Star Trek: Discovery

Star Trek: Discovery, or DISCO, is a NuTrek show better known by its PCW aliases of Star Trek: Disgracery or STD. It is created by Alex Kurtzman and is streaming on Paramount Plus. It is an extremely woke show which features a The Bestest Evar character named Michael Burnham, who just so happens to be Spock's SISTER (who we never heard about before) and how she solves all the problems in the UNIVERSE!

## General Storyline

Each season of Discovery follows a similar pattern. Like Enterprise season 3 but unlike most of the preceding Star Trek, it it serialized and features each season as its own arc, rather than being episodic. Each season has the pattern of having both a mystery box and some central conflict which must be resolved in the process of solving what the mystery box is. The mystery box likely comes from the fact that Alex Kurtzman learned it from JJ Abrams when they were working on the Star Trek movies together. As an example, the main conflict in ENT season 3 is in finding and consulting with the Xindi to stop them from destroying Earth, and the mystery box are the mysterious spheres that create the Delphic Expanse that the Enterprise must investigate in the meantime.

The show, being a prequel, also contains a number of canon and continuity violations with later shows, but the writers should have expected it trying to set it so close to TOS (10 years before approximately). It was revealed they were going to set it in 2500s which would work with canon, and they would not have to change ANYTHING, but instead they chose to set it in this century just so they could make MICHAEL the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE by being SPOCKS SISTER! The show also struggles because instead of the more mature debates and dicussions we get in old star trek, we get soap opera moments where the characters talk about their FEELINGS! The Discovery episode don't end until MICHAEL IS CRYING!

The main difference, however, is that Star Trek: Discovery, unlike all ST shows before it, is NOT an ensemble cast. Instead, almost every episode focuses on MICHAEL and she's the center of attention at all times! We don't even learn the names of some of the bridge crew until season 3, and the one episode in which it looks like they will flesh out a character (the android-esque Airiam) she dies at the end of the very same episode so it can go right back to the Michael Burnham show!

## The Show

In Season 1, we are introduced to Michael, and she becomes a MUTINEER! There's no way to redeem her for that right? Yes, she gets arrested, but then she gets saved by the titular starship (which mind you doesn't even appear until the third episode, making the first two kind of like some sort of weird pilot/prequel). There they discover it runs on the power of mushrooms and can appear anywhere in the universe at once. This is the spore drive and, well, we've seen weirder things in Star Trek (giant ameoba from The Immunity Syndrome comes to mind), but the main problem is that they don't describe exactly how it works, nor why such an important technology hasn't been discovered or re-discovered or any of that. In any case, the mystery box this season is Captain Lorca, the mysterious captain of the Discovery, and the main conflict is the Klingon War which Michael had started with her treason. To investigate the mystery box the show takes a few episode detour into the Mirror Universe where it is revealed Lorca is from there, and then comes back to quickly resolve the Klingon War plot so that MICHAEL can save the day and be quickly forgiven for all her mutineering and warmongering and all that. Oh and by the way the Klingons should be called Kling-orcs because they look and act NOTHING like Klingons from either TOS or TNG but rather grotesque feral figures!

In Season 2, the mystery box is the red angel, which is creating mysterious bursts across the galaxy, and the main conflict is against Control, a section 31 rogue AI that needs to learn how to be the AI that it already is (and also perpetuates the "evil AI" stereotype in fiction that Star Trek had worked so hard to prevent like with Data and the Doctor on previous shows). It may surprise many to see the red angel is actually Michael's MOM, not her, which should be a relief- HA! No, it turns out that Michael's mom is not causing the red bursts and yes indeed the Red Angel is the universe's savior, MICHAEL HERSELF! In any case, thanks to being the Red Angel and having all sorts of time travel powers, Michael once again SAVES THE DAY this time from all SENTIENT LIFE IN THE GALAXY BEING DESTROYED! In so doing, she creates a portal to the 31st century where she hopes the show can avoid future canon violations. Oh and yeah Captain Pike and a bearded Spock (who by the way explicitly states HE LIKES SCIENCE if you didn't know that already about Spock) appear and are probably the best parts of the show although that isn't saying much (and are due to appear in the spinoff Strange New Worlds set after their appearance here).

In Season 3, the mystery box is what caused the mysterious event known as THE BURN which destroyed all active dilithium in the galaxy, and the main conflict is against a group called the Emerald Chain which is threatening the scattered civilizations of the galaxy. Michael meets her boyfriend (although to call him a male is a little lenient given she emasculates him) named Book and his Grumpy Cat named Grudge. We get to meet the crew of Discovery for the first time ever starting in the second episode which is the first one where our HERO Michael does not appear, although that is short lived because at the end of even that episode she arrives to SAVE THEM! In the end it turns out the cause of the Burn is actually a manboy who got his FEELINGS HURT! At the end the show clarifies the message that communication is important which of course must be shoehorned into there due to the surrounding real life circumstances of lockdowns during the airing of this season. The flow of the season is not helped by another, this time two episode, detour into the Mirror Universe, where we must feel pity and celebrate Emperor Georgiou and her FEELINGS in spite of the fact she is a MASS MURDERER TYRANT who killed MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, and we also see the cheesiest scene where The Guardian of Forever returns and uses his voice from TOS for extra cringe! And don't even get me started on the TARDIS style ship where the turbolift shaft is bigger on the inside than the whole entire ship!

Season 4 has a mystery box is due to be some stupid gravitational anomaly with a size of 5 light years. In Season 4, Michael Burnham is finally THA CAPTAIN yayyy! Season 4 does show some improvement over previous seasons (although Mikey is still the bestest evar) since they do try to tackle some topics with some level of maturity (such as Zora's rights as an AI and whether she can be trusted given she has full control over the ship, and whether the anomaly should be destroyed or peacefully investigated). The show was capped by the appearance of Stacey Abrams, poorly acting the role of Earth's President (subtle much?) clearly defining the political orientation of the show and thus excluding half of the show's potential audience immediately.

A leak from July 2021 suggested Season 4 would be the last season of Discovery but given Kurtzman's contract renewal this may no longer be the case. Indeed, in 2022 a fifth season of Discovery was announced, where we can expect a brand new galaxy ending threat which Mikey Spock will SAVE THE DAY from.

## Strange New Worlds

A spin-off of Discovery starting Anson Mount as Pike, springing from Season 2 of Discovery, was released known as Strange New Worlds. The show was quite divisive. Of course, the PCWs, who were already biased against NuTrek, did not like the show and called it things such as "Strange New Woke". The show did have some political messaging, although much less than Discovery. The show is mainly criticized for having similar inconsistent writing as Discovery and also for being very inconsistent with The Original Series. That said, the show does appear to be making at least some attempt to bring back the original spirit of Star Trek such as through its episodic nature.