We have been tracking some post-season three finale interviews (see here, here, and here) with the Star Trek: Discovery cast and crew, who have hints about what to expect in season four. Now executive producer/co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman and executive producer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi are offering more insights into what’s next for the show and what it’s like shooting during the era of COVID.
Saru’s choice in season four
Alex Kurtzman and Olatunde Osunsanmi were guests on the BlerdGurl podcast talking about the season three finale, but also offering some hints about what’s to come in season four of Discovery. Host Karama Horne was a bit concerned about Saru’s fate at the end of season three, but got some assurance from Alex Kurtzman:
Saru is definitely coming back, of course he’s coming back. But everybody is evolving in different ways, right? Like the journey for Burnham obviously was from the rejection of the captain’s chair to the sitting in the captain’s chair. And when you have those kinds of polarities, you know, you’re going to have something interesting in the season, because they’re as far apart as you could get. So, to get her from here to there, it’s going to be a journey. And Saru, who I think made an extraordinary captain, also began to recognize by the end of the season that he doesn’t necessarily have probably the hardest thing that a captain has to have, which is the willingness to be able to potentially sacrifice something you care for, or somebody you care for, to serve a greater good. And he doesn’t know where he is on the line yet. And that’s going to be part of what he gets to explore in season four. But we would never lose Doug [Jones]. Never.
Doug Jones as Saru in “That Hope Is You, Part 2”
Michael’s challenge as captain
Season three ended with Michael Burnham promoted to the rank of captain and put in command of the USS Discovery, taking over from Saru (who is busy on Kaminar). On the same podcast, Kurtzman talked about Michael’s character arc that led her to becoming captain:
Just because she’s in the chair doesn’t mean that there isn’t a journey about what it actually means to now experience things as a captain, and to have to make choices as a captain that you don’t have to make when you’re not the captain. The simplest and most obvious is, you as a first officer or as a science officer don’t have to choose whether or not to sacrifice someone on your crew to serve a greater good. That’s the hardest choice that a captain can make. Burnham, without revealing too much, and one of the things that [co-showrunner] Michelle [Paradise] and I have talked a lot about is that every episode needs to reflect a different challenge of what it means to be a captain. So the new variable for season four will be, ‘Okay, it’s a cool story, but how does it make her take a step as a captain?’ And that’s been a really interesting thing, because once we started filtering our stories through that question, it began to focus us on the kinds of stories that we wanted to tell. Because now they all have to challenge her as a captain.
I think Burnham goes through this journey that’s very interesting over the course of three seasons. She’s been told to be a certain person by so many different people. First to her human parents then her Vulcan parents then to Starfleet… And what she really realizes at the end of season three is that she is chosen to be captain by Vance and by everybody because she’s two things. She doesn’t have to be one thing. None of us are ever only one thing. So I think Burnham at the end of season three learns to hold space for being two things, and that that’s okay. But that’s challenging as a captain when sometimes you actually do have to make choices that don’t allow you to make choices from both of those sides of yourself. So that’s a really interesting problem for her that I think that she’s going to have to go through.
Sonequa Martin-Green as Captain Burnham and David Ajala as Book in “That Hope Is You, Part 2”
Hints about Book and Stamets in season four
Kurtzman provided some other brief hints for some other characters as well as Michael’s relationship with Cleveland “Book” Booker:
There will be interesting new challenges in [Michael’s] relationship with Book. Obviously they have a love story in season three and no good love story is really good without a lot of tests of that love. So she’ll be going through some of that too.
Season three ended with Book’s special empathic abilities being utilized to control the spore drive. Kurtzman talked briefly about what impact this will have on Paul Stamets in season four:
Stamets has carried this unique burden/gift, which is that he is the only one who can power the Discovery, and now somebody else can. So what does that mean? That’s another question that we will be covering.
Anthony Rapp as Lt. Stamets in “There Is A Tide…”
Bringing new planets into the Federation
Season three began the process of rebuilding the Federation, which included bringing some former members back into the fold. But Kurtzman indicated that season four will have the crew of the USS Discovery visiting some strange new worlds in as well:
At the end of season three with the Federation, Humpty Dumpty really does kind of just come back together, but they have a long way to go. There’s still many, many species and planets that are not members of the Federation. So it’s an amazing first step in a brighter future. But ultimately, there’s a long way still left to go. Without spoiling anything, that’s a lot of what season four is going be about.
Oded Fehr as Admiral Vance, Doug Jones as Saru and Vanessa Jackson as Lt. Willa in “Scavengers”
Season 4 production is taking longer, focusing decision-making
Production on the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery began last November. On the same podcast, Olatunde Osunsanmi outlined how production has changed under new COVID protocols:
You start with safety first and the scientists, and then everything else kind of goes backwards from there. It goes to the scripts. And we’ve worked with Alex and Michelle, and say ‘You do this and the scientists are saying we shouldn’t do that’ Then once we get past that stage, we take it to the crew and start figuring out how to produce it. And then it just gets down to the nuts and bolts on set. We have to social distance, so that means when we do something called “last looks” when all the makeup, hair and costume people come in, now that’s separate. The costume people come in and go away, then hair comes in, goes away, then makeup. And obviously it takes three times as much time as it would normally take. And so you can take that process of individual departments, and multiply it across the entire company and things really slow down.
The executive producer/director talked about how the new protocols are forcing choices to be made when it comes to how much gets shot:
What you have is a situation where you have to make decisions about what really matters creatively to you. What will really matter creatively to Alex or to Michelle and to the audience, and you get exactly that. Whereas pre-pandemic, we would get a whole bunch of extra stuff, just in case. So now there’s much more communication about what we feel we actually do need. And it’s also about keeping it fun, still. CBS has spent an extraordinary amount of money to keep us safe. Everything we’ve asked for, we’ve gotten. We feel incredibly well supported. I feel as safe as I could possibly be in this little soft bubble of environment that we have. So it’s about staying vigilant about that, but also, finding a way to have fun while we are doing it.
Olatunde Osunsanmi on the set of Star Trek: Discovery
Keep up with all the news and reviews from the new Star Trek Universe on TV at TrekMovie.com.
One of the obvious plot lines that they can explore is what is going on with the Klingons in the new Discovery time line. They made zero appearances nor were even mentioned in Season 3. Does the Klingon empire still exist? What is their relationship with the Federation, if any?
Not only them, what about the borg,Q, Betazed, an the Ferangi. The ghost fleet ( halogram ships), thats where they could bring in the Good Doc from Voyger..
I think they already addressed Q with the Terra Firma (spelling sucks, I know) Episode. But you are right with the other cast of characters.
How did they address Q in the Terra Firma episodes?
They will have to address it at some point. But i would personally prefer they continue to avoid it if they stick with the monster makeup from the first two seasons, ha!
Please no more Klingon Orcs.
Guys how can I get to contact with someone from the Trekmovie team?!
Can’t you just leave a message here,like you did?
Here you go:
https://trekmovie.com/about/
Just scroll down. Their email addresses are there. I email them weekly about really bad content ideas for years now. I think they finally just decided to ignore me.
Tiger2, you mean you email them to tell them some of the content on Trekmovie was a bad idea, or do you mean you are giving them some of your ideas on possible content to post on the site and in your modesty, you say they are bad ideas because they haven’t been used… ?
Stuff you see under the “staff” byline is (or was) sometimes reader submitted. I miss the Science Saturday feature, I’d help if it was ever resurrected….no one has ever taken me up on that.
we got the message, thread closed.
If people have site feedback, feel free to use this: https://trekmovie.com/about/feedback-2/
I’m sorry I still don’t get it? They have a SPORE DRIVE which can take them to any part of the galaxy in seconds (which Discovery used in practically every episode last season). It’s thousand year old technology now and they just found another dude (Booker) who can use it. Here’s a nutty idea, why not try to make more of them and find other people like Booker who can adapt to it and make a fleet of them? Or maybe just find a way to do it without a biological component seeing you are now a thousand years into the future and all? IT’S ALREADY STARFLEET TECHNOLOGY!!! Q didn’t just zap it into existence and no one knows anything about it. What’s even crazier the guy who invented it just happens to be on the same ship too! Gee, imagine what the original inventor and a thousand years of advancement could do?
It’s the oddest thing to me. This was the one thing that could solve a lot of the Federation ills even if they solved the dilithium issue, but not a single person has not even suggested trying to study what they have and make more of them. Wouldn’t that be the first thing you do given their situation?
Anyway, still looking forward to next season and happy that the 32nd century is now their home. So many story possibilities and new dynamics that they couldn’t have in boring prequel land. So glad they moved on from there at least.
Are you seriously a fan, Thats allready been all exsplained in season 1 before the tartergrade dna an again when Stamins an the rest of the crew got stuck in the Misillieo Univers. Plus with the resources in the 32nd century ,too build a fleet would be too much
And yet Book without tardigrade dna had no problem navigating it two minutes after they threw him in the chamber. See I am fan, I paid attention. Clearly you didn’t pay enough attention to either the episode or what I said in my post.
Agreed, this is “DSC 101” at this point. People just need to pay attention and stop viewing all the Kurtzman stuff with a glass-half empty mentality, when you know that many of these seem incessant bellyachers give all the Berman shows a glass half full benefit of the doubt.
And it was bizarre how some of this same group fawned over the cynical, annoying and overated LD series?
Just because they haven’t mentioned it doesn’t mean that they are not going to explore it. We know very little about season 4 so far. There are practical considerations. Having Stamets the head of development for additional spore drives would probably take him off Discovery. Discovery could continue using its spore drive thanks to Book so that wouldn’t be a problem. However, Anthony Rapp is a series regular so you probably want to give him a substantial role. If his story is separate from Discovery there’s a risk of short-changing one or even both stories. Also, it already looks like Saru may stay on Kaminar for some time, cutting him off the main story. That would make three separate storylines involving main characters of the show. Sounds like a bad decision from a production standpoint, but also potentially a bad decision from a story standpoint.
I was talking about season 3.
Well, the Federation only learned about the existence of the spore drive when Discovery came knocking at their door and they only found out in the last episode that somebody besides Stamets can control the spore drive.
And then did nothing with it. But Discovery got floating nacelles and holodecks.
And, as far as the audience knows, NO ONE in Starfleet has even suggested “why not install that spore drive on other ships?” Which for me, would have been the very first question I would ask after verifying their backstory.
Until the season finale everybody was under the impression that the spore drive would only work with Stamets. Now that they know that others like Book can also control the drive Starfleet will probably show more interest in replicating the technology.
I sorta got the impression that what caused Stammets to make it work was something that could be done to pretty much anyone.
“Everybody [in Starfleet] was under the impression” — That’s the attitude that’s implausible: there’s no due diligence. There isn’t (i.e., we’re neither shown nor told of) a sit-down between Future-Starfleet and Stamets to verify that his ability is unique and non-duplicable.
This trope — “nobody’s inquisitive / assumptions go unexamined / because dramatically expedient” — cousin to “holding the idiot ball” — permeates the show’s writing, IMHO.
Yeah have to agree Tiger2. Although there are many things I like about Discovery (mainly that it helped re-ignite the Trek Universe with all the new shows), the occasional lack of some common sense in the writers room seems to be more than a little incomprehensibe.
That said, like you I am still looking forward to seeing what S4 has in store for Discovery and her crew – but I am really anticipating S2 of Picard, the premiere of SNW and what concepts they’ve come up for the S31 show (which I’ve come around on since I liked what Disco did with Georgiou’s backstory).
Wow guys, I think that the question of why the Federation didn’t build more spore drive ships was answered very well in the last two episodes of S3.
Did you not take in all the layering of evidence that the Federation is in survival mode?
– Federation scientific research and development is lagging and lacking in the post-war context. It’s the Chain that’s innovating. Bringing a new technology online, moving beyond the prototype stage is resource-intensive.
– Stamets has determined that the space tardigrade is extinct or unseen for many years, and hasn’t come up with another workable solution for an interface (before Book)
– the Federation can hardly hold the territory it has against the Chain. What would it have done in S3 if Discovery had traveled far and created expectations? The Federation wasn’t even able to deliver the basics to its remaining planets.
I’m sorry I just don’t buy it. First off, the problem with the spore drive is that they made it SO EASY for others to navigate it as we seen twice now. And yes it needed tardigrade DNA, but they never said it was the ONLY species who can control it. That’s what gets missed (and apparently in the show as well sadly), they only said tardigrade DNA was the best candidate not the only candidate. They never even tried it with any other species. They got to one that worked and basically stopped. And then what made it more absurd is that Stamets, NOT a tardigrade can still navigate it with its DNA. But why would you assume it’s the only one whose DNA can interact with it? It’s brand new tech (at least then), maybe just maybe there are hundreds if not thousands of other species it could be compatible with, right? No one ever really bothered to find out. And to this day I still don’t get why it was determined Stamets was the only guy who could navigate it?
And that was clearly proven false through Book himself. So basically people with some type of psychic/empath powers can now power it too, right? And AFAIK, he didn’t have any tardigrade DNA in him. Which means no one ever bothered to find out if just other humanoid species could be compatible.
This is the only point I’m making. It’s technology that is literally far reaching and yet they still have very little knowledge about it or seem to care to learn more about it. Well this is the time you can come with some other possible options. What exactly was going to happen if they did that? The Burn already happened over 100 years ago, it’s not exactly some time crunch they were under. Study the thing and maybe come up with some solutions they didn’t have a thousand years ago. But this being Discovery, they come up with solutions on the fly anyway like building a highly specialized and experimental new time travel suit from scratch in an hour or just luckily find out another random guy on the ship can now power the spore drive everyone was convinced only Stamets could do an hour before him.
For the record, I do love the idea of the spore drive and in fact it was the one thing that made season one interesting because they came up with a new tech we never seen in Trek before, it just felt like it was made in the wrong century that’s all.
Well that was fixed by throwing the ship 900 years into the future and now problem solved lol. But they created a different problem in the fact we’re supposed to believe one of the most highly technological inventions Starfleet has ever made was never worked on again in 900 years since its disappearance. Technology that literally makes warp travel completely obsolete but no one ever goes for a second prototype in all that time, even AFTER Discovery proves it worked on its first run through?
But OK, I’ll suspend my disbelief on that, but then don’t tell me when they show up with it 900 years later in a world where getting around is tough to say the least they don’t have a thousand Starfleet engineers inspecting it trying to figure out other ways to duplicate it? They spent time giving Discovery floating nacelles, programmable matter and holodecks but no one thought to take every schematic and research Stamets have of the thing and study up on it? Not one?
I have the same issues with it, Tiger. But this has been a problem with all of season 3. They kept dilithium as a necessity, and so they had to sweep EVERYTHING ELSE under the rug to make that work. So no matter how hard you try to make your case, it doesn’t matter. The writers, defying all logic, want things to work or not work however they want, and so we’re stuck with nonsense like ‘blanket bans on temporal tech’, or transwarp conduits junked up with debris (soo many problems with that). They rather pathetically got rid of or ignored every other possibility for another power source or method of FTL so they could make their story work, and there’s no changing that now. So honestly, it’s kind of pointless to go on about what they should have done, because there’s a lot…
And what about that line from Reno about polaric warp conduits?? Let me guess, they still need dilithium for it…
I do wonder where they’re going with the spore drive though. If Stamets doesn’t go back to studying it and the mycelial network in S4, then what’s the point of him being there? Like if he just ends up being one of two pilots doing dilithium supply runs across the Federation all season, that’s going to really suck for him, especially since he was trying to get away from dilithium dependence. I’m not at all confident in their ability to keep their own continuity straight, so I don’t expect that point to come up again.
Yes all true. And I generally liked season 3 a lot, but it still had many problems. The dilithium thing still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. I know they wanted to do something original but it would’ve just made a lot more sense to go with something like the Omega particle idea as that just made waaaay more sense of an experiment gone horribly wrong versus some Kelpian kid yelling out that managed to cripple most of the galaxy, but I digress.
Hopefully they will explore the spore drive idea in season 4, but it really bothered me they couldn’t even be bothered to use a line to excuse why no one even investigated trying to make more when the most advanced piece of technology Starfleet has probably ever made and can solve all their problems in one swoop just goes ignored.
And of course what’s even more odd is that a big plot line of the season was having Osyraa trying to steal it, literally the only one they had. So wouldn’t it make more sense to try to duplicate your biggest resource in the Federation when you had thugs trying to take it? And I’ll say this about Osyraa, chances are if she did get her way, they would’ve been all over it to figure out how it worked and provide drives for the entire Emerald Chain. She was a weak character, but at least an ambitious one.
And there could have even been a throwaway line early on about how after the burn they tried to duplicate the spore drive but two or three ships were destroyed in the process and it was deemed “too dangerous” or something to continue. But then they would have a working one to study… So… Ugh.. So much wrong with this show…
The problem is there is a simple solution that would have still made their S3 story work. And I mentioned this in another thread. It’s so very easy that this non-writer had no problems coming up with it. At some point in the future it became very clear that dilithium was going to run out. It was non-renewable. They found ways to extend the life but it was going to need to be replaced. They found something viable in that nebula where the Kelpian boy was. Now they have just made up a new substance, could make their own rules for how it works and behaves. Rules that would make “the burn” more plausible. And STILL get the same story they were going for. And they don’t have to make the audience believe that 900 years later we are still using horses to get around.
This is part of the reason why Secret Hideout Trek productions are so frustrating. Many of their plotting problems can solved with simple fixes. But they seem to think that by referencing things from old shows (dilithium, the Guardian of Forever) it will give viewers fangasms. Well, it does for some. But I don’t believe that works on most.
Yeah, I mean.. Another simple solution is to make it so the burn only ruined higher subspace domains, like the ones they might travel through for things like slipstream and transwarp. Then they’d have to retrofit ships to use ‘older’ warp drives and dilithium again. That would leave them in a position where they can’t get around as quickly, and probably can’t reach half the Federation in a timely manner. That would still cripple a Federation that probably spans much of the galaxy at that time. They would also still be facing a dilithium shortage too. I think everything could still work out about the same, but would certainly fix some of my biggest problems which are that they’d still be using dilithium in the far future, and that dilithium just went (temporarily?) inert… everywhere..
Agreed. “Travel is too slow to effectively bind a far-flung UFP” is as much of a dramatic motivation as “travel is rare.” It would offer an opportunity to illustrate how much the Federation had grown in 900 years (is this show allergic to legible diagrams?) and the theme “overreliance on interconnectivity and just-in-time transport” has present-day relevance, adding to the franchise’s long history of social commentary/allegory.
And I recall more than a few episodes of the other Berman shows where people tried to find alternatives to dilithium or warp drive. Only to fail, but it showed they were constantly thinking about it.
To say that in 900 years NONE of the ideas would work is just something I cannot buy. AT ALL. Plus, eventually SOMEONE would have come up with the spore drive. Either on their own or they stumbled across the top secret records from the “old days”. That is yet another thing I cannot buy that didn’t happen.
I don’t know if the writers are necessarily thinking about this, but one consideration would be: do you want to just openly disseminate technology that lets people pop into existence wherever they want unannounced? Like in the center of a planet? Militarily, how do you even defend against something like that when it falls into the wrong hands? It’s 1,000 year old tech but still super dangerous.
It is a little like giving security guards tactical nukes and zero oversight.
Or giving people personal transporters to just beam into any place they like.
Personal transporters have a much smaller range than a spore drive. Plus it has already been shown several times during the 3rd season that they can be blocked. At least so far, they haven’t established a way to “defend” against an incoming spore jump.
Actually, we have no idea what the range of the personal transporter is. For all we know it could beam a person from Earth to Qu’nos.
If it could do that the Burn would have had far less long-lasting consequences. People would just be able to beam from star system to system instead of using warp drives. The show has made it pretty clear that they can’t.
You forget that the starfleet of the 23rd century basically buried the technology because of its interdimensional capabilities. its a pandora’s box they didn’t want to deal with.
Yeah, but Trek does that. Data was the 24th century equivilant of the spore drive….all deux ex machina laziness. Starfleet had the ability to scan a room and identify who was vaporized by phaserfire weeks earlier, but no one, ever, scanned Data, a collection of parts, to build more? Which disbelief is harder to suspend – that no one, anywhere, over a thousand years, figured out another spore drive, or that all dilithum, going klabluie, reduced the civilized universe to the Zombie apocalypse almost overnight?
But at least it was acknowledged with Data in some form twice in both Measure of a Man and then The Offspring. And they also made it clear it was just hard to duplicate Data since it was done by one guy. And to be fair they eventually did remake Data and in more advanced forms with Soji/Dahj and all the other synths in Picard. Yes, it took over 20 years but it didn’t take over a thousand. ;)
The issue with the spore drive is that it’s already Starfleet technology. They already know to build one and yet….?
I’m not a huge fan of the dilithium explosion thing either but yeah.
Yes, they did scan Data on numerous occasions. There were parts of his positronic matrix that no one was able to duplicate. Even when Data himself tried to copy his own technology, his efforts with Lal failed. And, for the record, a deus ex machina is a last minute solution with no development brought in to solve a complicated story conundrum. Data was hardly that. He was a creatively constructed character designed to assess, project and comment on what it means to be “human.” TNG often focused on the nuances of our humanity necessary for problem solving – something that had to be learned and could not be programmed.
I found the entire concept that Data could not be duplicated to be weak. Even if no one was allowed to take him apart, there are plenty of ways around that. Geordi worked on Data more than anyone. Did no one think to consult HIM? He went into his head, removed emgrams, even made downloads of his entire programming into another machine. And NO ONE followed up on that??? Obviously it worked. So it certainly would have been something scientists would have continuously worked on. And eventually, SOMEONE would have found the secret Data’s builder had.
That is an offshoot of something I have said from the beginning. Why oh why are they STILL reliant on dilithium 900 years in the future?!?! It would be as if no one thought of anything better than getting around on horses for 900 years. And assuming that for some bizarro reason NO ONE either followed up on the spore jump or came up with it on their own in 900 YEARS well here is a working example along with one of the creators. They can reverse engineer the thing.
It’s just something so amazingly basic I’m stunned no one brought it up in the process of mapping out the story for season 3. Or, and I don’t know if this is worse, that someone DID bring it up but was blown off by others or even perhaps Kurtzman himself?
Disovery is in the 32nd centrury in season 3, season 4, should have Grudge Evolve into the cat from lower decks but is that species queen, an they meet Howard the duck, an half way through season it’s DUCK DODGERS AN THE 32ND AN A 1/2 CENTURY!!! 🤣🤣🤣
I’m glad they avoided the trap of making Vance just another “Crazy Starfleet Admiral.” or secretly crooked. He’s a much more interesting character if he’s just a good guy trying to do good things butmaybe spinning too many plates at once
Agreed. The Star Trek bad admiral trope needs to be dead and buried.
Yes,yes, oh, YES!
It seems that they are down to a single admiral with a C-in-C staffed by lieutenants.
Other than Kovich, who may be a civilian, every officer in headquarters is below command rank other than Vance.
Every captain they have is commanding a ship, and Vance is commanding his captains directly.
Vance was at the limit for much of the season.
Then who does that Vance dude answer to? Is there no oversight of any kind?
Maybe the Federation president (whom we haven’t been introduced to yet).
Perhaps we have. Could it be that Kovich is the President of the Federation?
Kovich standing in the C-in-C and looking out the window with Vance made me wonder in 313.
In terms of the negotiations with Osyraa, there is absolutely no way the President would be allowed in the room with Osyraa until the deal was ready to be formalized. The President was likely in a hardened safe room.
Maybe I should have said: we haven’t officially met the president yet.
That’s the single best thing they did in the entire season, and they definitely deserve plaudits for it.
In “Operation: Annihilate!” for awhile, Kirk thought that he might have to destroy everyone on Deneva — including Spock and his nephew — in order to prevent the parasites from moving on from Deneva and infecting more planets. Of course, he ended up not having to do that, but what if he HAD? It would have been such a wrenching decision, to destroy an entire planet, yet compared to letting the parasites claim more planets full of people, destroying the planet would have been the lesser of two evils.
It would be interesting to see Michael face a choice like that, one where she doesn’t have the out that Kirk had, but really has to make this choice.
I also enjoyed the wrenching choice Kirk had to make in “The Immunity Syndrome,” where the two most qualified people to take a shuttlecraft into the heart of the giant amoeba were Kirk’s two best friends. It was almost certainly a suicide mission, and Kirk says out loud, “Which of my friends do I condemn to death?”
Of course, Kirk managed to get Spock back after all, but what if he HADN’T — what would living with that have been like?
My brain is in the exact same space as yours with this. We’ve seen so many close calls with tough decisions that always worked out in the end, but I’d love to see someone make the right decision but still have to live with the aftermath. It’s happened once or twice, but I wanna see it really punch the gut, y’know? I want to see it really, permanently change her.
Would Sisko’s choice to use the biogenic weapons in “For The Uniform” count? Though, unfortunately, we don’t see much if any fallout from that choice for Sisko – either internal to Sisko or imposed by Starfleet.
I guess that’s kind of one of the “once or twice” occurences, and while Sisko did indeed live with the consequences, we as the audience didn’t see those consequences reverberate throughout anything past the end of that episode. That episode is great though. :-D
Yes. But ONCE per season — or twice at the most — and not in every episode.
I figure the treatment for psychological trauma must be really fabulous by the 23rd century, or Kirk would have been a basket case by halfway through Season 1, so it must be really stellar 930 years later. But even WITH that, I’d still expect Michael to need some time to assimilate things.
I’m really not looking forward to ‘testing’ Burnham as captain every episode… They’ll either be a few easy challenges, or nothing will stick, because the only thing they can keep consistent about her character is the ‘action hero’ elements. We can also be sure to see plenty of inappropriate crying. But I think the worst part that I’m anticipating is that they’ll make sure the ‘stakes have never been higher’ each time, so she can keep out-doing herself until it all spirals out of control into utter ridiculousness. I mean, how do you top what she’s already gone through? The only real tests for her would be confronting everything in her past, keeping control over her emotions, and actually keeping her hands off everything and letting her crew handle things. Those are the challenges I want to see her face.
I hate the uniforms.
You are not alone.
They’re perilously close to the reviled grey-and-red “bellhop” uniforms used temporarily on Crusade, the short-lived sequel to Babylon 5. On TrekBBS, there exist some fan-photoshops of how the tailoring would look with more color (akin to the TOS movie burgundy uniforms) or with black and the yoke motif worn by some of the Future-Starfleet staff.
For both, see: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/ah-the-new-uniforms.306173/page-33
I loved season three, but in my opinion, making Michael Burnham–a person who’d been in prison for mutiny, and who’d been demoted from the first officer spot–the captain is ridiculous. it’s the show’s biggest misstep.
Same arc as ro laren.
Who ends up security chief on ds9 in the novels
That’s a novel, however. Not really applicable. The only comparison that is close would be Pine-Kirk. But even then, as bad an overall movie Darkness was, he did learn a valuable captain’s lesson in it.
Damn, those are snazzy uniforms! I really, really love them. They incorporate everything I love about past uniforms and discard everything I didn’t. To my eye, they’re perfect.
I like them too.
Gersha Phillips is awesome.
“And Saru, who I think made an extraordinary captain, also began to recognize by the end of the season that he doesn’t necessarily have probably the hardest thing that a captain has to have, which is the willingness to be able to potentially sacrifice something you care for, or somebody you care for, to serve a greater good.”
None of that came across in the actual episodes at all. I wish these people would get better at actually delivering the ideas that are in their heads.
And I wish I could meet Buck Bokai but it’s never going to happen.
Kurtzman: Saru was an extraordinary captain but he doesn’t have what it takes to be captain. Alex talking out of both sides of his mouth as per usual. Hmm, I wonder why the shows he oversees are muddled messes…
In this show, all it takes to be an “extraordinary” anything is for you to want to be extraordinary, then try to be and mostly fail at it. Then the people around you tell you that you are extraordinary, because they don’t want your feelings to be hurt. Everyone cries, and boom, you are extraordinary.
…and everyone gets a trophy and goes home smiling. With the exception of in this case, the viewer. The bane of these times.
Many thumbs up to that comment.
Many.
After season three I think I’m done with this show. The writing was abysmal. Kept hoping it would improve but somehow it got worse. Intellectually the show makes no sense. Too many problems to list but to name a few. Tilly promoting out of nowhere. Character arcs that don’t go anywhere. A largely undeveloped bridge crew. Additional characters that are shoehorned in. Booker was solid but the empathic angle seemed derivative. Nope, Strange New Worlds can’t come fast enough. Discovery isn’t for me
Yeah Eric, but the same showrunners are putting SNW out. That’s my main worry about yet this next prequel.
But they handled pike, no.1 and Spock well
It wasn’t bad but one must remember that was comparing them to the Discovery show. But the fact that they stood out is cause for hope. The problem is when it comes to Trek, Secret Hideout has had a Midas touch for garbage. So I guess we shall see. But if I were a betting man I would wager SNW will not be very good.
First, I have to laugh any time someone involved in the show speaks about Burnham’s “journey”. Anyone who has seen the show knows there was none. She got what she has gotten through circumstance. No other reason. Would have been nice to see a character start from many flaws but potential, to actually have some real character development, learn lessons from failures and ultimate reach the goal of the captain’s chair. But no…
Second, having a 2nd person able to run the spore drive pretty much means Stammets can now take a day off from time to time. That’s about it.
Third… When they say “scientists” I REALLY hope they mean “medical professionals”. I mean, what good is a physicist (a scientist) going to do on set during a pandemic?
First, a scientist is not the same as a physicist. I’m a scientist but I’m not a physicist.
Second, the main way of transmission of COVID seems to be through aerosols. When it comes to modelling the spread of aerosols that’s exactly what physicists do (not every physicist, of course). So yes, when it comes to questions like “how many people can be in the same room safely?” that’s very much a question for a physicist. The studio doesn’t actually plan to treat people on set that get sick. They want to prevent people from getting sick in the first place.
^ thanks for this DIGINON ^
Good grief, dude… I threw that out there as an example of someone involved in a science who would be of ZERO use when it comes to the the medical fields. It could be ANY science specialist who is not involved in medicine in any way.
Geez… Some people just can’t see the forest for the trees.
And I pointed out to you how physicists are actually very useful in a pandemic.
Yep, public health is a multidisciplinary science.
Fluid mechanics, engineering of ventilation systems, organic chemistry come immediately to mind.
And the point flew right over your head.
Hopefully next season is better than 3, which is very disjointed.
And new uniforms still don’t look convincing.
Saru would be a fascinating ambassador — one whom could be part of Discovery’s outreach efforts.