Category: Star Trek

CBS has announced a new Star Trek series featuring Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. After the euphoric excitement of this news faded a bit, we were able to get excited all over again at the prospect of seeing other favorite Trek characters from the 24th Century. In this post I do some back of the envelope calculations about which of those characters we are likely to see again.   

Note that this is deep fanboy/girl speculation of the highest order. We have very little to go on, and as of now (late summer 2018) no scripts have been written. Here is literally all we know:

• It will be a TV series
• It will revolve around Picard
• Picard will be in a different place in his life, and in a different position, possibly not a captain 
• About 20 years will have passed since we last saw him in the last TNG film Star Trek: Nemesis.    

Going on those bare facts, I offer three ways to think about how other characters may or may not fit into the story of the new series. I have assigned a point system to the range of possibilities for each category. 

Interest Level:	Story Fit:	Story Burden:
High (3): Medium (2): Low (1):	Strong (3): Unclear (2): Weak (1):	Low (3): Medium (2): High (1):

First is Interest Level: how badly do we want to see the character again? This is obviously subjective. Some have little interest in even seeing Picard again because they like the way his arc ended, and they are comfortable with the man frozen in time in their head canon, perched in his chair on the Enterprise. While Wesley and Dr Pulaski are certainly someone’s favorite character, interest level in seeing them again are probably middling to low. I try to guide my rankings with what I perceive to be fandom conventional wisdom. Most of the TNG regulars are ranked as high interest.

Second is Story Fit: how well would a character fit into the story of a Picard-centric series? This question attempts to address the wish that no character should be dropped in just so we can see them again, and that their presence should make sense for the larger story and even enhance that story. It’s hard to guess how well Riker or Worf would do that since we do not know anything about the story yet. So I judge this based on additional questions: 1) is the character’s position in the Trek universe flexible enough that he or she could conceivably pop up wherever the series happens to be set?; 2) how close is the character to Picard’s life history; 3) what would their presence add to the story? While it may be fun for a fan to see Reg Barclay and LaForge in engineering of some ship, those cameos might come off as gimmicky.     

Third is a related but slightly different element, Story Burden: How hard would it be to resurrect the character based on where we last saw them (pun intended)? Some characters’ future story arc is a blank page, and so the writers would have no trouble filling in the details. But others were deposited by their previous writers into a narrative sweet spot of an end point, so new writers would have to try to honor that previous story arc and/or carefully dislodge them and set them on a new story arc. Other characters were left in a place of such finality that bringing them back would almost be like creating a new character. Solving for either situation will take up precious screen time with exposition and perhaps expensive flashbacks. Having to explain the plot of obscure episodes that aired over twenty-five years ago will risk confusing or losing the interest of new audience members–hence s story burden. 

By factoring these three elements together, we can get a sense of who is likely to return and who is not. There may be some surprises, so let’s get to it.   

Riker: 9/9

Interest Level: HIGH

Story Fit: STRONG

Story Burden: LOW

Riker is a natural choice for a major role in the Picard series in part because he is “out there” exploring space as captain of the Titan or some other ship. He need not be an admiral behind a desk. Born in 2335, he will be in his mid-sixties during the new series, which was Picard’s age when he was captain of the 1701-D. He will have been a captain for less time than Picard was captain of his first ship, the Stargazer. Picard served as a captain for 46 years that we know of. So it would make Riker’s putting off the chair all those years on TNG look absurd if he gave it up after only 20 years. 

More importantly, Riker knows Picard as well as anyone, and could provide insight on new developments in Picard’s life. It would be cool to see their relationship as friends and equals outside of the command structure of captain and first officer.  

Troi: 9/9

Interest Level: HIGH

Story Fit: STRONG

Story Burden: LOW

You probably can’t have Riker without Troi, since they are married and presumably serving on the same ship. Troi also served as Picard’s professional and personal confidant for the 15 years they served together. It’s easy to imagine that once they were no longer serving together on the same ship, the three of them became even closer friends.  

Crusher: 9/9

Interest Level: HIGH

Story Fit: STRONG

Story Burden: LOW

Crusher has known Picard for over fifty years. It would be natural for her to still be in his life since they share so much history, from the death of her first husband, to Picard helping raise her son Wesley, to their will-they-or-won’t-they romance. We know that she is one of the loves of his life. What we don’t know is if they ever get together (in the post-Nemesis novels they get married and have a child together). The Picard series will definitively answer this one way or the other unless she is not seen or mentioned, which seems unlikely. Will Crusher be depicted as his wife, as an old flame, or just an old friend? The answer will depend which option would better serve the larger story, and how much time they want to devote to her storyline.    

Worf: 9/9

Interest Level: HIGH

Story Fit: STRONG

Story Burden: LOW

Let’s assume that where Worf ended up at the close of DS9’s run, as the right hand of the chancellor of the Klingon Empire, is where he stayed–because it is the pitch perfect resolution to his entire story arc going back to early TNG. So an argument that Worf would fit well in a Picard story is predicated on the idea that some element of the Picard series will involve the Klingons–a pretty safe bet. The empire is vast, and Picard has some strong links to the Klingons, so it makes sense he would cross paths with them (and Worf) in his future adventures.     

LaForge: 7/9

Interest Level: MEDIUM

Story Fit: UNCLEAR

Story Burden: LOW

Unlike the others, the Geordie LaForge Memory Alpha entry doesn’t take that long to read. Most of what we know about his life is based on random bits of Geordie dialogue that were in service of someone else’s storyline and does not reveal much about his character (e.g., the fact that he survived a house fire as a child). When describing his personality, the best Memory Alpha could do was that “his outstanding characteristic was his adaptability to change and satisfaction with life. His sense of humor and affable nature remained strong, despite his growing responsibilities.” While there were many good Geordie episodes (“The Enemy”; “I, Borg”; “The Next Phase” to name only a few) these did not develop his character beyond that anodyne description. When the writers needed to depict future Geordie in “All Good Things” they had so little to go on that they made him a novelist, which had no basis in any previous episode. The best thing he gets to do in that timeline is make an in-joke about how awful it was to spew all that technobabble as chief engineer of the Enterprise.

If they choose to bring him back, the writers of the Picard series will hit a similar wall with the character: Who is Geordie 20 years after the Enterprise? Who was he when he on the Enterprise? If he’s going to play just another happy-go-lucky, competent Starfleet officer who helps Picard out on his adventure, maybe invent a new, more complex character for that role. For these reasons, I downgraded his ranks for interest level and story fit.          

Data: 6/9

Interest Level: HIGH

Story Fit: UNCLEAR  

Story Burden: HIGH

While Data is a beloved character, it would be difficult to bring him back for the Picard series. Story fit is one reason. The high interest in his character, combined with Brent Spiner’s acting chops, would bend the Picard storyline toward Data, or at least distract from it. In all four TNG movies Data received his own storyline that ran parallel to the Picard storyline, and so far this new series is billed as a Picard series, not the Picard & Data series.

Another complication is that Data’s presence would necessitate a detailed and likely technobabble-laden explanation to account for the fact that his physical body was completely destroyed in the last movie. Yes, his programming was downloaded into another Soong android, but that movie strongly implied that Data was dead, and the fact that his memories were preserved was just a sop to the the fans so they could pretend in their head canon that Data might return somehow. Actually resurrecting him would require some creative writing, which would distract from the main storyline.

As a side note: it was a mistake to kill Data, and would have been even if they found a more dramatically satisfying way to do it. One of the most interesting aspects of the character, which we first realized in “Time’s Arrow,” is his near immortality. It is possible that Data’s lifespan could last centuries if not thousands of years, with repairs, upgrades and replacements made along the way. Think of the perspective of such a being. We knew him as a “young man” who was still figuring out his programming and how to get along in the universe. To meet him again, twenty years later and over sixty years after being activated, he might have undergone a paradigm shift in his consciousness, making him a new and different character. I admit that I still hope we get to see this in the Picard series or a spin off season that features Data. We can all just agree to pretend that Data’s soul was transplanted in the new android’s body and then continue forgetting Nemesis ever happened. As for Brent Spiner’s age, it was always an easy explanation to say that Data has total control over his physical appearance and could make his synthetic flesh age with whatever peer group he joined. The only reason this idea was not floated, I presume, was that Spiner himself wanted a handy in-universe explanation to justify not wanting to keep playing the character. But that was years ago, and the quality CBS is offering is evident, and Stewart has agreed to come back, so… never say never.                        

Wesley: 4/9

Interest Level: MEDIUM

Story Fit: WEAK

Story Burden: HIGH

While some were fans of Wesley, including me, he was not part of the seven regulars and I doubt there is a huge fanbase clamoring to see him again. He would be an awkward presence in a Picard series because while he was part of Picard’s life, it was not a large part, especially compared to some other characters. And despite the scene of him in a Starfleet uniform at Riker and Troi’s wedding (which was cut from Nemesis), his story arc placed him on an extra-dimensional plane with the Traveller. It is unlikely that the CBS writers will want to devote precious airtime to revisiting those old TNG episodes just to fit in a Wesley cameo.

Guinan: 9/9

Interest Level: HIGH

Story Fit: STRONG

Story Burden: LOW

Guinan is a fan favorite, and audiences would love to see Whoopie Goldberg and Patrick Stewart perform together. If she popped up in the new series it would not feel intrusive because the character was designed to pop up in other character’s stories to offer sage advice and then slip away behind the bar. She and Picard are very close, with much shared history, it would be neat to see their relationship as Picard enters a new phase of his life. And if the CBS writers are looking to pepper in familiar faces without flirting with revival territory by bringing back some or all of the primary cast, Guinan is a natural choice.   

Q: 6/9

Interest Level: MEDIUM

Story Fit: UNCLEAR

Story Burden: MEDIUM

Q is also a fan favorite who has appeared in three of the five modern Trek series, and what fan would not love to see John de Lancie and Stewart banter with one another again? But his over-the-top personality may dampen some fan’s interest in seeing him on the new series. While Guinan can be an unobtrusive presence, Q certainly cannot. The character’s gravitational pull is so great that he can’t just show up for a cameo. When Q is in an episode it is a Q episode, and the writers may not want that for their Picard-focused storyline. Since he can literally appear anywhere and anytime, it’s certainly easy to bring him back. But writers will have to come up with an important reason for Q to flash back into Picard’s life, and that will have a large impact on the overall story.  

—

As a TNG fan since September 1987, I would eat up a TNG revival where all of these character were seen again. But I know that the artistry of the show would suffer from being over-stuffed with fan service. The new series promises to be an intimate character study of a great character staring down the last phase of a long life, and played by the best actor Trek has ever had. This is blessing enough for the fans. However, if the series is a success it could launch more seasons or offshoot miniseries where all of our favorite characters can have a chance to shine. The cards have been dealt and we fans are holding a strong hand. Sky’s the limit.

I’m not ready (yet) to speculate about Picard’s job title and when and why Troi should phone in. We’ll have over a year to do that. All I know is that I have been drifting off to sleep each night this week thinking about what old man Picard is up to these days. He’s sitting in his library at Chateau Picard sipping a glass of wine, looking up from his book every once in a while to watch the stars twinkling over his vineyard. He gives a thought to the stars he has visited, before turning back to whatever he is reading.

For those of us who don’t read the novels, Picard has been stuck in time. For me, not a big fan of the movies, that means my head canon stops at the poker table in All Good Things. There is not much life beyond that in my imagination. So this new series is a rare treat. It brings a beloved character back to life and pushes his story forward.

It’s also a rare opportunity in the history of the franchise: to have a main character depicted in the prime of his life, and then many years later, have the character developed and expanded upon closer to the end of his life. Kirk aged and evolved over the 6 TOS films, but he met his death pretty soon after that. He was past his prime but no old man (parallels to Kirk’s full arc and Picard’s will also need to be discussed, and hopefully the CBS writers will avoid the pitfalls of Kirk’s end). We saw Spock in his later, final years, but mainly in a guest staring role.

So I’ve been thinking about Picard the man, the kind of life he will be looking back on in this new series:

• He will be in his mid to late 90s
• He will have been working in space since he was 22, serving Starfleet for at least 56 years
• He will have been a starship captain since he was 28, serving on one ship, the Stargazer, for 22 years, until he was 50
• He will have captained the two Enterprises for at least 15 years, from age 59 to 74
• 20 years will have passed since we last saw him as captain of the Enterprise… and 28 years since that moment at the poker table.  

One of the many things Star Trek fans like to debate is the preferred setting and time period (and parallel dimension) writers should use to tell stories within the Star Trek universe. While some fans love stories set in the gap years between installments we have already consumed, others would prefer the franchise leap into the future.    

At the Vulture Festival in May, the now former Star Trek: Discovery co-showrunner Gretchen J. Berg said they “inherited the timeline” from the DSC’s creator and short-lived showrunner Bryan Fuller, but that she “loved the box” they were put in. She talked about how writers thrive when they are forced to operate within “boundaries and restrictions,” and how “overwhelming” it would have been to have to find a place for their show somewhere in the “entire universe” of Trek lore.

By stating that they “inherited the timeline” Berg is able to sidestep any debate about why the show is set ten years before the Original Series or whether that was a good idea. It is simply the reality of the show she was hired to write for. But it is clear that she appreciated Fuller’s choice of setting because, as a writer, it significantly reduced the amount of white space on the Blank Page CBS handed her.           

As nature abhors a vacuum, writers abhor the Blank Page. Especially TV writers. There are too many disparate demands and studio “notes” dictating what their writing must accomplish, not to mention the relentless pressure of production and filming deadlines. The task of creating a new TV show–from concept, to production design, to characters (and casting), to filmable scripts–must be overwhelming in ways that fans of the show cannot appreciate.    

Berg is not alone. Throughout the 52-year history of the franchise, many other Trek writers were similarly grateful that they did not have to reinvent their corner of the Trek universe from whole cloth. At every juncture, from the 1970s to the 2010s, Trek writers could have chosen any premise and any time period for their new Star Trek. What did they chose, and what do their choices tell us is likely to happen the next time Trek writers and producers are faced with the Blank Page.  

Sample Size: Leaps vs. Gap Years

Let’s look at the numbers and define some terms. After TOS, the franchise has had 18 installments that reached either the development stage or filming stage. For our purposes, let’s define an installment as any time a studio gave writers and producers the green light to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and create a new Star Trek property for film or television.

The time period settings of these installments fall into three categories. The most common is a Continuation, when the series takes place soon after or simultaneous with a previous installment. Then there is the Gap Year, when a series is set somewhere in Trek’s past. The least common installment is the Leap, when the series takes place far in the future relative to previous installments.     

• The Animated Series (TAS)–Continuation
• TOS Films–Continuation
• The Next Generation (TNG)–Leap
• TNG Films–Continuation
• Deep Space Nine (DS9)–Continuation
• Voyager (VOY)–Continuation
• Enterprise (ENT)–Gap Year
• Bad Robot Films–Gap Year
• Discovery (DSC)–Gap Year

Of the nine installments that were filmed and distributed–the six TV series and three film series–five were set in time periods that were Continuations of a prior installment. TAS presumably takes place during Kirk and crew’s original five-year mission, and the TOS Film Series beings some short number years after that. DS9 begins during TNG’s 6th season. The TNG Film Series and VOY begin within a year of TNG’s 7th season, when DS9 was in its 3rd season, and all three installments run concurrently with frequent character crossovers, visits to the same settings, and dual use of props and sets.   

Three of the nine installments were set in Trek’s Gap Years. ENT takes place a century before Kirk’s five-year mission; the Bad Robot series begins during Kirk and Spock’s childhood; DSC takes place a decade before the five-year mission.

That leaves TNG, which takes place about 80 years after TOS, as the only Trek installment that represents a Leap into the franchise’s future. Therefore, when Trek writers were faced with the choice between the Blank Page and a familiar frame, they chose the familiar 89% of the time.  

Choosing a Familiar Frame

Starting within a familiar frame exerts a powerful pull on the creative process, especially in sci-fi where the possibilities for every aspect of the show are limitless. When there are no limits, there are only infinite decisions the creators need to make. Decisions take time, energy and money to resolve. In TV and film, each decision faces the brutal math of production costs. Consider the benefits of some of Trek’s familiar frames.

When Michael Piller and Rick Berman set out to create DS9, they did not start with a Blank Page. Their premise of a space station at a stable wormhole between Bajor and Cardassia had already been developed and established over a handful of classic TNG episodes. Four of the seven lead characters had strong TNG ties: O’Brien had been on the 1701-D since TNG’s first episode; Kira was written as Ro Laren for much of DS9’s pre-production; Quark was a Ferengi, which was one of TNG’s original contributions to Trek’s pantheon of aliens; Sisko’s (and Jake’s) backstory was intricately tied to Picard. Similarly, VOY borrowed half of its premise–the Maquis crew–from storylines that had been developed on TNG and DS9.

Trek’s Gap Years are rife with opportunities for a familiar frame. Even before they wrote one script, the ENT writers knew from the start what a bulk of their stories would be: early interactions with the Klingons and Vulcans; the beginning of that TOS/TNG mode of exploration and familiar technology; the founding of the Federation.

All of these pre-existing plot threads and character elements offered the writers jumping off points and opportunities for creative synergy that would not be available to them if they had to dream up every element–new aliens, new locations, and new characters–from scratch.

Production design is another powerful motivator for showrunners to avoid the Blank Page. DS9’s alien station sets had to be designed from scratch, but their basic features and technology did not require radical rethinking of what we saw on TNG (holosuites instead of holodecks; ops instead of a bridge, etc). The Starfleet ships and tech on DS9 and VOY could be virtually identical to what the props department had in storage. All the ENT production designers had to do was smashkit the TOS Enterprise with circa 2000 nuclear subs and the International Space Station. With the Bad Robot movies and DSC, all there was to do was take TOS and TOS-Film era designs and update them with contemporary flourishes.  

Premise, setting, production design are all things that must be sweated out before the first scripts can be written. Choosing a familiar frame that is a Continuation or set in a Gap Year makes the process less daunting and, since millions of dollars are on the line, much less stressful for the showrunners.

The Undeveloped Treks

We see the same trend if we expand our sample size to Trek installments that achieved some development but never reached the production or filming phase. There are nine of these scattered throughout the franchise’s history. All but the last two listed below are archived as “undeveloped” on Memory Alpha: 

• Planet of the Titans–Continuation
• Phase II–Continuation
• The First Adventure (Starfleet Academy)–Gap Year
• IMAX–Continuation
• The Beginning–Gap Year
• Federation–Leap
• Final Frontier–Leap
• The CBS Meyer Trilogy–Gap Year
• The CBS Picard Series–Continuation

Four of these are Continuations. Planet of the Titans was to be the first motion picture with the TOS crew; Phase II was to be a TV series with most of the TOS crew, set on a refit Enterprise a few years after the first five-year mission; the 1990’s IMAX project would have focused on O’Brien and likely been set in the TNG/DS9 timeframe; the new Picard series will continue Picard’s story 20 years after his last appearance in Nemesis.

Another three were set in Gap Years. The Starfleet Academy concept was Harve Bennett’s idea for a second film series, and would have been set during the TOS crew’s Academy days. After the TNG Film Series concluded in 2002, The Beginning was Erik Jenderson’s idea to launch a third film series, set a century prior to TOS during the Earth-Romulan War. Finally, while we do not know much about Nick Meyer’s trilogy series for CBS All Access, we know it is set in a Gap Year because a significant aspect of the premise has been previously depicted in the at least one of the Trek film series.

Only two of the undeveloped installments represent Leaps. Final Frontier was an animated series set 149 years after the last TNG outing Star Trek: Nemesis (NEM). Federation was to be a live action series set in the year 3000, 621 years after NEM.  

That means only two live-action Trek installments have ever been conceived. What conclusions can we draw from this fact?

Setting TNG 80 years after TOS was a natural choice. Roddenberry and Berman wanted TNG to have the same premise as the original show but to also stand apart and succeed on its own. In the early years of TNG they were allergic to TOS callbacks. McCoy’s cameo in the pilot is the exception that proves the rule: his old man makeup made clear to fans that TNG was so far in the future that there would be no crossovers with familiar characters, and even if there were they would be virtually unrecognizable from the characters we knew and loved.

This Leap was also a no-brainer from a production design point of view. Twenty years had passed since TOS was designed, and now Roddenberry had more advanced technology and more budget to play with than he could have dreamed of in the 60s. So the 1701-D became bigger and sleeker; the trifecta of Starfleet tech–phasers, communicators and tricorders–became smaller and more user friendly. Everything was recognizable within the Trek aesthetic TOS had established, but all of it was updated in a believable way.         

Fast forward to 2006. With Star Trek: Federation, the writers wanted to explore themes around what happens when an advanced society succumbs to decadence. In their premise, the Federation has become complacent and corrupt; member worlds are breaking off and other species like the Ferengi are on the rise. According to one of the head writers, Geoffrey Thorne: “Utopia has occurred and everything has stagnated’ [….] I pictured a Federation that had hit its plateau and stayed there for three hundred years.” A new Enterprise is commissioned “to return the Federation to its goal of going boldly.” Setting their Trek show in the year 3000 just 6 years after Y2K, the writers were making clear that their declining Federation was an allegory for the United States.

Perhaps it was the writers’ commitment to these themes that made them less afraid of the Blank Page than other Trek writers. According to Memory Alpha, “Thorne’s series pitch document was twenty-five pages in length, detailing the era of the show, the eight primary characters, and outlines of the first four episodes [and] the Enterprise‘s new technology.”

It is reasonable for fans who long for post-Nemesis Trek to look to these two examples–TNG and Federation–and protest, “What’s so hard? These writers figured out how to do it, why can’t others?” This is a fair point. Just because most Trek writers choose not to Leap does not mean it is impossible. But the fact remains: most Trek writers stick with the familiar. 

While Star Trek: Discovery‘s spore drive and Mycelial network are universally praised as great sci-fi concepts, many fans are arguing that canon demands it be written out of the show and the sooner the better. If the spore drive was not available to Captain Kirk (and especially Captain Janeway) then it needs to be flushed down the memory hole before the prequel series gets too close to the eras we’ve already seen. No argument there. However, the spore drive must not, and I wager will not, be mothballed until the series is concluded. The unique way Discovery explores the Final Frontier is essential to the show.

Any Star Trek series has several main ingredients: dynamic characters; moral allegories; sci-fi whiz-bang. One essential element is the exploration of space, summed up by the tagline “the Final Frontier.” This evokes both an environment and an action. From a storytelling perspective, it is a combination of the setting and the plot of each episode. The means by which Star Trek crews explore space is more than just the backdrop for the episodes–it greatly effects the types of stories that can be told in the series. And each series does its exploring in a unique way. Let’s call this the Exploration Premise. Of all the Trek ingredients, this is the one that the franchises’ show runners keep reinventing with each series. Discovery‘s spore drive is only the latest example. 

The Exploration Premise was the same for The Original Series and Next Generation: the Enterprise uses its warp drive to hop from one star system to the next, sometimes in an unexplored region of space but usually relatively close to home. Each week they visit a gaseous anomaly or dying star or asteroid belt or strange new world. On both of these shows, the exploration happens in a completely random direction with no thread connecting one mission to the next. Oh sure, in-universe, the Enterprise’s mission orders probably adhere to some Starfleet strategic imperative blueprint, but this is never mentioned on screen, and I’ve never even thought about such a document until I wrote this sentence. This simple premise allows for the type of episodic stories those shows excel at telling.         

Deep Space Nine was the first spinoff to differentiate itself by changing it’s relationship to the Final Frontier. It kept the character templates, allegories and gadgets, but instead of warping into a random corner of the galaxy each week, it decided to spend the entire series exploring only one star system (Bajor) and it’s nearest neighbor (Cardasia). It further developed its own style of exploration with the use of the wormhole’s link to the distant side of the galaxy. This twin premise allowed for serialized stories that were more issues-driven and character-based, while the Gamma Quadrant depicted a more intense and sometimes terrifying sense of the unknown than TNG could in the familiar Alpha Quadrant.

Voyager went a step further and stranded the entire show across the distant Delta Quadrant. This allowed for stories about the danger and adventure of being alone in unexplored space without any hope of Starfleet support or resources. While the episodes were similar to TNG in that the Voyager explored different planets and nebulae, etc. each week, the viewer knew the direction of all these stories was pointed the same way: toward home.

Conversely, Enterprise‘s Exploration Premise was pointed in the opposite direction: branching out and away from Earth. Except since it was a prequel, the show depicted what it was like exploring nebulae and strange worlds for the first time. Tellingly for the purpose of this essay, even this premise was not deemed different or interesting enough compared to the previous shows. So the element of time travel was added to its version of exploration, in the form of the Temporal Cold War. The NX-01 could not travel through time, but other ships in the series could, and so did the characters, many times over.

When the time came for a 5th spinoff series, the Discovery show runners were going to have to come up with yet another new premise for exploring space and telling stories in the process–“a new way to fly.” In keeping with the fact that Discovery tends to Go For It! in all things, it equipped its ship with a spore drive than enables a Final Frontier trifecta: instantaneous travel to any point in the universe, travel to parallel universes, and time travel. Now that we’ve seen the first season, it is hard to imagine this show or any new Trek show plodding from one sector to the next at warp 5 or warp 8 or even warp 13. Watching the DISCO spin like a top and pop out of existence makes us realize what Trek’s producers intuited back in 1992: the TOS/TNG Exploration Premise had gone stale, and no new Trek–no matter what time period it is set in–should be locked into the same narrative framework that ran out of steam with the end of TNG’s run.

Beyond storytelling, there is another reason why the spore drive is an essential upgrade to the Exploration Premise. The act of spore jumping, and the limitless possibilities of this type of travel, opens the viewer’s mind to a sense of wonder and unknown possibility each week. Fifty and thirty years ago, TOS and TNG were able to do this simply by warping into planetary orbit each episode. But that kind of space travel came to feel routine in the same way Americans who were awestruck by the Apollo missions became bored by the space shuttle launches. In both cases, we needed a higher dosage of wonder.

TNG all but admitted this in its final episode, with the “All Good Things” Q Speech:

“Is that all this meant to you? Just another spatial anomaly, just another day at the office. We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons, and for one brief moment you did. For that one fraction of a second you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you–not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.”

Star Trek cannot merely tell us we are witnessing this unfold on our TVs, it has to show us with a mix of physical settings and plot events, hence the importance of continually revising the Exploration Premise. “All Good Things” accomplished this with a temporal anomaly that evolved backwards through time and linked Picard to three different phases of his life. DS9 took us inside a wormhole inhabited by beings who exist outside of linear time. Discovery shows us by taking us into the Mycelial Network, which is depicted like we are traveling along synapses of the Universe’s brain.

Since we are told and shown how this network connects all points in space and links all life, the show’s writers will not have any trouble making us believe we are experiencing Q’s “unknown possibilities of existence” on a regular basis. This is why, even though the spore drive cannot continue to operate during the other Trek time periods, it will and must continue to operate for the rest if Discovery‘s run. The Mycelial spores are this show’s most important characters.