Boldly Going… Away. Star Trek Discovery’s Final Season

Two cultural articles in one week (Cowboy Carter review on Monday) might be a bit much for an author usually focused on politics, but -as I tell people all the time-, I don’t always know what my fingers are going to type in my morning explorations.

The final season of Star Trek Discovery begins today (Thursday, April 4), and I’m looking forward to getting my future fix this evening.

Having traveled 800 years into the future, a technologically updated starship Discovery will pick up a storyline from a Next Generation episode about a long-past civilization that seeded the early eons of the galaxy with its DNA.

Given that Discovery’s format consists of a season-long arc, we’ll be shown in dramatic fashion clues to what Capt. Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and crew will be doing and where they’ll be going over the next nine episodes. Paramount+ says there will be an Indiana Jones feel to this season, whose 2023 premier was delayed by the decision to end the show, necessitating some reshooting, at five seasons. 

Bringing Star Trek to the (mostly) streaming screen in 2017 ended a dozen year absence for the concept, which first aired (and barely survived) in 1968. (See Every Star Trek Show And Movie In Chronological Order). What followed was a creative explosion of shows built around the basic Star Trek premise: Star Trek: Short Treks, spin-off series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Picard, Prodigy, Lower Decks and the upcoming film Star Trek: Section 31.

Star Trek storylines remain as one of the critical cultural influences for progressivism even after five-plus decades. Producer Gene Roddenberry sought to create a durable vehicle for slyly introducing topics not considered mainstream. Lucille Ball bet the farm on making the original series happen even after the network suits had turned it down.

Watching the original series makes me cringe these days, with its low budget effects and low life sexism. Creator Roddenberry was far from a saint, but the actualization of his concept of exploring more than planets and cultures remains, as Spock would say, fascinating.

The entirety of the franchise means a lot to me personally, as it does to fans worldwide. The combination of a positive future and evolved societies with adventurous tales keeps me coming back to previous incarnations of the show (check Pluto TV for the oldies) as I cope with the angst of reality in the early 21st century. 

There is a subculture devoted to discussions, representations, fan fictions, and in-person experiences of Star Trek. I’m not part of that; the stories are part of my personal collection of mythologies and I’m okay with other people who share those interpretations.

The summer before my daughter went off to college consisted of afternoons spent together watching Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. I hoped (and think I succeeded) she’d apply the tolerance and sense of wonder portrayed as she moved on to the next phase in her life.

Actress Sonequa Martin-Green (Captain Burnham preseason interview promises more than just an adventure story for the final season of Discovery:

• "In every department, you will see some really incredible things coming to life," continues Martin-Green. "In Season 5, we did some stuff we should not have been able to do; we did some stuff that we've never done before. I'm really proud of every department, of every cast member, of every crew member, every writer, every producer, every post-production coordinator, and supervisor, and worker. We took it to the next level without even knowing that it was our last season. When everyone sees it, I think that they'll see what I'm talking about. It's culminating because of that; it is just on another level. It's a huge, huge season. People have a lot to look forward to."

On occasion, somebody will get past the eye roll when I mention my devotion to the shows and ask what’s my favorite. And the answer is, I don’t know. For adventures, I’d pick Next Generation; for story lines, Voyager; and for scripts, Deep Space Nine. Ask me tomorrow and I might have a change of opinion.

All the series fulfilled the premise of going where no one had gone before. Star Trek is/was/will be our modern day mythology in every sense of the word. While Discovery as a series is wrapping up, the fantasy of a better universe and the value of stories about exploration will remain with me forever.

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Thursday’s Noteworthy News Links

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Too big to care by Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic

• Even after all that payola, Google is still absurdly profitable. They have so much money, they were able to do a $80 billion stock buyback. Just a few months later, Google fired 12,000 skilled technical workers. Essentially, Google is saying that they don't need to spend money on quality, because we're all locked into using Google search. It's cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we'd still prefer Google.

• This is enshittification. Google is shifting value away from end users (searchers) and business customers (advertisers, publishers and merchants) to itself.

• And here's the thing: there are search engines out there that are so good that if you just try them, you'll get that same feeling you got the first time you tried Google.

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Is Antifa a gang? Trial in street brawl at pro-Trump rally opens a landmark legal test by Will Carless at USA Today.

• A gang-style conspiracy conviction could effectively double any prison sentence. If successful, it could be used as a blueprint for prosecutors across the country, according to legal experts. It could also bolster a right-wing political narrative that has claimed Antifa is not just a political ideology, but a dangerous group.  

• “This case opens the door for any prosecutor to approach any protest where people are either anti-fascist or dressed in black and to pursue them under a conspiracy,” said attorney John Hamasaki, who is representing Lightfoot. “It has a chilling effect on political expression.”  

• But the prosecution’s high-profile approach has been criticized, in part because the two-sided street brawls only led to charges for one side. Video from the day showed fights involving people affiliated with the extremist group the Proud Boys and local white supremacist factions. 

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Can removing pavement help San Diego keep up with its road repair backlog? by Andrew Bowen at KPBS

• All together, the city has about 17,300 acres of paved streets to maintain. And many of those streets are excessively wide. For example, North Avenue in University Heights is about 67 feet from one curb to the other. That's wide enough for six lanes of travel, far more space than is needed for a quiet neighborhood street with a speed limit of 25 miles per hour.

• Two blocks east, Georgia Street is only about 42 feet wide. Not only does that street have less pavement — it also has a wider strip of landscaping between the sidewalk and curb.

• Chloe Lauer, executive director of the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, said the city should consider strategically reducing the width of its streets, either by removing unnecessary lanes or making the existing lanes narrower, and replacing the excess pavement with exposed earth.

• A study last year from Johns Hopkins University found narrower lanes also discourage speeding and reduce crashes.