STAR TREK: DISCOVERY Season One
The fungal frontier
released out now! 2017-2018 | 15 | Blu-ray/dVd
Showrunners Gretchen J Berg, aaron Harberts
Cast sonequa Martin-Green, doug Jones, shazad latif, anthony rapp
The title sequence feels like a mission statement. Schematics of classic Star Trek iconography – phasers, communicators – set to an optimistic main theme that’s undercut by the occasional troubling chord. It primes us for a show that’s out to disassemble and rebuild the daddy of SF franchises.
The first TV Trek in over a decade, Discovery is clearly in debt to the new age of small-screen storytelling. This is Roddenberry’s vision for a post-Battlestar, post-Lost world, shaped by the rise of serialisation and grimmer, more morally ambiguous narratives.
At first it’s a jolt. With its Black Alerts and flinty captain (a sly, compelling Jason Isaacs) the USS Discovery is presented as a weaponised science vessel, all too ready to exploit a newly discovered lifeform in the name of progress. Lead character Michael Burnham is disgraced, a mutineer. It feels like we’ve slipped into a Mirror Universe long before the show actually goes there.
But it’s a long game. Over 15 episodes that move from “Context Is For Kings”’ deep-space horror to time-bending standout “Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad” (the moment the show finally clicks), Discovery builds from a dark war footing to a restatement of Trek’s first principles. Uneven but sparky, powered by plot twists and an agreeable weirdness, this inaugural season ultimately jumps to warp speed.
Extras No commentaries (bah), but 10 short featurettes (totalling 135 minutes) compensate. A few, on subjects such as casting and representation, are full of the sort of worthy statements that are now a shade overfamiliar, but the behind-the-scenes pieces are well worth your time. The production designers, prosthetics and costume teams, props master and composer all get a chance to showcase their work, accompanied by treats like Doug Jones having his Saru face applied and time-lapse footage of the sets being built. These make you appreciate how much work goes into the show – especially an exhaustively detailed section on crafting Klingon clobber. A couple are episode-specific, like a cute look at the food stylists who loaded the Emperor’s dinner table.
A slightly clip-heavy overview (41 minutes) runs through the whole season, with writers and cast discussing every episode. Jason Isaacs is reliably entertaining – for example, declaring of his tight-fitting tunic, “I can’t fit a grape in without looking pregnant!”
Five episodes come with extended/deleted scenes (eight in all). By far the most substantial is a sequence from the finale (already revealed online) where Georgiou’s recruited by the shadowy Section 31. Nick Setchfield/Ian Berriman
The Kelpien ganglia which the Emperor gives Burnham to eat in episode 12 was actually made from vegan gelatine. Yum.