Said to be a much welcomed relief to Trekkers and Trekkies
who are unable to accept JJ Abram’s reboot of the Star Trek universe, does Star
Trek Discovery qualify as a much vaunted “back on track” return to Gene
Roddenberry’s original vision for Star Trek?
By: Ringo Bones
If you are one of those Trekkers / Trekkies like me who are
still suspicious of where the JJ Abrams Star Trek is going or what it was
supposed to become, the latest “small screen” variant of Gene Roddenberry’s
Star Trek franchise – i.e. Star Trek Discovery could be the much needed cool
breeze we are seeking since 2009. With a couple of seasons now shown and a
third one that’s already airing in some parts of the world, it seems that
critics and long-time fans agree that Star Trek Discovery could be the greatest
Star Trek TV series of the second decade of the 21st Century.
Star Trek Discovery not only serves as a stage where a
female East Asian action star named Michelle Yeoh, who became well-known to
Western audiences in her role as a computer savvy Chinese agent in the James
Bond Tomorrow Never Dies movie back in 1997, can now appear regularly to
Western fans who had wondered whatever happened to her after 9/11. But what
Star Trek Discovery has to offer that might rekindle the interest of Trekkies
and Trekkers fiercely original to the original series who thinks that the
franchise started to went downhill when Star Trek The Next Generation happened
is that Discovery reexamined characters and plot lines of the original series
that are somewhat merely glossed over back in the latter half of the 1960s. I
mean on the first season of Discovery alone showing the potential for Harry
Mudd to be as a formidable villain as Khan Noonien Singh and not just a
fumbling grifting buffoon in the original series. And Discovery’s first season ends
with a few episodes revisiting in more detail the “Terran Mirror Universe” that
was only featured in a single episode in the original series titled Mirror,
Mirror.
