Star Trek: Discovery, the season without unnecessary frills. I'll admit it honestly, I'm a trekkie. It's not like I'm going to Comic Con dressed up as a Klingon or Ferengi like our friends from The Big Bang Theory or, as recently as I was informed, not dressed up, Mandy and Peter from the MySeries podcast, but still.
A total of 930 (!!) episodes of Star Trek were made. I've seen them all. In fact, I watched some of the series twice. I'm not going to calculate how much time I spent on Star Trek, let alone think about what I could have done with that precious time.
There are a few animated series, but I'm not interested in those. The first animated series does deserve some explanation. The oldest animated series (Star Trek: The Animated Series) from 1973 played an important role. In 1969, Star Trek: The Original Series or, as we as accomplished Trekkies refer to TOS, was canceled. Creator Gene Roddenberry was in sackcloth and protagonist William Shatner lived in a camper. The strong fan base of TOS, among other things, has led to the appearance of an animated series. This was made for them and not for children. The fanbase became so large partly because of the Tribbles, an adorable fluffy pet in TOS. The Tribbels had the habit of reproducing as quickly as possible. Fun fact: in Discovery, Captain Lorca has a pet Tribble on board. The Next Generation was launched in 1987 and the momentum has continued since then.
In 2017, Star Trek: Discovery was released. This series contains five seasons. It should be noted that nowadays a season consists of far fewer episodes than in the past, often with more than 20 episodes. Discovery has been completed, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is still ongoing. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is in pre-production. Starfleet Academy seems to be a 'young-adult' series. I just have one simple question: why? Either way, the hungry trekkies stay fed.
In Discovery, every season is a story in itself. The storyline does not continue, as was clearly the case with Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. In my opinion, it doesn't get in the way of the series. In season five, the classic 'find the puzzle pieces' is revived. A smart concept, because it keeps it interesting and you are curious about the outcome. The crew must search for four artifacts that together form the key to returning to humanity's ancestors. This is crucial because the technology of the ancestors must not fall into the wrong hands. There are privateers on the coast. The extremely shrewd Moll (Eve Harlow, The Night Agent) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis, Blood of Zeus) are always one step ahead of the crew of the Discovery.
The series is praised and vilified for its diversity. The lead role is played by African-American actress Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green, The Walking Dead). There is also a role for non-binary actor Blu del Barrio who plays Adira Tal. You might assume that Discovery is suffering from the woke virus, but I don't find the broadening of diversity at Discovery disturbing at all. This is because there is no emphasis on it, along the lines of “look at me being non-binary”. That's a good thing, because if that were the case, I would immediately be in trouble. For example, I dropped out of the New Amsterdam series (2018) after a few seasons because it became far too pedantic. Station 19 and, to a slightly lesser extent, Grey's Anatomy have also fallen prey to the woke virus. Fortunately, it has been spared the Dick Wolf Chicago series (Med, Fire and Police) until now.
An extremely interesting aspect of Star Trek is that the presented vision of the future comes true remarkably often. For example, in the 1980s we see the crew of the Enterprise walking around with tablets in their hands. That was a futuristic image at the time. Nowadays, children are almost born with a tablet or smartphone in their hand. In Discovery, the tablet has been replaced by a transparent screen that can be displayed at will. The screen is operated with hand gestures and voice control. Everything indicates that this is closer than many think.
Star Trek: Discovery season five meets my expectations, plenty of action, good scenario, crazy aliens and it stimulates the imagination. Fortunately, no unnecessary deviations such as in season one, where once again a parallel universe was created in which the same roles are given a different character. In this case a fascist empire. Almost every Star Trek series has a few episodes in which they show a parallel universe. I think that's a shame, a bit childish.
