Summary
The second season of Star Trek’s latest flagship pulls on the past while looking to the future, adding a sense of fun, new characters, and a massive scope that takes the show to the next level.
The climactic finale of the first season of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY brought its darker and grittier director colliding with classic Trek. In the show’s second season, showrunner Alex Kurtzman pulls on some familiar thematic threads while boldly forging ahead with a season-long story that rocks the foundations of the Federation.
After receiving a distress call from the USS Enterprise, its Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) takes command of the Discovery. Investigating seven mysterious signals in the stars, Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) has a vision of a red angel that is tied to various crisis points, and it is somehow connected to her adopted brother Spock.
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY – Season 2 is a strong collection of episodes. While there is an overarching narrative throughout the fourteen chapters of the season, from the start there’s more of an emphasis on micro stories inside the whole. The show’s second episode (“New Eden”) – about a planet with a population that departed Earth following World War III – is a ‘prime directive’ style episode that feels like it could have come out of any era of Trek,and it’s directed by Jonathan ‘Riker’ Frakes to boot.
Similarly, Tilly gets a mini arc that starts in the same episode and spreads across “Point of Light” and “An Obol for Chabal.” Drawing on a past that was partly revealed in the tie-in novel Way to the Stars, a parasite latches onto Tilly and takes the form of a familiar face that only she can see. It’s a showcase for a character that continues to be an audience proxy about the Discovery.
There’s a handful of episodes that are more than just good, and in fact might be some of the best examples of Trek we’ve seen in twenty years. Some of these were very personal like the “The Sound of Thunder” which follows on from “An Obol for Chabal” (itself a touching piece of excellence) in exploring Saru’s origin story. Indeed, it’s safe to say that Saru becomes a very different character from this point on. The arc from “Project Daedalus” to “Perpetual Infinity” is hands-down some of the best television of the year.
Christopher Pike, originated by Jeffrey Hunter in the pilot for the original series and reimagined by Bruce Greenwood in the Kelvin Timeline, provides the swashbuckling fun that the series seriously needed to progress. The charismatic Mount would have fit in happily with William Shatner’s crew, but delivers a serious dramatic turn in “Through the Valley of Shadows,” an episode that goes deep into Trek lore (See: 1966’s “The Menagerie”).
Of course, one of the big hype points for this season is the (re)introduction of Spock. After a long tease, Ethan Peck confidently steps into the role that Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto have defined before him, not only capturing the subtle mannerisms of his predecessors but adding whole new layers (and a beard) to a character we’ve known intimately since 1963.
In fact, many of the characters get their due this time out. In the first season, we managed to go through the whole season without so much as knowing the names of all the bridge crew. While the principal crew get most of the attention, including Lieutenant Keyla Detmer (portrayed by Emily Coutts). The robotic Airiam (Hannah Cheesman replacing Sara Mitch) gets an entire backstory in “Project Daedalus.” Meanwhile, “Point of Light” serves as a backdoor pilot for the announced Michelle Yeoh spin-off. The introduction of new regulars, like Tig Notaro as a laconic engineer, continues to give the show life and texture.
Between Pike, Spock, and storylines focusing on Talos IV and Section 31, you’d be forgiven for thinking STAR TREK: DISCOVERY was content to do a greatest hits package. Instead, it builds to a two-part conclusion (“Such Sweet Sorrow”) that is effectively a feature-length and high-stakes space battle. The ambiguous finale may frustrate the hell out of some, but while this might be a prequel, it’s doing a magnificent job of paving the way forward for Star Trek‘s future.
2019 | US | SHOWRUNNER: Alex Kurtzman | CAST: Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anson Mount, Anthony Rapp, Ethan Peck | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix (AUS), CBS All Access (US) | EPISODES: 14
