‘Star Trek: Discovery’ comes close to space saga we need

While gazillionaires compete to launch the best private rockets, a space adventure has been conspicuously absent from this golden era of TV.

Today’s Earthlings have our choice of lavishly produced shows about almost anything you can imagine, set in almost any time period, including a number of deeply dystopian stories about the future, where people are more likely to churn butter than travel at light speed.

Instead of outer space, TV has spent the past decade obsessing over inner space, the Philip K. Dick stuff, over and over. Who could ever count all the shows about time travel, time-shifting, time-jumping, digitized souls, reincarnation, alternate realities, parallel dimensions, artificial life, telepathic excursions — all of it sooner or later concerned with the nature of existence (synthetic or biological? Paper or plastic?).

The notion of producing a really great, high-end space drama — something as good or better than HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” only set among stars and strange planets — must sound to network executives as cost-prohibitive and failure-prone as most NASA proposals sound to lawmakers. In either context, space is a huge investment of time and money. It’s a genre even the most profligate networks are content to leave to deep-pocketed film studios, which rely solely on proven franchises.

The further you search, the more it becomes clear: Television only ever had one space saga that truly felt at home in the medium. It’s set in a distant yet palpable future, 250 or so years from now, in which Earthlings and others have formed an altruistic ideal of mutual respect and exploration - a Federation of planets.

Yes, all roads (and wormholes) eventually lead back to Gene Roddenberry.

“Star Trek: Discovery,” Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman’s gripping and pleasingly clever revival of the brand, has wrapped up its first streaming season on CBS All Access. As good as the show is, it carries with it some unique burdens. Not only must it please fans, it also has to be a “Star Trek” that can compete in the peak-TV era — while persuading viewers to pay for another new streaming subscription service ($5.99 a month, or $9.99 commercial-free).

“Discovery,” which takes place a decade before the original “Star Trek” series, introduces us first to its complicated protagonist, an antihero named Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), a strident and cocky first officer aboard the USS Shenzou.

Orphaned as a child and raised by the Vulcan ambassador Sarek ( James Frain), Burnham is urged by her mentor, Capt. Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), to reconcile her logic-driven personality with her human side.

The friendship between the two women seems to be the show’s anchor, except that, in an encounter with a dormant tribe of xenophobic Klingons, Burnham takes actions that start a war between the Federation and the Klingons, destroying the Shenzou and costing thousands of lives including Georgiou’s. Sentenced to prison for treason, Burnham instead winds up as an ostracized temp on the USS Discovery.

To know much more than this, a viewer would have had to follow “Star Trek: Discovery” over its paywall, where, by the third episode, it becomes a far more thoughtful and original addition to the “Trek” universe — and yes, worth subscribing to, long enough for a weekend’s binge.

If CBS had been smart enough to air “Star Trek: Discovery” on plain ol’ TV, the show’s plot twists and big reveals probably would have been quite the talkers. “Discovery” often thrums and sizzles with TV’s modern moves — including a nod to our beloved, wait-what? adventures in inner space, when the ship accidentally spore-hops into an alternate universe. With their entire existence turned upside-down, Discovery’s crew must question and reaffirm Roddenberry’s central “Star Trek” values. And when they do, it’s a rather stirring moment for true believers.

And yet, as capable as it turned out to be, “Star Trek: Discovery” has only satisfied part of the deeper longing. It’s like staring up at the nighttime sky, wishing for a fantastic space drama among all the possibilities, and someone keeps pointing out the same point of light that is “Star Trek.”

Is that all there is? Are we really this alone?