Crew of Star Trek: Discovery, We Hardly Knew Ye

Ten-episode seasons are far from enough to develop an ensemble cast

Discovery crew

The original Star Trek was never meant to be The James T. Kirk Show or The Spock Show, regardless of whatever diva complex the actors may have had behind the scenes. We have a roughly complete idea of what Uhura is like, what Chekhov is like, what Scotty is like, what Sulu is like. That's the function of so-called filler episodes: they give the writers a chance to showcase and flesh out the secondary characters.

This breathing room is lost in today's shorter seasons of television, but even in new shows, the writers can figure out ways to let us get to know the whole cast. Star Trek: Lower Decks has ten-episode seasons, and yet we've spent more than enough time with relatively minor figures like Billups, Kayshon, Migleemo and Barnes. Lower Decks is a particularly good example for my argument: as a comedy show, it needs to go out of its way to make every line of dialogue memorable. This means that a minor character with only one line per episode will still have a chance to stand out and leave an impression about their personality. We know nothing about Migleemo's family life, but we can guess what it would feel like to dine with him.

Star Trek: Voyager didn't know how to do this. It oscillated between wanting to be The Tom Paris Show and The Doctor Show until it got a severe case of whiplash and became permanently The Seven of Nine Show. In this case, characters were written either as one-note archetypes (Paris, Torres, Kim, Kes, Tuvok) or as protean entities with no defined shape (Chakotay, Janeway). At the very extreme of amorphousness stand both the Doctor and Neelix. But the Doctor, being a sentient AI on a quest to expand his capabilities, was an excellent fit for this style of writing that gave him a rapidly changing identity, whereas Neelix, who already had a life and a personal history, came off as desperate by trying to do everything and be everything.

The secret to threading the needle of characterization in Star Trek is showing us life outside the job. Star Trek has always had a problem of idolizing Starfleet a bit too much, and it hasn't explored with sufficient depth the way each character's whole self is subsumed in their job. The fact that an old Picard can immediately tell that Rios used to belong to Starfleet is intended as a glimpse inside Rios's character, but it's actually a tragedy. Here's how Picard inadvertently describes the reduction of Rios as a person:

I see this ship is impeccably maintained. Every bolt and clasp and fitting in place. Everything stowed in regulation Starfleet order. I don't know what happened to you, Rios, or to the Ibn Majid. But five minutes on this ship, and I know precisely what I'm looking at. You are Starfleet to the core. I can smell it on you.

The writing in Picard was never particularly well focused, but at least nominally it was supposed to be a show about one main character. The nature of the tragedy is that this character completely identifies with an institution (or rather with the idealized form of it; when Picard quits Starfleet in protest, it's to preserve his own Starfleet-ness). That is how he can figure out Rios, because the institution worked the same standardization magic on him. Defining Rios in that way, so soon after introducing the character, casts a shadow on everything else we can glean about him afterwards.

The actual purpose of all this rant is to point out the criminal disservice that Star Trek: Discovery did to its secondary characters. Rhys, Linus, Bryce, Arav, Pollard, Christopher, Owosekun, Detmer, Airiam, Nilsson (plus all the crew members who suddenly and inexplicably showed up in season 5 only to fill chairs: Jemison, Naya, Asha, Gallo)—why don't we know anything about them outside the job? This is an unusually large cast for a Star Trek series, and we only ever see them as the functions they perform on the ship. We don't meet them as people. Owosekun has a fascinating backstory that could provide endless drama; Detmer's PTSD promises a compelling season arc that goes nowhere; Arav has a fascinating design that hints at very unusual biology, yet is reduced to background decoration; and poor Airiam receives the worst treatment of all. Fans spent two whole seasons wondering what was Airiam's deal until it was finally explained in the most clumsily rushed manner in the same episode where she dies.

For all its talk of cooperation and community, Discovery was never an ensemble show; it was The Michael Burnham Show. We're constantly told that this crew has become a family, but we aren't shown why. The writers seem to have finally realized the problem by season 5, when new First Officer Rayner is ordered to socialize with the crew because he's a grumpy ball of bitterness. What he does instead is have a lightning round of 20-second talks with every one of them. The episode where this happens gives us the tiniest bit of characterization for the Discovery crew that is never revisited. It's not a cure to the problem; it's salt on the wound.

This neglect happens even to the main cast of Discovery. After Gray gets a new synthetic body, the fact that Adira still carries a Trill symbiont is never addressed again, and their character becomes a blank slate from then on. Reno's wonderful sense of humor is shamefully underutilized; in some episodes it's easy to forget she's even in this show. And Burnham herself is the poster child for workaholism. Who is she apart from Starfleet? Turns out she becomes mother to another Starfleet captain. I feel sorry for that kid.

It's tradition in Star Trek to use the tie-in novels to fill in the blanks left on screen. Discovery left far too many blanks about its own cast, and now that the show is over, an opportunity opens to keep Discovery fans hooked with dozens and dozens of books. Is Paramount hiring? May I call dibs on Owosekun?

—Arturo

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