Discovery Season 3 Makes Star Trek's TOS Message Relevant Again
Star Trek: Discovery season 3 has set its sights on updating a classic message from Star Trek: The Original Series.Unlike TOS, which had a reputation for being optimistic, Discovery has not been afraid to show that the future might not be so hopeful. This is particularly true in season 3, which shows the crew of Discovery traveling into the 32nd century only to find that the Federation has collapsed due to The Burn, plunging the galaxy into lawlessness and chaos. Earth has also regressed, becoming isolationist, xenophobic, and extremely hostile to outsiders.
TOS premiered in 1966 and paved the way for the rest of the Star Trek franchise. The show depicts a utopian future in the wake of Earth's first contact with extraterrestrial life, a future where humanity has put aside all differences and agreed to work as part of the United Federation of Planets towards common goals of exploration and scientific discovery. War, poverty, and discrimination have all been eradicated on Earth by the time TOS takes place. By contrast, Star Trek: Discovery has consistently taken a darker approach to the future. Essentially, the utopia of TOS has become a dystopia, where many of the worse parts of humanity have returned.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowFor long-time Star Trek fans, Discovery's darker, apparently less hopeful tone might seem like a betrayal of TOS's message. Discovery, however, only seems to be trying to take a more nuanced stance. TOS made the argument that humanity had progressed beyond the place where they could fall back into old patterns. Discovery season 3 refutes this idea almost immediately, showing instead that progress is not permanent. The show makes it clear that humanity is not perfect, and that catastrophe still has the ability to cause society to regress. This argument, however, is not offered without hope. The Federation may have collapsed in the 32nd century, but it is not entirely gone, and Discovery's crew has made it their mission to find the pieces and put them back together. They have carried their optimistic ideals with them into the future, and hope to be the ones who restore the galaxy to its former order. Discovery season 3 has not abandoned all hope of a utopic future, it is simply saying that humanity is not always as good at keeping that utopia alive as TOS argues it is.
In this way, Star Trek: Discovery is keeping a Star Trek tradition alive: it is mirroring back the social and political context in which it has been created. Star Trek: The Original Series was born in a decade that was extremely politically divisive, and saw the explosion of the Civil Rights Movement as well as many others. TOS chose to address this moment head-on instead of shying away from it. Now, in a similar political and social climate, Star Trek: Discovery is choosing to do the same thing, arguing that the current tensions indicate a bleak future if humanity continues on its path, but there is always hope.
Discovery is also building on a tradition of dystopian fiction that has become very common. Since the September 11th attacks, the number of dystopian narratives has exploded across all genres. Star Trek: Discovery is using the tropes of a common type of fiction to update Star Trek's original message for an audience that has been bombarded with bleak ideas about the future and is potentially more cynical about the idea of a utopia than they were roughly 50 years ago.
Audiences have been drawn to the Star Trek franchise for decades, both for its strong characters and storylines and because of its optimistic message. Star Trek: Discovery continues to deliver on these things, and while the optimism of the show might seem more buried in season 3, it is actually more present than ever. In the darkest times, having a group of people championing what is right and not giving up despite the odds might be the most hopeful thing to depict.
About The AuthorSource: screenrant.com