Tag Archives: Star Trek Discovery

There was no shortage of pearl-clutching and garment-rending over the tone and spirit of Star Trek Discovery through much of its first season (some of it from yours truly). The show embraced a moral ambiguity in Starfleet’s mission that every other series (outside of Deep Space 9) had only hinted at. Captain Lorca leaving Harry Mudd to rot in a Klingon prison cell was touted as a betrayal of Federation and franchise principles. And Heaven help any writer who’d dared to have a character suggest that some Star Trek ideals must be bent or broken in a time of war.

But as I discussed with Robbie Dorman on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, for all that folderol (or perhaps because of it) Star Trek Discovery ends its first season with a firm embrace of the franchise’s hallowed ideals of optimism, mercy, and understanding; a firm rejection of those who would eschew or ignore those things when they’re inconvenient; and a firm vindication of a lead character who grows enough to discover that it’s worth a mutiny to stand by those principles, not to toss them aside.

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