This week, Star Trek: Discovery kicked off its final season with a daring journey—one with intimate ties to a traditional Star Trek: The Next Generation story no different present within the franchise has dared to comply with up on. In doing so, it’s opening up the sorts of alternatives that solely Discovery actually can—however it requires a fragile balancing act within the course of.
It’s becoming that Discovery’s fifth season premiere opened on the week of what’s often known as First Contact Day to Star Trek followers. Slightly below 4 a long time from at the moment, through the occasions of, effectively, Star Trek: First Contact, humankind meets its first alien civilization within the Vulcans, and finds itself thrust right into a a lot larger galaxy than it may have ever imagined after years of devastating nuclear battle. What higher reveal then, that Discovery’s final season will construct itself across the thriller of the final word first contact—a chase for the alien civilization that kickstarted humanoid life throughout the galaxy within the first place?
That is the twist Michael Burnham discovers on the climax of Discovery season 5’s first episode, “Crimson Directive.” The mysterious mission she’s been saved in the dead of night about all episode, racing after mysterious pirates and a centuries-old Romulan puzzlebox, entails a species now dubbed “The Progenitors,” an historic precursor civilization that first turned identified to Starfleet and different galactic societies through the Subsequent Technology season six episode, “The Chase”.
It’s an episode with fascinating parallels to the season-arching narrative Discovery needs to exit on, although it’s an journey in only one hour of TV as a substitute of an entire season. After crossing paths along with his previous archaeology professor, Captain Picard finds himself on a treasure hunt throughout the galaxy, with rival factions within the Klingons, Cardassians, and finally the Romulans (resulting in Discovery’s method in, fictional centuries and precise a long time later), after it’s found that the professor had found a secret that would both bind the entire of galactic civilization collectively—or shatter it to items, simply as Burnham is warned of her personal mission. Whereas his rivals imagine they’re on the hunt of an almighty weapon, finally what Picard and the opposite powers at play uncover on Vilmor II is fact, and information.
A holographic message from a bald, humanoid being—performed fantastically such a short while by Salome Jens, who would go on to play the same wanting however altogether extra horrifying Star Trek alien in her function because the Feminine Changeling heading the Dominion’s invasion of the Alpha Quadrant in Deep House 9—reveals that her species, lengthy useless, advanced too quickly to fulfill comparable sentient life within the galaxy. So, within the hopes of spreading their legacy throughout the celebrities, they seeded life of their picture—bipedal, humanoid, smooth-skinned, and (for essentially the most half) hairless—throughout the galaxy, and left clues in order that at some point when that life advanced and took to the celebrities as that they had, they might uncover their shared origin, and achieve this collectively.
“The Chase” concludes on an optimistic, however non-committal word, despite the gravity of its reveal that intelligence design doesn’t simply exist in Star Trek, however is each a enjoyable metatextual reply to why most aliens within the franchise conveniently appear like people in numerous shade palettes and with extraneous latex bits, and likewise a chunk of worldbuilding that essentially reshapes its complete universe. Whereas the Klingons and Cardassians, who’d assumed they had been looking for energy and know-how, are disgusted by the considered widespread ancestry, Captain Picard and his Romulan counterpart specific that the revelation may at some point carry peace—not simply between their very own civilizations, however throughout your entire galaxy.
Star Trek promptly by no means went there once more, boldly or in any other case.
There have been Star Trek tales since that study the evolution of life throughout its universe—like Voyager’s fascinating “Distant Origin,” the place a scientist from a Delta quadrant species known as the Voth discovers they’re descended from Earth’s dinosaurs—however it took three a long time for the franchise to choose up immediately the place “The Chase” left issues off as Discovery did this week. It’s already expanded upon the episode, giving the alien species an alternate title within the “Progenitors,” in addition to the revelation from Michael’s quest that they didn’t simply go away behind their information, however parts of the particular know-how they used to form life after the decline of their civilization… know-how that sure, now, because the Klingons and Cardassians dreamed of in “The Chase,” may very well be weaponized in sure fingers.
It’s already fascinating that Discovery would take what was, effectively, a discovery of data, and switch it right into a extra tangible, galaxy-threatening object. Nevertheless it’s additionally fascinating in what Star Trek says about itself solely simply choosing up on the potential of “The Chase” now, not simply when it comes to the precise, literal a long time its been since that TNG episode, however in choosing it up in Star Trek: Discovery, a sequence now set within the furthest level of time any sequence of the present has recurrently taken place in, the thirty second century. We already know that the Progenitors’ dream of unity amongst its myriad descendants has not occurred—simply 4 years after “The Chase,” the Alpha Quadrant is torn aside with Salome Jens’ return because the Feminine Changeling, and together with her the beginning of the Dominion War. We all know additional nonetheless that, by the point Burnham and her crew have jettisoned themselves into the thirty second century, the galaxy isn’t any extra united that in was of their unique time—if something, it’s extra divided than it had been in centuries, the Federation and Starfleet shattered into disparate items by the influence of “The Burn” and the diminishment of warp journey explored in Discovery season three.
Star Trek is perpetually within the technique of progress towards the utopia it’s at all times maintained it has attained within the first place—always challenging its ideals to strengthen them, and difficult them by means of battle and division. Nevertheless it says so much that 30 years in the past the franchise laid out the final word pathway to peace, and that utopic intention throughout the celebrities, after which merely… didn’t contact it once more till now.
And but, maybe it’s good that it’s Star Trek: Discovery that’s determined to choose up the items. Time will inform simply what occurs in Michael and her crew’s journey throughout the galaxy to seek out all of the puzzle items they want, and simply what form this Progenitor know-how will finally take. However Star Trek: Discovery has, throughout its lifetime, at all times championed the facility of connection—on particular person and galactic scales—within the face of adversity, and are available out on prime time and time once more. In season four, Captain Burnham already achieved the seeming impossibility of peaceable first contact with an extragalactic race not like something the shared-ancestry siblings of Star Trek’s galaxy had ever actually identified earlier than. After that, exploring the untouched legacy of one in all The Subsequent Technology’s most fascinating episodes—and maybe discovering a option to make that energy of connection actually tangible throughout its universe—is certainly one thing that may very well be on the playing cards. For a present that has pushed Star Trek’s continuity further and further forward throughout its life, doing so could be a becoming achievement to exit on.
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