Star Trek Discovery Season 3 Is Almost Here!
Discovery Is Returning!
(The following contains spoilers for Star Trek Discovery seasons 1-3)
Star Trek Discovery is ready to launch back into action and onto our screens October 15th 2020! The long wait to see what the future, literally, will hold for Michael Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery is over! New cast members are about to be revealed and new stories will be told in Season Three of Discovery!
Disco Series Recap
Star Trek Discovery focuses around Michael Burnham, who first serves aboard the USS Shenzhou and then the Discovery on her redemptive arc from mutineer and war starter, to hero. She is the adopted sister of Spock after being orphaned on Vulcan following a tragedy where she lost her parents. As the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth, Sarek, Spock’s Father, believes it is his duty to take Michael as his ward. Her childhood is not easy. In Starfleet she served aboard the USS Shenzhou as First Officer. During an investigation of a damaged satellite she finds an ancient Klingon ship and is attacked by a Klingon warrior. While defending herself, she kills the Klingon. The soldier’s death is used by T’Kuvma, whos is an outcast in the Klingon Empire, to unite the Klingon Houses and start a war against the Federation. Burnham, against her captains direct orders, fires on the Klingons in her hope to prevent the war. During the Battle of the Binary Stars, T’Kuvma kills Captain Georgiou and Burnham returns the deed by killing him. The battle claims many lives and there are heavy losses on both sides. Burnham is arrested for mutiny and stripped of rank.
Six months later, while being transferred, Burnham’s shuttle has an emergency and is recovered by the USS Discovery. Captain Gabriel Lorca asks Michael to work for him as a science specialist to win the war with the help of a a new type of drive propulsion on the Discovery that uses spores. Burnham saves a tardigrade known as Ripper who is being used and tortured as the host that controls the spores. She solves this problem by suggesting a human as the host and Lt. Paul Stamets risks his life to become the new host that controls the spores.
With the help of Discovery’s spore drive and Burnham, the war with the Klingons ends with an armistice agreement that earns Burnham a pardon. She is reinstated as a Commander and becomes Chief Science Officer on Discovery.
In Season Two, Burnham and Discovery square off against Section 31 and Control, a mysterious AI, that is the real reason why the Red Angel has been appearing and sending signals throughout the galaxy. She finds out that her foster brother Spock has been seeing visions of the Red Angel since childhood and that it has damaged his sanity due to a mind meld with it. He is accused of murder after he escapes the mental facility that he had himself committed to. His Mother, Amanda Grayson, hides him for a time until he is discovered, and he is then taken to the Talosians (a race of beings with powerful telepathic abilities) who help heal him. In his mind meld with the Red Angel, he sees a universal catastrophe that is about to happen.
On route to rescue Spock, the crew of Discovery encounter a Sphere, composed of organic and nonliving matter melded together that had been collecting information and analyzing the universe as it travelled and was reaching the end of it’s lifespan. Not wanting everything that it had learned in its travels to be lost forever, the Sphere pulled the Discovery out of warp using a powerful multiphasic stasis field. Then it attempts to communicate with the ship by teaching its languages to the universal translator. However, the complexity of its communication and the breathtaking amounts of knowledge overload Discovery's systems, causing widespread malfunctions that are at first, determined by the crew to be a computer virus. The crew figures out the intent of the Sphere is benign, so they drop all resistance thus allowing the Sphere to transfer its knowledge to them. Burnham later realizes that her Mother as the Red Angel, put the Sphere in the path of the Discovery.
Burnham, Spock and the crew of Discovery, (now under the command of the famous Captain Christopher Pike) learn of Control, and its plan to destroy all life in the universe. It is later found out that 20 years earlier, Section 31 had built the Red Angel suit and Burnham’s parents were an important part of the temporal project.
Michael is used as bait for the Red Angel by Section 31. They successfully capture the Red Angel and it is revealed to be Burnham’s Mother Gabrielle Burnham. Control takes over Captain Leland of Section 31 via nanites, killing him and reanimating his corpse. It steals 54% of the Sphere data, and escapes. The plan to send all the Sphere data away with the suit fails as the containment field collapses taking Gabrielle and the damaged suit into the future once again. The crew comes up with a plan to build a new suit, send the signals, get the Sphere data in Discovery’s computer and send Discovery far into the future and out of Controls reach. To power the suit, they must approach the Klingons for help. They have “time crystals” that will allow the suit to move through time. Pike volunteers and sees a vision of his future. Figuring out via a vision of her own that self-destruct won’t work, Burnham readies for a one-way trip with Discovery to the future. She knows she must set the signals in the past. Section 31 brings 30 ships to attack the Enterprise and Discovery. However, these two ships aren’t unaided as the Klingons and the Kelpiens join the fight to stop Control. The Leland-Control being is lured, painfully disabled, and killed by Georgiou, who had traveled from the Mirror Universe in the Discovery in season 2.
Burnham activates her suit and sets off all 5 points in the past, and then sets the 6th for Discovery to follow into the wormhole. The battle is intense, and bloody, but ultimately victorious against Control as Leland is dead and the Sphere data is where it cannot be reached 930 years into the future. A seventh signal is detected later by the Enterprise as it starts its new mission. To them, it is the sign that the Discovery and her crew had arrived safely in the future. The Enterprise crew is sworn to never speak of Discovery or her crew again, and they report the Discovery destroyed to Starfleet.
Season 3 Trailer moment standouts
“Let’s show them who we are” – Michael Burnham
After crashing on a planet, Burnham is extatic that she has succeeded in stopping Control after detecting lifeforms on the planet that she and Discovery crashed on.
However, she also learns that the Federation collapsed after an event known as the "Burn".
“The Federation isn’t just ships; the Federation is its people” Burnham tells Saru.
“Disfunction is the team” “We’ve just accepted it” “No, we haven’t” quips the Crew as a problem is detected and discussed.
The words FAR FROM HOME appear and fade as Michael talks to a new ally in the Future. Then the words THEIR FIGHT BEGINS. Mirror Universe Georgiou shows some local about her authority by using her foot upside his head after he makes the mistake of questioning it. Burnham is impressed by a kinetic weapon used by her new ally to knock some human pins down. “We all want a future that’s real, that matters”. Burnham continues a voiceover about how the Federation empowered the universe, and them and that they can rise to meet and solve problems as images flash of what Discovery has in store, planets, trees, even some hugging. The trailer can be seen here: https://youtu.be/70dm3WzNuss
New Cast Members
- Cleveland “Book” Booker (David Ajala) joins as the new ally to Burnham
- Adira (Blu del Barrio), a non-binary human described as “highly intelligent with a confidence and self-assurance well beyond their years.”
- Gray (Ian Alexander) described as “empathetic, warm and eager to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a Trill host, but he will have to adapt when his life takes an unexpected turn.”
Season 3 Themes
The new Season is set 930 years in the future, and it will revolve around finding that although they did save the universe, they still find that the Federation has lost its way and is gone after it collapsed into a skeletal version of itself, sometime after an event called the "Burn".
Do you let it be or do you fight to bring back the Federation?
Also being introduced is a new Trill character, who will explore who a person is and their identity more than they have in the past with Jax or other Trills.
Now that Michael Burnham has faced the past and conquered it, the actor playing her says “My character is no longer driven by fear”, will this lead to a bolder Burnham? We can’t wait to see!
New episodes will be available on Thursdays exclusively on CBS All Access starting October 15th
What do you think of Discovery's new path into the future? What brought about, "The Burn"? New characters? Let us know in the comments!