Coda

This coda sums up the book and gives an outlook to the show’s possible future. It discussed how, with the second season cliffhanger, Star Trek: Discovery allows for the show to both keep established characters and continue telling stories about the effects of the events seen in the previous two seasons, while also providing it with a ‘fresh start.’ This not only potentially disentangles it from established canon, it also impacts the worldbuilding of the show, while running the risk of reading like a cop out, or even an admission of defeat after two years of criticism heaped on the show from some parts of the fanbase as well as some media critics. However, as Discovery effectively reanimated a whole franchise that is now also one officially, it might also simply open up new ways for transmedia storytelling and crossovers with all the other properties being launched in the new Star Trek franchise group.

‘We Get to Reach for the Stars’

The Introduction compares Discovery to the earlier shows comprising the Star Trek canon and argues, against criticism raised by some scholars and fans, that the show’s darker tone in the first two seasons present an exploration of the established storyworld of the franchise. Thus, rather than betraying the utopian ideals underlying Star Trek, Discovery continues another franchise tradition: staying in touch with and commenting on its contemporary moment. In doing so, the show takes on the post-9/11 climate of war and explores the conscious effort it takes to uphold societal ideals in the face of outside and inside threats. The Introduction further comments on the nostalgia attendant on some critics’ comparisons between Discovery and other Star Trek shows and briefly reflects on the slightly more nostalgic feeling of the second season and the ways in which it avoids some of the retrofuturism other shows have been criticized for. Finally, the Introduction also summarizes the 18 essays and one interview included in this volume and their interconnections.

‘Into A Mirror Darkly’

This chapter argues that contemporary representations of border crossing on screen engage with a specifically 21st-century U.S. manifestation of what Lora Wildenthal in following Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar calls “imperial feminism.” It examines how the most recent product of the Star Trek franchise, the TV series Star Trek: Discovery (2017–ongoing), interrogates the legacies of U.S. imperialism and, less overtly so, of U.S. imperial feminism. The analysis focuses on the geographical as well as the metaphorical border crossings that occur in the series when the crew of the Federation starship Discovery jumps to an alternative universe which is dominated by the fascist Terran Empire. It argues that Star Trek: Discovery can be read as a feminist text that exposes the limits of two very different kinds of post-sexist futures: one, the Mirror Universe, in which the empowerment of women depends on openly imperialist and racist ideologies and another, the Prime Universe, in which these ideologies threaten to make a comeback in the context of violent conflict. By contrasting these two possible futures and by connecting them through instances of border crossing, Star Trek: Discovery not only speaks to issues of intersectional feminist critique, it also responds to the political, social, and cultural changes in the United States leading up to and associated with the Trump administration.

Star Trek Discovers Women

Women scientists are often seen as anomalous exceptions in the fictional (and indeed real) world of white, male dominated scientific research. Even in the supposedly race and gender blind future of Star Trek, a black woman science specialist is considered revolutionary. Science and technology are a backdrop for the Star Trek universe. The theory and practice that gives the narrative a spectacular speculative frame is often perceived as neutral (or at least benevolent) as Starfleet explores the universe. Star Trek idealises science and the scientist, and throughout much of its history the science future it imagines has been distinctly white and male. This chapter argues that Star Trek has historically given women the space to be scientists, but Discovery goes further than previous entries into the canon by taking a black woman scientist from the margin to the centre of the story and offering a future when neither race nor gender present a barrier.

Looking in the Mirror

This chapter examines the Mirror Universe as a figure for Star Trek’s negotiation of its own franchise identity. It argues that the Mirror is a tool with which Trek examines its own legacy, tropes, and purpose. It is no coincidence that this dark, funhouse vision is used most extensively in Discovery and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, two shows whose premises are built on re-examination and reinvention of the franchise, and whose themes draw morally murky connections between the Trek future and our real present. These shows repurpose the dystopian Mirror as a necessary means of reflection on what it means to be Star Trek, and how the franchise negotiates its complicated past. This chapter focuses in particular on how Discovery revisits and revises the systems of power inherent to the franchise’s operation, both onscreen and in audience distribution, especially as they pertain to women, power, and normative subjectivity.

‘Lorca, I’m Really Gonna Miss Killing You’

While time travel as a narrative device has been firmly entrenched in popular culture since the late 19th century, its sub-trope, the time loop, has been largely neglected until the 1990s. Star Trek, never a franchise to shy away from bold narrative tools, first introduced a time loop in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Cause and Effect” (1992). Since then, the trope has become a well-known storytelling device, especially within the realms of science fiction television series. A time loop occurs when the temporal fabric of a narrative world enfolds one or several characters in a recurring circular loop, while for the rest of the story world, time flows in its natural direction. Most crucial in many of these narratives is the question of emotional development and human connection, both equally enabled and denied by the time loop. This is also the case in Discovery’s seventh episode “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” (2017). This chapter looks at the episode, at the special narrative space created by the time loop, the counterfactuals it generates, and the emotional development it affords to the characters trapped inside – and outside.

Not Your Daddy’s Star Trek

This chapter argues that in contrast to older iterations of the franchise, Star Trek: Discovery is not only centred on Michael Burnham, First Officer and later mutineer/science specialist, and thus departs from the usual focus on a starship Captain as lead character, it also introduces a wider variety of female characters – human and Klingon – who are instrumental in resolving the first and second season’s central conflicts. Thus, Discovery, through including of so many different and fully-fledged female characters not only continues in the franchise’s liberal tradition, it also explores new ways in which female characters can be represented in televised (American) science fiction series. This paper will argue that the show’s female characters push against and sometimes transcend generic tropes that have limited characters like TNG’s Deanna Troi and Dr. Beverly Crusher, picking up on and contributing to contemporary debates about gender and gender identity.

Interview with Dr. Diana A. Mafe on ‘Normalizing Black Women as Heroes’

In an interview with the editors, Dr. Diana Mafe discusses her book Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive Portrayals in Speculative Film and TV (2018) on the role of black women in science fiction, and what Star Trek: Discovery’s lead character Michael Burnham means for the genre in general, as well as the Star Trek franchise in particular.

Preface

The Preface outlines the ways in which this volume’s essays on questions of race and racialization, sexuality and the politics of gender identification, and the new storytelling possibilities of television in the post-network era place Discovery in its larger Star Trek canon, show how it engages the history of this canon and reinvents the series through the new critical perspectives of twenty-first century cultural politics.

‘I Never Met a Female Michael Before’

Although transgender individuals have been absent from Star Trek since its 1966 debut, this absence has conspicuously haunted the franchise in the form of illusions, allegories, metaphors, alien species, and various other metonymic mirages. Unsurprisingly, the franchise’s latest iteration, Star Trek: Discovery, is no exception. This chapter argues that despite depicting a seemingly cisgender universe, the show, like its predecessors and reviewers, does not seem to be able to escape this significant absence of trans characters and the associated cisgender anxiety. It examines the affective dimensions of the show’s and its reviewer’s struggle to come to terms with its nascent trans potentiality. Moreover, it explores the potential ramifications of these allusions to aspects of trans experience from a trans studies perspective.