Tag: Star Trek: Discovery

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Star Trek: Discovery – Season 2 (2019)

2024 Entry #30 01-31-24 The second season of the American TV series “Star Trek: Discovery” begins in the year 2257 and ends in 2258, 7 years before the beginning of “Star Trek” (The Original Series). Until Star Trek: Discovery LGTBQ+ characters in Trek were exceedingly rare and often only there via interpretation, but the first season introduced brilliant Astromycologist Paul Stamets (played by openly gay actor Anthony Rapp) & his loving physician husband Dr. Hugh Culber (played by openly gay actor Wilson Cruz). That season saw the death of the latter character, but death is often not permanent in Trek, and this was to be the case here; it’s more a wrinkle in their extended love story than an abrupt ending to one. And in the Mirror Universe we met Her Most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Qo’noS, Regina Andor, Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius (who is pansexual, and played by Oscar Winner Michelle Yeoh).

Season 2 was released in 2019 and not only brought our gay and pansexual characters back with a vengeance, greatly expanding on them, but also brought us a widowed lesbian engineer in the form of Jett Reno (played by lesbian comedian legend Tig Notaro). If that seems like a lot of representation after barely having any, it is, but this series doesn’t rest on its laurels and the series gets more Queer as it goes – which is wonderful. Season 2, picking up right where Season 1 left off, completes a story which leads into Season 3 but also feels complete, while also launching spin-off series, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”, which is currently shooting its third season and has been renewed for a fourth. If you stopped here it would be satisfying. But if you keep going, there’s so much more! And I love it all! Well worth checking out!

And for completists, the first “Short Treks” installment, titled “Runaway” fits in between episodes 2 & 3 of Season 2; that’s “New Eden” and “Point of No Return”.

I plan on re-watching Seasons 3 & 4 before watching the final season this summer. I’ll probably post a review for those 3 seasons together.

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Star Trek: Discovery – Season 1 (2017)

2024 Entry #015 01-12-24 “Star Trek: Discovery” is an American science fiction television series created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access (later rebranded as Paramount+). It is the seventh Star Trek series overall and the second series chronologically; it debuted in 2017. The series follows the crew of the starship Discovery beginning 101 years after “Star Trek: Enterprise” and 9 years before the introduction of Kirk in “Star Trek: The Original Series”.

For LGBTQ+ Star Trek fans who wished to see themselves presented in Star Trek, this was the first series to feature such characters prominently. Other series had flirted with the idea of LGBTQ+ representation (most notably “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), but these storylines were mostly relegated to analogies or random episodes. DISCO was the first Trek series to truly bring LGBTQ+ equality to the franchise. The first season of the series runs 15 episodes and features familiar Trek staples like the Federation, Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, the Mirror Universe, the Enterprise, etc. But the series is accessible to new fans.

Having just binged watched the first season again, partially in preparation for the streaming premiere of the final season in April, I reaffirmed this series as my current favorite Trek series, and I enjoy them all to some degree. There are so many elements of this series that I love that I doubt I could do them justice here, though I could ramble on about it for hours. Suffice it to say that I love it and I recommend it.

Having said that, I do feel that I need to talk about one aspect of the series, specifically for queer fans, a kind of trigger warning – and a bit of a spoiler, but this was something that the creative team were quick to reveal to the audience in real time and with good reason. So SPOILER, one member of the gay male couple featured in this season (both of whom are played by openly gay actors) dies in the course of this season in a brutal murder. However, this is NOT meant to be part of the “Bury Your Gays” TV trope, but instead is actually part of a Star Trek trope in which characters often don’t stay dead. Indeed, the couple are reunited in Season 2 and keeping other spoilers to a minimum, are alive and well through at least the start of the upcoming season. And I would also like to mention that while they’re the most prominent queer characters in season 1, others are seen in ways that were new to Trek, and this is expanded on in the following seasons with prominent lesbian, bisexual, non-binary and transgender characters all being represented.

I fucking love this show.

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