Discovery is the Star Trek we deserve

Going darker than any Star Trek has gone before

By the time I’m writing this, only the rst three episodes of

Star Trek: Discovery have aired. But it’s clear that this is a Trek with its own distinctive personality, and boy, is it darker than any Trek that has come before.

For one, our lead protaganist Michael Burnham (Sonequa MartinGreen) has to grapple with PTSD over a rash mistake that cost thousands of her fellow officers their lives.

And in stark contrast with previous Star Treks, where eet captains could be counted on to be moral exemplars, the captain of the USS Discovery, Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), appears to be slightly unhinged. In one scene, he chillingly declares to Burnham that when it comes to rules, “Universal law is for lackeys, context is for kings.”

This is clearly not Kirk’s

Enterprise, yet perhaps Discovery is the Star Trek we deserve, but not the one we need right now. The sheer optimism of a series like The Next

Generation feels too far away in 2017, amid worrying tensions of climate change, isolationism and random acts of terror. And yet, hope has always been Star

Trek’s gift to popular culture. The series’ signature is unwaveringly optimistic; that no matter how bleak the times become, humanity overcomes its worst instincts to create a future of inclusion, exploration, and discovery.

Will Discovery be the Trek that permanently plunges the series into darkness, or will it nd a way back to provide hope for the future again? Right now, your guess is as good as mine, but either way, it’s worth watching to nd out.