So, how to solve the problem of “Discovery feels too advanced” and solve the problem of, “The writers want to make Star Trek but mostly ignore most established Trek canon concepts.”
What if you just… Catapult the plot 930 years into the future.
I am not entirely against the time travel angle of the plot.
I am a bit against the “930 years” part.
For one, now there is the opposite problem, where everything doesn’t feel advanced ENOUGH. Like seriously, did society just plateau? This is literally the equivalent of being a medieval knight to our present day. Even if English were the primary language, there would be a communications barrier. And in general, the tech feels like it has not changed much, like it should. The Spore Drive should be long past useless in favor of some sort of folded space transwarp nonsense.
Granted, there is the main plot problem of “The Burn”. Which vaguely explains why everything is not as advanced as it could be. But also, why were they still on Dilithium 800 some years in the future?
So, let’s dig a bit more into the details here.
The first episode follows Burnham alone, who emerges alone, in her special time suit. She runs into a courier named Book, who has a cat named Grudge, who is the best character introduced for Season 3, as infrequently as she appears. Also, Book is like, 1000x better than fucking Ash Tyler, while he essentially is replacing.
Discovery and the screw shows up in the second episode. One year after Burnham arrived. Time shenanigans. During that year Burnham has basically shrugged off all of her logical Vulcan ways and loosened up quite a bit. A lot of underlying theme for Burnham and the crew this season is, “find your place.” Everyone has been uprooted from everything they know. Also during all of this, we learn a bit about “The Burn”. Basically, roughly 100 years prior, an event happened which screwed up all of the Dilithium in the galaxy, which caused a lot of ships to self destruct all at once, and effectively ended warp travel.
Warp is still possible, but Dilithium is scarce enough that it’s much less laissez-faire than it once was. Burnham, for example, has not returned to Earth during that year, because she did not have the fuel to make the trip.
Book tags along with Discovery, and they Spore Jump to Earth, to rejoin the Federation. Which seems really crazy, like they could just show up 1000 years later and just, continue on doing Federation things. The arrival on Earth leads to one of, in my opinion, the most interesting parts of this whole “Future” experience. Earth, is not part of the Federation, which itself is barely a thing anymore. The entire Earth episode is basically like any other, “visit a random alien world and solve a problem” episodes that Trek is known for. Which is kind of a fun and neat twist.
The trip does lead them to someone who knows where the Federation is, a young woman named Adira who has been bonded with a Trill Symbiote, and is the first of their kind. It was done as an emergency when their boyfriend, Gray Tal, a Trill who had recently become a host, was injured and needed emergency treatment.
They also ask to use they/them pronouns. Which is actually kind of clever of the writers, because it gives them a way use the “present day” pronouns topic, but also, being a Trill, with memories of several lifetimes, they basically ARE a they. The Human/Trill angle also kind of feels like an excuse to downplay the Trill’s ability to access old experiences and memory, because Adira doesn’t come off much like say, Dax, who was super buddy buddy with Cisco due to her previous experiences as Kirzon Dax. Beyond recalling the location of the Federation HQ, it doesn’t show up much.
In general, Adira feels like an alright addition, though like everyone on Discovery, they are a bit of a know it all in their field.
Eventually, Discovery does meet up with the Federation remnants, who are, less than receptive, which is to be expected. Especially since Spock went and basically wiped out Discovery from history. They do eventually prove themselves, but even then, the Federation now, isn’t exactly the same Federation that dominated the galaxy on a mission of exploration. They are essentially just survivors.
The new Admiral isn’t super keen on sharing information about The Burn either, which at this point the crew still doesn’t actually know what it was.
There is also mention that time travel has been outlawed after some sort of Temporal Wars that happened during the 930 year time jump. I suppose that had to be done because at the end of the day, Time Travel is pretty common in Star Trek. The crew got Discovery away from Control, but they seem iffy on the time travel now that they are there. There really isn’t any reason they couldn’t do some sort of slingshot maneuver like in Star Trek IV, to return home, even if it was in another ship, to keep Discovery away from Control.
Though Control was killed by Georgiou. They could just, take Discovery back.
So we get some more running around the galaxy, learning more about an Orion/Andorian alliance called The Emerald Chain, who are essentially the main antagonists of the season. We also learn that Romans and Vulcans have sort of, rejoined as a species and now call themselves the Ni’var.
There is also a notable little interlude that allows Emperor Georgiou to leave the show. This felt, really abrupt honestly. I was kind of iffy on the idea of bringing her back via the Mirror Universe, especially since she was kind of playing the role of Space Hitler over there. But it worked out and was interesting. Also, Michelle Yeoh seemed to be having a good time in the role, or maybe she is just a good actress. But there was a small build up and then, “She is unstable in our universe so we have to send her back.” But not just back, they seemed to send her back in time or something as well, with the most random cameo, the Guardian of Forever from the GOS episode, City on the Edge of Forever.
It’s random because this “character” is literally a giant talking rock gate.
The send off was both good and bad though. Basically, Georgiou relives the moment that she was betrayed by Lorca and Mirror Burnham in the Mirror Universe. No cameo from Jason Isaacs annoyingly. It was an interesting story to tell, but I have a really hard time giving a shit about hallucinated alternate universe versions of characters. There is basically no stakes of anyone dies, which they do.
Anyway, I figure they also partly wrote her out of the show because Book kind of fills the role of “Outsider loose canon”, but he does so in a less OP way. Georgiou is extremely capable in almost every aspect, which made her a bit too useful as a Deus Ex tool to wrap up problems. She would have seen though everyone else’s bull shit in a lot of the later plots.
As Burnham tries to piece together what caused The Burn (because somehow science of 930 years in the future is garbage???), the crew of Discovery is lead to a mysterious Nebula. Inside they find a planet made of Dilithium, and on that planet a crashed ship, with a lone survivor, a Kelpian whom has been living there alone for 100 some years, since he was a young boy. He was born on this planet after the crash,and his mother left him inside an elaborate holo simulation to keep him alive and keep him company.
The Holo thing is… Weird. It’s an interesting concept at its core. But for not really explained reasons, when the Discovery Crew beams down, they are overlayed by the Holo system to look like random other races. Also, for some reason it makes Adira’s boyfriend corporeal. There has been a sort of subplot where he was showing up only to them. It kind of felt like just, a way to represent the Trill consciousness in a new way. Only Adira could see Gray. But suddenly, Gray is visible to everyone inside the hologram area. It was kind of weird.
They don’t really seem to gain any of those race’s traits. Like, Burnham, is a Trill, but she doesn’t suddenly have a hologram symbiote. It felt mostly like an excuse for Saru to be there, but not appear as a Kelpian (Saru shows as human). Due to the interference of the Dilithium and Holo program, they have to convince the stranded Kelpian to shut the system down first. There is also a timer of sorts from Dilithium poisoning.
Which is complicated because The Emerald Chain shows up and takes over Discovery, stranding half our important crew. The Emerald Chain tries to use Discovery to take out Star Fleet HQ, which goes badly because the Discovery Crew are resilient and spunky and can’t fail! The Spore Drive saves the day and they convince the Kelpian to shut things down so they can leave the planet.
There is also this rediculous fight on a turbo lift inside the shit. Of all the “Un-Trek” things in this series, the ship designs annoy me the most. The old Treks were not perfect, but they were pretty good about making ship sizes and layouts believable. In Discovery’s case, we kind of have an idea of how large it is from last season, when they evacuated the crew to The Enterprise before the final Control fight. There were these physical catwalks used, and we saw people in those catwalks so we know they are like, 10-15 feet tall, so you can get an rough estimate of the height and general size of these ships. As I have mentioned in a previous write up, the internals of Discovery seem to be completely filled with these huge open chasms of space. Not to mention the disks of the Saucer Section spin when using the Spore Drive.
WHERE IS ALL THIS SPACE??
Maybe it’s just a small hole int he middle right? Except the climax of this episode has this pretty drawn out hand to hand fight between Book and one of the bad guy leaders (whose name I forget), in an open Turbo Lift as is screams through the ship. At the speed it’s going, and the time fo the fight, it would imply the ship is literally miles long. The ship really isn’t that big. It might, MIGHT, if you really stretch, be a single mile long.
Why do they need him to leave so badly? Apparently, he has developed some sort of weird symbiotic relationship with Dilithium. And when his mother died, in his grief, he caused The Burn.
Feels a bit anti climactic, but it’s kind of an alright and less expected angle. Getting him off the Dilithium planet stops a second Burn.
