Category: Star Trek

As we have seen last season and continuing this season, DSC weaves its themes through most if not all of the episodes of the season. Last year I couldn’t peace it all together until long after the season was over. This year, I’m going to try to keep track of how the thematic elements are laid out in each episode.

There are two themes that are evident from the first episode “Brother,” and each have been described beforehand by the show runners. One is about family, and how the Discovery crew is gelling into a family. Pike will help with undo some of Lorca’s damage and help them become a more functional family. There is also the storyline of Sarek and Amanda’s family, and we see Spock meeting Michael for the first time, with hints of some family disfunction they will have to overcome. It’s not entirely clear yet what the ultimate theme will be.

The other major theme has to do with religious/spiritual faith and secular scientific thought. Burnham’s opening monologue lay’s the predicate: “We have always looked to the stars to discover who we are. A thousand centuries ago in Africa the Kahama Abathua tribe gathered to share a story: the tale of a girl who dug her hands in the wooded ash and threw it into the sky to create the Milky Way. And hidden there, a secret, buried among the eternal stars was a message, an enormous message in a bottle made of space and time, visible only to those whose hearts were open enough to receive it. When I first heard the story of the girl who made the stars, I was not ready to understand. I still don’t know if I am.”

The last idea there–about her not being ready to understand–promises that the season will be about her journey to that understanding. Also by starting with the African myth, the season hints that it is going to be about religion in a universal sense of the word, not limited to the Judeo-Christian sense, which the Abrahamic look of the Red Angels might imply.

Another quote is from Tilly to Stamets after he confessed that the ship feels haunted to him after the death of Culber: “I understand that this place may be haunted for you. But maybe it’s good haunted. Maybe living with ghosts and energies that are bigger than we are is why you love science.”

What is interesting to me is that both of these quotes imply religious faith but also invoke that faith as a motivation follow the ways of science. Burnham says the spiritual, mythic “message” is written in the scientific concepts of space and time. Tilly makes it explicit that spiritual forces reminds us there are forces “bigger than we are” is the same thing that motivates Stamets to be a scientist.

Is religion and science two sides of the same coin, both equally valid means of answering the big questions? Time will tell how far DSC will push this theme.

Theme 4: Faith vs. Fear

• When faced with fear of people or faith in people, chose faith

• Fear makes it easy to justify immoral behavior and reject core principles based on temporary circumstances

David Milch (of NYPD Blue and Deadwood fame) says there are only two basic emotions that motivate behavior: faith or fear. He (and his TV shows) advocate always striving to act from a position of faith not fear, by which he means it is wiser to believe in the core goodness of people and that the universe bends toward justice rather than believe everyone is out to get you and failure is inevitable. It’s not that bad things won’t happen, but living in a state of fear darkens your perception of reality and closes you off to human connection.

Milch credits the contemporary poet Hubert Selby Jr. for the idea, though it is one of those universal themes of literature, especially of the Judeo-Christian variety.   

Selby described it this way:

As I understand it, there are only two emotions a human being can experience—love or fear. And when you’re in a state of love, you can’t think of trying to get anything. You’re incapable of thinking that way. You just seem to experience the perfection of creation… So if I’m coming from anyplace else I’m coming from fear, and fear takes many, many, many forms to be effective. All kinds of forms. So, if I’m facing the demon of fear, love is always available, but what I have to do is be willing to surrender to it. Surrender … all those dreadful judgments that keep us in turmoil and ignorance and misery.

Sarek sums up this idea with a poetic logic: “For what greater source of peace exists than our ability to love our enemy. ” 

DSC’s overarching theme in Season 1 is that we must resist the fear mindset and chose faith–faith in people, in our principles, even in our enemies.

The first iteration of this theme is Burnham’s decision to fire first on the Klingons at the Binary Stars. This decision was driven by fear. She had just been nearly killed by the Torchbearer, which provoked flashbacks to her childhood traumas, which all began when the Klingons murdered her parents. Her repeated justification for mutinying to bring about the attack shows that she was convinced they were all in mortal danger: ”I’m trying to save you… all of you.” Whether she was right or not–and it is debatable–is besides the point. Her actions were driven by fear alone, and she only used the pretense of logic (ie the Vulcan Hello) to make her actions seem reasonable. Georgiou on the other hand was more level headed. She was prepared to fight, but she was not going to make any rash decisions based on fear. It is debatable whether Georgiou’s approach would have avoided a wider war, but that debate does not mean Burnham’s approach was right. By the end of the season Burnham came to openly admit that she was wrong.

In the Ripper arc, we see fear causing not only poor judgment but immoral decisions. We have already discussed in Theme 1 how Landry saw Ripper as a killing machine. She was not physically afraid of the Tardigrade but she did see it through the lens of its most terrifying actions. Unlike Burnham, she was incapable of having faith (or Selby’s definition of love) that Ripper might be more than that. Landry was acting on orders of Lorca who is motivated by fear in his core, as we will see. Saru made his immoral decision regarding the Tardigrade out of actual fear when he ordered Stamets to use the weakened Ripper to make spore jumps. It was not a physical fear, but fear of losing his place in his society: fear of being a bad captain, of not measuring up, of damaging his reputation and future career in Starfleet. Fear of failure in the face of judgment from your peers, superiors and yourself can be even more debilitating than a physical threat. As with the Burnham’s decisions at the Binary Stars, it is debatable whether risking the life of the Tardigrade to save the captain was the right command decision, but there is no doubt he made it for the wrong reasons. And just as Burnham eventually realizes she was wrong, so does Saru when he admits to himself, “I know what I did.” He realizes that his mission aims may have been achieved, but by making the decision he did, he has not measuring up to the decorated captains he was hoping to emulate.

The third iteration of the theme of fear is Lorca and the Terrans. Once in the Mirror Universe, Burnham is quick to sniff out their true nature and she narrates it for the rest of us. She describes the all-pervasive sense of fear: “I can’t rest here, not really. My eyes open and it’s like waking from the worst nightmare I can imagine. Even the light is different. The cosmos has lost its brilliance, and everywhere I turn is fear.”

She is not saying that she is afraid. She is describing an environment where fear and its corollary hate is the predominate mindset. The Mirror Universe is less about fear as an emotion that causes hairs to stand on end and threat ganglia to sprout, but how fear affects decision-making and how it is used as a weapon by people in power. It would be hard to argue life is a picnic for even the Humans living in the Terran empire, but they are kept in line by their leaders through a steady diet of fear of non-Humans. The Emperor can always say: you may quibble with my domestic policies, but what do you think the Klingons and Vulcans will do to you if I am gone? This is also why she tells Burnham “your people are dangerous.” The Emperor lives in fear of her own people, so ideas of equality and freedom are terrifying to her. And everyone else in the chain of command lives in fear of the knife in the back. For Terrans, fear is a way of life, a governing philosophy in the same way logic is for Vulcans. It is their chosen belief system that guides their actions.   

Not everyone in the Mirror Universe choses fear over faith. Mirror Voq is uncharacteristically magnanimous, even though Tyler tried to kill him. This is because the rebels have adopted a philosophy of faith and trust in opposition to the Terrans. This may seem counterintuitive but it is not. When facing an enemy there are two competing compulsions: to defeat them by being more like them, or to defeat them by being nothing like them–and more times than not the latter wins out. After mind-melding with Burnham, Mirror Sarek is amazed that a Human could have “a seemingly impossible depth of human compassion.” The rebels practice compassion because they know its value.  

Burnham also makes a strong case the value of faith over fear as a leadership tool. When she bucks up Tilly who must pretend to be Captain Killy in the Mirror Universe, she says, “Terran strength is born out of pure necessity because they live in constant fear, always looking for the next knife aimed at their back. Their strength is painted rust. It’s a facade.” She tells Tilly that true strength and security is formed through trusting bonds with people: “You have the strength of an entire crew that believes in you. Fortify yourself with our faith in you. That’s what a real captain does.” In other words, you will have more success commanding through faith than fear.

This brings us to the season’s grand finale: the plot to blow up Kronos. From a thematic perspective, the point of spending so much of the season in the Mirror Universe, and of having Terran characters present for 13 out of 15 episodes, was to pose this question: What would happen if the Federation willfully chose to become the Terran Empire? When the Federation Council, acting on fear, chose to allow the Emperor to destroy Kronos they set in motion a history and culture-altering chain of events. Had the genocide happened, there would be no going back to “Federation principles” because all future leaders would know those principles are flexible. It might take a generation or two, but the moral decay and corruption would eventually assimilate the entire Federation more thoroughly than the Borg could dream of. This is what Burnham and the Discovery crew saved them from.

Two powerful but quiet climaxes dramatize this point. The first is when Burnham confronts Cornwell over the plan. When she calls it genocide Conrwell says, “Terms of atrocity are convenient after the fact. The Klingons are on the verge of wiping out the Federation.” When Burnham replies, “You know it’s not who we are,” Conrwell gives a quick and clear-eyed answer: “It very soon will be. We do not have the luxury of principle.” This Starfleet Admiral has made peace with the devil’s bargain I laid out above. She knows the cost but has accepted it for the sake of survival. Then Burnham gives her coup de grace: “That is all we have, Admiral. A year ago I stood alone. I believed that our survival was more important than our principles. I was wrong. Do we need a mutiny today to prove who we are?”

The second understated climax is the bomb handoff Burnham facilitates between the Emperor and L’Rell. She hands L’Rell the detonator saying, “Use the fate of Kronos to bend them to your will. Preserve your civilization rather than watch it be destroyed.” L’Rell is awed by the act. She can only respond, “But I am no one.” A happy ending ensues. There are a couple valid criticisms you could make at this point: that Burnham was empowering L’Rell and giving up Federation leverage without any guarantee of ending the war; that the solution was too simple and anti-climactic. Yes it could have ended with a big DS9-style bat’leth fight in that cave. Yes there are nagging real-politic questions about giving a super weapon to a nobody fanatic. I am only arguing that the resolution was consistent with the thematic arc of the season. It was the type of story the writers were trying to tell: the ultimate demonstration of faith over fear. Star Trek is full of pat resolutions meant to punctuate a theme. This is another entry, and a successful one.

At a panel discussion on DSC’s feminism, Mary Wiseman commented on how refreshing it was that the three powerful women in that cave–Burnham, L’Rell and the Emperor–did not break out into a nasty catfight. She described Burnham’s act as a reflection of her “huge generosity of spirit” that was “not easy.” The name of the episode sums up the theme well: Will you take my hand? The question mark implies risk and vulnerability, but also the promise of connection.   

As they are saying goodbye, Tyler tells Burnham, “Your capacity to love literally saved my life.” Burnham’s capacity to chose love over fear also saved the Federation’s soul, and forged a bond with the Klingons that may lead to peace.

When I began this theme series, I noted that the themes of DSC were harder to parse because they did not get neatly summarized in a captain’s speech at the end of each episode. But by the end of the season Burnham takes on the mantle of all past Trek leads. Her speech is in her own unique voice: it’s quieter, less confident, but no less principled. The final episode of the season is book ended with a closing monologue that is Burnham’s speech to Starfleet Command. It concludes: “how do I defeat fear? The general’s answer: the only way to defat fear is to tell it no. No. We will not take shortcuts on the path to righteousness. No. We will not break the rules that protect us from our basest instincts. No. We will not allow desperation to destroy moral authority. I am guilty of all these things. Some say that in life there are no second chances. Experience tells me that this is true. But we can only look forward. We have to be torchbearers, casting the light so that we can see our path to lasting peace. We will continue exploring, discovering new words, new civilizations. Yes. That is the United Federation of Planets. Yes. That is Starfleet. Yes. That is who we are and who we will always be.”

More than most Trek speeches like this, be they from Kirk or Picard or Sisko or Janeway, we know precisely where Burnham’s wisdom came from. We saw what it took for her to earn it. This is because DSC’s writers place theme at the top of their storytelling priorities. Hopefully this will continue in future seasons as Burnham and her crew continue to explore–and discover–the human condition.  

Theme 3: Might vs. Right & Fate vs. Agency

Might does not make right, and belief that you are a Chosen One blinds you to the agency of others, or even your own.  

Star Trek: Discovery (DSC) is rife with commentary on the nature of political power and who gets to wield it. There is also a lot of talk about fate, with Lorca’s fortune cookies as a recurring symbol. What is going on here? Let’s see if we can pull these two threads together.

Lorca exemplifies the type of person who wields raw power with intentional lack of regard and compassion for others. The etymology of his first name, Gabriel, means ‘strong man.’ Jason Isaacs describes his character this way in a Buzzfeed interview: “[Lorca’s] a liar and a manipulator, and obviously thinks that might is right, and he thinks that he can get anyone to do what he wants.”

This is no mere commentary on Terran Empire political philosophy. It is inspired by current events. Isaacs collaborated with the writers to create a character that represents the nationalist/populist strongmen who are gaining followers and political power all around the world, including the United States. In an interview on the Season 1 Blu-ray Isaacs explains their motivation:  

There are many people who are out there who can passionately argue that the notion … people can work together, that there are harmonious solutions, diplomatic solutions to things, is fanciful and may be short lived. And we see a resurgence in politics around the world right now that one needs to be strong and one needs to dominate militarily, and that bullying is the right way to go, that this blip in human relations for the last 50 to 100 years has been just that, and we will return to might is right.

For Isaacs, putting this message out into the world was “one of the reasons to make the show.” Explaining that Star Trek has always been a socially conscious entertainment property, he says, “the only reason to do it again was to tell a story that has some modern resonance. It’s such a horribly, unbelievably decisive time.”

Some fans think that Lorca’s imitation of Trump was too on the nose–“Terrans need a leader who will preserve our way of life, our race … make the Empire glorious again.”–but Loca is a timeless archetype, which like it or not has also become a timely one. The character will feel relevant long after Trump is off the stage.   

The question of whether might makes right will never be a universally agreed upon proposition, human nature being what it is. But there are periods in history that cause the question to be asked–and answered–more loudly than in other periods. Just speaking of Isaacs’s British tradition, the principle that right makes might is one of the reasons King Arthur became a beloved English folk hero; his benevolent and ur-democratic tendencies were a welcome fantasy to a people living under a spate of more bad kings than good ones. Robin Hood was another example of right making might. He was popularized under a king who was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which finally enshrined into law the notion that what is right is dependent not upon the king’s guards but on a universal sense of fairness and dignity. These ideas reached their logical conclusion with the United States Constitution. And yet… we are now in a period where storytellers are again called upon to pose the question: should might make right; is that who we really want to be?  

As David Frum wrote recently about his debate with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon: “The cruel always believe the kind are weak. But human decency and goodness can also move human affairs. They will be felt. And today’s ‘populists’ will follow their predecessors into what President George W. Bush so aptly called ‘history’s graveyard of discarded lies.’”

These words, and many like them spilled across our newspapers, sound much like lines of dialogue in Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery. As the current political moment evolves (for good or ill) and we look back on Season 1, its “modern resonance” will only become more clear. We will look back–as we do on many episodes of TOS–and be grateful that Star Trek once again took a stand when it mattered. By killing off Lorca–the quintessential “bad king”–and allowing the Discovery crew to triumph, the show reminds us that might does not make right, and that “human decency and goodness can also move human affairs.”

But what about those fortune cookies?

People who put themselves on the might side of the Right-vs-Might equation tend to create all sorts of justifications for their power. They craft a narrative that explains why they got to the top of their society’s food chain when so many others did not. For those kings of England the story they told themselves and their people was that God literally handpicked them and their family to rule in His name. In the modern world, people who wield socio-economic power–say a business owner of a profitable fortune cookie company, like Lorca’s ancestor–tell themselves that they just worked harder and smarter than other people. While this may often be true, this narrative edits out certain privileges that may have been available to them and not others. It is seductive to hold the self image that you are special, unique, and chosen. It can also create negative consequences not just for those around you but also yourself.   

Lorca does not believe in God, but he does believe in an unseen, all-powerful force in the universe that continues to smile on him alone. Describing the ion storm that sent him to the prime universe, he says “It was physics working as the hand of destiny, my destiny.” When he is about to declare himself the new emperor, reflecting back on all the twists in his life that brought him to this moment, he declares, “Nothing that’s happened to me was an accident…. I’m living proof that fate is real.”

Isaacs says of Lorca: “He’s also a racial purist… everybody has a place, and there’s a natural hierarchy that needs to be respected.” If fate has decreed that he should be on top, that must mean that fate also wants everyone else at the bottom.  

The show does not endorse this view, of course. In fact, holding this view makes Lorca not only unsuccessful at his goals, but foolishly so. By believing he is destined to be emperor with Burnham at his side, and that it would be impossible for these things not to happen to him, he fails to foresee how Burnham will betray him. He does not see Georgiou’s blade until it’s sticking out of his chest.    

Burnham knows better. Earlier in the season, when Lorca muses about how fate brought them together, she corrects him: “Fate did not bring me here. You did.” When you are powerless in society, as she was when Lorca found her, you see things about how the power structures of society impact your life that people in power may not see, or don’t want to see. Burnham knows from experience that she is a cork bobbing in the ocean subject to powerful currents she cannot control. But she is not fatalistic about this. She knows that she has at least some agency, which with great effort, cunning and bravery, she can use to at least keep herself afloat in those currents and to steer in the direction she wants to go. 

The fact that Burnham is played by a woman and a person of color adds more of that “modern resonance” to this theme. People who look like Sonequa Martin-Green have no illusions about how on point they must be in order to get ahead in life, while some (many?) people who look like Jason Isaacs go through life without ever being fully aware of the large and small graces they have received that allowed them to get as far as they did.    

In an article about how DSC “was actually feminist all along” Casey Cipriani writes: “Lorca’s actions are decidedly misogynistic from the beginning. He essentially kidnapped Burnham from her prison transport because he was in a type of creepy, grooming, father-figure-turned-romantic sexual relationship with the Burnham from his universe. That he felt that he could simply take ownership of the Prime universe’s Burnham, groom her as well, and convince her to join his cause is a level of presumptuousness that only comes with extreme disregard for women’s own agency.”   

Despite this, Burnham’s craftiness and skill won the day over his blind self regard for his own power. If Lorca saw life as she did, and knew that you have to make your own fate, he might have been more careful and avoided dying in a mycelial fireball.  

In the end, the bowl of fortune cookies–the symbol of Lorca’s belief in fate, which allowed him to believe his might was always right–was vaporized by Cornwall’s phaser. Then the crew sat together around the conference table, and instead of waiting for some invisible force to guide them, they set about solving their problems on their own.

Theme 2: Perception vs. Identity (Nature vs Nurture)

Our perception of others shapes their identity for good or ill.

Shortly before Ripper rips apart Landry, Burnham tries to talk her out of seeing the Tardigrade as a hostile force that can be converted into a weapon: “You judge the creature by its appearance, and one single incident from its past. Nothing in its biology suggests it would attack, except in self-defense. Commander, this creature is an unknown alien. It can only be what it is, not what you want it to be.”

This question of how we see other people, and the consequences of that perspective on ourselves as well as the individual, is one that recurs throughout the season. The message takes the xenophobia theme of the season (see Theme 1) and applies it to a person-to-person context. It is relatively easy to not be racist against a whole group, but it can be harder to keep from projecting your preconceived notions and prejudices onto an individual in your space.

The writers pushed this theme one step further by showing how our perception of an individual can actually begin to shape their identity. Burnham is suggesting that the greater danger facing Ripper is not that it would be killed, but that it would become the killing machine Landry and Lorca wanted it to be, that its will would be broken and its nature permanently warped.

Later in the season, Tilly makes this point explicit when trying to convince Burnham to forgive Tyler:

When we were in the Terran universe I was reminded how much a person is shaped by their environment. And the only way to stop ourselves from becoming them is to understand the darkness within us and fight it. … [Tyler/Voq’s] crimes are reprehensible but Tyler is not the person who did that, at least not anymore. Tyler is something other, someone new. What we do now, the way that we treat him, that is who he will become. 

In other words, if we treat someone like a monster or a freak, they will soon begin to see themselves that way, and their behavior will change accordingly. Tilly is the one character on DSC who seems to be instinctually predisposed to this view of people. She is instrumental in freeing Ripper, and in rallying her crewmates to welcome Tyler back into the family. She also makes a similar speech to Saru about Stamets when it was believed Stamets killed Culber under the influence of the spores. Burnham has a harder time practicing this level of empathy when it comes to Tyler. When she rejects him, she says it is because when she looks into his eyes she sees Voq. She judges him based on “one single incident from his past,” albeit understandably since in that moment Voq tried to kill her. It is only after she observes him on Kronos interacting normally with other Klingons, and after he decides to stay with L’Rell, that she can tell Tyler she sees him for who he actually is.

Tyler’s reason for staying on Kronos is also an expression of this theme. He knows that Starfleet would treat him as a science experiment, a medical marvel or a freakshow. Despite Tilly’s best efforts, the one Starfleet officer he cares about has not only dumped him but denied the validity of his core identity. When he is in the Orion settlement, laughing and playing games with other Klingons, being accepted by them for who he is–a Human who can speak Klingon like “a dog who can waterski”–he begins to see himself as they see him. Because Tyler is clearly Human and knows things only Klingons would know (thanks to Voq’s memories) the other Klingons treat Tyler as the Klingon-Human hybrid that he is beginning to accept himself to be. Their acceptance helps him become himself. Tyler’s character arc was a mystery (some might argue a confusing mess) until the last episode of the season, when his identity finally became clear and compelling. Hopefully this character arc will be developed in Season 2.        

The perception theme is explored from a different angle in the relationship between Sarek and Burnham. She wants him to see her as his daughter, and he withholds that at first. In Lethe they have this exchange:   

Burnham: “Help me understand what you did. It could make us grow closer, not further apart. That’s what families do.”

Sarek: “Technically, we are not related.”

Burnham: “You can do better. But I won’t push you. We’ll have this conversation one day. Father.”

This is the first time that their relationship is described in such tight, familial terms. Sarek had described Burnham as “my ward,” and the fan community debated if she was legally adopted, fostered, or some other arrangement. There was a sense of cold, professional distance between them up to that point, one that Sarek was trying to maintain in that moment. By the end of the season, Sarek has a change of heart. He tells Burnham, “You are only human, as is your mother.” He means Amanda, and by extension if Amanda is his mother then he is Burnham’s father. This line was written as a counterpoint to the scene from Lethe, and it packs a punch. When I first heard the line I was disoriented because I assumed Sarek meant Burnham’s biological mother, who was killed. But then I realized if that is who he meant, he would have said “as were your parents.” By just mentioning Amanda, he is is acknowledging that both he and Amanda are Burnham’s parents. He does not say the word father, which she leveled almost as an accusation at the end of Lethe, but by pointedly not saying it he lays a heavy inference on the word. Logically, there is no way he believes Amanda is Burnham’s mother without also believing he is Burnham’s father.

Burnham longed to be viewed as Sarek’s daughter. As an orphan, it caused her pain that she was not a daughter to anyone. She was able to convince Sarek to look in her eyes and see not a ward but family, and thus some of that pain was taken away.

There are other examples of the power of perception, and how it can get you into trouble.

• Burnham perceived the Klingon ship at the Binary Stars as an imminent threat, based in part on her childhood trauma and her projection of the Vulcan experience onto the current situation. T’Kuvma went to the Binary Stars, and shot up that Starfleet satellite, precisely because he was counting on Starfleet officers to perceive him the way Burnham did and start the war that he wanted. Captain Georgiou, on the other hand, chose on principle to give the Klingons the benefit of the doubt. To do so meant a localized risk to her crew, but provided the best chance of avoiding a wider war.
• L’Rell and Cornwall were enemies but they succeeded in seeing one another as individuals. Cornwall tells her, “I do not subscribe to your ideals, but I feel as though you and I understand one another.” And L’Rell reciprocates, “T’Kuvma said Humans have no courage, on this he was wrong.” By not allowing their strong feelings about the war to keep them from engaging with one another as people, their relationship paved the way to ending the war.
• Burnham fails to clearly see Emperor Georgiou through of the memories of her former captain; only after she starts masquerading of Captain Georgiou does she admit that she sees her for the evil person she really is. We will see if Georgiou loses those evil ways after living in the Federation, and being perceived as the good-hearted captain. Or will Section 31 foster her Terran dark worldview? This is another story arc that may develop in Season 2.    
• The symbolism of the Terran eye sensitivity, which literally keeps them in the dark and in a perpetual state of staring out through the darkness. Is that the reason the Terran species branched off on such a different historical path than their Human counterparts?    

In all these examples, DCS is telling us that nurture matters so much more than nature in shaping a person’s identity. And that we all have the power to nurture others in a positive way by letting go of our preconceived notions about them and seeing them with generosity of spirit.  

A Star Trek’s prime directive is to tell a good story that has something to say about the human condition or the state of today’s society. Star Trek: Discovery (DSC) Season 1 has accepted that challenge more than any recent Trek series since DS9. Unlike all previous Treks, which were limited to 42 minute morality tales, DSC has a much wider canvas. Like some “prestige” modern serialized TV shows, DSC’s themes are complex and woven throughout all the of episodes in subtle ways. This theme series will pull the threads together so we can better understand exactly what DSC is trying to say in its first season. I count four primary themes, and will analyze each one in a blog post.    

1. Xenophobia vs. Inclusion
2. Perception vs. Identity (Nature vs. Nurture)
3. Might vs. Right & Fate vs. Agency
4. Faith vs. Fear

Theme 1: Xenophobia vs. Inclusion

• Fear of other cultures is a poisonous ideology that can be easy to succumb to, but lasting security comes from inclusion.
• It is easier to accept inclusion with outsiders only after members of a society have achieved unity.   

Let’s review all the cases where DSC Season 1 depicted xenophobia or bigotry and the struggle to overcome that with the ideal of inclusion. The problem of xenophobia is laid out in the first lines of the first episode by T’Kuvma: “They are coming. Atom by atom, they will coil around us and take all that we are.” This is textbook fear mongering from a fanatical bigot. The most notable thing about how it is handled in the two-part season opener is that T’Kuvma’s views are not commented upon within the episode in oldschool Trek moralizing fashion. The Klingon characters are allowed to spew their racism while the writers keep an anthropological distance, leading viewers to wonder if we are supposed to think T’Kuvma might have a point somewhere in all his speechifying. The Starfleet characters are set up merely as a contrast to this bigotry: being helpful to the bug-like aliens in the teaser; Burnham being awed by the beauty of the Klingon ship; Admiral Anderson not being able to even comprehend the Klingons’ murderous hatred even while his ship is being cleaved in two. It is not until the end of the season when a character finally declares, “T’Kuvma was an ignorant fool.” Because DSC is serialized, this season opener could not wrap up this theme in the final act with a captain’s speech like always happened in previous series. Instead it establishes a question: what happens when you use xenophobia as a tool to forge one type of unity (the Klingon houses) at the expense of the more expansive unity of peaceful coexistence with neighbors? By the end of the two-parter we don’t know exactly how the show will try to answer this question.

The theme is further developed in the next three episodes, although without the Klingons. The Ripper arc depicts the discovery and capture of the Tardigrade, the exploitation and near death of the creature to make the Spore Drive work, and Burnham’s insight about its true nature, which leads to her decision to set it free. The rest of the crew saw this sentient being as something to be feared, and once it was contained, as a mere animal that was expected to give its life to serve human needs. This view was prevalent over the three episodes, and even Saru succumbed to it. With the first five episodes of the series failing to take a firm moral stand on this theme right up until the last few minutes, it is no wonder that many fans were beginning to question whether DSC was ‘true Star Trek.’

But Burnham did take a stand. By putting herself in Ripper’s position, imagining how it thinks and feels, she practiced the one way to break the spell of xenophobia: empathy. Stamets sacrificing himself to save Ripper’s life is another important stand. When he injects himself with its DNA, making himself a little less Human, he shows that he does not share T’Kuvma’s fear of being changed “atom by atom” through unity with an alien, but that he embraces the opportunity.

What’s more, empathy and inclusivity wins the day: the ship’s mission is successful, and Ripper gets to go home. Everyone gets some of what they need.  

Once Ripper zips off to parts unknown, the xenophobia theme moves to Vulcan where we meet a member of an extremist group that believes Vulcans dilute their culture by being members of the Federation.

Speaking lines similar to T’kuvma, V’Latak says Sarek’s mission “does not reflect true Vulcan ideology,” and that his “fascination with humans can no longer be tolerated” because his “obsession” has blinded him to the fact that “Humans are inferior.” He calls the Federation a “failed experiment.” Like T’Kuvma, V’Latak martyrs himself for his cause. The episode shows that his views are commonly held by less fanatical Vulcans. As with the real world we all live in, there are strong political and social currents that inspire a minority to violence but cause many mainstream Vulcans to hold bigoted views of Humans. The Director of the Vulcan Expeditionary Group and others view Sarek as a threat because his family is a literal mixture of Human and Vulcan. He even calls it an “experiment,” which was V’Latak’s word for the Federation. Not a family, not a home of bonded people, but an ill-advised science project that should be shut down.       

In this episode, Sarek becomes a much more heroic Star Trek character than he already was. It is the narrative equivalent of a white man marrying a black woman during segregation, having an interracial child together, and then adopting a black daughter… and then being forced to chose how much he should lie to her to protect her from the pain of the bigotry being directed at them all… and then both of them being nearly killed by terrorists in two separate attacks years apart. We still do not know what motivated Sarek to build the type of family he did, but we know now how radical that decision was. And we know that Sarek is a strong believer in the power of unity and intermingling that the Federation exemplifies.

Here too unity is a strength, not a weakness. Burnham explains that she “shares part of his Katra, his eternal life force.” They are intertwined at a level beyond DNA and smaller than atoms. Sarek’s psychic bond with Burnham saved her life when she was nearly killed as a girl, and she used it to save his life when the terrorists came for him.    

Once in the Mirror Universe, our crew is dropped into a xenophobic culture that would make the Klingons blush. Emperor Georgiou tells Burnham, “your people are dangerous” because of Federation values like “equality, freedom, cooperation.” Lorca is able to inspire a coup with the message: “I’ve watched for years as you let alien races spill over the borders and flourish in our backyard, and have the gall to cite rebellion. Terrans need a leader who will preserve our way of life, our race.”

Part of DSC’s message is that this worldview provides only the illusion of strength. Terrans may have firepower, but they do not have much in the way of security and stability or even operational success. They are too busy backstabbing one another and fomenting coups to be effective (see also the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).   

The same is true of the Klingons. T’Kuvma was killed almost immediately after he began his crusade, and his followers were easily co-opted by Kol. The only Klingon to succeed is L’Rell, and only because she bonded with Cornwall and cooperated with the Discovery crew. Landry is another example of someone whose inability to empathize drove her to make stupid and fatal mistakes.         

Burnham inherently understands that true strength and security will come from the trust that is built out of diversity and inclusion. When in the Mirror Universe she strives to understand how the Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites have been able to find unity and form what she calls a “coalition of hope” in such a dark place. She wants to take the answer back to her own universe and use it to help the Klingons forge peace with the Federation. So she risks the mission and the lives of her crew to meet with the Fire Wolf. What did she learn? Below are the key lines from their long exchange:  

Burnham to Fire Wolf: You lead this group of vastly different species… I need to know how, how have you come to compromise and embrace each other.

Fire Wolf: A Teran enemy is a Klingon friend.

Burnham: Does that union not contradict your drive to defend the Klingon honor at all cost?

Fire Wolf: Klingons stand together and strong. It is only with our own houses in order that we can begin to invite others in.

Burnham: Thank you for your wisdom.

The Fire Wolf expresses the political reality that a fractured society is going to be insecure in itself, suspicious of opposing groups, fearful. Such a society is in no mood to court the complex social dance with outsiders, having no way to predict how those interactions will exacerbate existing internal divisions. One contemporary example is fear that Hispanic and Latin immigrants will drive changes in “traditional” American society and benefit one political party over another. Fortunately in America we have the tradition of pluralism that allows different groups of people to tolerate one another just enough that we can live and work together. Our balanced electoral system allows us to feel secure enough that we adhere into one nation. Despite our divisions we are able to “stand together and strong” when we have to. The Federation is like this: a framework that allows vastly different species to unify around a common identity. As we have seen before, your species must itself be unified in order to join. And members who have joined or considered joining have sometimes complained about a homogenized effect the Federation has over a species–“a Homo Sapiens only club.” The pull of nationalism (or speciesism) will always be strong in people, whether you are a member of the European Union who feels your cultural heritage has been diluted in the name of abstract international principles, or a Vulcan who feels you people’s way of life is being eroded by proximity to people who think differently than you do. These are real concerns, but pro-Federation partisans like Burnham or Kirk or Picard would argue that the alternatives of retrenchment, isolation and conflict are worse.           

 The Fire Wolf is expressing a much more basic motivation that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but he still makes the point that all the Klingon houses had to come together before they reached that conclusion and opened their arms to other species. This insight is the reason Burnham gives L’Rell the power to unify the Klingon houses, because only then would there be a chance for lasting peace with the Federation. Time will tell if DSC’s Season 2 depicts the second phase of this theme: cooperation, mutual respect, and empathy between Humans and Klingons. Since the Klingon storyline will be led in part by a Human-Klingon hybrid, it is likely this theme will continue to be explored. But we already know that the Klingon unification that comes at the end of the DSC/TOS era–the evacuation of Kronos–does bring about lasting peace with the Federation.

True unity and lasting security can only come from acceptance, or if that’s too much, at least toleration of the differences between us. We must get our own house in order before we can join with others, and the benefits of doing so are vast, and sometimes life saving. This may not seem very profound, but in the current political environment where some of our leaders teach that empathy is weakness and trust of outsiders is a foolish, potentially fatal mistake, it is true to Star Trek’s tradition to provide a counter argument. DSC Season 1 makes a strong one.          

How does a sci-fi franchise that was originally conceived in the 1960s as an update of Buck Rogers continue to present itself in the 21st Century as… well, actual science-fiction, at least from a visual perspective? This is a question that every Star Trek producer has had to answer since at least the 1980s.

Last May, before she was fired as Star Trek: Dicovery‘s showrunner, Gretchen Berg asserted that the Discovery writers were determined that their show is “going to fit into the [existing, 1960s-established] timeline,” but from a visual perspective “we have to make sure it makes sense” by reflecting “the world we live in now” as opposed to the world when TOS was designed and filmed.  

At a September convention, some Discovery designers voiced similar sentiments.

• Production designer Tamara Deverell: “So, whereas we all love TOS and the carboard sets that they had. If we did that and offered that up to all of you, I think you would be sadly disappointed in this day and age.”
• Concept illustrator Ryan Dening: “The Enterprise really, before the movies, is a bunch of cardboard sets. So, there has to be come a point we can give you more advanced technology than you have in your living room, or I think you would be kind of bored.”

Now in fairness, the original series sets were not cardboard, and they were state-of-the-art for the day. So much so that NASA wrote to the production team to figure out how they programed the doors to slide open when an actor approached them (a union guy was yanking pullies behind the walls). There are quotes from actors in every era of the franchise (from 1967 to 1987 to 2017) that describe the sensation of walking onto the bridge set and feeling like it might actually take off and fly through space. This actually makes the production designers’ point for them: a Star Trek set needs to look and feel real relative to the standards of the current audience and not the audiences of the past.

Deverell said that the showrunners “owe it to the fans to keep in time with the technology that we have.” She was referring to film production tech like 3D printing, but it also applies to contemporary audience’s sense of what constitutes advanced technology.

In a previous post I explored why 90% of the Trek installments ever developed or filmed were either Continuations of previous installments or set in Gap Years. Only The Next Generation represented a Leap into Trek’s future. In this post I will explore another significant barrier to a creating a Leap Trek series that showrunners in 2018 will have to contend with: the technology and aesthetic of the show must be updated so it “makes sense” to contemporary viewers, and it must also account for our recent awareness of the pace of technological change.

In the twenty years between when Roddenberry created TOS and TNG, the average American household and business did not look that different. In the 80s, hot technologies were microwave ovens and VCRs. Personal Computers were rare, and not very impressive compared to the hand-held and talking computers imagined for Kirk’s Enterprise. Because of this lack of massive, foundation-shaking shifts in technological development, the technological shifts on TNG were equally mundane. Other than the holodeck, the only pieces of advanced technology on Picard’s Enterprise showcased in the series pilot were Geordie’s visor and the blinking dot that guided Riker through the corridors.  

   

In the twenty years between TNG and the development of Star Trek: Federation (a 2005 undeveloped Leap series by Bryan Singer and Geoffrey Throne ), technological shifts had become more pronounced with the advent of the Internet and smaller, more powerful computers. Still, it is telling that Federation was not going to depict a massive jump in technology even though it was set 600 years after TNG. Like the Enterprise-D in Encounter at Farpoint, the Federation Enterprise would have a few token upgrades like a “singularity engine” and cloaking device. Instead of blinking dots on corridor screens, there would be “CG environments for parts of the ship.” According to Memory Alpha, the stagnation premise “would allow for the new show to feature much of the same technology as had been depicted in Star Trek: The Next Generation, including old Federation ships.” Here again we see the fear of the Blank Page rearing its head. Even though the show was a Leap, it was not going to represent a top-to-bottom rethink of technology and the look of the franchise.

Since then, American society has lived through even more seismic shifts. When Thorne was writing his premise for Federation, Facebook was barely two years old; Twitter had not been launched; the iPhone had not been invented; handheld GPS devices were only just coming on the market, and self-driving cars were still science-fiction. As such, society had not yet undergone the changes we have experienced since: social networks were not driving the important conversations of the day; every interaction could not be recorded for posterity; people were not addicted to their screens; elections could not be hacked… (Ever noticed there is no social media in the Star Trek universe?)

So if in the next few years the next group of showrunners or film makers decide to set their Trek far in Trek’s future, they will have to contend with two wicked Blank Page problems: 1) They will have to envision a sci-fi aesthetic that will “make sense” in the average household of the 2020s, filled as they will be with screens, VR holograms, talking coffee pots, and a self-driving car in the driveway; 2) They will have to envision how much TNG-style technology would have advanced during the decades of the Leap based on what “makes sense” according to the audience’s expectations for how fast technology evolves.    

   

Consider just one design question: the Starfleet issue Type-II Phaser. In the 80s, Roddenberry updated the pistol shape of TOS to the cobra shape for TNG. Next time, it will not be a question of what a phaser should look like one hundred or six hundred years after Riker wielded one while leading one of his many Away Teams. It will be this: does it even make sense for a human to have to lift a phaser from his or her holster, aim it and press the trigger button to remove an obstacle or incapacitate an enemy, when a piece of wearable tech or floating drone could do that more efficiently? Which begs another question: does it even make sense to send humans down to a strange new world on an away mission when a ship from orbit or a floating drone should be able to solve all the mysteries that Away Teams tend to find on such planets? Which begs another question: what does exploring strange new worlds even mean to an organization that will have been at it for half a millennium, using ships that can rip the fabric of space, time and the multiverse, that are run by AI, with the potential to be crewed by androids and sentient holograms? Will it make sense to have a helmsman sitting in a chair pressing buttons to steer the ship when the viewer might not even need to drive her own car? Do you even need a captain sitting on the bridge of that ship? Do you even need the ship?    

There are answers to these questions, certainly. But writers will have to dream them up and so many more, and devote minutes of dead-weight exposition to explaining them–all with no guarantee that longtime fans would accept it or that casual viewers would sit through it.

The answers are going to result in a sci-fi show that won’t much resemble the Star Trek people know. We could not fault these writers for thinking that it might be easier to invent an entirely new sci-fi franchise, because they would effectively have done this by setting their story hundreds of years post-TNG. This is one reason why Trek writers have chosen the safer path of setting their installment in a Gap Year, where they knew that the audience could tune in and immediately understand the rules of their story world.

That said, a vocal contingent of fandom wants the franchise to break new ground, explore Trek’s future and stay away from its Gap Years. What is the outcome of this dilemma? I forsee three possibilities.

One is that Trek will remain telling stories set in its own past. The expected look of Trek will become a kind of retro aesthetic (much like Star Wars has for itself) with phaser pistols, communicators, captain’s chairs in the middle of bridges that Roger Ebert infamously said (about the 1701-E) looked like a shopping mall security office. The backdrop will be familiar and thus free the writers to focus on characters and themes that are relevant to contemporary audiences. This is the path the DSC writers have chosen.   

Another possibility is that some enterprising writer, unafraid of the Blank Page, will chose to do the hard work and update Starfleet for the 26th Century or the Third Millennium or whenever. The show would look very strange, like something from another sci-fi franchise, but it could be familiar in other ways with Trekian themes, morality tales, and dynamic characters.   

Or, because the first option will becomes tiresome, stale and unmarketable, and the second will seem unappealing, risky, and a pointless waste of creative energy, the Trek franchise simply fades away, supplanted by a new space exploration franchise.     

We are a long way from the third option. But there are durable reasons Trek writers keep choosing the first over the second. The Blank Page is a powerful motivator to stick with the familiar.