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WATCH: ‘Star Trek: Renegades’ Now Available For Free

“Star Trek: Renegades,” directed by Tim Russ and starring Walter Koenig, Adrienne Wilkinson, Sean Young, Manu Intiraymi, Gary Graham, Robert Picardo, Corin Nemec, Bruce Young, Tim Russ, Chasty Ballesteros, and Edward Furlong, is now available to view in its entirety for FREE online. The feature-length film, which was successfully crowd-funded in 2013, has been made available to fans via YouTube.

Clocking in at just under an hour-and-a-half, the feature is now being used as a pilot for a fan-supported online series.

Scroll down to watch the entire film embedded below.

When a seemingly unstoppable new enemy threatens the very existence of the Earth, Admiral Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) is forced to work outside the boundaries of Starfleet’s rules to combat this deadly new foe. When planet after planet winks out of existence, yet Starfleet refuses to act, Chekov turns to Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ, who also directs), the new head of Starfleet’s covert operations division, Section 31. Together, they assemble a new elite strike-force, consisting of rogues, outcasts and criminals, led by the fearless yet haunted Lexxa Singh (Adrienne Wilkinson). The Renegades’ mission is simple: take on an army and stop their leader, Borrada (Bruce Young), from destroying the Earth. Outnumbered and outgunned, the ragtag crew is in an adrenaline-pumping race against time and space. But they soon find their foes are the least of their concerns: the real trouble may be coming from within!

You can help support “Star Trek: Renegades” via StarTrekRenegades.com .

10 Comments

August 24, 2015 at 8:26 pm

AWESOME MOVIE!!!!!! When do we get the series?!!! Some of my fav Star Trek Characters + a Xena actress!!! I’m GEEKING out!!!

August 24, 2015 at 9:09 pm

Was Bloody good… Will only get better you guys did a brilliant job

James Hubbell

August 24, 2015 at 9:55 pm

it was good is. there going to be more

Dennis Wirts

August 25, 2015 at 10:33 pm

Well worth the wait! Koenig and Russ are an awesome team. Can’t wait for the new episodes.

Tonto L. Camper

August 26, 2015 at 12:52 am

This is an EXTREMELY OUTSTANDING MOVIE!!! Thank You!!! 🙂

Lynn Easton

August 26, 2015 at 10:24 pm

It was good, wasn’t best in terms of special effects or acting, but for a first & break away movie, I give a thumbs up & look forward to better episodes if it becomes a series in it’s own right!

rick oconnor

September 15, 2015 at 8:22 pm

too much music in the scenes to spacey you need music from voyager it was a little cheesy but seriously we need a new seriesto help the movies

September 15, 2015 at 8:25 pm

iam 55 yrs old and have watched star trek since the beginning i do hope there is more coming and mst of all we need to get the original writers that would all so help with the new ones

Christopher Dalton

November 22, 2015 at 10:27 pm

Star Trek Renegades – Star Trek’s own answer to both The Dirty Dozen and Blake’s Seven

If E.M. Nathanson had seen his classic anti-war novel ‘The Dirty Dozen’ converted into a classic Star Trek adventure, he probably would have been flattered. But, if he had seen his classic story, or the concept thereof, turned into something like Star Trek Renegades, he would have been bored to death by it and fallen asleep during its showing.

No doubt I did and I had to go through a second viewing. Or at the very least, picked up where I dozed off.

Thankfully, MGM did a better job in 1967.

All that aside, the plot of the Star Trek film is this.

Set a decade after the return of the Starship Voyager, some strange phenomena is erupting in certain sectors of the galaxy.

When a seemingly unstoppable new enemy threatens the very existence of the Earth, Admiral Pavel Chekov is forced to work outside the boundaries of Starfleet’s rules to combat this deadly new foe.

When planet after planet winks out of existence, Starfleet refuses to act. As a result of the current intergalactic crisis, Chekov turns to Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ, who also directs), the new head of Starfleet’s covert operations division, Section 31. Together, they assemble a new elite strike-force, consisting of rogues, outcasts and criminals, led by the fearless yet haunted Lexxa Singh (Adrienne Wilkinson). A woman who is surprisingly the daughter of the ill-fated and Khan Noonian SIngh, himself.

The Renegades’ mission is simple: take on an army and stop their leader, Borrada from destroying the Earth with his space-folding technology. Outnumbered and outgunned, the ragtag crew is in an adrenaline-pumping race against time. But they soon find their foes are the least of their concerns: the real trouble may be coming from within!

The tag-line wasn’t kidding when it said boldly going where no Star Trek has gone before.

And as our favorite Russian character(i.e. Pavel Chekov)points out in the film, ‘How far is too far?’

Judging by the end results, Sky Conway, Tim Russ, and even Alec Peters, himself went too far.

It is no wonder that CBS/Paramount rejected the idea of turning this pilot episode into a series. Assuming if you believe such a story.

Honestly, this film almost makes Conway’s first effort(i.e. Star Trek – Of Gods And Men)tolerable, despite that film’s own shortcomings.

Okay, here are my gripes about this latest fan funded endeavor.

1. Walter Koenig once stated that his appearance as a much older Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek – New Voyages/Phase II episode ‘To Serve All My Days’ would be his last appearance as the stalwart Russian officer. That it was his way of saying good bye to the character of Chekov and bringing the character a sense of closure. If that was the case, then why did he decide to return as a 142 year old version of Chekov? Was he taking a cue from the late Leonard Nimoy? Who knows?

2. Vic Mignogna. Seriously, does this man have to be in every Star Trek production or incarnation, thereof? Whoever said that Vic was The Doomsday Machine of Star Trek fan films was not joking. His performance in his P2 rip-off Star Trek Continues proves that point. His antics on the set of Star Trek-Phase II’s ‘Kitumba’ was so bad that it was one of the many factors that made james Cawley turn the role of Jim Kirk over to professional actor Brian Gross. Mignogna’s antics even caused David Gerrold’s P2 episode ‘The Protracted Man’ to be scrapped. Then his and certain other individuals involvement in the theft of the Starship Ajax production’s newly built sets caused Ajax to be set back to the point of no return, and give the Starship Farragut production’s own reputation a severe tarnishing and major ruining(i.e. a black eye). Anyone from those productions that will tell you any different is just trying to create a smokescreen and cover their tracks. The role of the ill-fated Cardassian Garis certainly fit Mignogna like a glove and the character’s death all the more refreshing. As well as the derogatory descriptions branded the character by some of the leads(i.e. blasphemor, coward, butcher, etc). I’m amazed that Michele Specht was not in this dud in some supporting role.

3. When on Earth did Khan Noonian Singh have time to have a daughter? Seriously? A daughter? Unless this happened back in 1996 before Khan and his ill-fated folowers fled Earth in the Botany Bay, the very idea of Lexxa Singh’s existence is a pretty far fetched one. An idea that stretches credibility to the very breaking point. The late Ricardo Montalban and Benedict Cumberbatch must be wondering the same thing.

4. The production design not only looked cheap, the CGI effects were not all that up to par. It is almost as if both Conway and Russ were trying to cheaply copy the CGI effects that was used in the science fiction classic Babylon 5(which also starred Walter Koenig in the recurring role of Psi-Cop Alfred Bester).

5. Finally, some of the sound effects used in this episode were borrowed from the science fiction classics Space:1999 and the original Battlestar Galactica. Something that was done quite often on Phase II and Starship Farragut. Note to those involved in Star Trek fan productions, use your own sound effects or those from Star Trek instead of recycling others from different science fiction productions. You can do better than that.

While I found the new Starfleet Uniforms a bit interesting and the idea that Starfleet’s own black ops department Section 31 has gone through a complete overhaul, plus the idea that a century old Pavel Chekov is now a great grandfather, those elements really did nothing much to save Sky Conway’s second independent Star Trek film from total boredom.

While Star Trek Renegades boasted a cast from other Star Trek productions and those from other genre related productions(i.e. the latter being Louisville, Kentucky native Sean Young who starred in the classic Blade Runner and the surrealitic flop Dune, Corrin Nemec from Solar Crisis and Stargate SG-1, Edward Furlong from Terminator 2 – Judgement Day, and Herbert Jefferson, Jr from the original Battlestar Galactica), such a cast did little to make this Star Trek production an interesting one.

The Dirty Dozen concept was already used successfully in the original Battlestar Galactica two-parter ‘The Gun On Ice Planet Zero’. The Blake’s 7 format had fit perfectly in that universe. Unless the production had some clever ways of writing such scenarios and making them unique, they don’t really fit into the Star Trek universe.

If this is going to be a fan series, it is certainly not going to be an entertaining one.

To Sky Conway and Tim Russ, better luck next time gentleman. You’re going to need it.

Star Trek: Renegades stars Walter Koenig, Adrienne Wilkinson, Sean Young, Gary Graham, Robert Picardo, Corin Nemec, Tim Russ, Edward Furlong, John Corrigan, Richard Herd, Vic Mignogna, and Herbert Jefferson, Jr.

Fijo Sanders

June 13, 2016 at 6:25 pm

Way low budget…

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RENEGADES: “THE REQUIEM, Part 2” available on YouTube until AUGUST 28!

Back in June of 2016, on the second day of filming the first hour-long episode of STAR TREK: RENEGADES , “The Requiem,” the production team received a nasty and potentially catastrophic surprise. CBS and Paramount had just released a new set of guidelines for Star Trek fan films that would essentially stop Renegades in its tracks.

The timing of the release might not have been entirely coincidental.

Six months earlier, CBS and Paramount had “stopped” the fan film AXANAR with a huge, multi-million dollar copyright infringement lawsuit. But there were still many other fan productions out there using the Star Trek name and intellectual property. And while Axanar had been the first to cross the million-dollar threshold by raising $1.2 million in donations from thousands of fans, Renegades was hot on Axanar ‘s heels with (at the time) over $850K in crowd-funding, also from thousands of fans.

And while Axanar featured one veteran Star Trek actor reprising his role from canon (GARY GRAHAM as Soval), Renegades would feature TIM RUSS as Tuvok, WALTER KOENIG as Chekov, NICHELLE NICHOLS as Uhura, CIRROC LOFTON as Jake Sisko, TERRY FARREL as “Jadzia” (minus the Dax symbiont), ROBERT BELTRAN as Chakotay, ARON EISENBERG as Nog, and even HANA HATAE as a grown-up Molly O’Brien.

The previous year, Star Trek: Renegades had premiered a 90-minute fan film with a red carpet premiere at the historic Crest Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles, calling the project a “backdoor pilot”or “spec pilot” for CBS to consider. Late in 2015, CBS requested (politely) that the Renegades team stop referring to their fan film as a pilot, a request they quickly compiled with. So instead they announced plans to release 12 half-hour webisodes per year (or “season”) oftheir spinoff Star Trek series, with “The Requiem” being the kickoff full-hour episode.

But the guidelines put the kibosh on all of that. No longer permitted to use Star Trek veteran actors or crew people, no longer allowed to pay professions, and constrained to no more than two 15-minute episodes and no sequels or seasons or ongoing series, Renegades had been effectively castrated as a Star Trek fan production before production come even get up to speed.

So a fateful decision was made. The script was quickly edited to remove all references to any Star Trek character or race or technology. The Federation became the “Confederation.” Chekov became “The Admiral.” The Romulans became the Rigelians.  The CGI ships would be redesigned.  Nog would trade in his Ferengi make-up for something totally new. The footage shot the first day had to be digitally manipulated to remove the Starfleet insignia comm badges. It was a mad scramble, but it ultimately resulted in the new independent film project: RENEGADES: THE SERIES .

“The Requiem, Part 1” debuted in February of 2017 exclusively to donors.  Two months later, it was released to the general public…but not on YouTube.  Instead, it was behind a firewall requiring a sign-up first.  Although free to view, some fans objected to having to share their contact information before being allowed to see a fan film.

On July 6, 2017, “The Requiem, Part 1” was finally released with no firewall onto YouTube for free viewing by anyone…

And a week later on July 12, “The Requiem, Part 2” was shown for the first time at a theater in North Hollywood…along with Part 1.  Like the red carpet premiere in Westwood two years earlier, the cast and crew attended, with tickets sold to donors at $20 each.   Here’s the blog   with photos and descriptions of that special event.

But since then, “The Requiem, Part 2” has never been posted to YouTube. Although still available behind the firewall on the AtomicTV website , many fans didn’t bother to go through the process of creating an account and have therefore never seen the conclusion…which features a stellar final scene with Walter Koenig. fast fake id

However, as a special tie-in to the 15-day Kickstarter for the new Renegades project OMINARA with Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig (more on that in my next blog!), “The Requiem, Part 2” is being posted for free on YouTube for a limited time—until August 28, 2020.

So watch it now while you can…!

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2 thoughts on “RENEGADES: “THE REQUIEM, Part 2” available on YouTube until AUGUST 28!”

Thanks so much for drawing my attention to this. I stayed away from Requiem part 1 until now because, for exactly the reasons you gave, I did not fancy giving my personal details out to watch part 2. Anyway, I’ve just found time to watch it all with the attention it deserves and it was fantastic (FANtastic I mean 🙂 ). Sure, they were compressing a story that would have played out over a series into an hour with limited locations, but, overall, it was great!

I have to say that the one thing that strikes me about this is the speed with which they turned around the production. I’m not knocking others (well possibly one, but I… well no, I shouldn’t, because I only watch the things, not make them) but I think they did it quicker than Interlude, which I think has been one of the faster higher quality productions. When it’s your own work (and I do some creative stuff in other fields) I can appreciate these things take time and it’s hard to know when to stop tweaking.

Really looking forward to Romulan War btw, which I see you’ve just featured.

I think the comparison to Interlude might be a little unfair, Alastair, simply because the Renegades folks had hundreds of thousands of dollars to work with and could pay their people respectable sums of money to prioritize production and post production tasks. They also had a much larger crew. I had 50 people, $20K, and mainly volunteers (we paid the caterer, of course, and some folks were reimbursed for travel and lodging expenses). As for comparisons to Axanar, that’s not exactly apples to apples either. The lawsuit shut down production for a year, forced a move across country, and required a start-from-scratch crowd-funding initiative that has been hampered by Alec’s inability (because of the settlement) to publicly promote where and how to make donations. And keep in mind that Axanar managed to do three shoots in five months and only needs one more. Had the pandemic not happened, all of the footage would have already been in the can by now, leaving only post production to finance and complete.

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Web Video / Star Trek: Renegades

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It was executive produced by Sky Conway and directed by Star Trek: Voyager actor Tim Russ . It aimed to be the first continuation of the Star Trek timeline after Star Trek: Voyager , while featuring real Star Trek actors reprising their roles.

Star Trek: Renegades provides examples of:

• Captain Lexxa Singh, the daughter of Khan, and genetically engineered human with enhanced strength and reflexes.
• Also T'Leah, the Romulan guard who twice saves a Starfleet officer from a would-be assassin with her bare hands.
• Back for the Dead : Admiral Paris is killed by Grant Imahara's character.
• Black Dude Dies First : Played straight, with the man who tries to warn Chekov "we can't trust anyone!"
• Boxed Crook : Lexxa Singh is introduced serving a life sentence in an Orion prison, approached by Tuvok with an offer for her release.
• Though a continuation set after Voyager , with most of the returning characters also being from VOY, Renegades in many ways harks back to the Original Series with the new designs for the uniforms and Starfleet decor, Admiral Chekov, a Romulan and Andorian character, and of course the protagonist being Khan's daughter.
• Captain Alvarez's ship is the U.S.S. Archer
• The Breen character, for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .
• Character Focus : The buxom Andorian in the low-cut top and the returning Trek alumni, especially Chekov. Shree in particular makes a lot of appearances in promotional imagery.

• Continuity Nod : The USS Archer , named for Star Trek: Enterprise 's Captain Jonathan Archer.
• Fantastic Racism : Jarro, a Pah-Wraith worshiping Bajoran, not surprisingly isn't too tolerant toward the new Cardassian shipmate.
• Generic Doomsday Villain : The Big Bad hates the Federation for unclear reasons, has an unstoppable superweapon, and is physically powerful in one-on-one combat.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe : Shree, the Andorian hacker, is an oversexed blue-skinned lady with a black leather getup and a penchant for (lesbian) BDSM.
• Guile Hero : Subverted with Lexxa, who is introduced with this in mind but is outsmarted by a bunch of ape-men who live in caves and helpfully explain their evil plans. Her plan is basically to walk into the enemy cave base with a bunch of guns, with only a casual attempt at stealth.
• Hellbent For Leather : One of the perks of a Star Trek series where the main crew isn't Starfleet. Lexxa, Ragnar, T'Leah, and Shree all have some amount of leather in their outfits.
• Informed Ability : Lexxxa, allegedly an intelligent character and planner, attacks the bad-guy homeworld by just calmly walking in with guns. This predictably results in two deaths and the bad guys almost winning .
• Jerkass : The Lawful Stupid Federation Captain. Possibly lampshaded : his ship is named Archer , after the infamously divisive star of Star Trek: Enterprise .
• Ms. Fanservice : The Andorian, Shree, is clearly intended to be this, with her deep cleavage, leather outfits, and her first scene being a random lesbian sex scene, but many people find her to be too overtly sexualized to be attracted to.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits : The series centers on a pirate crew captained by the outcast daughter of Khan Noonien Singh and including a disgraced scientist, a rogue former drone, a genetically-defective Betazoid, a Pah-Wraith-worshiping Bajoran, and more.
• Reflexive Response : T'Leah absentmindedly snaps a would-be assassin's neck when she could just as easily have captured him. When called out on the fact they needed to interrogate him, she blames "old habits".
• Smug Snake : Lexxa. Almost everything she does is accompanied by an oily smirk.
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Published Jun 3, 2024

Time Agent Provocateur: The Greatest Hits of Crewman Daniels

The man with a plan to save all the entire timeline is back. Or maybe he never left?

This article contains story details and plot points for Star Trek: Discovery's series finale, "Life, Itself."

StarTrek.com

As much as serious Star Trek fans might worry about keeping the intricacies of the various chronologies well-ordered in our brains, there are characters within Star Trek striving to do the exact same thing. While Trek has given us our fair share of time agents — from Gary Seven in The Original Series , to Captain Braxton in Voyager , and even recently, La'An Noonien-Singh in Strange New Worlds — there is another, undercover temporally-concerned individual who had a big impact on all of Star Trek . We're talking about Agent Daniels, who first appeared in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode " Cold Front ," way back in 2001.

And now, sneakily, Agent Daniels is back . When Captain Michael Burnham completes her mission in the Discovery series finale, " Life, Itself ," she decides it's time to get some answers from the mysterious Kovich, as played cryptically, and charmingly by legendary director David Cronenberg, starting with Discovery 's third season. When Burnham deduces that Kovich is a "codename," she reintroduces herself, which prompts Kovich to reveal that his real name, yes, is Daniels, and that he'd served on the Enterprise and "other places."

"Life, Itself"

But just how many "other places" has Kovich/Daniels really been? While we may not know the full breadth of the timey-wimey adventures of Daniels, we are aware of his greatest hits to date. Here are the essential Daniels moments, all of which have kept the Star Trek timeline intact. Mostly.  

Daniels Saves the Day… and Then Dies?

"Cold Front"

From the very start of Enterprise , Captain Archer had hints that the villainous Suliban were just one part of a paradoxical Temporal Cold War . But, it wasn't until Episode 11, "Cold Front," that we learned that there were some future-tense allies in this conflict. When Silik sneaks aboard the Enterprise , Daniels reveals himself to Archer as being an agent from the 31st Century, sent back in time to prevent enemy forces from messing with the 22nd Century. Although this is the first appearance of Daniels in any Star Trek episode, ever, Matt Winston's performance convinces us that he's sort of been there all along; an innocuous crewmember that Archer might not notice.

And so, when Daniels reveals to his captain that he has a lot more information about the larger conflict, a seemingly meek character is transformed into a formidable one. That said, Daniels does get zapped, seemingly, to death in this episode, which makes his ability to keep popping up all the more interesting.

Daniels Takes Archer Back to the Beginning

"Shockwave, Part I"

In the Enterprise Season 1 finale, " Shockwave, Part I ," the crew, briefly, believe they are responsible for destroying an entire colony due to a random shuttle plasma accident. This disaster threatens to shut down the entire mission of the NX-01, and Archer, Trip, and everyone involved are understandably depressed. But, just as Archer climbs into bed to cuddle with his dog and feel sorry for himself, he wakes up in his old apartment on Earth, 10 months prior, and exactly one day before his mission began.

As Archer walks around shirtless, trying to figure out what’s going on, Daniels appears, explaining to Archer that nothing about the disaster on Paraagan II was his fault. Turns out, the Temporal Cold War is heating up, and somebody is trying to change the past to frame Starfleet and Enterprise . Daniels is here to help Archer set the record straight. Though, strangely, he doesn't offer to help Archer find his shirt.

Daniels Recruits Archer and T'Pol

"Carpenter Street"

Throughout Enterprise , we learn that Daniels is from the 31st Century, and that his organization deals with a lot of complex rules. He alludes to the "temporal accords," from time to time, which is something his future self, Kovich, has mentioned on Discovery, too. But, in the third-season episode, "Carpenter Street," Daniels can't get involved with the timeline changes directly, and so, he recruits Archer to do some time travel dirty work for him.

In this gritty time travel episode, T'Pol and Archer have to go back to Chicago in the year 2004, and prevent Xindi from using human blood to create a biological weapon in the future. With Daniels as their temporary boss, "Carpenter Street" remains the closest thing a Star Trek episode has done that feels like The Terminator — a shadowy battle in the present to prevent a worse future.

But, in addition to the new revelation that Kovich and Daniels are one in the same, "Carpenter Street" has also influenced contemporary Star Trek shows in other ways. In Picard Season 2, La Sirena 's mission to fix the timeline is similar in tone and style to "Carpenter Street," even if the specifics differ. And, in the Strange New Worlds Season 2 episode, " Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow ," La’An is recruited to fix the timeline in a way that's not entirely dissimilar to what Daniels does with Archer and T'Pol.

A Glimpse at the Enterprise -J

"Azati Prime"

In the Season 3 episode, " Azati Prime ," Daniels once again whisks Archer to a different time period, but this time, to prove a point. In this episode, Daniels wants to convince Archer that figuring out some kind of truce with the Xindi is likely the best route to victory. Why? Well, turns out in the 26th Century, the Xindi are members of the Federation, and some of them even serve in Starfleet.

To make this point very clear, Daniels brings Archer to the deck of the Enterprise -J, a 26th Century incarnation of the beloved ship, that plays a huge part in the Battle of Procyon V. But, If Archer doesn't make nice with the Xindi in the 22nd Century, then the Enterprise -J can't do its thing in the 26th. While this one-and-only glimpse of the Enterprise -J was a wonderful Easter egg for fans when the episode aired in 2004, it also connects to the recent Kovich reveal on Discovery .

In "Life, Itself," when Kovich says he served on the U.S.S. Enterprise , he could have been referring to the Enterprise -J, since the NX-01 Enterprise wasn't initially given the prefix of "U.S.S." Then again, if Kovich survived dying in the 22nd Century, lived in the 31st Century, and settled into the 32nd Century as "Dr. Kovich," then who knows — maybe there are several other Enterprise he's lived on.

Kovich Explains the Multiverse

"Terra Firma, Part 1"

Now that we know that Kovich is Daniels, so much of what he's done — and elucidated — on Discovery makes a lot more sense. In Enterprise , we were made aware that time travel was common in the 31st Century. But, in Discovery , in the 32nd Century, time travel has been outlawed, by the "Temporal Accords." Surely Daniels was behind making this happen, since he probably got sick of all the time paradoxes earlier in his career, which constantly required him to grab Captain Archer in the middle of the night.

In the Discovery Season 3 episode " Terra Firma, Part 1 ," Kovich says to Dr. Culber, "Consider yourself lucky to have skipped the Temporal Wars. Amongst the many horrible things we discovered when weaponizing time — temporal travel can make you pretty sick."

What this ends up meaning is that some time travel within the same reality is okay, but if you time travel and cross parallel dimensions, like Georgoiu did, the results can be fatal. Because we now know that Kovich was Daniels all along, it makes sense that he would have all sorts of knowledge that spanned the era of The Original Series, The Next Generation , and even, the Kelvin Universe. But, as Discovery concludes, what remains so interesting about Kovich is that in a world in which time travel is outlawed, he seems like the last of an extinct breed, the last of the Star Trek time lords, at the edge of the universe.

"Red Directive"

Luckily though, just like everyone else in the Star Trek family, Kovich (or Daniels) is never really on his own. And so, when he recruits Burnham to help with those pesky " Red Directives ," it seems he's carrying on the same tradition he started back in the 22nd Century, when he enlisted the help of the first captain of the Enterprise .

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Ryan Britt is the author of the nonfiction books Phasers on Stun! How the Making and Remaking of Star Trek Changed the World (2022), The Spice Must Flow: The Journey of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies (2023), and the essay collection Luke Skywalker Can’t Read (2015). He is a longtime contributor to Star Trek.com and his writing regularly appears with Inverse, Den of Geek!, Esquire and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Maine with his family.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Inside the ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Series Finale: The Last-Minute Coda, the Surprise Easter Eggs, and What Season 6 Would Have Been About (EXCLUSIVE)

SPOILER WARNING: This story includes descriptions of major plot developments on the series finale of “ Star Trek : Discovery,” currently streaming on Paramount+ .

Watching the fifth and final season of “ Star Trek: Discovery ” has been an exercise in the uncanny. Paramount+ didn’t announce that the show was ending until after the Season 5 finale had wrapped filming — no one involved with the show knew it would be its concluding voyage when they were making it. And yet, the season has unfolded with a pervasive feeling of culmination. 

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“I think there’s more to it than just, ‘Oh, it was a coinkydink!’” the actor says with a laugh, before explaining that she’s thinking more about subtext than direct intent. “I’ve gotta give Michelle her flowers. She has always asked the deeper questions of this story and these characters. Those questions of meaning and purpose led to questions of origin and legacy, and, yes, that is quite culminating.”

Martin-Green and Paradise spoke exclusively with Variety about filming the finale and the coda, including the surprising revelation about the origins of one of “Discovery’s” most memorable characters and what Paradise’s plans for Season 6 would have been.

“It’s the Most Complicated Thing I’ve Ever Seen”

Once the “Discovery” writers’ room decided the season would be organized around a search for the Progenitor’s technology, they also knew that, eventually, Burnham would find it. So then they had to figure out what it would be.

“That was a discussion that evolved over the course of weeks and months,” Paradise says. Rather than focus on communicating the intricate details of how the technology works, they turned their attention to delivering a visual experience commensurate with the enormity and complexity of something that could seed life across the entire galaxy.

“We wanted a sense of a smaller exterior and an infinite interior to help with that sense of power greater than us,” Paradise says. Inspired in part by a drawing by MC Escher, the production created an environment surrounded by towering windows into a seemingly endless procession of alien planets, in which it’s just as easy to walk on the walls as on the floor. That made for a daunting challenge for the show’s producing director, Olatunde “Tunde” Osunsanmi: As Burnham battles with the season’s main antagonist, Mol (Eve Harlow), inside this volume, they fall through different windows into another world, and the laws of gravity keep shifting between their feet.

“It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen, directorially,” Paradise says. “Tunde had a map, in terms of: What did the background look like? And when the cameras this way, what’s over there? It was it was incredibly complex to design and shoot.”

Two of those planets — one in perpetual darkness and rainstorms, another consumed by constant fire — were shot on different parking areas on the Pinewood Toronto studio lot.

“The fire planet was so bright that the fire department got called from someone who had seen the fire,” Paradise says. “It should not be possible to pull those kinds of things off in a television show, even on a bigger budget show, with the time limitations that you have. And yet, every episode of every season, we’re still coming in on time and on budget. The rain planet and the fire planet we shot, I believe, one day after the other.”

Martin-Green jumps in: “Michelle, I think that was actually the same day!”

“It Felt Lifted”

The last time a “Star Trek” captain talked to a being that could be (erroneously) considered God, it was William Shatner’s James T. Kirk in 1989’s “Star Trek: The Final Frontier.” The encounter did not go well.

“I had my own journey with the central storyline of Season 5, just as a believer,” Martin-Green says. “I felt a similar way that Burnham did. They’re in this sort of liminal mind space, and it almost felt that way to me. It felt lifted. It really did feel like she and I were the only two people in this moment.”

It’s in this conversation that Burnham learns that while the Progenitors did create all “humanoid” alien species in the galaxy in their image, they did not create the technology that allowed them to do so. They found it, fully formed, created by beings utterly unknown to them. The revelation was something that Martin-Green discussed with Paradise early on in the planning of Season 5, allowing “Discovery” to leave perhaps the most profound question one could ask — what, or who, came first in the cosmos? — unanswered.

“The progenitor is not be the be all end all of it,” Paradise says. “We’re not saying this is God with a capital ‘G.’”

“There’s Just This Air of Mystery About Him”

Starting on Season 3 of “Discovery,” renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg began moonlighting in a recurring role as Dr. Kovich, a shadowy Federation operative whose backstory has been heretofore undisclosed on the show.

“I love the way he plays Kovich,” Paradise says of Cronenberg. “There’s just this air of mystery about him. We’ve always wanted to know more.” When planning Season 5, one of the writers pitched revealing Kovich’s true identity in the (then-season) finale by harkening back to the “Star Trek” show that preceded “Discovery”: “Enterprise,” which ran on UPN from 2001 to 2005.

In the final episode, when Burnham debriefs her experiences with Kovich, she presses him to tell her who he really is. He reintroduces himself as Agent Daniels, a character first introduced on “Enterprise” as a young man (played by Matt Winston) and a Federation operative in the temporal cold war. 

This is, to be sure, a deep cut even for “Star Trek” fans. (Neither Cronenberg nor Martin-Green, for example, understood the reference.) But Paradise says they were laying the groundwork for the reveal from the beginning of the season. “If you watch Season 5 with that in mind, you can see the a little things that we’ve played with along the way,” she says, including Kovich/Daniels’ penchant for anachonistic throwbacks like real paper and neckties.

“I didn’t know that that was going be there,” Martin-Green says. “My whole childhood came back to me.”

“We Always Knew That We Wanted to Somehow Tie That Back Up”

Originally, Season 5 of “Discovery” ends with Burnham and Book talking on the beach outside the wedding of Saru (Doug Jones) and T’Rina (Tara Rosling) before transporting away to their next adventure. But Paradise understood that the episode needed something more conclusive once it became the series finale. The question was what.

There were some significant guardrails around what they could accomplish. The production team had only eight weeks from when Paramout+ and CBS Studios signed off on the epilogue to when they had to shoot it. Fortunately, the bridge set hadn’t been struck yet (though several standing sets already had been). And the budget allowed only for three days of production.

Then there was “Calypso.” 

To fill up the long stretches between the first three seasons of “Discovery,” CBS Studios and Paramount+ greenlit a series of 10 stand-alone episodes, dubbed “Short Treks,” that covered a wide variety of storylines and topics. The second “Short Trek” — titled “Calypso” and co-written by novelist Michael Chabon — first streamed between Season 1 and 2 in November 2018. It focuses on a single character named Craft (Aldis Hodge), who is rescued by the USS Discovery after the starship — and its now-sentient computer system, Zora (Annabelle Wallis) — has sat totally vacant for 1,000 years in the same fixed point in space. How the Discovery got there, and why it was empty for so long, were left to the viewer’s imagination. 

Still, for a show that had only just started its run, “Calypso” had already made a bold promise for “Discovery’s” endgame — one the producers had every intention of keeping.

“We always knew that we wanted to somehow tie that back up,” says Paradise, who joined the writers’ room in Season 2, and became showrunner starting with Season 3. “We never wanted ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling Chad.”

So much so, in fact, that, as the show began winding down production on Season 5, Paradise had started planning to make “Calypso” the central narrative engine for Season 6. 

“The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting ‘Discovery’ back with ‘Calypso,’” she says.

Once having a sixth season was no longer an option, Paradise knew that resolving the “Calypso” question was non-negotiable. “OK, well, we’re not going to have a season to do that,” she says. “So how do we do that elegantly in this very short period of time?”

“I Feel Like It Ends the Way It Needed to End”

Resolving “Calypso” provided the storytelling foundation for the epilogue, but everything else was about giving its characters one final goodbye.

“We want to know what’s happening to Burnham, first and foremost,” Paradise says. “And we knew we wanted to see the cast again.”

For the latter, Paradise and Jarrow devised a conceit that an older Burnham, seated in the captain’s chair on Discovery, imagines herself surrounded by her crew 30 years prior, so she (and the audience) could connect with them one final time. For the former, the makeup team designed prosthetics to age up Martin-Green and Ajala by 30 years — “I think they were tested as they were running on to the set,” Paradise says with a laugh — to illustrate Burnham and Book’s long and happy marriage together.

Most crucially, Paradise cut a few lines of Burnham’s dialogue with Book from the original Season 5 finale and moved it to a conversation she has with her son in the coda. The scene — which evokes the episode’s title, “Life Itself” — serves as both a culminating statement of purpose for “Discovery” and the overarching compassion and humanity of “Star Trek” as a whole.

To reassure her son about his first command of a starship, Burnham recalls when the ancient Progenitor asked what was most meaningful to her. “Do you know how you would answer that question now?” he asks.

“Yeah, just being here,” Burnham replies. “You know, sometimes life itself is meaning enough, how we choose to spend the time that we have, who we spend it with: You, Book, and the family I found in Starfleet, on Discovery.”

Martin-Green relished the opportunity to revisit the character she’s played for seven years when she’s reached the pinnacle of her life and career. “You just get to see this manifestation of legacy in this beautiful way,” she says. “I will also say that I look a lot like my mom, and that was that was also a gift, to be able to see her.”

Shooting the goodbye with the rest of her cast was emotional, unsurprisingly, but it led Martin-Green to an unexpected understanding. “It actually was so charged that it was probably easier that it was only those three days that we knew it was the end, and not the entirety of season,” she says.

Similarly, Paradise says she’s “not sure” what more she would’ve done had there been more time to shoot the coda. “I truly don’t feel like we missed out on something by not having one more day,” she says. “I feel like it ends the way it needed to end.”

Still, getting everything done in just three days was no small feat, either. “I mean, we worked ’round the clock,” Martin-Green says with a deep laugh. “We were delirious by the end — but man, what a way to end it.”

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Johnson Space Center

The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show’s cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only three seasons, it generated a devoted fan base disappointed by the cancellation despite their write-in campaign to keep it on the air. But as things turned out, over the decades Star Trek evolved into a global phenomenon, first with the original episodes replayed in syndication, followed by a series of full-length motion pictures, and eventually a multitude of spin-off series. With its primary focus on space exploration, along with themes of diversity, inclusion, and innovation, the Star Trek fictional universe formed a natural association with NASA’s real life activities.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first had the idea for a science fiction television series in 1964. He presented his idea, a show set in the 23 rd century aboard a starship with a crew dedicated to exploring the galaxy, to Desilu Productions, an independent television production company headed by Lucille Ball. They produced a pilot titled “The Cage,” selling it to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) network that then bought a second pilot titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC introduced the show to its fall 1966 lineup, with the first episode “The Man Trap” airing on Sep. 8. To put that date in perspective, NASA launched Gemini XI four days later, one of the missions that helped the agency achieve the Moon landing nearly three years later. Meanwhile, Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise continued its fictional five-year mission through the galaxy to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” The makeup of the Enterprise’s crew made the show particularly attractive to late 1960s television audiences. The major characters included an African American woman communications officer, an Asian American helmsman, and a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, later joined by a Russian-born ensign. While the show enjoyed good ratings during its first two seasons, cuts to its production budget resulted in lower quality episodes during its third season leading to lower ratings and, despite a concerted letter-writing campaign from its dedicated fans, eventual cancellation.

Despite the show’s cancellation, Star Trek lived on and prospered in syndication and attracted an ever-growing fan base, turning into a worldwide sensation. Often dubbed “trekkies,” these fans held the first of many Star Trek conventions in 1972. When in 1976 NASA announced that it would name its first space shuttle orbiter Constitution, in honor of its unveiling on the anniversary of the U. S. Constitution’s ratification, trekkies engaged in a dedicated letter writing campaign to have the orbiter named Enterprise, after the starship in the television series. This time the fans’ letter writing campaign succeeded. President Gerald R. Ford agreed with the trekkies and directed NASA to rechristen the first space shuttle. When on Sept. 17, 1976 , it rolled out of its manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California, appropriately accompanied by a band playing the show’s theme song, it bore the name Enterprise. Many of the original cast members of the show as well as its creator Rodenberry participated in the rollout ceremony, hosted by NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher . Thus began a lengthy relationship between the space agency and the Star Trek brand.

During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, the need arose to recruit a new group of astronauts to fly the vehicle, deploy the satellites, and perform the science experiments. When NASA released the call for the new astronaut selection on July 8, 1976, it specifically encouraged women and minorities to apply. To encourage those applicants, NASA chose Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, to record a recruiting video and speak to audiences nationwide. She came to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1977, and accompanied by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan L. Bean , toured the center and filmed scenes for the video in Mission Control and other facilities. NASA hoped that her stature and popularity would encourage women and minorities to apply, and indeed they did. In January 1978, when NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts from more than 8,000 applicants, for the first time the astronaut class included women and minorities. All distinguished themselves as NASA astronauts and paved the way for others in subsequent astronaut selections. Nichols returned to JSC in September 2010 with the Traveling Space Museum, an organization that partners with schools to promote space studies. She toured Mission Control and the International Space Station trainer accompanied by NASA astronaut B. Alvin Drew . She also flew aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope aircraft managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, in September 2015.

Meanwhile, the Star Trek brand renewed itself in 1979 as a full-length motion picture with the original TV series cast members reprising their roles. Over the years, several sequels followed this first film. And on the small screen, a reboot of sorts occurred in 1987 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new series set in the 24 th century aboard the Enterprise-D, a next generation starship with a new crew. That series lasted seven seasons, followed by a near-bewildering array of spin-off series, all built on the Star Trek brand, that continue to this day.

James Doohan, the actor who played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, had early associations with NASA. In April 1967, Doohan visited NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, spending time with NASA test pilot Bruce A. Peterson. A month later, Peterson barely survived a horrific crash of the experimental M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. He inspired the 1970s TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man, and the show’s opening credits include film of the crash. Doohan narrated a documentary film about the space shuttle released shortly before Columbia made its first flight in April 1981. In January 1991, Doohan visited JSC and with NASA astronaut Mario Runco (who sometimes went by the nickname “Spock”) toured the shuttle trainers, Mission Control, and tried his hand at operating the shuttle’s robotic arm in the Manipulator Development Facility. In a unique tribute, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong , the first person to step on the lunar surface , spoke at Doohan’s retirement in 2004, addressing him as “one old engineer to another.”

George Takei, who played Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and his husband Brad, visited JSC in May 2012. Invited by both Asian American and LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Groups, Takei spoke of leadership and inclusiveness, including overcoming challenges while in Japanese American internment camps during World War II and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He noted that Star Trek remained ahead of its time in creating a future when all members of society could equally participate in great undertakings, at a time when the country struggled through the Civil Rights movement and the conflict in Southeast Asia. The inclusiveness that is part of NASA’s culture greatly inspired him. JSC Director Michael L. Coats presented Takei with a plaque including a U.S. flag flown aboard space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission. He also visited Mission Control and spent some time with Robonaut.

Leonard Nimoy played the science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock. The actor watched in September 2012 when space shuttle Enterprise arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the last leg of its journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it currently resides. “This is a reunion for me,” observed Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” As noted earlier, the Star Trek cast attended the first space shuttle’s rollout in 1976. Following his death in 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti paid tribute to Nimoy aboard the International Space Station by wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform, giving the Vulcan greeting, and proclaiming, “Of all the souls I have encountered … his was the most human.”

Captain James T. Kirk, played by actor William Shatner, a life-long advocate of science and space exploration, served at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. His relationship with NASA began during the original series, with references to the space agency incorporated into several story lines. In 2011, Shatner hosted and narrated a NASA documentary celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program , and gave his time and voice to other NASA documentaries. NASA recognized Shatner’s contributions in 2014 with a Distinguished Public Service Medal , the highest award NASA bestows on non-government individuals. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert “Bob” N. Jacobs presented the medal to Shatner. The award’s citation read, “For outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” In 2019, Shatner narrated the NASA video We Are Going , about NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon. He has spoken at numerous NASA-themed events and moderated panels about NASA’s future plans. On Oct. 13, 2021, at the age of 90, Shatner reached the edge of space during the NS-18 suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness.

Elements of the Star Trek universe have made their way not only into popular culture but also into NASA culture. As noted above, Star Trek fans had a hand in naming the first space shuttle Enterprise. NASA’s Earth observation facility aboard the space station that makes use of its optical quality window bears the name the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). The connection between that acronym and the name of a Klingon officer aboard the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series seemed like an opportunity not to be missed – the facility’s official patch bears its name in English and in Klingon. Several astronaut crews have embraced Star Trek themes for their unofficial photographs. The STS-54 crew dressed in the uniforms of Starship Enterprise officers from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the second full-length feature motion picture of the series. Space shuttle and space station crews created Space Flight Awareness (SFA) posters for their missions, and more than one embraced Star Trek themes. The Expedition 21 crew dressed in uniforms from the original series, while the STS-134 crew chose as their motif the 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek.

As much as Star Trek has influenced NASA, in turn the agency has left its mark on the franchise, from episodes referencing actual and future spaceflight events to NASA astronauts making cameo appearances on the show. The first-season episode “Court Martial” that aired in February 1967 featured a photograph of the December 1965 Gemini VI launch adorning a wall aboard a star base. In the second-season episode “Return to Tomorrow,” airing in February 1968, Captain Kirk in a dialogue about risk-taking remarks, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the Moon?” a prescient reference to the first Apollo mission to reach the Moon more than 10 months after the episode aired. Astronaut Mae C. Jemison , who credits Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration to become an astronaut, appeared in the 1993 episode “Second Chances” of Star Trek: The Next Generation , eight months after her actual spaceflight aboard space shuttle Endeavour. In May 2005, two other NASA astronauts, Terry W. Virts and E. Michael Fincke , appeared in “These are the Voyages…,” the final episode of the series Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the 2016 documentary “ NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space ,” host NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover states, “Science and Star Trek go hand-in-hand.” The film explores how for 50 years, Star Trek influenced scientists, engineers, and even astronauts to reach beyond their potential. While the space station doesn’t speed through the galaxy like the Starship Enterprise, much of the research conducted aboard the orbiting facility can make the fiction of Star Trek come a little closer to reality. Several of the cast members from the original TV series share their viewpoints in the documentary, along with those of NASA managers and scientists. Over the years, NASA has created several videos highlighting the relationship between the agency and the Star Trek franchise. In 2016, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden led a video tribute to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode.

In 2021, on the 100 th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, his son Rod hosted a virtual panel discussion , introduced by NASA Administrator C. William “Bill” Nelson , about diversity and inspiration, two ideals the Star Trek creator infused into the series. Panelists included Star Trek actor Takei, Tracy D. Drain, flight systems engineer for the Europa Clipper spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim , Swati Mohan, guidance and operations lead for the Mars 2020 rover at JPL, and Hortense B. Diggs, Director of the Office of Communication and Public Engagement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mutual attraction between NASA and Star Trek stems from, to paraphrase the opening voiceover from the TV series, that both seek to explore and discover new worlds, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. The diversity, inclusion, and inspiration involved in these endeavors ensure that they will live long and prosper.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' ends as an underappreciated TV pioneer

Eric Deggans

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham. Michael Gibson/Paramount+ hide caption

First, an admission: Though this column will offer a lot of discussion and defense of Star Trek: Discovery as a pivotal show, it won’t spend much time talking up the series’ current, final season or its finale episode, “Life, Itself,” dropping Thursday on Paramount+.

That’s because, for this critic, the last few seasons of Discovery have been a bit bogged down by the stuff that has always made it a tough sell as a Trek series: overly ambitious, serialized storylines that aren’t compelling; new characters and environments that don’t impress; plot twists which can be maddening in their lack of logic; big storytelling swings which can be confusing and predictable at once.

'Star Trek: Picard' soars by embracing the legacy of 'The Next Generation'

The show’s finale features the culmination of a sprawling scavenger hunt which found the crew of the starship Discovery bounding all over the place, searching for clues leading to a powerful technology pioneered by an alien race which created humanoid life throughout the galaxy. Their goal was to grab the technology before another race, ruthless and aggressive, could beat them to it, laying waste to everything.

It's no spoiler to reveal that Discovery ’s heroes avoid that nightmarish scenario, wrapping its fifth and final season with a conclusion centered on Sonequa Martin-Green’s ever-resourceful Capt. Michael Burnham and fond resolutions for a multitude of supporting characters (there’s even a space wedding!)

Still, this good-enough ending belies Discovery ’s status as a pioneering show which helped Paramount+ build a new vision for Star Trek in modern television – breaking ground that more creatively successful series like Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would follow years later.

And it all began with a singular character: Michael Burnham.

A take on Star Trek for modern TV

Discovery debuted in 2017 on CBS All Access — the streaming service which would become Paramount+ — facing a serious challenge.

As the first new Trek series in a dozen years, it had to chart a path which offered a new vision of the franchise without going too far — carving out a new corner in the universe of Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock not long after the release of Star Trek Beyond , the third feature film produced by J. J. Abrams featuring rebooted versions of those classic characters.

Producers set Discovery ’s story 10 years before the days of Kirk and Spock (originally depicted on NBC for three seasons starting way back in 1966). The new series wouldn’t be centered on a starship captain, but its second in command: Burnham, a Black woman who also happened to be the hitherto unknown adopted daughter of Vulcan ambassador Sarek, Spock’s father (she would get promoted to captain of Discovery much later).

A Black human woman who was raised among the emotionally controlling, super-intellectual Vulcans? Who Trek fans had never heard of over nearly 60 years? Before I actually saw any episodes, my own feelings ranged from cautiously intrigued to cynically pessimistic.

But then I saw the first episode, which had an amazing early scene: Martin-Green as Burnham and Michelle Yeoh as Discovery Capt. Philippa Georgiou walking across an alien planet – two women of color marking the first step forward for Star Trek on a new platform.

People once sidelined in typical science fiction stories were now centerstage — a thrilling, historic moment.

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in the very first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Jan Thijs/CBS hide caption

And it got better from there. Back in the day, Trek writers often felt hamstrung by creator Gene Roddenberry’s insistence that, in the future depicted by the show, humans were beyond social ills like greed, prejudice, sexism, war, money and personal friction. The writers chafed, wondering: How in the world do you build compelling stories on a starship where interpersonal human conflict doesn’t exist?

But Discovery found a workaround, putting Burnham in a position where logic led her to mutiny against her captain, attempting a strategy which ultimately failed — leaving humans in open combat with the legendarily warlike Klingons. Discovery also featured a long storyline which played out over an entire season, unlike many earlier Trek shows which tried to offer a new adventure every week.

'First, Last And Always, I Am A Fan': Michael Chabon Steers Latest 'Star Trek'

The show’s first season had plenty of action, with Harry Potter alum Jason Isaacs emerging as a compelling and unique starship captain (saying more would be a spoiler; log onto Paramount+ and check out the first season). Fans saw a new vision for Trek technology, leveraging sleek, visceral special effects and action sequences worthy of a big budget movie, with design elements cribbed from several of the franchise’s films.

Later in its run, Discovery would debut Ethan Peck as Spock and Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, classic Trek characters who eventually got their own acclaimed series in Strange New Worlds . So far, five other Trek series have emerged on Paramount+ from ideas initially incubated on Discovery – including a critically acclaimed season of Picard which reunited the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Not bad for a series one TV critic eventually called among “the worst in the [ Trek ] franchise’s history.”

Discovery’s unappreciated legacy

Unfortunately, Discovery has taken some turns which didn’t work out quite so well. At the end of Discovery ’s second season, the starship jumped ahead in time nine centuries – perhaps to remove it from Strange New World ’s timeline? – placing it in an environment only distantly connected to classic Trek .

And while Discovery initially seemed cautious about referencing classic Trek in its stories, later series like Strange New Worlds and Picard learned the value of diving into the near-60-year-old franchise’s legacy – regularly tapping the show’s longtime appeal, rather than twisting into knots to avoid it.

There are likely fans of Discovery who would disagree with this analysis. But I think it helps explain why the series has never quite gotten its due in the world of Star Trek , initially shaded by skeptical fans and later overshadowed by more beloved products.

Now is the perfect time to pay tribute to a show which actually accomplished quite a lot – helping prove that Roddenberry’s brainchild still has a lot of narrative juice left in the 21st Century.

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‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Season 2 Confirms July 2024 Netflix Return

Picture: Paramount+

The rescued season of Star Trek: Prodigy has finally confirmed its Netflix release date. The next batch of episodes has been confirmed to be arriving on Netflix on July 1st, 2024. 

In case you missed the news last year , Netflix acquired the rights to Star Trek: Prodigy away from Paramount+. It carried the first season from Christmas Day in 2023, with the confirmed second season skipping Paramount+ to be exclusive to Netflix.

Netflix didn’t quite acquire the global rights to the show, with many local distributors continuing to carry it. According to Unogs , 23 regions of Netflix carry Star Trek: Prodigy , including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil, Argentina, France, Israel, Singapore, most European regions, and select Asian territories.

Following season 1 being added to Netflix late last year, it featured in the Netflix Kids top 10s in a handful of countries , including the US, UK, and Australia, but its best-performing countries were Germany and Austria.

Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 – Picture: France TV / Paramount+ / Netflix

The wait for season 2 has been a long time coming. Last summer, we were told that the finished season wouldn’t be coming to Paramount+, but after the rescue, the release of season 2 was pushed to 2024. The wait was made even worse by the fact that the show had already aired in some countries. In France, for example, the series has been available since February 2024 .

Season 2 kicks off with Dal, Rock Tak, Zero, Jankom Pog, and Murf continuing their training to join Starfleet Academy and are called aboard a new ship for a mission under the command of Admiral Kathryn Janeway.

The new season has 20 episodes in total, with multiple two-part episodes, including the season opener and season finale, plus two split episodes in the middle. It’s unclear whether Netflix intends to split the new season in half.

The Star Trek: Prodigy voice cast includes Kate Mulgrew, Brett Gray, Ella Purnell, Rylee Alazraqui, Angus Imrie, Jason Mantzoukas, Dee Bradley Baker, John Noble and Jimmi Simpson.

The episodes for this season are as follows:

• Directed by: Ben Hibon
• Written by: Kevin & Dan Hageman
• Directed by: Andrew L. Schmidt & Patrick Krebs
• Written by: Aaron J. Waltke
• Directed by: Sung Shin
• Written by: Erin McNamara
• Written by: Keith Sweet II
• Directed by: Ruolin Li & Andrew L. Schmidt
• Written by: Jennifer Muro
• Directed by: Sung Shin & Sean Bishop
• Directed by: Sean Bishop
• Written by: Diandra Pendleton-Thompson
• Written by: Alex Hanson & Aaron J. Waltke
• Directed by: Ruolin Li
• Written by: Erin McNamara, Jennifer Muro, Diandra Pendleton-Thompson, Keith Sweet II & Aaron J. Waltke
• Written by: Alex Hanson
• Written by: Kevin & Dan Hageman & Aaron J. Waltke

Netflix has yet to officially unveil the new season, but we’ll update this post once we have more information.

Let’s round out this article with some new first looks for the upcoming season:

Picture: France TV / Paramount+ / Netflix

Are you looking forward to the new season of Star Trek: Prodigy hitting Netflix? Let us know in the comments down below.

Founder of What's on Netflix, Kasey has been tracking the comings and goings of the Netflix library for over a decade. Covering everything from new movies, series and games from around the world, Kasey is in charge of covering breaking news, covering all the new additions now available on Netflix and what's coming next.

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