Observations, rants, and musings by Joe Siegler.

Star Trek Discovery Marathon

It would take twelve more years after the end of Enterprise for Star Trek to reappear on the small screen.  The seventh Star Trek TV series (Star Trek Discovery) premiered on 24 Sep 2017.   This show was a new modern take on Trek.  It still felt like Trek to me as there was enough that it felt like it.  But there were some core changes to the premise.

The primary actor was Sonequa Martin-Green.  But she wasn’t the captain of the Discovery.  She was a a first officer, who then gets courtmartialed, and is a prisoner.  Her character has quite the journey over the five seasons of the show.  It’s an interesting take that the primary actor isn’t the captain of the ship the show is based on.  That was new.  Before the series launched, it was said that Michelle Yeoh was the captain of the ship, and that was true.  She was, but she was a guest actor.   Not regular cast.

The other odd choice is they made it yet ANOTHER prequel like Enterprise was – except this time it was only about 10 years before the time of Kirk & Spock. Then they immediately introduced a canon problem by having the tech of the USS Discovery radically more advanced than what the Federation could do in the time of Kirk & Spock.  They did fix that problem by soft rebooting the series going into the third season.  I know a lot of people had issues with that.  But I bought into it.

The show had a much darker tone than Trek to this point, which is where I think people are put off.  It isn’t my favorite overall series – or close to it.  But I don’t actively dislike it – and there are some excellent episodes, and wonderful acting performances.  I adore Doug Jones’ Saru here.  Mary Wiseman’s Tilly is a joy.   But this series leaned more into the “Big Three” concept that TOS had, because the bulk of the bridge crew are honestly – faceless to me. As I sit here writing it, I can’t tell you any of their names.  Now a lot of that has to do with me having watched the series just once – on original transmission – very VERY few repeats.  So while it’s all relatively recent, most if where the story bits fit together are lost to me.

They did tie in to existing Trek lore in a big way a few times.  One episode was titled “Unification III” and was a sequel to the first two episodes of that name in TNG’s run.  They also did a DIRECT sequel to the original pilot – “The Cage”, which involved Talos IV again, and the Keepers and all that.  It was great.  In fact, that happened in the middle of Season 2 when Anson Mount’s Capt Pike had come on to the series, and ended up resulting in the entire Strange New Worlds series.  So there’s definite ties to lore (heck we had Spock’s parents, and a change to canon saying that michael Burnham was Spock’s adopted sister).

They finally broke the seal on having an openly gay couple – two of the (male) primary cast members were married to each other – something that had been talked about in Trek since the days of the original series.  So that was a step forward.

Also, as we’re into modern Trek, the series themselves are shorter.  TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT had roughly 24-26 eps a season.  The original had even more. Discovery bucks this trend.  Season one has the most at 15 episodes.  It then trends downward until Season 5 has just 10.

It was also the first Trek series that wasn’t broadcast on terrestrial television – it was a streaming only series on Paramount+ (which was at the time of launch called CBS All Access).   That too probably put people off.

Discovery was also the first series to have a companion series that aired with it on “CBS All Access”.  It was called “After Trek” at first, and was hosted by Matt Mira.  It was designed as a behind the scenes piece where actors and production people would come on to talk about the show.  I watched it, but it was kind of painful.  The host didn’t seem that connected to the material.  Fortunately they realized this, and in Season 2 onwards, they changed format.  They created something called “The Ready Room”, and changed hosts to Naomi Kyle.  It was better, but still felt off.  However for Season 3, they got the formula right by changing hosts again – to Wil Wheaton.  Wheaton was perfect for that.  Both from his known nerd status, and from his direct involvement in Trek.  He remained host of The Ready Room through the rest of it’s run – which covered the end of Discovery, as well as Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, & Strange New Worlds.

Discovery spawned two direct sequels – the series “Starfleet Academy”, and the made for streaming movie “Section 31” – which I’ll cover later.  There’s also Strange New Worlds, which is in a different time frame as Discovery but is still very much related.’

The show was also expensive to produce.  In reading about it apparently cost anywhere from $6 – $8.5m per episode, with Netflix picking up $6m of that for world wide distribution rights (except in North America).  I will say this about the series.  It definitely LOOKED good.

This show has a lot of producers.  In the pilot episode alone, there are 19 people with the word “Producer” in their title in the credits.  That fluctuates as the series goes on to over 20 in subsequent seasons.  Granted, two of them are Nicholas Meyer & Eugene Roddenberry, but do you really need THAT many producers?

To end the intro on a positive note..  I had hoped they’d go back to a more traditional orchestral theme song after Enterprise, and they did.  Gone is the song, and a really nice piece of music by Jeff Russo.  It uses pieces of Alexander Courage’s original series theme, but mostly does it’s own thing.  I quite love this theme.  Perhaps not my favorite of all of Trek, but I definitely enjoy this – and even more so this time around.  I never found myself wanting to skip the theme tune/titles watching Discovery.

Season 1

Season 1 of Discovery starts off with Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou as captain of the Discovery, and gets killed off in the first two episodes.  The ship is then captained by Jason Isaacs’ “Gabriel Lorca”.  Lorca then requested Burnham who got court martialed and sent to a penal colony for her actions.  It’s quite the start for the primary lead of the series.

The main cast for Season 1 was Sonequa Martin-Green (Michael Burnham), Doug Jones (Saru), Shazad Latif (Ash Tyler), Anthony Rapp (Paul Stamets), Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly), and the aforementioned Jason Isaacs (Gabriel Lorca).  Stamets’ husband (Wilson Cruz’s Hugh Culber) wasn’t yet a series regular at this point only appearing in the fourth episode forward, and not every single one.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the series was the first to have an openly gay (male) couple in the primary cast.  While it never bothered me personally, I always wondered if those people who are hostile these kinds of ideas checked out because of that.  Shame, but things are what they are.

Season 1 was split into two halves.  The first comprised nine episodes and aired from 24 Sep 2017 through 12 Nov 2017.  The remaining 6 aired from 7 Jan 2018 through 11 Feb 2018.  I point this out as the two halves had collective names (albeit not very inventive ones).  The first nine were called “Chapter 1”, and the final six were “Chapter 2”.  This was not repeated with any subsequent seasons.

I did enjoy the season far more than I recalled from the past.  I do say that I didn’t watch hardly any episodes again after original broadcast, and I had this filed as “good” in my mind, but the events were a blur.  As I said elsewhere, it still felt like Star Trek, but different.  It certainly never LOOKED this good.  In hindsight, knowing the big Twist with Lorca that happens, there are signs – but on first view you’re unlikely see them – but I definitely noticed it on a repeat watch.   I still never quite found out why Lorca thought bringing in a convicted mutineer to be part of his crew was that important to him.  Or I just missed it.   The Klingon War comprised most of Season 1’s arc, although there as a sojourn into the Mirror Universe for a few episodes, – which brought back Mirror Georgiou – something I felt was an odd choice.  Still, more Michelle Yeoh was a good idea.   Overall – thumbs up.

As more of an admin note – Discovery is the first Trek series to not have a title card.  As I use title cards for my episode pages, I’m going to have to create my own.  Will use the most excellent title card generator for multiple Trek series created by Josh Mayfield.  It can be viewed here, where you can make your own for any Trek series.  Josh can be reached on BlueSky here.

Season 2

Season 2 branches off the cliffhanger at the end of Season 1 (Here’s Capt Pike with the USS Enterprise NCC-1701), carrying Number 1 from the Cage, and also Spock.  We spend a lot of time in Season 2 on family stuff, especially around Michael Burnham.  There’s a full on sequel to the original “The Cage” pilot which was awesome as hell, and probably my most rewatched Discovery episode.

The overall arc here is “The Red Angel”, which I won’t get into here, as I’d write 1,000 words, and ruin it all anyway.   We pick up Tig Notaro’s recurring character here – she’s a total joy.   Adore her so that’s a major positive addition.   They added Dr Culber as a primary cast member now, which was amusing because at the time he was promoted, he was DEAD.  ha.

The opening titles remained mostly the same, but some new objects were added to the montage of things we see in them which are more connected to this series – the captain’s chair from NCC-1701 being one of them.  This idea of tweaking the titles would remain through the remaining series.

This series was originally scheduled to be 13 episodes, but it was extended to 14 mid season.  In addition, two of the show runners (Aaron Harberts & Gretchen J. Berg) were fired mid season.  Not entirely sure why.

Season 2 is also I believe the first season of ANY incarnation of Star Trek to this point that aired all of its episodes in one continuous block.  The 14 episodes here aired on 14 consecutive weeks.  No breaks, no week off for a political event, holiday – nothing.  First time that’s happened, AFAIK.

My memory of the series was that Season 2 was the best season of Discovery, and this rewatch did nothing to change that opinion.  Even the episodes that weren’t “direct” arc eps still had something to do with it.  The finale tied it all together, and surprisingly I forgot a few points about how the arc wrapped up, so that was nice.  The reaction to the Enterprise, Pike, Spock, & Number One was so great, we got an entire series out of it (supposedly) due to fan demand – that being Strange New Worlds.

  • Brother (10/11/2026) - (17 Jan 2019) – Season 2 Episode 1 (Serial 201)
  • New Eden (10/12/2026) - (24 Jan 2019) – Season 2 Episode 2 (Serial 202)
  • Point of Light (10/13/2026) - (31 Jan 2019) – Season 2 Episode 3 (Serial 203)
  • An Obol for Charon (10/14/2026) - (7 Feb 2019) – Season 2 Episode 4 (Serial 204)
  • Saints of Imperfection (10/15/2026) - (14 Feb 2019) – Season 2 Episode 5 (Serial 205)
  • The Sound of Thunder (10/16/2026) - (21 Feb 2019) – Season 2 Episode 6 (Serial 206)
  • Light and Shadows (10/17/2026) - (28 Feb 2019) – Season 2 Episode 7 (Serial 207)
  • If Memory Serves (10/18/2026) - (7 Mar 2019) – Season 2 Episode 8 (Serial 208)
  • Project Daedalus (10/19/2026) - (14 Mar 2019) – Season 2 Episode 9 (Serial 209)
  • The Red Angel (10/20/2026) - (21 Mar 2019) – Season 2 Episode 10 (Serial 210)
  • Perpetual Infinity (10/21/2026) - (28 Mar 2019) – Season 2 Episode 11 (Serial 211)
  • Through the Valley of Shadows (10/22/2026) - (4 Apr 2019) – Season 2 Episode 12 (Serial 212)
  • Such Sweet Sorrow (10/24/2026) - (11 - 18 Apr 2019) – Season 2 Episodes 13 & 14 (Serial 213-214)

Season 3

Season 3 is a soft reboot for the show.  Discovery has gone 930 years into the future – far past the furthest point out in the TNG/DS9/VOY timeline.  So it’s totally new territory, which is something I think the show needed – it worked better that way vs being another TOS prequel.  The arc here is what I call “The Burn”, and is mostly comprised of rebuilding the Federation which had been decimated by something called “The Burn”.  There are also numerous new things which show the fact that we’re now in the 32nd century.  Programmable matter, personal transporters, even USS Voyager-J.

This even extended to filming which was done in July 2019 in Iceland to make it look different.  Filming ended on 24 Feb 2020, 10 days before the covid-19 pandemic shut everything down.  As such all the post was done remotely – something unique and new to Trek, which delayed things a bit.  It pushed the premier of the season past the finale of Season 1 of Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Also due to the format change, we have some new cast members.  David Ajala is added as a series regular as “Cleveland ‘Book’ Booker”.  Blu del Barrio is added as the recurring character Adira Tal.

We return to the mirror universe in this season after spending quite a few episodes there in Season 1 (and none in Season 2).  We also get a sequel to one of the more popular two parters of TNG – “Unification“.

As before, the title sequence is altered with objects specific to this season.  That includes red dilithium crystals, Book’s own ship, new Starfleet badges, and the wormhole from the end of last season . There’s also a slightly modified series logo, which I’ve read is because the first one was created around the original Klingon story from Season 1.

Will add more about Season 3 once I finish watching it.

  • The Hope is You, Part I (10/25/2026) - (15 Oct 2020) – Season 3 Episode 1 (Serial 301)
  • Far From Home (10/26/2026) - (22 Oct 2020) – Season 3 Episode 2 (Serial 302)
  • People of Earth (10/27/2026) - (29 Oct 2020) – Season 3 Episode 3 (Serial 303)
  • Forget Me Not (10/28/2026) - (5 Nov 2020) – Season 3 Episode 4 (Serial 304)
  • Die Trying (10/29/2026) - (12 Nov 2020) – Season 3 Episode 5 (Serial 305)
  • Scavengers (10/30/2026) - (19 Nov 2020) – Season 3 Episode 6 (Serial 306)
  • Unification III (10/31/2026) - (26 Nov 2020) – Season 3 Episode 7 (Serial 307)
  • The Sanctuary (11/1/2026) - (3 Dec 2020) – Season 3 Episode 8 (Serial 308)
  • Terra Firma (11/3/2026) - (10 - 17 Dec 2020) – Season 3 Episodes 9-10 (Serial 309 & 310)
  • Su’Kal (11/4/2026) - (24 Dec 2020) – Season 3 Episode 11 (Serial 311)
  • There is a Tide (11/5/2026) - (31 Dec 2020) – Season 3 Episode 12 (Serial 312)

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