There are only six stars left on the Federation flag! Star Trek: Discovery has officially jumped into a very bleak future for the Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. Nonetheless, Saru wants everyone to focus on “hope.” But what’s up with Burnham’s multiple hairstyles and why is Mirror Georgiou back in a Starfleet uniform? Fire up-that Spore Drive, the new trailer for Star Trek: Discovery season 3 is here!
Spoilers for the new trailer for Star Trek: Discovery season 3 ahead.
First off, let’s watch that shiny new trailer right here!
There’s lot to take in here. So let’s break down the basics.
- Burnham has several different hairstyles, meaning a lot of time will pass during this season
- Andorians are back and they appear at odds with what is left of the Federation.
- There are only six stars left on the Federation flag. Which planets might those be? (And who left?)
- We very clearly see members of the Trill species in this trailer. Could the Dax symbiont be a legit character this season! Why did no one see that one coming!?
- The new captain is not revealed, but Georgiou is in a Starfleet Uniform at some point. So maybe she’s in charge? Plot twist!
- The newest character, Cleavland Book, says Burnham believes in “ghosts” referring to her Starfleet insignia. This heavily implies Starfleet doesn’t exist anymore, even though the Federation might?
The release date for season 3 is simply listed as “2020” right now, so it stands to reasons it’s after Picard.
As usual CBS will find a way to destroy Star Trek again. As seen in trailer it looks like CBS destroyed the Federation and Starfleet. And I easy that because that character Book says to Burmam I see you believe in ghosts because of the emblem she wears on her uniform. So as I said CBS destroys every Trek it touches.
I thought Cleveland Book was the novelization of a Family Guy spinoff.
@1/Kevin Fowler: The production company currently operating under the name CBS Television Studios is essentially the same continuous entity as the one that was called Paramount Television before the Viacom split, and that was called Desilu Studios before the 1967 merger between Desilu and Paramount. Star Trek has always been produced by basically the same company, but that company has changed corporated hands and thus changed names more than once. (More specifically, Viacom owned the TV studio under the Paramount name for decades, but then it acquired CBS, merged its TV properties together, and split off the movie properties to a different company that was confusingly called Viacom while Viacom changed its name to CBS Corporation. So Paramount Television became CBS Paramount Television for a few years after the CBS acquisition, and then dropped the “Paramount” part after the Viacom split.)
But in a sense, maybe you’re right, since every revival and sequel of ST ever made has been accused by some fans of “destroying” ST, and so was the third season of TOS, probably. So the entity currently known as CBS Television (and before that Paramount Television) has been “destroying” Star Trek continuously for nearly 50 years now.
And once again Burnham is the key to it all. But at least Saru gets to make another inspirational speech.
This is probably all a big psychological experiment. How bleak can you make Star Trek before people will stop associating it with a bright future?
@5/Jana: Deep Space Nine got really bleak in its later seasons, but people loved it. I’ll never get this objection. Optimistic storytelling doesn’t mean nothing bad happens, it means the heroes defeat the darkness by standing by their principles.
Besides, a story about the struggle to restore the ideals of a great society that’s fallen into decline is very timely for us Americans.
Maybe if there hadn’t been so many dystopian works of fiction in the past decade, this turn by Star Trek might be more noteworthy. As it stands now, though, it looks…average. You’ve got a scrappy band of tortured souls fighting the odds and probably hitting the buzzwords of faith, family, and destiny along the way. Yeah.
@6/Christopher: I haven’t watched DS9’s later seasons. I probably wouldn’t love it. But from what I’ve heard, it’s definitely part of the big psychological experiment ;)
I agree that optimism doesn’t mean that nothing bad happens. But at least for me, optimism means that things, overall, will get better. Also, context matters. If you take a story about a better world and smash that better world in order to tell a story about heroes defeating the darkness, the result isn’t optimism. At best, it’s “This too shall pass”.
I concede the point about America. But there’s a shortage of good societies in fiction right now, and it’s a pity to lose the ones there are. Wouldn’t it have been much more elegant to deal with the timely story in the traditional manner, by portraying an alien society that suffers from the same problem?
@9/Jana:”If you take a story about a better world and smash that better world in order to tell a story about heroes defeating the darkness, the result isn’t optimism. At best, it’s “This too shall pass”.”
It’s unrealistic to expect any society to remain permanently stable forever. It goes without saying that there will be times in the future when the Federation struggles or falls and people will need to strive to restore its principles. But that’s still optimistic because they have the foundations of what the Federation built to show them the way, to motivate them to bring it back. No single institution lasts forever, but the ideas and principles it stood for can live on and inspire its successors. They can make the low points in history shorter and less dark because people remember what a better world looked like and can keep striving to live by its principles and restore it.
If you listen to the dialogue in the trailer, it’s largely talking about hope and making the future bright. So I don’t get the sense that the tone of the season is going to be dismal or depressing.
@9/Christopher: I don’t expect the Federation to remain unchanged, because everything changes, always. But I prefer a narrative where it continues to grow and change in good ways. Do you know the story “Our Million-Year Mission” in Strange New Worlds VI? That’s the kind of far future I’d like to see, if we have to have a far future tale.
Struggle and fall may be more realistic. But a story about continuing learning and growth would be more interesting and more inspirational. Why does the future have to be like the past?
”I don’t get the sense that the tone of the season is going to be dismal or depressing.”
Oh, I’m sure they’ll go for a new dawn and stuff. I still find it depressing. Not surprising – of course they would do a hope in dark times story, hope in dark times stories are easy to tell – but depressing. If you can like it, that’s fine.
I like Michael’s long hair, I think it’s very becoming if less practical than her short cut. And I love the height differential between Saru and the Empress. He’s looking down at her and her gun like “are you serious?”
@10/Jana: Sure, and I expect the Federation to be restored again by the end of season 3, so what’s the problem? If anything, the trailer implies that the UFP still exists in reduced form, that there’s still a Federation facility of some sort that that one guy has been watching. Maybe it hasn’t been destroyed but has just suffered setbacks, like in the unmade Final Frontier animated series proposal from 2006. It’s never wise to make assumptions from a trailer. Hints and teases are not definitive answers, nor are they meant to be.
@11/roxana: Yeah, her hair looks great.
@12, CLB, I’m just wondering how often those braids need to be redone and how long it takes. Also does she do it herself or does somebody help her? But they do look great.
I’m more interesting in Discovery than in Picard. I love that they took the story so far in the future and I love seeing the caves on Trill again. I hope they present the Trill species better than Ds9, they’re fascinating species and my favorites and Ds9 didn’t do them justice imo. There were so many more stories to say about their society, the joining and their place in the federation. I like that Alex Kutrman brought them up in the panel. I hope the writing for discovery is more coherent that the last couple of seasons. I feel the show had so many potentials that were wasted. I understand that the end goal for last season was for discovery to end in the future so some storylines felt forced but now that that goal was accomplice I hope they will focus more on the exploration of the characters and let the story unfold naturally
@13/roxana: I looked around a bit and found an article about the basics of how it works:
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/beauty-hair/hair/a11651707/braiding-afro-hair-aftercare/
In short, it takes maybe 6 hours or more to do it, but then it holds for a couple of months, if tended properly.
I suppose one could ask a similar question about Yeoman Rand’s insane beehive or the other ornate hairstyles on TOS women. But I think the implicit idea there was that the women of the future used some kind of high-tech means to create elaborate hairstyles quickly so that even military officers could routinely wear what would once have been impractically complicated dos. Which is the kind of futurism you’d expect of the ’60s, envisioning advances in technology but not in gendered behaviors or customs.
Six hours every couple of months seems reasonable. She can do research on her computer thanks to voice control and Holo displays while she does her hair.
I thought of the crazy sixties dos but does Michael have access to that technology? Is she aboard Discovery while her hair grows out?
Michael does her hair, assisted by Tilly , who needs some tonsorial help herself, and maybe Georgiou in a scene of feminine bonding and serious strategizing.
@15/Christopher: They did envision advances in gendered behaviours, hence all the female scientists and other professionals. It’s just that real life has followed suit. And none of the women ever fainted! I’ve watched a few episodes of The Outer Limits last winter and grew quite irritated with all the fainting women. That hasn’t aged well at all.
With the exception of Janice Rand’s beehive, were the hairstyles even more elaborate than the ones women actually wore at the time? Some of them look quite practical, for example Areel Shaw’s or Tonia Barrows’.
@16/Roxana: Feminine bonding and serious strategising would sound nice if it weren’t for the fact that Georgiou is an evil ex-dictator.
#12. Sure, and I expect the Federation to be restored again by the end of season 3, so what’s the problem?
I think you answered your own question. When so much is built around a season-long arc and it’s this predictable, it can feel like an empty experience. It’s cheap drama, too. You know everything you watch Star Trek for? Watch us take it away and slowly, gradually bring it back with iconic things you’ll recognize: a flag, familiar ships, familiar aliens, etc. It’s practically from a playbook now.
@17/Jana: More elaborate than one would expect of a woman in military service, certainly, without the time to spend hours at a beauty salon. Hence my suspicion that there was supposed to be some futuristic advance in the efficiency of such things.
I love that there are Andorians, Trill, and even a Lurian!