It’s taken me a while to get round to the latest incarnation of Star Trek following my recent completion of Enterprise and the movies featuring the cast of The Next Generation. From the off it’s clear that Star Trek: Discovery is something rather different, not only because (in the U.K. at least) it’s the first to be shown on Netflix, but because it doesn’t immediately try to overburden us with its exact setting and all the specific detail of the Trek universe.
We start off, in a fairly standard way, by meeting the crew of a starship but by the end of the first episode this is all rather turned on its head and it takes the entirety of series to, in a way, begin to right itself.
At first this was somewhat of a culture shock to a long time Trek fan like myself but, once I got the hang of things and we got to know the lead, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), grew accustomed to the new look Klingons and realised it all falls between Enterprise and The Original Series it became a genuinely engaging new take on Trek.
Probably the most major change from past series is that it doesn’t focus on the ship’s captain and their two supporting officers.
Instead, in Burnham, its lead by something of a misfit; Human but raised by Vulcans and disgraced in the eyes of Star Fleet she is, by Trek standards, a rebellious lead character.
Along with her is an ensemble of the Discovery’s crew several of whom are in second position to Burnham, particularly notable are cadet Tilly (Mary Wiseman), scientist/engineer Stamets (Anthony Rapp), Saru (Doug Jones) and Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif).
This gives the show a different feel of being a little more ‘below decks’, albeit not exactly at ground level.
In all of this there is still room for a charismatic captain in the form of Jason Isaacs’ enigmatic and driven Gabriel Lorca.
While most of the ship’s crew are scientists Lorca is focussed, it appears, on taking the fight to the Klingons as war rages with the Federation but, it transpires, there is more to Lorca than at first meets the eye.
While it takes a few episodes for the characters and setting to bed in once it does, more than any other series of Star Trek, it commits itself to an ongoing story line that traces the characters through the Klingon-Federation war.
With hints at past versions of Trek (notably Original Series recurring character Harry Mudd makes an appearance and Captain Christopher Pike and his reasonably well know vessel get a mention) it balances these references with a lot of originality and a slightly different spirit, though one still based on the main tenets of Trek, to bring a new life to this fifty-year-old ‘franchise’.
To mention too much of the plot would lead to major spoilers but what really makes Discovery work, along with the great characters, is how it constantly keeps you guessing as the war rages and USS Discovery is placed at the vanguard of the conflict leading to a climax that is both surprising and satisfying in equal measure, while leaving things set up for an intriguing start to season two.
This all makes Star Trek: Discovery something of a return to form for the more recently troubled franchise bringing a freshness and modernity to it while keeping the original ethos of the series alive and well.
Tommy Girard 