Star Trek: Discovery has begun to find its voice in season 2 by embracing some of the core tenets of the Star Trek franchise it ignored in season 1. As the first Star Trek TV series since Star Trek: Enterprise was canceled in 2005, Star Trek: Discovery was always going to have a lot to live up to.
From a business standpoint, the show was an instant success, making the nascent CBS All Access streaming service viable overnight and serving as the springboard for an abundance of future Star Trek projects, including the upcoming animated comedy Lower Decks and the much anticipated return of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, who will appear once again on TV in late 2019.
Yet Star Trek: Discovery season 1 was divisive among viewers, reigniting decades old arguments about what is and isn’t Star Trek. To understand how far the show has evolved in season 2, it’s important to understand what it got fundamentally wrong in season 1, and where there were glimmers of promise that the show has managed to exploit.
- This Page: What Discovery Got Wrong In Season 1 & Right In Season 2 Page 2: Star Trek: Discovery’s Biggest Problem Is Still Burnham
What Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 Got Wrong
Star Trek: Discovery was behind the eight ball before it ever began filming. Co-creator Bryan Fuller left the production in acrimonious fashion after he and CBS couldn’t agree on a vision for the series, leaving his former Pushing Daisies lieutenants, Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg, to helm Discovery. The behind the scenes upheaval was easy to see onscreen - Star Trek: Discovery season 1 was thematically scatterbrained, never quite sure how deeply it wanted to examine humanity’s desperation in its war with the Klingons. The Klingons themselves were redesigned as hairless monsters, resembling Orcs more than Worf. Perhaps most egregiously, Discovery season 1 leaned into the darker, more nihilistic tendencies of modern prestige TV that are averse to the basic tenets of Star Trek. The show lingered on personal despair, graphic violence, and shock deaths - perhaps an attempt at copying some of Game of Thrones’ darkest tricks.
Star Trek: Discovery’s greatest innovation - centering the story on a character who’s not a starship captain - ended up as something of a double-edged sword. Sonequa Martin-Green’s performance as disgraced Starfleet officer Micheal Burnham was compelling, but the character was bogged down in so much prequel debris that her very existence garnered an eye roll from certain viewers. Making Burnham the never spoken of foster sister to Spock made her seem more like a canonical cookie being thrown to satisfy potential viewers uneasy about a version of the franchise with no direct ties to The Original Series.
But Star Trek: Discovery did manage to get some things right in that debut effort. It’s a gorgeously produced series, easily playing on the same visual level as powerhouse HBO shows like Westworld. And even if the series was too focused on Burnham, the supporting cast blossomed around her. Ensign Tilly evolved from her initial “awkward girl” stereotype into an integral part of the crew and something of a surrogate little sister to Burnham. Commander Stamets is the sort of cantankerous super scientist the franchise practically screams for, an explorer deeply uncomfortable with life as a soldier. And Commander Saru is believed to be Star Trek’s best alien since Spock. When Star Trek: Discovery pulled away from the heavily serialized war arc, like in the fantastic timey-wimey episode, “Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad”, the show’s potential felt undeniable.
How Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 Is Righting The Ship
Star Trek: Discovery made the decision to abruptly end the war with the Klingons at the end of season 1 and recalibrate the show’s objectives in season 2. It also introduced a new captain; with the villainous Mirror Universe Gabriel Lorca dispatched, Captain Christopher Pike took command of the Discovery while his own USS Enterprise underwent repairs. Pike’s earnest do-good personality is a complete 180 degrees from Star Trek: Discovery’s morally hazy worldview in season 1, and it’s been a breath of fresh air. Pike’s presence has also made the rest of the cast stronger, making the crew feel more like a true ensemble than the bit players to Burnham’s arc they were in season 1. The show has also, bewilderingly, located a solid sense of humor.
But Star Trek: Discovery’s biggest improvement has been its move away from wartime despair to telling stories about exploration. Season 2 is still connected to an all encompassing mystery, but along the way, we’re seeing new spins on classic Star Trek ideas. Star Trek: Discovery season 2 episode “New Eden” - directed by Commander William Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes - saw Pike and Burnham struggling with the realities of the Prime Directive when they find a displaced human settlement on the far edge of the galaxy, while at the same time Saru and the Discovery must save the planet from destruction. It manages to effortlessly weave the moral aspect of Star Trek with its action/adventure beats. Similarly, “An Obol for Charon” takes one of the most well known Star Trek tropes - the ship encounters a massive, amorphous alien with unclear motives - and turns it into something both exciting and emotional through the lens of a seemingly dying Saru. These are not only episodes that honor the spirit and intelligence of Star Trek, they’re also just great hours of television.
Star Trek: Discovery still has some problems, of course; the Klingons are still something of a mess, and it’s unclear if the show knows what it’s doing with pseudo-Klingon Ash Tyler and Mirror Universe Georgiou, but the signs of improvement are impossible to ignore.
Page 2 of 2: Star Trek: Discovery’s Biggest Problem Is Still Burnham
The Problem With Michael Burnham
Star Trek: Discovery’s biggest remaining problem is the same one it’s always had: Michael Burnham. While she no longer has to bear the burden of being the mutineer catalyst of the war with the Klingons, she is still weighed down by her direct connections to Star Trek lore, namely her Vulcan little brother, Spock. Discovery is still trying to shoehorn Burnham into unexplored parts of Spock’s life, attempting to build her mystique by simple proximity to the franchise’s most famous character. It was cheap in season 1, and so far it still feels very thin in season 2. It’s possible this will change when Ethan Peck’s Spock finally makes his Discovery debut and meets Burnham face to face, but it’s currently holding Burnham back as a character.
A likely unintentional result of saddling Burnham with so much of the unfortunate prequel story beats is that it frees the rest of the cast from it. Characters like Stamets and Saru have been allowed to develop naturally, as they owe nothing to the Star Trek mythos beyond what we’ve seen on the screen. That’s all well and good, but it results in a show where the ostensible lead is in many ways the least interesting character. Again, this is a resolvable problem - there’s no reason the show has to keep backsliding toward Spock after season 2, as it’s proved it can stand on its own two feet at this point. Indeed, some of these changes and course corrections could be coming much sooner than many might expect; Harberts and Berg were fired for abusive behavior during production of season 2, replaced by current Star Trek head honcho Alex Kurtzman during production on Discovery season 2 in summer 2018; it forced a temporary production hiatus so that the series’ creative team could regroup with a more cohesive direction. Harberts and Berg oversaw the first batch of episodes in season 2, so we’ll soon get our first look at Kurtzman’s version.
-
It’s easy for fans to forget, but it’s actually quite rare that a Star Trek series will come out of the gate fully formed and without any issues at all. For instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation was borderline unwatchable during its first two seasons before producer Michael Piller came on board and unlocked the magic of Captain Picard and friends. Even Star Trek: Deep Space Nine didn’t really become the show people loved until season 3, when the conflict with the Dominion began to escalate and writers Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore took the reins from Piller. So, despite a shaky debut in season 1 (which itself was tough to get on CBS All Access due to its behind the scenes issues), Star Trek: Discovery is very much in good company, and the fact that it’s already beginning to figure itself out so early in season 2 suggests that the future could be bright for the series. In reality, Star Trek: Discovery’s success is what’s led to the Picard series returning as well as consideration for even more Star Trek shows on the network.
More: Star Trek Movies & TV: What The Franchise’s Future Looks Like
Star Trek: Discovery airs Thursdays on CBS All Access.
