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What’s the point of Star Trek Discovery?
People tell stories for a reason. Typically stories provide for the audience escapism, educational lessons, validation of culture, and a sense of social or moral control. These can all manifest in different ways, but generally speaking, those four functions are at the heart of any story worth telling.
More simply: the stories that resonate over time and place mean something to their audience. They tell us about our world around us, about our communities, about ourselves.
We’re currently over a quarter of the way through Star Trek Discovery and the story being told is pointless. Worse, it’s meaningless.
Ostensibly, STD is a prequel to Star Trek [TOS] that tells us the story of the Klingon War that created the conditions for Kirk et al to thrive. It should be highlighting the tension between Starfleet’s idealism versus the the reality of a cold, harsh galaxy. It should be setting up the politics of the Alpha Quadrant so that when we’re done with the series we can turn on “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and feel a seamless transition. It should be telling us about how humanity has to not give in to fear and hate and anger and suffering.
The problem is: Star Trek Discovery is failing at all of these things.
