Star Trek: Discovery

The sixth Star Trek live-action series and the one that marks the franchise's return to television, Star Trek: Discovery focuses on the adventures of the science vessel USS Discovery, equipped with an experimental method of FTL travel known as the "spore drive". It also returned the action to the Prime Timeline, roughly ten years before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series.

Massively mould-breaking by Trek standards, Discovery quickly set itself apart from its predecessors. Rather than focusing on the command crew in general, the show focuses on Science Officer Micheal Burnham, a human raised as Spock's adoptive elder sister, and eschewed the usual Monster of the Week set-up for season long Myth Arcs.

The first season, set in 2256-57, focused on the crew navigating the latest Federation-Klingon war. The second, which picked up right where its predecessor had left off, saw the Discovery placed under the temporary command of Captain Christopher Pike to investigate a series of bizarre space/time anomalies that popped up across the galaxy with some relation to a "Red Angel".

The third season then broke the mould even further by taking Discovery to the 32nd century into a Bad Future where a phenomenon called "The Burn" ripped through the galaxy and massively reduced the scope of The Federation.

The show first aired in 2017, streaming on CBS All Access in USA, Space Channel and Crave in Canada and Netflix everywhere else.

Tropes used in Star Trek: Discovery include:

• 2-D Space: Averted for once in Star Trek. The Discovery clearly drops down when she uses her spore drive and battles involve them using three dimensions.
• After the End: Season 3 takes place in 3189 after "The Burn" detonated all dilithium in the galaxy, savagely curtailing the scope of the Federation.
• Bury Your Gays: After the show got great praise for featuring a gay couple, Dr. Culber gets Neck Snapped by Tyler. He comes Back From the Dead in Season 2.
• The Bus Came Back: The Guardian of Forever returns in the "Terra Firma" two-parter.
• Character Development: Of all characters, the Guardian of Forever has become a more helpful and extraverted character than back in TOS.
• Cosmetically Advanced Prequel: The USS Discovery looks far more advanced than the Enterprise-E despite being built only a decade or so after the original Enterprise. The show actually justifies this by:
  • The Discovery, unlike the Enterprise, operates within Starfleet space and can afford to stop off at starbases every now and then. The Enterprise has to opt for Boring but Practical technology that can be easily repaired only with the ship's onboard resources with those deep space missions meaning that Constitution-class vessels often miss out on the fleet wide upgrades. Likewise, the show establishes that Christopher Pike is a big fan of Boring but Practical and he himself will be promoted to a fleet captain which would likely give him the final word in which tech goes into the ships.
  • Discovery is a science ship, so it's testing out new technologies while also even developing some new ones.
  • Some of the Discovery‍'‍s technology, like its ship wide universal translators or holographic communicators, hasn't been fully perfected yet and their glitches made them so impractical on a day to day basis that they were shelved until the 24th century.
• Dark Is Evil: Introduces one biological difference between Terrans and humans. Terrans are more photosensitive and can be Weakened by the Light. Like Captain Lorca.
• Darker and Edgier: Quite a bit darker than its predecessors. It's much Bloodier and Gorier with many a Cruel and Unusual Death, not shying away from the fact that War Is Hell and that space is an incredibly hostile environment where it is so easy to die.
• Denser and Wackier: Zig-zagged. As a result of increasing understanding of the realities of space travel, the show's science aspects are much more grounded than prior Trek and feature designs more rooted in contemporary theories for space. But there's also the mycelial network and the space tardigrade which are out there even for Trek.
• Die Hard on an X: "There Is A Tide..."
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: The mycelial network that powers the spore drive thins out at the edge of the Milky Way, preventing the trivialization of extragalactic travel.
• Early Installment Weirdness:
  • In Season 1, Saru describes Kaminar as a "dog eats dog" type of place. Season 2 introduces a very clear Fantastic Caste System.
  • Season 1 also suggested that Discovery was a Section 31 ship before Season 2 shows that the ship isn't associated with the organization.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Sphere. It's a massive sphere that's been around for Q knows how long, can pull ships out of warp and hold them and has data regarding just about everything in the galaxy.
• Eternal English: On a societal scale. Even after nine hundred years, there's no distinction between the Federation of the 23rd and 32nd centuries.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: Averted. The crew of the Discovery consider the Mirror Universe to be just as "real" as the Prime Timeline. The Terrans consider their world to be real and dismiss the Prime Timeline as nothing.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Said in the pilot. Micheal's trauma; the colony she lived at being razed by Klingons when she was eight; does not grant her the right to mutiny, assume the Klingons' motivations, and open fire on their fleet. In fairness, the Klingons were going to fire, just not for the reasons that Micheal assumed.
• Hope Springs Eternal: Arguably the main point of the show. No obstacle cannot be overcome when Starfleet stays true to itself.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: At the end of Season 2, after Discovery jumps into the future, the crew of the Enterprise are instructed to never mention the Discovery or her crew. The first season of Spin-Off Strange New Worlds shows just how through they were in scrubbing the logs.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Discovery with its spore drive. It can move anywhere in the galaxy, but it's still only a science vessel. If it goes up against a warship in a straight fight, it will find its shields collapsing very quickly.
• Mirror Universe: Discovery is accidentally sent to it in ""Into the Forest I Go" and return home in "What's Past Is Prologue". In the interim, they found that Lorca was Terran and brought back with them the Terran counterpart of Georgiou. By the 32nd century though, the Prime and Mirror Universes have drifted too far apart to allow for crossovers.
• Mysterious Past: Much of the first season has the looming shadow that something is not quite right with Captain Gabriel Lorca. It's seemingly answered by the revelation that he had Survivor Guilt from being the Sole Survivor of his previous ship before the Reveal that he's from the Mirror Universe.
• Science Hero: The Discovery is a science ship.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Sphere. It dies at the end of its debut episode, "An Obol for Charon", but the knowledge it imparts onto Discovery drives the plot of Season 2 and necessitates the change in setting for the third season.
• Starfish Aliens:
  • Ripper is implied to be very intelligent, with Micheal thinking that its brain would put Starfleet supercomputers to shame. But the fact that the space tardigrades are so fundamentally different to your basic humanoid means that it comes off as a primitive, violent animal to Starfleet.
  • Species 10-C. A species of giant jellyfish-like creatures, with bones, who live in the upper layers of gas giants and, while not quite a Hive Mind, are all linked and don't see themselves as individuals. They communicate by bioluminescence and the release of pheromones.
• Reconstruction:
  • Despite its Darker and Edgier tone, every season ends with an affirmation of the values of Star Trek, pointedly saying that the ends do not justify the means and compromising morals for a victory is no victory at all.
  • Season 4 reconstructs Sufficiently Advanced Alien. While such aliens usually aren't thought of after the episode they debuted in, the 10-C is presented as being akin to gods to the Federation, having technology that no one can hope to match and a frightening Blue and Orange Morality.
• Retool: After an intensely Darker and Edgier first season that had very little in common with prior Trek, Season 2 had much more overt homages to Star Trek: The Original Series before Season 3 moves the action to the 32nd century.
• Technology Marches On: The 32nd century breaks the trend of the Star Trek by showing advancements to warp and transporter technology.
• Those Were Only Their Scouts: The Dark Matter Anomaly. It's Species 10-C's mining tool. This is the very reason that the Federation refuses to take up arms against the 10-C. If a physics defying, solar system eating wormhole is the 10-C's equivalent to an automated mining probe, what must their weapons look like?
• Vestigial Empire:
  • The Klingon Empire was heading this way in the first season. T'Kuvma's war was all about averting this and reunify the Empire.
  • The Federation in Season 3. After the Burn, several member worlds, including Earth, have left to fix themselves up.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Klingons are conspicuously absent in the 32nd century.
• What You Are in the Dark: This is hinted at a bit in Season 1. When the Federation had its back pushed against the wall by the Klingon War, a lot of its morals were pushed to the back-burner.