Star Trek: Discovery
WORKING
Star Trek: Discovery (TV series). Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, creators. Based on Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry, #7 in the Star Trek series of series. USA (and Canada): Secret Hideout, Roddenberry Entertainment, Living Dead Guy Productions, CBS Studios (Production) / CBS, CBS All Access, Paramount+ (networks), 2017 f., 4 seasons as of March 2023; one more season announced.[1] Running time: 37-65 minutes.[2]
Premise (Wikipedia) <block quote> The series begins around ten years before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series, when Commander Michael Burnham's actions start a war between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire. She is court-martialed, stripped of rank, and reassigned to the USS Discovery, which has a unique means of propulsion called the "Spore Drive". After an adventure in the Mirror Universe, Discovery helps end the Klingon war. In the second season they investigate seven mysterious signals and a strange figure known as the "Red Angel", and fight off a rogue artificial intelligence. This conflict ends with the Discovery traveling to the 32nd century, more than 900 years into their future.[3]
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Some Episodes of Interest for Users of this Wiki
Season 1, Episode 1, "The Vulcan Hello," 24 Sept. 2017
Generally significant for introducing a tension between interpretations of intentions and actions in terms of the agents' culture or race/species — and gender, with the Klingon forces gendered male, the Federation's more female (though gender-balanced in ways complicated nicely by species). Of interest here for the mise en scène: Star-Trekian smooth and Modern(ist) vs. Klingon complex and convoluted, with Klingon spaces and costuming suggesting the Baroque plus indigenous MesoAmerican-Imperial. Note also the juxtaposing of an ornate, heavy-metal Klingon casket and the burial at space of a male-gendered leader with the female lead on the Federation side on a high-tech gurney in a curative space in sickbay; and cf. and contrast that with a child-version of the character in a Vulcan learning-chamber, quizzed by a computer.
Season 1, Episode 2, "Battle at the Binary Star," 24 September 2017
Note dialog between imprisoned protagonist, Michael Burnham, and the ship's computer, both gendered female; subject: ethical grounds for the computer to release Burnham to go through the vacuum in a wrecked part of the ship to go to a bulkhead hatch the computer will blow open. Cf. and contrast dialogs between David Bowman and HAL-9000 over entry into the Discovery in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film) and and the dialog with the computerized bomb — both speakers gendered male — in DARK STAR.
Season 1, Episode 3, "Context Is for Kings," 1 October 2017
Brief but impressive shot of The Garden in the Machine, literally: a lush vegetative area inside Discovery. Note also Michael Burnham, in her prisoner's outfit, inside a transparent box, surrounded by flickering spores, in one of the scenes in which the principle of propulsion? transport? sought (illegally) by Star Fleet is bit by bit explained. We might think of it as a kind of Gaia hypothesis on the intergalactic level, bringing together physics and biology (and quantum mechanics) — and a rationalized mysticism — of the universe interconnected physically/organically. There are also references to the theory of "panspermia," used in an unusual way,[4] and to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, used more seriously.[5]
Season 2, Episode 9, "Project Daedalus," 14 March 2019
See for "Starfleet's Control artificial intelligence" and Control in a take-over attempt,[6] atypical for Federation AI, though reversed in the third season (see below).[7]
RDE, finishing, 18Mar23 f.
