordist: Jordan Unit ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Aaron Hamman – Modeling Supervisor
• Kevin Haney – Makeup Artist
• Adrian Hardy – Set Dresser ("Battle at the Binary Stars"–"The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry")
• Christoph Hasche – Digital Compositor: MovieBrats Studios ("The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry")
• Vic Holt – President 2CGVFX
• Phil Hope – Concept Designer
• Tim Kafka – Lighting Supervisor
• Jesse Kawzenuk – Main Unit Data Wrangler
• Alan G. Kelly – Additional Camera Operator/Steadicam Operator
• Andrew Kim – Senior Concept Illustrator ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Jessica Kirec – Set Production Assistant
• Mark Krentz – Associate CG Supervisor: Spin VFX /Senior VFX Artist
• Eryn Krueger Mekash – Special Makeup Effects Artist
• Kevin Lafferty – Line Producer/Producer
• Ray Lai – Concept Illustrator/Prop Designer
• Pat Lau – VFX Supervisor/Matte Painter
• Dennis Liddiard – Makeup Artist
• Daniel Hyun Lim – Senior Illustrator/Costume Concept Designer
• Julian Lojek – Lead Compositor: Pixomondo
• Peter Mabrucco – Assistant to V. Natali ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Sang Maier – Props Buyer
• Anne Marley – Travel Coordinator
• Sheilagh McGrory – Prosthetic Shop Assistant
• Mike Mekash – Special Effects Makeup Artist
• Samuel Michlap – Concept Designer: Klingon starships ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Divyansh Mittal – Digital Compositor: Pixomondo
• Bart Mixon – Special Effects Makeup Artist ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Michele Monaco – Special Effects Makeup Project Manager
• Jose Mora-Perez – Special Effects Makeup Sculptor: Alchemy Studios
• Alamgir Muhammad – Costume department
• Sébastien Nebout – Compositor: BUF
• Oksana Nedavniaya – Costume Illustrator/Costume Concept Artist
• Michael O'Brien – Art Director/Head Sculptor: Alchemy Studios
• Grant Pearmain – Sculptor: FBFX ltd.
• William Powlowski – Senior Visual Effects Supervisor
• Kevin Quattro – VFX/CG Supervisor
• Loretta Ramos – Producer
• Richard Redlefsen – Prosthetic Makeup Artist ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Kai Reimer-Watts – Technician
• Alejandro Reyes-Andreu – Set Dresser
• John Rouse – VFX Integration Supervisor: CBS Television Studios ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Matt Salib – Foley Artist
• Scott Schneider – Conceptual Set Designer/Specialist Set Designer
• Sheila Mia Seifi – Dental Prosthetics Head: Alchemy Studios (Klingon teeth)
• Den Serras – Pipeline Technical Artist
• Matthew Skrobalak – Executive in Charge of Casting
• Daniel Smallegange – Property Buyer
• Mike Smithson – Special Makeup Effects Artist ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Bruce Spaulding Fuller – Special Makeup Effects Artist ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Julie St-Louis – Stunt Safety ("The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry", "The Wolf Inside")
• Mitch Suskin – Senior Visual Effects Supervisor: CBS Television Studios (June 2016-February 2017; pre-production)
• Alan Sutton – Fire Safety Coordinator
• Mack Sztaba – Concept Artist
• Hitesh Thadani – Compositor: Pixomondo
• Jan Thijs – Still Photographer
• Ella Thompson – Pre-Production Art Assistant
• Hugo Villasenor – Key Special Effects Makeup Artist
• Dan Walker – Concept Artist
• Matt Whelan – VFX Supervisor
• Clarissa Justine Wiggers – Makeup Artist
• Matthew Williamson – Animation Lead
• Quinn Woods-Robinson – Render Assistant
• Mark Wotton – Special Effects Costumer: Creature Effects Lab Tech
• Shane Zander – Special Effects Makeup Artist

Unconfirmed [ ]

• Karthik Adepu – Compositor: Pixomondo
• Xavier Allard – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Indiana Allemang – Key Makeup Artist
• Wesley Alley – Assistant Chief Lighting Technician: Los Angeles Unit ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Wasili Angelopoulos – Costume Prop Maker: Spacesuits ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Jonathan Angus – Visual Effects Editor ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Berenice Antoine – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Michael Armstrong – Dialect Coach for Shazad Latif
• Natalia Atlija – Trainee Assistant Art Director
• Nick Augustyn – Second Assistant/Trainee Art Director/Set Designer
• Shereen Baddour – Second Second Assistant Camera Operator: Jordan Unit ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Adam Baker – Animator ("The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry")
• J. Cody Baker – Assistant Colorist ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Mike Barber – Visual Effects Editor ("Battle at the Binary Stars"–"Context Is for Kings")
• Tanya Batanau-Chuiko – Head Cutter ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Context Is for Kings")
• Patrick Baxter – Special Makeup Effects Artist
• Nicola Bendrey – Special Makeup Effects Artist
• Daniel Biagi – Assistant to Producer
• Brian Black – Scorpio Head Operator
• Christian Bobak – Craft Service
• Nicolas Bonnell – Visual Effects Producer: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Leor Boshi – Set Decoration Coordinator
• Nicolas Bouf – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Scotia Boyd – Prosthetics Crew ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Robert Branam – Video Assist Operator: L.A. Unit ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Steven Browning – CG Modeller
• Krista Burbidge – Makeup Artist
• Cavan Campbell &ndash: Rigging Electrician
• Scott Cannizzaro – ADR Mixer
• Ian Carre-Burritt – Set Lighting Technician: Los Angeles Unit ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Jean-Andre Carriere – Set Designer ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")/Art Director ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Lauren Carson – Second Assistant C Camera Operator ("Battle at the Binary Stars"–"Choose Your Pain")
• Kevin Carter – Contact Lens Painter
• Olivier Cauwet – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Joel Chambers – Digital Compositor
• Kathleen Vernice Chavez – Art Apprentice
• Michael Cherrington – Camera Crane Operator ("Battle at the Binary Stars"–"Choose Your Pain")
• Alfonso Chin – Visual Effects
• Allan Cooke – Special Makeup Effects Artist
• Faye Crasto – Special Makeup Effects Artist
• Xinyue Cui – Digital Compositor ("The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry"–"Choose Your Pain")
• Pierre Debras – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Grégoire Delzongle – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Paul DeOliveira – Commpositing Supervisor: Spin VFX
• Sujoy Dey – Digital Compositor ("Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad")
• Alanna Dickie – Contact Lens Technician
• John Dickenson – Illustrator ("The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry")
• Emerson Doerksen – Sculptor ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Christophe Dupuis – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Guillaume Dureux – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Michael R. Edmund – Second Assistant Art Director/Scale Model Builder
• Marion Eloy – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Elliott Elsey – ADR Recordist ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Dave Erlichman – A Camera Dolly Grip
• Eric Felland – Set Lighting Technician: Los Angeles Unit ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Cory Fisher – Special Makeup Effects Artist: Alchemy Studios
• Henry Fong – Key Costume Illustrator ("The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry")
• Alissa Gee – Prosthetic Effects Technician
• J.P. Giamos – VFX Producer: Spin VFX
• Blake Goedde – VFX Lead ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Choose Your Pain")
• Alexandria Goldman – Textile Artist
• Javier Gonzalez – Specialty Costume Manufacturer
• Florian Gourdin – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Jonathan Graham – Assistant Head Sculptor
• Bryan Haines – Digital Compositoor ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Meriam Hamila – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Tanya Hart – Props Buyer ("The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry"–"Choose Your Pain")
• Joanna Tracey Heaton – Daily Scenic ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Sean Heissinger – ADR Editor ("Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad")
• Kirstin Herbst – Trainee Assistant Art Director/Second Assistant Illustrator
• Tashan Hira – Construction Buyer
• Alex Hirtenstein – Matte Painter: Concept Artist
• Mitch Hounslow – Visual Effects Editor: Spin VFX
• Rory James – Assistant Director
• Tex Kadonaga – Set Designer ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Context Is for Kings")
• Barry Kane – Chief Technical Officer: Spin VFX
• Jesse Kawzenuk – Lead Data Wrangler
• J.R. Kenny – Special Effects Technician
• May Khalili – Assistant Art Director: Jordan ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Hanadi Khurma – Costumer Crepusculans : Jordan Unit ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Olga Kirnos – Assistant Makeup Artist
• Zane Knisely – Special Makeup Effects Artist ("The Vulcan Hello"–"The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry")
• Claire Koonce – Casting Associate
• Laura Krause – Previs Modeler: Pixomondo
• Abhishek Kukreti – Digital Compositor ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Romane Landrieux – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Johnny Larocque – Special Effects Technician
• Derek Ledbetter – Compositing Supervisor ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Wing Lee – Costume Cutter
• Yulia Levitas – Compositor: Spin VFX
• Drew Longland &ndash: Special Effects Technician
• Renaud Louvet – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Kristi Lugo – Casting Assistant ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Sandrine Lurde – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Sang Maier – Property Buyer
• Jennifer Maillet – Digital Compositor
• Pierre-Yves Marin – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Aurélien Marquaille – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Arthur Marx – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Saurabh Maurya – Lead CG Artist
• Colin Mayne – Matte Painter ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Matt McClurg – Previsualization Creative Supervisor: Pixomondo
• Rachel McIntire – Dailies Technician: Los Angeles Unit ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Lisa McNeil – Second Unit Script Supervisor ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Kyle Menzies – VFX Supervisor: Spin VFX
• Carl Michaloski – Sculptor/Mouldmaker ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Robert Murdoch – Camera Trainee
• Geoffrey Niquet – Visual Effects Supervisor: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Cem Olcer – Visual Effects Supervisor: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Graham Penny – Data Wrangler
• Nick Petoyan – Post Production Production Assistant
• Regina Petrik – Driver
• Tijana Petrovic – Art Apprentice
• Félix Pirritano – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Thibault Plancq – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Michelle Poirier – Assistant Property Master ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Corinna Porsia – First Assistant Art Director
• Matthew Porteous – Sound Utility/Boom Operator
• Thomas Pringle – Concept Artist
• Andrew Read – Lighting Console Programmer
• Cecily Rhett – Editor
• Antonio Ribeiro – Digital Compositor: Spin VFX
• Mike Rotella – Sculptor: Creature Effects
• Mikaiel Russ – Digital Compositor ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Jawed J.S. – Set Dresser ("The Vulcan Hello")/Set Decorator
• Balthazar Sahel – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Michael Saintsbury – Special Effects Technician/Grip
• Jean-Marc Saldini – Additional Focus Puller
• Nagita Salsberry – Special Effects Artist ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Adam Sauder – Board Operator
• Robert Schajer – VFX Producer: Buf ("Choose Your Pain")
• Marc Schatalow – Set Lighting Technician: Los Angeles Unit ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Jordan Schella – Rigging Electrician
• Emily M. Schoener – Casting Associate
• Alan Scott – Legacy Effects Supervisor ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Vanessa Shah – Scout ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Daryl Shail – Visual Effects Producer
• Jaclyn Shoub – Set Decoration Buyer
• Jesse Siglow – Visual Effects Artist ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Maria Simonelli – Assistant Property Master
• Diandra Soares – Set Production Assistant
• Callie Sorce – ADR Recordist ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Zeina Soufan – Costumer: Jordan Unit ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Kitty Spiropoulos – Production Accountant
• Mark Steel – Production Designer
• Justin Steptoe – Digital Imaging Technician: Los Angeles Unit ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Jeffrey Swarts – Construction Unit Driver
• Chloe Swintak – Set Dresser
• Michael Tanton – Visual Effects Editor and Project Coordinator
• Tom Tennisco – Visual Effects Coordinating Producer
• Cale Thomas – Makeup Artist: Alchemy Studio
• Sydney Allison Thomas – Visual Effects Editor
• Wayne Thomas – Textile Artist
• Sonja Toma – Set Dresser ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Joseph Tsai – Sound Editor ("Battle at the Binary Stars"–"The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry")
• James Anthony Usas – Second Assistant Art Director/Set Designer
• Victor Utku Gocer – Compositor: Spin VFX
• David Uystpruyst – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Brian Van Dorn – Special Effects Makeup Artist: Alchemy Studios
• Michael Van Fleet – Visual Effects Senior Systems Engineer
• Tyson Van Wagoner – Modeler ("The Vulcan Hello")
• Stephane Vogel – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• Cassidy Watkins – Clearance Coordinator
• Arnaud Watteau – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")
• LuAndra Whitehurst – Special Makeup Effects Artist ("The Vulcan Hello"–"Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Aidan Whitworth – Sculptor
• Sheryl Willock &ndash: Costume Buyer
• Andrew N. Wong – Office Production Assistant: Los Angeles Unit ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Jennifer Wood – Set Decoration Buyer
• Samir Zaidan – Construction Manager ("Battle at the Binary Stars")
• Annabelle Zoellin – Digital Artist: BUF ("Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum")

Production companies [ ]

• 2CGVFX – Special Effects Company
• Creature Effects – Special Effects Company
• FBFX ltd. – Special Effects Company
• Gentle Giant Studios – 3D Scanning
• Legacy Effects – Visual Effects Company
• LRX Lighting – Grip and Lighting Equipment
• MovieBrats Studios
• Paul Jones Effects Studio
• Streak Productions Inc.

See also [ ]

• DIS Season 1 performers
• DIS Season 1 DVD
• DIS Season 1 Blu-ray

External links [ ]

• Star Trek: Discovery season 1 at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Star Trek Discovery Season 1 episode reviews  at Ex Astris Scientia
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Calypso (episode)

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Sonequa Martin-Green Saved Star Trek: Discovery From Getting Lost in a Maze of Plot Twists

This review contains spoilers for the first season of Star Trek: Discovery.

Star Trek: Discovery entered the world with a hyperawareness of how it would fit into the larger Star Trek canon . As a prequel to the original series, it had to contend both with what had come before it in the timeline—the relatively short-lived Enterprise —and with the many series and movies that would follow it chronologically. All that in a franchise whose fans are notorious for their attention to detail.

And yet each new Star Trek series says much more about the era it’s created in than it does about whatever futuristic time period it’s trying to imagine. The original series was a clear product of the 1960s, an idealist’s response to the Cold War, the space race, and the civil rights movement, while Deep Space Nine , arriving on the heels of the Gulf War, explored the aftermath of a brutal occupation. Enterprise ’s entire third season hinges on a massive terrorist attack by religious zealots and follows a Starfleet crew as they venture into enemy territory in search of a weapon of mass destruction. (I trust I don’t have to spell out what exactly was happening in 2003 to inspire that kind of storyline.)

So what does Star Trek look like in 2018? Well, there’s certainly a lot that Discovery can tell us about the state of television right now. The first Star Trek of the streaming era leaned into that distinction by airing 14 out of the first season’s 15 episodes exclusively on CBS All Access, making the show a kind of guinea pig for the network’s subscription-only streaming service. Discovery was also the first Trek to be rated TV-MA, which gave the showrunners the freedom to show more graphic violence in a time of war, to reveal what Klingon breasts look like (a lot like regular breasts), and even to drop the franchise’s first F-bomb . The series went for a more serialized format than we’re used to seeing from Star Trek and tossed out the familiar aesthetics of its time period in favor of a darker palette and some technology that more plausibly lines up with our own.

Discovery is also one of the most diverse installments of the franchise to date, and the first led by a woman of color, Sonequa Martin-Green, as Michael Burnham, a Starfleet officer–turned-mutineer. It’s impossible to talk about Discovery without talking about Burnham, an anchor in a season that desperately needed one, thanks to all the time travel, alternate universes, doppelgangers, and fungi-fueled jumps through space , to say nothing of the larger plot line involving a war between Starfleet and the Klingons. As a human raised by Vulcans, it would have been easy to make Burnham yet another Spock or Data, her humanity buried under layers and layers of logic. Instead, Martin-Green plays her with a fierce charisma and warmth, making Burnham not only a compass in the wilderness but a light in the darkness, too.

Sunday night’s season finale brought Burnham’s frequently messy story full circle—maybe a little too neatly. Discovery began with Burnham accidentally starting a war and committing a mutiny against her beloved captain, putting her crew’s survival over Starfleet’s ideals. The first season ends with Burnham threatening another mutiny against that same captain, this time in defense of Starfleet’s principles and with the aim of ending the war that she started. In spite of all the distractions and misdirections along the way, Burnham’s arc has finally become clear, with another character even explicitly pointing out that she has learned to love her enemy after falling for Lt. Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif), who turned out to be a Klingon sleeper agent—a Jekyll-and-Hyde flourish that Discovery watchers saw coming a parsec away , just one of the perils of making Star Trek in an era of social media.

There turned out to be too many of those twists in Discovery ’s first season, and it was frustrating to watch as the writers sidled up to new, risky frontiers for exploration, only to suddenly change course right when things were starting to get interesting. Tyler went from a troubled prisoner of war to a science experiment, both complicating and simplifying what was shaping up to be a far more nuanced exploration of PTSD. The relationship between Lt. Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz), a landmark for gay visibility in Star Trek , was cut abruptly short with Culber’s shocking death. And don’t get me started on Jason Isaacs’ character, Capt. Gabriel Lorca, the series’ most shameless bait-and-switch of all. He was introduced to us as a Starfleet captain with an edge, obsessed with warfare and an end-justifies-the-means mentality, who promised to complicate our ideas about Starfleet morality—right up until he was revealed as “secretly” being from Star Trek ’s evil Mirror Universe. (This concept was so clearly telegraphed in advance that the show sometimes took on the quality of a horror movie in which every character, including Burnham, is too oblivious to realize that the monster is in the room with them.)

That said, those Mirror Universe episodes were some of the most enjoyable in the entire season, particularly in bringing back Michelle Yeoh as a deliciously devious Mirror version of Philippa Georgiou, after her character was so rudely killed off in the show’s second episode. Not only did that plot line give Discovery ’s other supporting players a chance to shine, particularly Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Saru ( Doug Jones ), it also exemplified what made Discovery great, when it was : questioning the role of science in warfare, establishing bonds between characters that could transcend entire universes, and a willingness to throw caution and self-seriousness to the wind once in a while and have a little bit of fun with the canon, as when the key to Lorca’s secret identity was his sensitivity to light, a wink at the Mirror Universe’s dark aesthetic in Trek ’s other iterations. Best of all, it focused on Burnham and her relationships—with her crewmates, her enemies, and her surrogate parents—of which there are many.

That’s the kind of note that Discovery went out on in the last minutes of the finale, as the crew of the USS Discovery at last put the war behind them thanks to Burnham and charted a new course—only to be sidetracked by a distress signal from the ship that started it all, the USS Enterprise. Fan service, to be sure, but the kind of fan service that’s fun even when you see it coming because it raises new possibilities for the second season, including the possibility of Burnham running into her adopted brother, Spock. Discovery ’s first season wasn’t perfect, but it did try to show us what Star Trek could look like in 2018, and the results were intriguing and boundary-pushing. Let’s see if it can break those boundaries altogether in Season 2.

Read more in Slate about Star Trek.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' ends as an underappreciated TV pioneer

Eric Deggans

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham. Michael Gibson/Paramount+ hide caption

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

That’s because, for this critic, the last few seasons of Discovery have been a bit bogged down by the stuff that has always made it a tough sell as a Trek series: overly ambitious, serialized storylines that aren’t compelling; new characters and environments that don’t impress; plot twists which can be maddening in their lack of logic; big storytelling swings which can be confusing and predictable at once.

'Star Trek: Picard' soars by embracing the legacy of 'The Next Generation'

The show’s finale features the culmination of a sprawling scavenger hunt which found the crew of the starship Discovery bounding all over the place, searching for clues leading to a powerful technology pioneered by an alien race which created humanoid life throughout the galaxy. Their goal was to grab the technology before another race, ruthless and aggressive, could beat them to it, laying waste to everything.

It's no spoiler to reveal that Discovery ’s heroes avoid that nightmarish scenario, wrapping its fifth and final season with a conclusion centered on Sonequa Martin-Green’s ever-resourceful Capt. Michael Burnham and fond resolutions for a multitude of supporting characters (there’s even a space wedding!)

Still, this good-enough ending belies Discovery ’s status as a pioneering show which helped Paramount+ build a new vision for Star Trek in modern television – breaking ground that more creatively successful series like Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would follow years later.

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

A take on Star Trek for modern TV

Discovery debuted in 2017 on CBS All Access — the streaming service which would become Paramount+ — facing a serious challenge.

As the first new Trek series in a dozen years, it had to chart a path which offered a new vision of the franchise without going too far — carving out a new corner in the universe of Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock not long after the release of Star Trek Beyond , the third feature film produced by J. J. Abrams featuring rebooted versions of those classic characters.

Producers set Discovery ’s story 10 years before the days of Kirk and Spock (originally depicted on NBC for three seasons starting way back in 1966). The new series wouldn’t be centered on a starship captain, but its second in command: Burnham, a Black woman who also happened to be the hitherto unknown adopted daughter of Vulcan ambassador Sarek, Spock’s father (she would get promoted to captain of Discovery much later).

A Black human woman who was raised among the emotionally controlling, super-intellectual Vulcans? Who Trek fans had never heard of over nearly 60 years? Before I actually saw any episodes, my own feelings ranged from cautiously intrigued to cynically pessimistic.

But then I saw the first episode, which had an amazing early scene: Martin-Green as Burnham and Michelle Yeoh as Discovery Capt. 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 sidelined in typical science fiction stories were now centerstage — a thrilling, historic moment.

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in the very first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Jan Thijs/CBS hide caption

And it got better from there. Back in the day, Trek writers often felt hamstrung by creator Gene Roddenberry’s insistence that, in the future depicted by the show, humans were beyond social ills like greed, prejudice, sexism, war, money and personal friction. The writers chafed, wondering: How in the world do you build compelling stories on a starship where interpersonal human conflict doesn’t exist?

But Discovery found a workaround, putting Burnham in a position where logic led her to mutiny against her captain, attempting a strategy which ultimately failed — leaving humans in open combat with the legendarily warlike Klingons. Discovery also featured a long storyline which played out over an entire season, unlike many earlier Trek shows which tried to offer a new adventure every week.

'First, Last And Always, I Am A Fan': Michael Chabon Steers Latest 'Star Trek'

The show’s first season had plenty of action, with Harry Potter alum Jason Isaacs emerging as a compelling and unique starship captain (saying more would be a spoiler; log onto Paramount+ and check out the first season). Fans saw a new vision for Trek technology, leveraging sleek, visceral special effects and action sequences worthy of a big budget movie, with design elements cribbed from several of the franchise’s films.

Later in its run, 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 reunited the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Not bad for a series one TV critic eventually called among “the worst in the [ Trek ] franchise’s history.”

Discovery’s unappreciated legacy

Unfortunately, Discovery has taken some turns which didn’t work out quite so well. At the end of Discovery ’s second season, the starship jumped ahead in time nine centuries – perhaps to remove it from Strange New World ’s timeline? – placing it in an environment only distantly connected to classic Trek .

And while Discovery initially seemed cautious about referencing classic Trek in its stories, later series like Strange New Worlds and Picard learned the value of diving into the near-60-year-old franchise’s legacy – regularly tapping the show’s longtime appeal, rather than twisting into knots to avoid it.

There are likely fans of Discovery who would disagree with this analysis. But I think it helps explain why the series has never quite gotten its due in the world of Star Trek , initially shaded by skeptical fans and later overshadowed by more beloved products.

Now is the perfect time to pay tribute to a show which actually accomplished quite a lot – helping prove that Roddenberry’s brainchild still has a lot of narrative juice left in the 21st Century.

Screen Rant

Star trek: discovery’s “calypso” short trek & finale epilogue reveal explained.

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Star Trek: Ranking The 10 Best Short Treks (According To IMDb)

Star trek: discovery never showed the 32nd century’s uss enterprise, star trek: discovery’s real ending already happened in 2018.

WARNING: Contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery's Series Finale, "Life, Itself"

• Zora's Red Directive mission in Star Trek: Discovery ties directly to the events of the Short Treks episode "Calypso" in the distant future.
• Admiral Burnham's command of the USS Discovery's final mission ensures that "Calypso" will happen as Zora embarks on her mysterious task.
• The series finale of Star Trek: Discovery neatly resolves the timeline questions surrounding "Calypso" and sets the stage for Zora's future.

A long-standing question surrounding Star Trek: Discovery is finally answered in the epilogue of Star Trek: Discovery's series finale , "Life, Itself". Decades after the events of Star Trek: Discovery , Admiral Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is called to active duty in order to take the USS Discovery out for one final mission. The Red Directive mission is assigned to Zora (Annabelle Wallis), the sentient artificial intelligence that was integrated with the USS Discovery's computers as a result of merging with the Sphere Data in Star Trek: Discovery season 2. Zora's mission is simply to wait, crewless, at predetermined coordinates for an unspecified amount of time.

Zora's final Star Trek: Discovery mission is intentionally vague, but should ring a few bells with viewers who are familiar with Star Trek: Short Treks season 1, episode 2, "Calypso". In "Calypso", a wounded soldier named Craft (Aldis Hodge) seeks refuge aboard the abandoned USS Discovery 1000 years in the future. Craft's only companion is the starship's disembodied intelligence, Zora, who nurses Craft back to health physically before also healing Craft emotionally. War has disillusioned Craft, but Zora's kindness kindles a romantic connection between the pair, before Craft ultimately decides to return to the wife and child he hasn't seen in 10 years.

In 2018, CBS All Access released Star Trek: Short Treks as a companion to Star Trek: Discovery. These are the best episodes according to IMDb!

What Was Star Trek: Short Treks "Calypso" & Why It Was Controversial

"calypso" doesn't fit star trek: discovery's timeline.

For years, Star Trek: Short Treks season 1, episode 2, "Calypso" presented more questions than it answered. "Calypso" is a story out of step with the rest of the Star Trek universe, in a far-flung future beyond even Star Trek: Enterprise 's Temporal Cold War, since Zora tells Craft that Discovery has been abandoned for nearly 1000 years. The distance between Star Trek: Discovery 's present and the future in "Calypso" theoretically allows for the evolution of Zora as an independent entity within Discovery's computer, and for the name of Craft's enemies, the V'draysh, to evolve from their original title: the Federation. Unfortunately, as Discovery goes on, "Calypso" doesn't add up.

Like the V'draysh being an elided version of "Federation" due to the passage of time, Star Trek: The Original Series season 2, episode 23, features the "yangs" and "comms", named for slang evolved from "yankees" and "communists" .

The USS Discovery's jump to the future means Star Trek: Discovery 's final 3 seasons take place within the original suspected time frame of the Star Trek: Short Treks episode "Calypso". Zora in Star Trek: Discovery season 3 is a full-fledged character and new life form, suggesting the events of "Calypso" are still in the USS Discovery's future -- just 1000 years after the new 32nd century present, pushing "Calypso" all the way to the 42nd century. The wrinkle is that Discovery's 32nd century refit with detached warp nacelles and 1031-A registry doesn't match with the USS Discovery's 23rd century exterior in "Calypso" , seemingly making the Short Treks episode impossible.

The title of the episode "Calypso" comes from the Odyssey, where Calypso is the name of a nymph who rescues Odysseus and keeps him from continuing his homeward journey for seven years.

Star Trek: Discovery Ended By Making Sure “Calypso” Will Happen

"calypso" is zora's red directive mission.

The ending of Star Trek: Discovery ensures that "Calypso" will happen. As Admiral Michael Burnham arrives to command the USS Discovery's last mission, the "A" is being scrubbed off of Discovery's hull. The retrofit to Discovery's original appearance is confirmed when a flyby shows that Discovery's warp nacelles have also been reattached. Burnham explains that Zora's new mission is a Red Directive from Dr. Kovich (David Cronenberg), and Kovich is Star Trek: Enterprise 's Agent Daniels (Matt Winston), a temporal operative who likely already knows exactly where and when Zora needs to be in 1000 years, even if Burnham's only clue to Zora is the word "Craft" .

With the coda of Star Trek: Discovery' s series finale, "Life, Itself", the pieces fall into place for Short Treks "Calypso" to happen as it should. Theories that "Calypso" takes place in an alternate Star Trek timeline or after Zora's memory has been erased aren't needed. Admiral Burnham suggests that after Zora completes her mission, Zora can seek out the original Discovery crew's descendants, and essentially return to a family in the same way that Craft will after Zora and Craft's fated meeting. By tying up the last loose end, Star Trek: Discovery finally explains how Star Trek: Short Treks' "Calypso" actually happens.

Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Short Treks are streaming on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery

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Star Trek: Discovery is finally free to do whatever it wants

Imagining the future of the future

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It’s a truth universally acknowledged that even among the greatest television shows in Star Trek history, most of them take two seasons to stop being kind of bad. Never has that been more true or more excruciating than in the case of Star Trek: Discovery .

Polygon is looking ahead to the movies, shows, and books coming soon in our Spring 2024 entertainment preview package, a weeklong special issue.

Often it felt like what Discovery was really doing in its early seasons was discovering what didn’t work. Strong performances from a great cast? That works. A Klingon design that absolutely nobody liked ? Definitely not. But despite the stumbles, Discovery season 1 had still averaged C’s and B’s with reviewers, and had built an audience and a subscriber base for Paramount Plus. On the strength of Disco ’s first season, Paramount greenlit Star Treks Picard , Lower Decks , and Prodigy , three new shows covering a huge range of ages and nostalgic tastes. And spinning out of Disco ’s second season, which introduced familiar , nostalgic characters and a brighter, more Star Trek-y tone, Paramount produced Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , inarguably the best new addition to the franchise since 1996.

Star Trek: Discovery crawled so that the rest of modern Trek could run... and then it started to walk. The show’s third season saw the USS Discovery and crew in the place that should have been their starting blocks: the bleeding future edge of Star Trek’s timeline. Thanks to season 3’s groundwork, season 4 became the first time that Discovery had a status quo worth returning to. In its fifth and final season, Star Trek: Discovery is finally free — free in a way that a Star Trek TV series hasn’t been in 23 years.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is such an elder statesman of the television elite that it’s easy to forget that it was daring. The show’s triumph wasn’t just that it featured a new cast of characters, but also its audaciousness in imagining the future of the future — and making that future unmistakably different . The Original Series showed a racial and national cooperation that seemed fantastical in its time, with an alien crewmember to denote the next frontier of embracing the other . Next Generation saw that bet and raised it, installing a member of the Klingon species, the Federation’s once-feared imperialist rival state, as a respected officer on the bridge of Starfleet’s flagship.

Next Generation ’s time period — one century after Kirk’s Enterprise — wasn’t a nominal choice, but a commitment to moving the story of Star Trek forward. From the show’s foundations, Gene Roddenberry and his collaborators, new and old, set a precedent that the Federation would evolve. Therefore, in accordance with the utopian themes of the franchise, old enemies would in time become friends. Next Generation embraced The Original Series ’ nemeses and the rest of ’90s Trek saw that bet and raised it again, pulling many of Next Gen ’s villains into the heroic fold. Voyager welcomed a Borg crewmember and disincorporated the Borg empire; Deep Space Nine gave the franchise the first Ferengi Starfleet cadet, and brokered a Federation-Klingon-Romulan alliance in the face of an existential threat.

But Discovery — at least until it made its Olympic long-jump leap 900 years into the future — couldn’t move Star Trek forward. So long as it was set “immediately before Kirk’s Enterprise,” hemmed in by the constraints of a previously established era of Star Trek history, it could graft on new elements (like Spock’s secret human foster sister) but it couldn’t create from whole cloth (like a galaxy-wide shortage of starship fuel that nearly destroyed the Federation). Like its predecessor, the ill-fated Star Trek: Enterprise of the ’00s, it was doomed to hang like a remora on the side of the events of The Original Series , or, if you’ll pardon another fish metaphor, doomed like a goldfish that can only grow as large as its half-gallon fishbowl will allow.

Discovery ’s later, free seasons in the 32nd century have shown the Federation at its most vulnerable, a subtler echo of Picard ’s own season 1 swing at fallen institutions . (Fans of Voyager and Deep Space Nine know that this is an extremely rich vein of Trek storytelling.) In its third season, Discovery solved a galaxy-wide fuel crisis that had shattered the community of the Federation. In its fourth it fought for a fragile new Federation alliance and its millennia-old ideals.

And those seasons have also boldly committed to the idea of imagining the future’s future — 900 years of it. The centuries-old rift between Vulcans and Romulans is long healed, Ferengi serve as captains in Starfleet, the work of Doctor Noonien Soong has brought new medical technologies to the fore.

Even still, Discovery hasn’t been truly free in its third and fourth seasons. Star Trek: Picard was out there, forming new past elements of a post- Next Gen / Voy / DS9 era that Discovery had to abide by. And, after all, the show still had to make sure there was something for its own next season to come back to.

But now — with Prodigy and Picard finished, and Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks locked into their settings of Star Trek’s established past, and Starfleet Academy and Section 31 not yet in production at the time that its final season would have been written — Discovery has reached the final final frontier for a Star Trek show. If you’re a Star Trek fan, that should excite you.

Not since Deep Space Nine in 1999 and Voyager in 2001 has a Star Trek series had the freedom to wrap up its run with the Federation in any state it wants to. With franchise flagship Next Generation at an end, and Voyager restricted to the Delta Quadrant only, Deep Space Nine used its last seasons to throw the Federation into all-out war, making sweeping changes to the established ficto-political norms of ’90s Trek. Voyager used its finale to do what Captain Picard never could: defang the Borg (mostly).

We don’t know exactly what Discovery will do with that freedom. Season 4 directors have talked about reaching “ into the past to get further into the future ,” and likened it to Indiana Jones. Official news releases have said the crew will “uncover a mystery that sends them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries.” But speculating on what that means would be beside the point.

Discovery , the show about an intergalactically teleporting starship, can finally, actually, go anywhere. It’s been almost a quarter of a century since a beloved Star Trek series was so free to boldly go. Let’s hope they’re very bold indeed.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 premieres with two episodes on April 4 on Paramount Plus.

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Episode list

Star trek: discovery.

S3.E1 ∙ That Hope Is You, Part 1

S3.E2 ∙ Far from Home

S3.E3 ∙ People of Earth

S3.E4 ∙ Forget Me Not

S3.E5 ∙ Die Trying

S3.E6 ∙ Scavengers

S3.E7 ∙ Unification III

S3.E8 ∙ The Sanctuary

S3.E9 ∙ Terra Firma, Part 1

S3.E10 ∙ Terra Firma, Part 2

S3.E11 ∙ Su'Kal

S3.E12 ∙ There Is a Tide...

S3.E13 ∙ That Hope Is You, Part 2

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‘The Acolyte’ Joins ‘Andor’ as Another ‘Star Wars’ Success on Disney+: TV Review

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Yet “The Acolyte” is quick to explain the relationship between Stenberg’s two characters, both to the audience and Osha’s investigators. The show, it turns out, has more interesting topics to turn to, like the relationship between Osha and her onetime mentor Sol (“Squid Game” star Lee Jung-jae). Along with Indara, Sol was once stationed on Osha’s home planet, where a fire took the lives of her entire family — including, or so she thought, her twin sister, Mae. A then eight-year-old Osha went to Coruscant with Sol, who retains a guilt-inflected soft spot for his erstwhile student, while Mae trained with an anonymous master. No one says the words “dark side” or “Sith,” but the red lightsaber speaks for itself.

There are obvious echoes of Luke and Leia in the story of twins separated as young children, and Darth Vader in a villain who wears a mask and speaks with a distorted voice. But later episodes contain revelations that subvert, and even threaten to upend, our notions of the Jedi and binary conception of the Force.

The Jedi’s fallibility has long been one of the most interesting, and underexplored, “Star Wars” themes. In their pursuit of a chosen one, the warrior monks inadvertently planted the seeds of their own destruction; Luke Skywalker grew so disillusioned with his life’s work that he vowed the order would die with him. “Star Wars” has always, on some level, been a Greek tragedy disguised as a children’s blockbuster. But while a slew of spinoffs can dilute a brand’s cachet, as they have for corporate sibling Marvel, they can also allow for a narrow focus. When not forced to share (literal) space with armies and outlaws, the Jedi have never been as centered, nor as scrutinized, as they are in “The Acolyte.”

Lee’s Sol emerges as the empathetic face of this ambivalence. Viewers familiar with the actor’s work in South Korea won’t be surprised to see him as an action hero with a heart, but to Americans who know him solely from the Netflix sensation, the role is a show of range on one of the biggest stages in English-language media. Stenberg, of course, gets to embrace her dual role, developing Mae and Osha’s physicalities as well as their differing points of view on the Jedi. (Though it says something that even defender Osha chose not to join their ranks because she couldn’t let go of emotion in her unprocessed grief.) Manny Jacinto plays Mae’s accomplice, a performance that recalls his bumbling, goofy “The Good Place” character with more sinister undertones, and Dafne Keen of “His Dark Materials” conveys her sharply inquisitive young Padawan from under a mountain of makeup and CGI. Together, the ensemble riffs on established “Star Wars” types while making marks of their own.

The first two episodes of “The Acolyte” will launch on Disney+ on June 4 at 6 p.m. PT, with remaining episodes streaming weekly on Tuesdays.

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Star Trek's Next Show Needs Rayner & Discovery's Finale Is Proof

• Tilly's mentor program in Starfleet Academy will likely bring back characters like Rayner to engage older Star Trek fans.
• The inter-generational outlook of Tilly's mentorship program will infuse Starfleet Academy with a sense of unity and diversity.
• While Tilly's mentor program may establish its own identity, it sets the stage for future cameos from the Star Trek: Discovery cast.

Star Trek: Discovery 's series finale is proof of how much Paramount+'s next Star Trek show needs Commander Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie). Now that Discovery has come to an end, attention turns to its upcoming spinoff series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy , which will continue to tell the story of life in the 32nd century. Star Trek: Discovery 's finale and epilogue , "Life, Itself", written by Kyle Jarrow & Michelle Paradise, and directed by Olatunde Osusanmi , contained several teases for the upcoming Starfleet Academy series, including the revelation that Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) would become the institution's longest-serving instructor.

However, there's still a long time to go before Tilly reaches her Starfleet Academy milestone in Star Trek: Discovery 's 33rd century. Therefore, the most pertinent hints for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy come from how Tilly's role in the search for the Progenitors' treasure may have shaped her approach to teaching the cadets. In Tilly's final scene, she outlines to Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) her plan for a mentorship program that will pair cadets up with inspirational figures . Tilly's mentorship program could, therefore, be the ideal opportunity to bring back Star Trek: Discovery characters like Rayner.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 6 Or Movie - Everything We Know

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 is the final season, but will Captain Burnham and the USS Discovery be back for season 6 or a Paramount+ movie?

Star Trek: Discoverys Finale Sets Up Rayners Return In Starfleet Academy

Tilly's Starfleet Academy mentorship program is inspired by how Captain Burnham helped Commander Rayner overcome his anger to become less " crabby " and an even better starship captain. Tilly and Rayner's friendship in Star Trek: Discovery season 5 was a revelation , so it would be disappointing not to see more of their dynamic going forward. While a Tilly and Rayner Star Trek show won't happen , Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is happening, and is therefore an ideal opportunity to pair them up again, via Tilly's mentorship program.

While Mary Wiseman hasn't been officially confirmed for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy , it has been widely accepted that she'll be involved since the series was announced.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will be predominantly focused on a YA audience, which may be off-putting to older fans. Rayner could, therefore, be the voice of those older Star Trek fans put off by the youthful angst of Starfleet Academy's newest cadets . There is surely a great deal of generation-gap comedy to be mined from Rayner butting heads with his young mentee, while his old friend Tilly tries to mediate the dispute. Furthermore, while not much is known about Holly Hunter's Starfleet Academy character , her previous acting roles suggest she could be a great foil for Callum Keith Rennie.

Tillys Starfleet Academy Mentor Program Sets Up Future Discovery Cameos

Tilly's proposed mentor program at Starfleet Academy sets up future cameos by the Star Trek: Discovery cast. Her plan is to pair promising Starfleet Academy cadets with serving Starfleet officers on a one-on-one basis. There's certainly no shortage of potential mentors among the crew of the USS Discovery, from Captain Michael Burnham to the newly promoted Admiral Saru (Doug Jones). While Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will be keen to establish its own identity in its first season, it feels inevitable that Tilly's mentor program will start bearing fruit once the show is established.

According to Doug Jones, " Admiral " was an ad-lib by actor Oded Fehr, who was scripted to call Saru " Ambassador " during the wedding scene.

As a spinoff from Star Trek: Discovery , it's inevitable that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will contain various elements from its parent show. Tilly's mentor program could codify these crossover appearances, so that guest appearances by members of the USS Discovery crew don't feel forced. Tilly's vision for Starfleet Academy is based on the idea of different generations working together and learning from each other. Hopefully, Tilly's inter-generational outlook will inflect Star Trek: Starfleet Academy too, making it a show that will delight fans young and old alike.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is executive produced by Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, and is set to start shooting in Fall 2024.

All episodes of Star Trek: Discovery are available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery

Cast Blu del Barrio, Oded Fehr, Anthony Rapp, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Wilson Cruz, Eve Harlow, Mary Wiseman, Callum Keith Rennie

Writers Alex Kurtzman

Where To Watch Paramount+

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

Cast Holly Hunter

Writers Noga Landau, Gaia Violo, Alex Kurtzman, Tawny Newsome