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Star Trek: Discovery

Ten years before Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise, the USS Discovery discovers new worlds and lifeforms as one Starfleet officer learns to understand all things alien. Ten years before Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise, the USS Discovery discovers new worlds and lifeforms as one Starfleet officer learns to understand all things alien. Ten years before Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise, the USS Discovery discovers new worlds and lifeforms as one Starfleet officer learns to understand all things alien.

• Bryan Fuller
• Alex Kurtzman
• Sonequa Martin-Green
• Anthony Rapp
• 4.5K User reviews
• 104 Critic reviews
• 21 wins & 87 nominations total

Episodes 65

Photos 1468

• Michael Burnham …

• Lt. Cmdr. Paul Stamets …

• Sylvia Tilly …

• Lt. Keyla Detmer …

• Dr. Hugh Culber

• Lt. Gen Rhys …

• Lt. Joann Owosekun …

• Lt. R.A. Bryce …

• Lt. Nilsson …

• Cleveland Booker

• Lt. J.G. Linus …

• Discovery Computer …

• Ash Tyler …

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The Starfleet vessels seen in the first season, including the Discovery, the Shenzou and the redesigned Enterprise, were all designed by production artist John Eaves. Eaves' work with Star Trek spans three decades. Probably his most notable contribution was the design of the Enterprise-E for Star Trek: First Contact (1996) .
• Goofs With Michael being the adoptive sister of Spock, the series has many flashbacks to their childhood and upbringing on Vulcan. Spock's Vulcan half-brother, Sybok, does not appear nor is mention during these scenes. In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) , Spock says that he and Sybok grew up together. However, since it's never stated when Sybok joined Sarek's home - only that he did so following his mother's death - or when he was exiled from the family, it's not impossible Sybok moved in after Burnham, and left before she graduated (the two extremes of the flashbacks). Also, since Sybok was never mentioned before Star Trek V, it seems reasonable the family never spoke of him again after his estrangement.
• Alternate versions The serif-font legends and subtitles in the "broadcast" episodes are absent from the DVD versions, where they are replaced with the standard DVD subtitles.
• Connections Featured in MsMojo: Top 10 Female Lead TV Shows You Should Be Watching in 2017 (2017)

User reviews 4.5K

• wrappedinfunky
• Feb 4, 2022
• How many seasons does Star Trek: Discovery have? Powered by Alexa
• Why do the Klingons in this series look completely different to how they look in all of the previous Star Trek shows and films?
• Do I need to have seen any previous Star Trek TV series and movies in order to be able to understand and follow this show?
• Does this series take place in the alternate timeline of Star Trek (2009), or the timeline we are all used to from TOS?
• September 24, 2017 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
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• Star Trek: Hành Trình Khám Phá
• Pinewood Toronto Studios, Port Lands, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• CBS Television Studios
• Living Dead Guy Productions
• Master Key Production
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 1 hour
• Dolby Digital

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Full Cast of Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 - Every Main Character & Actor Who Appears (Photos)

As Star Trek: Discovery ’s final season commences, the principal actors from the hit series must say goodbye to characters they have played for several years.

When Star Trek: Discovery premiered in 2017, it was met with its fair share of backlash. Trek die-hards criticized the show’s design, cast, and even the time period in which it was set.

Still, Discovery won over a good portion of fans, many of whom were just glad to have a new Star Trek series again, after the franchise’s extended absence from television. Now, the show has launched Season 5, set to be the show’s final voyage.

The Characters & Actors of Star Trek: Discovery Season 5

Sonequa martin-green - michael burnham.

Sonequa Martin-Green plays Captain Michael Burnham, the adopted sister of Star Trek icon Mr. Spock. Burnham was given command of the series’ eponymous starship, the USS Discovery, at the end of the third season, after the cast wound up in the far-flung future of the 32nd Century.

Apart from her work on Discovery , which is undeniably her most well-known role, Martin-Green has also been a part of shows like The Walking Dead and The Good Wife .

Doug Jones - Saru

Veritable chameleon Doug Jones portrays Saru, Burnham’s first officer. Saru is a Kelpian, a species with a kind of biological early warning system that acts like a sixth sense. Saru has served as a fan-favorite since the series began, with many viewers calling for him to take on Discovery’s captain‘s chair.

Doug Jones has appeared in many major projects, but he is often completely unrecognizable, buried under prosthetics and makeup. He was Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies and the Amphibian Man in 2017’s The Shape of Water .

Anthony Rapp - Paul Stamets

Anthony Rapp plays the groundbreaking role of Commander Paul Stamets, a science officer and one of the two first openly gay Star Trek characters (The other being Stamets’ husband Dr. Hugh Culber).

Rapp has long been a fixture of stage and screen, having performed as a part of several high-profile Broadway shows, such as Rent , in which he was an original cast member. 

Mary Wiseman - Sylvia Tilly

Sylvia Tilly, brought to life by Mary Wiseman, started the series as a quirky but very driven cadet on board Discovery. Later on in the series, after the crew’s one-way trip to the future, she took a teaching position at Starfleet Academy.

Mary Wiseman is most famous for her part as Tilly but she’s also appeared in Baskets and the Western show Longmire to name a few.

Wilson Cruz - Hugh Culber

Wilson Cruz plays Dr. Hugh Culber, one of the USS Discovery’s physicians. Earlier in the series, Culber was killed by another, out-of-control officer. But eventually, the good doctor was brought back to life through the use of the mycelial network.

Cruz cut his teeth on the classic 1990s teen drama My So-Called Life , playing Rickie. He’s additionally had roles on hits like Grey’s Anatomy , Monk , and The West Wing .

Blu del Barrio - Adira Tal

Adira Tal is portrayed by Blu del Barrio. The character’s backstory involved them becoming the host for a Trill symbiont called Tal, which they inherited from their romantic partner. Currently, Adira is a Starfleet ensign, having been granted commission in Season 3.

Blu del Barrio holds the significant distinction of being Star Trek ’s first openly non-binary actor. They are also a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Callum Keith Rennie - Rayner

Callum Keith Rennie’s Rayner is a new character for Season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery . Rayner is a Kellerun, which is a species first introduced in the 1994 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , “Armageddon Game”.

Rennie has a lengthy resume, starring in a vast array of Canadian shows and films. He has also acted in the Battlestar Galactica reboot as well as Showtime’s Californication .

David Ajala - Cleveland “Book” Booker

David Ajala plays Book, a man introduced to the crew upon their arrival in the year 3188. As a Kwejian, Book can empathically connect with plant and animal life, including his pet cat Grudge. He also has a close personal bond with Michael Burnham.

Alaja previously had roles in Nightflyers and CW’s Supergirl , where he played the villainous Manchester Black.

Eve Harlow - Moll

Moll, played by Eve Harlow, is a pirate who is seeking an ancient technology that has ties to the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Chase”.

Eve Harlow has acted in favorites such as NCIS: Los Angeles and The Rookie . She also played the recurring character Tess on Agents of SHIELD .

Elias Toufexis - L’ak

L’ak, a green-skinned alien of unknown descent, is played by Elias Toufexis. He serves as Moll’s literal partner in crime.

Toufexis has appeared in another popular sci-fi series The Expanse , as well as several other television series, like Shadowhunters and Criminal Minds .

Oded Fehr - Charles Vance

Oded Fehr plays Admiral Charles Vance, who was introduced to Star Trek: Discovery in Season 3. As commander in chief of Starfleet, Vance wields a considerable amount of influence within the spacefaring organization.

Fehr would be best recognized for his character of Ardeth Bay in 1999’s The Mummy and its 2001 sequel. He’s also guested on shows such as The Blacklist and How to Get Away With Murder .

Chelah Horsdal - Laira Rillak

Laira Rillak, in addition to serving as Federation president, is of multi-species descent, a hybrid of human, Cardassian, and Bajoran genetics. Typically, Starfleet and Federation top brass are portrayed as having lesser quality moral fiber, but Rillak has stood out as an exception.

Chelah Horsdal has appeared in a wide variety of movies and series including Arrow , Hell on Wheels , and Rise of the Planet of the Apes .

Tara Rosling  - T’Rina

T’Rina is a Vulcan woman who first showed up in Discovery in the seventh episode of the third season. Since then, she has become romantically linked with Saru. T’Rina is also president of Ni’Var, the planet formerly known as Vulcan.

In addition to her Star Trek role, Rosling has also cropped up in The Expanse and The Handmaid’s Tale .

David Cronenberg - Kovich

David Cronenberg portrays Dr. Kovich, a Federation agent and galactic historian. Kovich first appeared in Discovery ’s third season and has gone on to become a well-liked recurring character.

As a veteran filmmaker, David Cronenberg is credited with bringing the genre of body horror into popular culture. His newest film, The Shroud , will hit theaters this year.

Tig Notaro - Jett Reno

Comedian Tig Notaro breathes life into Jett Reno, the fast-talking, wise-cracking Discovery engineer with a heart of gold. Reno has more than cemented herself as an audience favorite.

Alongside Notaro’s standup work, she’s had parts in Community , Bob’s Burgers , Suburgatory , and many more.

Star Trek: Discovery can be streamed exclusively on Paramount+ . The next new episode premieres on Thursday, April 11.

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Star Trek: Discover team up with Captain Christopher Pike on a mission to explore seven signals. The crew work together to uncover the meaning of the Red Angel while Michael considers the return of Spock.

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0:53 Star Trek: Discovery: Season 5 (First Look)

• 2019 - Emmy - Outstanding Main Title Design - nominated

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Inside the ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Series Finale: The Last-Minute Coda, the Surprise Easter Eggs, and What Season 6 Would Have Been About (EXCLUSIVE)

SPOILER WARNING: This story includes descriptions of major plot developments on the series finale of “ Star Trek : Discovery,” currently streaming on Paramount+ .

Watching the fifth and final season of “ Star Trek: Discovery ” has been an exercise in the uncanny. Paramount+ didn’t announce that the show was ending until after the Season 5 finale had wrapped filming — no one involved with the show knew it would be its concluding voyage when they were making it. And yet, the season has unfolded with a pervasive feeling of culmination. 

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“I think there’s more to it than just, ‘Oh, it was a coinkydink!’” the actor says with a laugh, before explaining that she’s thinking more about subtext than direct intent. “I’ve gotta give Michelle her flowers. She has always asked the deeper questions of this story and these characters. Those questions of meaning and purpose led to questions of origin and legacy, and, yes, that is quite culminating.”

Martin-Green and Paradise spoke exclusively with Variety about filming the finale and the coda, including the surprising revelation about the origins of one of “Discovery’s” most memorable characters and what Paradise’s plans for Season 6 would have been.

“It’s the Most Complicated Thing I’ve Ever Seen”

Once the “Discovery” writers’ room decided the season would be organized around a search for the Progenitor’s technology, they also knew that, eventually, Burnham would find it. So then they had to figure out what it would be.

“That was a discussion that evolved over the course of weeks and months,” Paradise says. Rather than focus on communicating the intricate details of how the technology works, they turned their attention to delivering a visual experience commensurate with the enormity and complexity of something that could seed life across the entire galaxy.

“We wanted a sense of a smaller exterior and an infinite interior to help with that sense of power greater than us,” Paradise says. Inspired in part by a drawing by MC Escher, the production created an environment surrounded by towering windows into a seemingly endless procession of alien planets, in which it’s just as easy to walk on the walls as on the floor. That made for a daunting challenge for the show’s producing director, Olatunde “Tunde” Osunsanmi: As Burnham battles with the season’s main antagonist, Mol (Eve Harlow), inside this volume, they fall through different windows into another world, and the laws of gravity keep shifting between their feet.

“It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen, directorially,” Paradise says. “Tunde had a map, in terms of: What did the background look like? And when the cameras this way, what’s over there? It was it was incredibly complex to design and shoot.”

Two of those planets — one in perpetual darkness and rainstorms, another consumed by constant fire — were shot on different parking areas on the Pinewood Toronto studio lot.

“The fire planet was so bright that the fire department got called from someone who had seen the fire,” Paradise says. “It should not be possible to pull those kinds of things off in a television show, even on a bigger budget show, with the time limitations that you have. And yet, every episode of every season, we’re still coming in on time and on budget. The rain planet and the fire planet we shot, I believe, one day after the other.”

Martin-Green jumps in: “Michelle, I think that was actually the same day!”

“It Felt Lifted”

The last time a “Star Trek” captain talked to a being that could be (erroneously) considered God, it was William Shatner’s James T. Kirk in 1989’s “Star Trek: The Final Frontier.” The encounter did not go well.

“I had my own journey with the central storyline of Season 5, just as a believer,” Martin-Green says. “I felt a similar way that Burnham did. They’re in this sort of liminal mind space, and it almost felt that way to me. It felt lifted. It really did feel like she and I were the only two people in this moment.”

It’s in this conversation that Burnham learns that while the Progenitors did create all “humanoid” alien species in the galaxy in their image, they did not create the technology that allowed them to do so. They found it, fully formed, created by beings utterly unknown to them. The revelation was something that Martin-Green discussed with Paradise early on in the planning of Season 5, allowing “Discovery” to leave perhaps the most profound question one could ask — what, or who, came first in the cosmos? — unanswered.

“The progenitor is not be the be all end all of it,” Paradise says. “We’re not saying this is God with a capital ‘G.’”

“There’s Just This Air of Mystery About Him”

Starting on Season 3 of “Discovery,” renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg began moonlighting in a recurring role as Dr. Kovich, a shadowy Federation operative whose backstory has been heretofore undisclosed on the show.

“I love the way he plays Kovich,” Paradise says of Cronenberg. “There’s just this air of mystery about him. We’ve always wanted to know more.” When planning Season 5, one of the writers pitched revealing Kovich’s true identity in the (then-season) finale by harkening back to the “Star Trek” show that preceded “Discovery”: “Enterprise,” which ran on UPN from 2001 to 2005.

In the final episode, when Burnham debriefs her experiences with Kovich, she presses him to tell her who he really is. He reintroduces himself as Agent Daniels, a character first introduced on “Enterprise” as a young man (played by Matt Winston) and a Federation operative in the temporal cold war. 

This is, to be sure, a deep cut even for “Star Trek” fans. (Neither Cronenberg nor Martin-Green, for example, understood the reference.) But Paradise says they were laying the groundwork for the reveal from the beginning of the season. “If you watch Season 5 with that in mind, you can see the a little things that we’ve played with along the way,” she says, including Kovich/Daniels’ penchant for anachonistic throwbacks like real paper and neckties.

“I didn’t know that that was going be there,” Martin-Green says. “My whole childhood came back to me.”

“We Always Knew That We Wanted to Somehow Tie That Back Up”

Originally, Season 5 of “Discovery” ends with Burnham and Book talking on the beach outside the wedding of Saru (Doug Jones) and T’Rina (Tara Rosling) before transporting away to their next adventure. But Paradise understood that the episode needed something more conclusive once it became the series finale. The question was what.

There were some significant guardrails around what they could accomplish. The production team had only eight weeks from when Paramout+ and CBS Studios signed off on the epilogue to when they had to shoot it. Fortunately, the bridge set hadn’t been struck yet (though several standing sets already had been). And the budget allowed only for three days of production.

Then there was “Calypso.” 

To fill up the long stretches between the first three seasons of “Discovery,” CBS Studios and Paramount+ greenlit a series of 10 stand-alone episodes, dubbed “Short Treks,” that covered a wide variety of storylines and topics. The second “Short Trek” — titled “Calypso” and co-written by novelist Michael Chabon — first streamed between Season 1 and 2 in November 2018. It focuses on a single character named Craft (Aldis Hodge), who is rescued by the USS Discovery after the starship — and its now-sentient computer system, Zora (Annabelle Wallis) — has sat totally vacant for 1,000 years in the same fixed point in space. How the Discovery got there, and why it was empty for so long, were left to the viewer’s imagination. 

Still, for a show that had only just started its run, “Calypso” had already made a bold promise for “Discovery’s” endgame — one the producers had every intention of keeping.

“We always knew that we wanted to somehow tie that back up,” says Paradise, who joined the writers’ room in Season 2, and became showrunner starting with Season 3. “We never wanted ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling Chad.”

So much so, in fact, that, as the show began winding down production on Season 5, Paradise had started planning to make “Calypso” the central narrative engine for Season 6. 

“The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting ‘Discovery’ back with ‘Calypso,’” she says.

Once having a sixth season was no longer an option, Paradise knew that resolving the “Calypso” question was non-negotiable. “OK, well, we’re not going to have a season to do that,” she says. “So how do we do that elegantly in this very short period of time?”

“I Feel Like It Ends the Way It Needed to End”

Resolving “Calypso” provided the storytelling foundation for the epilogue, but everything else was about giving its characters one final goodbye.

“We want to know what’s happening to Burnham, first and foremost,” Paradise says. “And we knew we wanted to see the cast again.”

For the latter, Paradise and Jarrow devised a conceit that an older Burnham, seated in the captain’s chair on Discovery, imagines herself surrounded by her crew 30 years prior, so she (and the audience) could connect with them one final time. For the former, the makeup team designed prosthetics to age up Martin-Green and Ajala by 30 years — “I think they were tested as they were running on to the set,” Paradise says with a laugh — to illustrate Burnham and Book’s long and happy marriage together.

Most crucially, Paradise cut a few lines of Burnham’s dialogue with Book from the original Season 5 finale and moved it to a conversation she has with her son in the coda. The scene — which evokes the episode’s title, “Life Itself” — serves as both a culminating statement of purpose for “Discovery” and the overarching compassion and humanity of “Star Trek” as a whole.

To reassure her son about his first command of a starship, Burnham recalls when the ancient Progenitor asked what was most meaningful to her. “Do you know how you would answer that question now?” he asks.

“Yeah, just being here,” Burnham replies. “You know, sometimes life itself is meaning enough, how we choose to spend the time that we have, who we spend it with: You, Book, and the family I found in Starfleet, on Discovery.”

Martin-Green relished the opportunity to revisit the character she’s played for seven years when she’s reached the pinnacle of her life and career. “You just get to see this manifestation of legacy in this beautiful way,” she says. “I will also say that I look a lot like my mom, and that was that was also a gift, to be able to see her.”

Shooting the goodbye with the rest of her cast was emotional, unsurprisingly, but it led Martin-Green to an unexpected understanding. “It actually was so charged that it was probably easier that it was only those three days that we knew it was the end, and not the entirety of season,” she says.

Similarly, Paradise says she’s “not sure” what more she would’ve done had there been more time to shoot the coda. “I truly don’t feel like we missed out on something by not having one more day,” she says. “I feel like it ends the way it needed to end.”

Still, getting everything done in just three days was no small feat, either. “I mean, we worked ’round the clock,” Martin-Green says with a deep laugh. “We were delirious by the end — but man, what a way to end it.”

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Star Trek: Discovery

Where to watch.

Watch Star Trek: Discovery with a subscription on Paramount+, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

Cast & Crew

Bryan Fuller

Alex Kurtzman

Sonequa Martin-Green

Captain Michael Burnham

Anthony Rapp

Paul Stamets

Mary Wiseman

Sylvia Tilly

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Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 4 Review – Face the Strange

A twisty time loop offers a teachable moment for Commander Rayner as Discovery tumbles through its past—and future

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This Star Trek: Discovery review contains spoilers .

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 4

Time travel has been a staple of science fiction ever since the genre was invented. And Star Trek has always been curious about the concept—from the basic rules of how it works to the widespread impact caused by the tiniest of changes to history. From The Original Series’ classic “The City on the Edge of Forever” to Strange New Worlds’ more recent Lower Decks crossover “Those Old Scientists” , the franchise is full of time travel stories. But Star Trek: Discovery has played around with the concept more than most, from season 1’s Harry Mudd episode “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” to the headache (and potentially paradox) inducing Red Angel plot that saw the Discovery launched hundreds of years into the future at the end of season 2. 

To be fair, season 5’s “Face the Strange” time travel shenanigans are a bit more straightforward, if not particularly subtle about the larger aims of the episode. Rayner’s still going through what might be called an adjustment period as he settles into his new role as Discovery’s first officer, and finds Burnham’s insistence on feelings and meaningful emotional connection to be an annoying and inefficient way to command.

What Discovery doesn’t seem to understand, however, is that part of the reason Rayner is so interesting as a character is precisely because he’s such a fish out of water amongst this group of people who regularly engage in the professional equivalent of braiding each other’s hair at sleepaway camp. (Let the man be cranky, for goodness sake!) And let’s not kid ourselves, despite the fact that it all works out for them this week, he’s also not wrong . Michael’s crew is undisciplined and overly familiar and don’t respect things like “chain of command” or “basic boundaries.” Yes, for the most part that’s worked out pretty well for them. But it’s also not exactly aspirational, or even particularly safe behavior, and Rayner’s not a bad person for pointing that out (or not liking it). 

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That said, no one is likely all that surprised that this episode is essentially a Teachable Moment from start to finish and pretty much solely exists to Impart the Value of Emotional Connection to a man who doesn’t enjoy engaging in small talk. But, thankfully, it also offers an intriguing twist on the always delightful time loop trope, and in doing so is much more entertaining to watch than it probably should be. Yes, everything gets resolved in peak Discovery fashion—Rayner must convince a disgruntled season 1 era version of Michael to trust that her journey ultimately gets better—but it’s also a surprisingly deft way to examine just how far this series’ central character has come from her first moments onscreen. 

The premise of the hour is pretty simple: Determined to beat the Discovery crew to the next clue, L’ak and Moll have smuggled a time bug on board the ship, a creepy-looking insect-like device leftover from the temporal war. It paralyzes ships by freezing and cycling them through time until it runs out of power, a process that could take weeks or months to play out. Thanks to this little (literal) bugger, Discovery’s now stuck hurtling through various snippets of its own history in the same place, and Burnham and Rayner—who were in the process of transporting just as the first loop hit and thus are unaffected by it—have to learn to work together to stop it before their enemies beat them to the next clue. 

Well, the two of them and Stamets, who also exists out of time because of his tardigrade DNA and is aware of the looping going on, a sentence that is truly as ridiculous to type as it is to read. This show sometimes, y’all. Rayner’s expression when told about the tardigrade situation is how I often feel if I think too hard about the specifics of some of these plots.

Anyway, while our heroes try to figure out the pattern to the various time jumps and how long each will last, we’re bounced through some of Discovery’s greatest narrative hits. Burnham and Rayner find themselves on the bridge of the ship during its trip through the wormhole to the 32nd century, in dry dock as it’s being built, and in the midst of the crew’s battle with Section 31’s sentient AI, Control, before being yanked away again. There’s a blast back to Gabriel Lorca’s time in the captain’s chair (though, sadly, Jason Isaacs doesn’t make an appearance) and even a quick trip to the future—one that’s apparently full of destruction and death because Moll and L’ak managed to snag the Progenitors’ secret technology and sell it off to the highest (presumably terrible) bidder. All the more motivation for our heroes to figure out how to dislodge the time bug without destroying the ship or killing themselves in the process!

They’re successful only when Michael realizes she has to tell the Klingon War-era crew that she’s from the future and trust that the bonds she’s forged with them will be enough to convince them to help her. It works, of course, because this episode exists to teach Rayner a Valuable Lesson, but not before Michael must confront some uncomfortable bits of her past: namely, her obvious lingering feelings toward Book—that David Ajala basically appears in this episode solely to be shirtless is peak fan service—and her messy personal past as a mutineer. Michael, undoubtedly, has come a long way from the rash, furious girl who accidentally got her mentor killed and started a war. (And no matter how insufferable you might find Burnham now, whew, this is a timely reminder that she used to be so much worse . Growth is possible and real!) 

That Rayner ultimately uses the personal information Michael gave him—and the very specific story about how lost Michael had felt when she first came aboard Discovery— to convince her past self to allow him to save the future is this show at its most try-hard. But at this point, that either works for you or it doesn’t, and “Face the Strange” is an entertaining enough hour that the convenience of its resolution isn’t even as annoying as it probably ought to be. 

With just 10 episodes in its final season, your mileage may (and likely will) vary when it comes to the usefulness of including an episode like this one, which doesn’t do much in terms of moving the larger story along. (In fact, it’s very clearly filler meant to cover for the fact that with just five pieces in the puzzle the crew is chasing, they literally can’t find a clue in every episode!) Technically, almost nothing of any significance happens during this hour.

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Adira seems remarkably fine for someone who just went through a surprise break-up. Saru and T’rina are entirely absent, so it seems safe to assume their engagement news didn’t cause some intergalactic political incident. And I guess Dr. Culber must still be sleeping off the whole Trill symbiont possession thing. We learn nothing new about the Progenitors or the tech they left behind. And though Moll and L’ak at least appear in this episode, all we learn is that they want to be free and together, and somehow the payday from finding the god-like technology before Michael and the Federation do is going to ensure that. Can’t wait for the flashback episode that fills us in on that particular misunderstood backstory, is what I’m saying.

Lacy Baugher

Lacy Baugher is a digital producer by day, but a television enthusiast pretty much all the time. Her writing has been featured in Paste Magazine, Collider,…

When is the 'Star Trek: Discovery' Season 5 finale? Release date, cast, where to watch

Warning: May contain spoilers .

U.S.S. Discovery's final mission is almost at its end, with the last episode of "Star Trek: Discovery" Season 5 scheduled to release this Thursday.

The fifth and final season of the hit TV series had followed Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncover a mystery that sent them on "an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries," according to Paramount+.

"Star Trek: Discovery" debuted in 2017 and is the seventh in the Star Trek series. Here's what to know about Season 5 of "Star Trek: Discovery," and when the final episode will be dropping.

When is 'Star Trek: Discovery' Season 5 finale?

The final episode of "Star Trek: Discovery" Season 5 will release on Paramount+ on Thursday, May 30. Paramount+ did not specify what time the episode will be available on its platform.

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Nine episodes of Season 5, and Seasons 1 to 4 are available to stream on Paramount+.

'Star Trek: Discovery' on Paramount+: Subscribe

Will 'Star Trek: Discovery' have another season?

No. Paramount+ had earlier announced that Season 5 will be the last in the "Star Trek: Discovery" series.

'Star Trek: Discovery' Season 5 cast

Season 5 of "Star Trek: Discovery" brings back new and old faces along with recurring guest stars. Cast members include:

• Sonequa Martin-Green as Captain Michael Burnham
• Doug Jones as Saru
• Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets
• Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly
• Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber
• David Ajala as Cleveland “Book” Booker
• Blu del Barrio as Adira
• Callum Keith Rennie as Rayner
• Elias Toufexis as L’ak
• Eve Harlow as Moll

'Star Trek: Discovery' Season 5 trailer

Paramount+ dropped the official trailer for Season 5 on Feb. 23.

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Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @saman_shafiq7.

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Star trek: discovery season 5 review - thrilling star trek season is stretched to its breaking point.

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When Does Every Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode Premiere (& How Many Are There)?

Star trek: discovery’s ending had a major 33rd century federation reveal, star trek: discovery season 5 - every episode ranked worst to best.

• Star Trek: Discovery season 5 delivers an amazing adventure.
• Star Trek: Discovery season 5 has a lot of downtime.
• Season 5 is a thrilling cinematic Star Trek movie stretched across 10 hours.

Star Trek: Discovery returns for one last dance that occasionally feels as if the show has two left feet. It's worth mentioning that Discovery season 5 wasn't originally written as the final outing for Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the crew. An epilogue was written and shot after filming on Discovery season 5 was completed to provide proper closure. While there's no sense of those reshoots impacting the first four episodes available for review, there are some attempts to tie up character arcs that feel quite clunky in their execution.

Star Trek: Discovery is an entry in the legendary Sci-Fi franchise, set ten years before the original Star Trek series events. The show centers around Commander Michael Burnham, assigned to the USS Discovery, where the crew attempts to prevent a Klingon war while traveling through the vast reaches of space.

• Star Trek: Discovery delivers an Indiana Jones in Space adventure
• The new characters cleverly shake things up
• The action sequences are stunning
• Discovery season 5 lacks urgency
• The focus on character relationships undermines other intense scenes

The final season of Star Trek: Discovery sends Burnham and the crew on the hunt for the " greatest treasure in the known universe " that links its 32nd century setting with the wider Star Trek timeline . Frustratingly, this epic quest often has to vie for attention with a focus on the interpersonal relationships of Burnham and the crew, which creates some pacing issues. At times, it feels like the impressive action sequences in Discovery have to pause so that characters can discuss their feelings . Thankfully, Discovery 's new additions, Callum Keith Rennie, Elias Toufexis and Eve Harlow brilliantly shake things up.

Star Trek: Discovery returns in April for season 5, and here is the premiere date for every episode of Disco's final season.

Star Trek: Discovery's New Cast Members Make Season 5 Fly

Captain Rayner (Rennie) is the standout new character in season 5. Rayner's gruff professionalism is hilariously at odds with the family atmosphere that Burnham has cultivated aboard the USS Discovery. Rayner is, therefore, the perfect foil for Burnham, and keeps the rest of the Discovery crew on their toes in season 5, too. Rayner also has some great scenes with the returning Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and reformed grump, Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), to whom Rayner quickly endears himself.

Rayner's gruff professionalism is hilariously at odds with the family atmosphere that Burnham has cultivated aboard the USS Discovery.

The addition of Captain Rayner recalls how Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced Ensign Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes) to shake up the dynamics aboard the USS Enterprise. Like Ro, Rayner is a welcome addition to the crew of Discovery that breaks up their over-familiarity and adds some much-needed urgency to their Red Directive mission . Rayner isn't the only thing in Discovery season 5 that reminds us of TNG . After all, it's no secret that Discovery season 5 has a TNG connection via the 800 year-old Romulan science vessel that triggers this season's intergalactic treasure hunt.

The treasure hunt brings us to Moll (Harlow) and L'ak (Toufexis), who are villains unlike any that Captain Burnham has faced before. Essentially an intergalactic Bonnie and Clyde, Moll and L'ak are refreshingly driven by their own self-interest. After two seasons of galaxy-threatening powers, it's refreshing that it's Moll and L'ak's selfishness and criminality that could drastically change the shape of the Star Trek universe . Moll and L'ak's single-minded focus on their goal makes them compelling and unpredictable villains, making them difficult for Burnham — and us as viewers — to second guess.

The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 5 will be released on Paramount+ on April 4th.

Discovery's Treasure Hunt Is Breathtakingly Stunning, But Poorly Paced

From Burnham surfing the hull of a starship at warp to the desert chase sequence, season 5 has some of the most cinematic action sequences in the modern franchise . In these sequences, Discovery more than lives up to its promise of doing an Indiana Jones movie in space . Frustratingly, the series can't let some of these action sequences play out in full. For example, a thrilling set-piece in which Book and Burnham evade a terrifying monster is butchered by frequent cutaways to other characters discussing their relationships; these scenes could've waited until after Book and Burnham had solved their predicament.

...You start to wish that the younger, more maverick Michael Burnham would emerge, defying orders and moving things along.

It's a minor complaint, but speaks to a larger problem with the pacing of Star Trek: Discovery season 5. The USS Discovery is supposed to be in a race against time to locate treasure, but there's a surprising amount of downtime . At one point, Burnham blames Starfleet bureaucracy for delaying their search, and you start to wish that the younger, more maverick Michael Burnham would emerge, defying orders and moving things along. Part of the issue with pacing is the spore drive, providing the crew with instantaneous travel to where they need to be, completely undermining any sense of urgency.

Discovery season 5 reminds us how this show revitalized Star Trek for the modern era.

In its most frustrating moments, Star Trek: Discovery season 5 feels like the most cinematic and thrilling Star Trek movie stretched to breaking point across 10 hours . In its best moments, however, the series reminds us how it revitalized Star Trek for the modern era. Discovery is a show that has a lot of heart, and it's the most stunning and cinematic of all the modern Trek shows. Despite some flaws, Star Trek: Discovery season 5 is a testament to that, and feels like a fitting summation of everything that has come to define the show since its premiere.

Star Trek: Discovery

The 'Star Trek: Discovery' series finale is a mixed bag (review)

"Discovery" was the first of the new wave of "Star Trek," and it helped pave the way for the recent renaissance in television science fiction. For that, we are thankful.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5, episode 10

Here we are, six years, eight months and six days later, and, to paraphrase a well-known " Star Trek " alum, Oh my, the world has drastically changed during that time. And so has "Star Trek." You may remember that, way back on Nov. 2, 2015, news trickled out that CBS was going to reboot "Star Trek" in some way, shape or form, giving producers a year or so to put something together before the show's 50th anniversary in September 2016. A perfect promotional opportunity. 

Nicholas Meyer was originally attached to the project before he was ousted. Then Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts were fired before Bryan Fuller left the project, ultimately leaving everything in the hands of Alex Kurtzman. And he has taken something of a back seat in recent seasons, leaving the showrunning duties to Michelle Paradise.

The first episode of the first season, entitled "The Vulcan Hello," aired on Sept. 24, 2016 and showed massive potential. However, the concept of focusing the show not on the captain of the USS Discovery NCC-1031, but on the first officer instead, proved difficult to maintain. Consequently, over time we've ended up where we are now — lost somewhere ludicrously far forward in time where transporters have replaced stairs and you can just beam into new uniforms.

Related: 'Star Trek:' History & effect on space technology

Watch Star Trek on Paramount Plus: Get a one month free trial  

Get all the Star Trek content you can possibly handle with this free trial of Paramount Plus. Watch new shows like Star Trek: Discovery and all the classic Trek movies and TV shows too. Plans start from $4.99/month after the trial ends.

Over the last seven and a half years, it's been a  very  mixed bag; there were  inspired episodes ,  missed opportunities , truly  bizarre stories , some  blatant plagiarism  and even a nod  to Scooby-Doo . Despite some  very good  standalone episodes, the show has steadily declined in the quality of story writing. That's not to say the performances have been bad at all; in fact, "Discovery" has some of the finest talent in television. What has let them all down is ultimately the decisions made by the showrunner, or whoever it is who oversees the writing.

Despite a strong start, it soon became clear that, as "Star Wars" has a Skywalker problem, "Star Trek" suffered from a similar Enterprise problem. It was incapable of letting go. For some ridiculous reason, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) had  to be related to Spock, and we had to actually have the USS Enterprise show up. It's much less work to draw on a deep well of existing character history than actually write anything new, you see. Maybe studio executives have an even shorter attention span than viewers?

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Now, while that's spawned " Strange New Worlds " — which is the best of  NuTrek so far, by far— it would've been nice to have had a show, still set less than three centuries from now, with   new   characters and minimal reference to any other longstanding "Star Trek" shows. Kurtzman's decision to fling the series 1,100 years into the future at the end of season two to "free it from the constraints of existing canon" was an effort to recover from this, but the damage had already been done. 

Related: 'Star Trek: Discovery' season 5 episode 9 offers a tense but questionable cliffhanger

However, bringing "Star Trek" back onto the small screen has had an undeniably positive effect on television science fiction. The fact that CBS All Access, later Paramount Plus, was investing so heavily in it undoubtedly influenced Amazon with its decision to save "The Expanse" in August 2018. Plus, in November 2017, Disney announced it was going to put a live action "Star Wars" spinoff show on our humble TV screens, and, exactly two years later, we got " The Mandalorian ." And let's not forget " The Orville ," which also arrived on our screens in September 2017. 

"Discovery" helped pave the way for a renaissance in television science fiction and for that, we are eternally thankful, but ... we won't be even remotely sad to say goodbye to black alerts, that damn spore drive, smartmatter, excessive flamebursts, detached nacelles, Georgiou's smug sniggers, Burnham's Bottom Lip™ and those crazy, cavernous turbolift spaces .

For the finale, though, we're treated to a whopping 90-minute installment, written by Michelle Paradise, so you have some idea of what's coming. And to be perfectly honest, this episode drags. Paradise always favors super-fluffy storylines that leave you with a cheese-overload aftertaste, and we've never seen evidence to suggest that she has any range beyond this. So, that's what you can expect, and that's exactly what is delivered — a cookie cutter-style finale that's mostly disappointing.

Malinne "Moll" Ravel (Eve Harlow) has just become annoying now, and the side plot threads, like that of Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), feel forced and hastily tacked on. And ultimately, you're left thinking that this finale is just like all the others we've seen in seasons three, four and now five. For the end-of-series climax, could it not have been something slightly different? Extremely unlikely with Paradise running this show. Also, what actually was the Progenitor tech? A galaxy-sized MacGuffin? Yes. Again.

Yes, there is a link to the "Short Trek" installment " Calypso ," but in order for it to directly correspond, we see the USS Discovery being reverse-engineered to its former 23rd century state, complete with a removed "A" from the hull registry and reattached warp nacelles. Oh, and it turns out that Kovich (David Cronenberg) is Daniels, a temporal agent played by Matt Winston and first introduced in the "Enterprise" episode "Cold Front" S01, E11, with seven more appearances in the thoroughly enjoyable temporal story thread. So, that's nice.

The fact that Burnham becomes an admiral and works for Starfleet Intelligence now, along with everything we've just mentioned above was absolutely, unquestionably added to help link this episode, show and characters with the Section 31 television movie that's being made starring Michelle Yeoh. Moreover, the same was done to help tie in with the new Starfleet Academy series that quite obviously is being set in the 32nd century. 

 —   Watch the bittersweet trailer for 'Star Trek: Discovery's final season (video)

— Star Trek streaming guide: Where to watch the Star Trek movies and TV shows online

—  Star Trek movies in order: Chronological and release

As she set off to fulfill Discovery's destiny with Zora, it might have been nice to see Burnham locate and gently rub the small metal burr under the captain’s chair’s left armrest that Captain Georgiou had practically rubbed smooth, as was explained to Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) in the episode " Su'Kal " (S03, E11) — but evidently no one thought of that. 

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery," and every other episode of every " Star Trek " show — with the exception of "Star Trek: Prodigy" — currently streams exclusively on Paramount Plus in the US, while "Prodigy" has found a new home  on Netflix . 

Internationally, the shows are available on  Paramount Plus  in Australia, Latin America, the UK and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. They also stream on Paramount Plus in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In Canada, they air on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and stream on Crave.

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When Scott's application to the NASA astronaut training program was turned down, he was naturally upset...as any 6-year-old boy would be. He chose instead to write as much as he possibly could about science, technology and space exploration. He graduated from The University of Coventry and received his training on Fleet Street in London. He still hopes to be the first journalist in space.

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Published Apr 3, 2024

Star Trek: Discovery's Five-Season Mission

In the lead up to Discovery's final adventure, the cast and creatives behind the hit series reflects on their journey so far.

StarTrek.com

We're mere days away from Star Trek: Discovery launching its final adventure with the premiere of its fifth season on April 4.

In need of a catch up of where we last left off with each character? We've got a guide for that . Want a spoiler-free tease of what's to come for the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery ? We've got you covered there as well .

Ahead of their last mission, the cast and creatives behind the hit series that relaunched the Star Trek universe seven years ago has been reflecting on their experiences on- and off-screen during their latest stints on Star Trek: The Cruise VII, SXSW, WonderCon, World Premiere junket, and more. Here are the biggest takeaways from their promotional tour!

"Under the Twin Moons"

Following the finale of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005, it would take the franchise 12 years to return to television screens with the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017.

Speaking directly to StarTrek.com during the press junket at SXSW, executive producer and showrunner Alex Kurtzman detailed how they selected Sonequa Martin-Green to usher in the modern era of Star Trek . "Sonequa's amazingness just radiated off the screen, and that was just from an audition," shared Kurtzman. "We actually didn't meet her in person; she was in New York at the time. It's that beautiful thing. We had been looking for so long for the right Michael Burnham. And it's that miracle moment that you always wait for when you're in a casting process where just the right person shows up and starts saying the lines, and you go, 'That's my Michael Burnham.' That's what we got with her just out of the gate."

"On top of being a brilliant Michael Burnham, she's also just the most amazing Number One ever," continued Kurtzman. "She's such a beautiful human being, such a wonderful leader. She created a space on set for everybody to be joyful and to do their best work. I honestly don't think we can say enough about how amazing she is."

This sentiment was echoed amongst all the cast members, including the newest addition to the series, Eve Harlow , who praised Martin-Green during an exclusive conversation with StarTrek.com during Star Trek: The Cruise VII, "She is that captain, and she treats everyone like an equal. I've just never been on a set where everyone, the crew is so appreciated. She knows everybody's names. She knows what they do. She knows their family life, what's going on with them. She genuinely cares, and being around that, that spirit is infectious."

"The Hope That Is You, Part 2"

Sitting in the SXSW Studio , Sonequa Martin-Green reflected on being the first Black woman to helm a Star Trek series. "This is one of the things that I'm most proud of," exclaimed Martin-Green. "There's no way that i could not be. We made television history twice. First, it was the first Black female lead, and then it was the first Black female lead and captain. Those moments mean so much to me even being able to just sit in the chair. I could distill it to that moment of being able to sit in the chair. I was carrying my daughter at the same time. So being able to share that with her, and then being able to become a producer and then an executive producer behind-the-scenes."

During the Discovery panel at WonderCon, executive producer and director Olatunde Osunsanmi reflected on Michael Burnham's journey throughout Star Trek: Discovery. " [Sonequa] is an incredible human being, and she's an incredible actor. Here she was playing these multiple roles, lieutenant to prisoner at one point. It takes an actor of incredible range and incredible capability to be able to pull that off. To be believable in each of the different roles of each of the different phases of her life. It was really fantastic to be able to see and have a front row seat to that. It's one of those things I'll cherish for the rest of my life."

During the WonderCon panel, executive producer and showrunner Michelle Paradise added, "She surprises me every episode. She just really incredible. I remember when I first started on the show, one of the first things Alex said to me is that there's nothing Sonequa can't do, and he's absolutely right. I saw that very early on. And as a writer, that is just a gift because you can take the character anywhere. She's a formidable presence and performer, and just so emotional, and the tiniest moments, she just brings them to life. It's a real treat honestly to get to work with her."

"Coming Home"

In the SXSW Studio, Doug Jones shared how Saru helped fans as well as himself. "Science fiction does parallel real life a lot," noted Jones. "That's why i think the fandom for this genre is so strong because people do see that they can watch something fictional and then go into their real life and go, 'I've got the power to face my demons or whatever is coming in my way that day.'"

"With my character on this [series], I found that the fans seem to be responding to Saru's imposter syndrome, his fears, his anxieties that he starts with in this series," explained Jones. "Watching him work through it, watching him evolve past it, watching him find confidence and courage in himself. That's a theme that so many people have related to and told me, 'Oh my gosh, watching Saru has helped me through this, this, that.' And me too. Me watching Saru go through this has been 'Oh gosh, i don't have to have imposter syndrome anymore. I actually do belong here dagnabbit."

Blu del Barrio also reflected on how their character Adira and Ian Alexander's character Gray has resonated with fans as well as themselves. "It was really perfect timing because the way that Ian and I were introduced," stated del Barrio. "Right after this massive time jump was really perfect, and the way that we were introduced was very nonchalantly, which I think was the right way to do it. There's very rarely a trans character on a TV show. There's never two, and they're never in a relationship. So the fact that I got to do that with Ian is definitely what I'm most proud of in all of the way that I've done here. I feel immensely grateful to have been allowed to. [To Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise,] you guys gave us this platform."

"I didn't realize the effect that it would have, and I'm hugely grateful for it every single day" added del Barrio. "I love the way that we were portrayed. I love the way that I got to bring a lot of my own life and transition into Adira, and that I got to do that on-screen. Although it was very scary, I'm grateful for it. I'm glad that I could do it, and I'm glad that it was not the most interesting thing about either myself or Ian's character. In fact, we literally never talk about it which is perfect. I love that."

Wilson Cruz echoed the same sentiment earlier in the conversation, "I'm feeling grateful for the experience, for people to have been introduced to all of these people who have become a part of my life. I'm grateful for being able to tell this story with this incredibly diverse cast, and finally give voice and face to communities that had been longing to see themselves in this franchise for so many years."

Get ready for Discovery 's final adventure when Season 5 premieres with the first two episodes later this week!

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Christine Dinh (she/her) is the managing editor for StarTrek.com. She’s traded the Multiverse for helming this Federation Starship.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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Star trek discovery season 5: everything we know so far.

Star Trek: Discovery season five is coming in 2023. Here is the release date info, latest trailers, casting details, rumors, and more.

Star Trek: Discovery first premiered back in 2017, and since then, it has headlined a fleet of new Star Trek shows and is on its way to becoming the most watched show on Paramount Plus. We'll be hopping aboard the USS Discovery for a fifth season, thankfully, as Paramount recently shared a first look at the next season during its Star Trek Day Celebration. Here's everything you need to know about the new season of Star Trek: Discovery. 

Star Trek Discovery season 5: What you need to know

Star Trek: Discovery takes place further into the future than anything else we've seen in the Star Trek Universe. That might come as a bit of a surprise - if you've only seen the first season or two of the series, as the crew of the USS Discovery was sent over 900 years into the future to the year 3188. The crew arrives in this new future to find the United Federation of Planets disbanded and space travel much harder due to an event known as The Burn.

The crew of the USS Discovery sets out to re-establish the United Federation of Planets. Going into the fifth season, the Discovery is captained by Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). She'll of course be joined by her first officer Saru (Doug Jones). Making things tougher for Burnham is that the USS Discovery lost its Spore Drive, which allowed it to warp travel. As far as what we can expect in the next season, the plot was teased on Star Trek Day as revolving around Burnham and the crew being on the hunt for a powerful ancient object. We can assume we'll get into the process of rebuilding the Federation of Planets, too, as Earth agreed to rejoin in the finale of season four. 

If you're looking to get all the way caught up on everything Star Trek, check out our Star Trek viewing order .

Star Trek Discovery season 5: Release date

There's no release date yet for the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery, but it's expected to be released in the first half of 2023. 

Star Trek Discovery season 5: How to watch

• Watch Star Trek Discovery Seasons 1-4 on Paramount Plus

Star Trek: Discovery seasons one through four are available on Paramount Plus, so season five likely will be as well. The streaming service starts at $4.99 per month in the US. Learn more about Paramount Plus from our guide here .

Star Trek Discovery season 5: Cast

You can expect most of the crew to come back for the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery. Sonequa Martin-Green is returning as Michael Burnham, as well as Doug Jones as Saru. Here's a rundown of who to expect in season five: 

• Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham
• Doug Jones as Saru
• Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets
• Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly
• Wilson Cruz as Hugh Culber
• Blu del Barrio as Adira Tal
• David Ajala as Cleveland "Book" Booker

Star Trek Discovery: Trailers

So far, Paramount has not released any trailers. But it did share a tour of the set of season five on YouTube, and it's guided by Wilson Cruz (who plays Hugh Culber). You can watch that below:

Star Trek: Discovery - Season Five Set Tour

Star Trek Discovery: How to catch up

The Star Trek Universe literally spans over a thousand years of history in its different films and shows. Star Trek: Discovery is unique because it does that by itself - with a 900-year time jump occurring between the second and third seasons. If you're really looking to get into the details of what's going on alongside the crew of the USS Discovery, check out our chronological Star Trek movies and shows ultimate viewer's guide . 

David Cronenberg's Star Trek: Discovery Role Explained - Who Is Doctor Kovich?

Contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Discovery"

The universe of "Star Trek" is so jam-packed full of fascinating characters — human and otherwise — that there's always tons of information we don't know about them, even the recurring ones. Someone like Dr. Kovich (played by the esteemed horror director David Cronenberg), for example, has been making his presence felt over the last three seasons of "Star Trek: Discovery," but for the most part, very little has been revealed about his actual character.

While this might be frustrating for lore-hungry fans, it has also allowed him to remain a tantalizingly mysterious figure whose true intentions are always unclear. Until now, that is. In the series finale of "Star Trek: Discovery," we finally get an explanation of who Dr. Kovich really is — and the reveal is a lovely gift to fans of "Star Trek: Enterprise." Because Dr. Kovich isn't just Dr. Kovich, the chaotic sometimes-ally of Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Starfleet officer whose job operates in a cloud of secrets: He's also Agent Daniels, a temporal operative featured in "Enterprise."

Who is Agent Daniels?

For a long time now, "Star Trek" has had a complicated history with the concept of time travel. While sometimes it's been used as a band-aid of sorts, to cover up any inconsistencies between the many different arms of the franchise, that doesn't mean that there aren't any internal rules about messing with time. Thus, different "Star Trek" series have employed the use of temporal agents, whose job is to maintain the integrity of crucial timelines, even if that means going into the past themselves and cajoling key figures into making the right choices.

It's in this capacity that we first meet Agent Daniels on "Star Trek: Enterprise." Originally played by Matt Winston, he made his first appearance back in 2001 in the Season 1 episode "Cold Front," and appeared several times over the first four seasons of the show. He would often turn up to resolve some time-related crisis or to nudge Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) into aiding him in his efforts to preserve the timeline. In a landscape where many of the frontiers of space are being mapped out, Daniels was a reminder that time (perhaps the final  final  frontier) still presents its own mystery. His return as Dr. Kovich is a pleasant surprise, especially to "Enterprise" fans, and adds to the satisfying conclusion of the "Star Trek: Discovery" finale that capped off a stellar final season.

Jonathan Frakes Was Really Surprised Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Is Based On His TNG Episode

• Jonathan Frakes was "surprised" by Star Trek: Discovery basing season 5's story on a TNG episode he directed.
• Director Frakes considers Discovery his "home" show, but didn't expect this story connection.
• Frakes shared the differences in directing for different Star Trek eras.

Jonathan Frakes described his "surprised" reaction to Star Trek: Discovery basing season 5's story on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation he directed. Frakes has directed 8 episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, including season 5 (and the series') penultimate episode, "Lagrange Point". Since he joined as a director for season 2, Jonathan has always considered Star Trek: Discovery his "home" Star Trek on Paramount+ show, but Frakes didn't expect Discovery season 5 would draw its story from one of his TNG episodes.

In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Jonathan Frakes shared why he was "really surprised" that Star Trek: Discovery season 5 is a sequel to his Star Trek: The Next Generation season 6 episode, "The Chase" . Frakes also described how directing the current Star Trek series is different from directing Star Trek during Rick Berman's era in the 1990s. Check out his quote below:

I was really surprised because I don't remember "The Chase" being that significant in the oeuvre of Next Gen. And then when Michelle explained how that was going to be the kickoff and the premise of the show... You know, I got "The Chase" only by the luck of the draw. That's how the cards played. On Next Gen, you got your episodes dealt to you by some random polling of straws, But on Discovery, and also, even more significantly on Strange New Worlds, they assign you an episode that they believe you would be suited to direct. So it was just happenstance that "The Chase" happened to be one that I had directed.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Returning Cast & New Character Guide

As Burnham seeks the universe's greatest treasure in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, she'll need help from a host of new and returning characters.

Jonathan Frakes Explains Differences Of Different Eras Of Star Trek As A Director

Tng era star trek was much stricter.

Jonathan Frakes went on to describe how directing for Star Trek on Paramount+ series is very different in terms of how the current shows allow directors freedom with dialogue that the Star Trek series produced by Rick Berman didn't allow. 1990s and 2000s era Star Trek demanded the actors be word-perfect and say all dialogue as written , but the new shows are looser and allow for experimentation. Read Frakes' quote about his experience directing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks below:

That's an interesting point. That happened on "Those Old Scientists" where we had Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid come in. Tawny is a Second City improv specialist, and they messed around a little bit with the lines. I had Kat Lyn and Bill Wolkoff on the set with me as my writers, and we all sort of locked eyes, and I just whispered to them and said, 'What do you think? Should we just let them go?' And they said, 'Sure.' And that freed up Anson, and that freed up Rebecca, and all of a sudden, we did the scenes as written, but then we played with the scenes, and that was such a thrill to have. Because it was so strict [on Next Gen], as I'm sure you've heard. It was so strict on our show. It was strict on all the shows about the dialogue. So it was a very freeing moment.

Other differences between the past and current Star Trek eras include the cinematic visual style of the new shows where directors like Jonathan Frakes are encouraged to "shoot to thrill" , the fact that directors are assigned episodes based on what the producers think they would excel at, unlike the Rick Berman era's luck of the draw, and that there are simply fewer Star Trek episodes produced in the streaming era than in Star Trek 's syndication and broadcast network era. All of these changes began with Star Trek: Discovery .

Source: Screen Rant Plus

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 is streaming on Paramount+

Cast Blu del Barrio, Oded Fehr, Anthony Rapp, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Wilson Cruz, Eve Harlow, Mary Wiseman, Callum Keith Rennie

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Alex Kurtzman

Directors Jonathan Frakes, Olatunde Osunsanmi

Showrunner Alex Kurtzman

Where To Watch Paramount+

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55 Years Ago: Star Trek Final Episode Airs, Relationship with NASA Endures

Johnson space center.

The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show’s cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only three seasons, it generated a devoted fan base disappointed by the cancellation despite their write-in campaign to keep it on the air. But as things turned out, over the decades Star Trek evolved into a global phenomenon, first with the original episodes replayed in syndication, followed by a series of full-length motion pictures, and eventually a multitude of spin-off series. With its primary focus on space exploration, along with themes of diversity, inclusion, and innovation, the Star Trek fictional universe formed a natural association with NASA’s real life activities.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first had the idea for a science fiction television series in 1964. He presented his idea, a show set in the 23 rd century aboard a starship with a crew dedicated to exploring the galaxy, to Desilu Productions, an independent television production company headed by Lucille Ball. They produced a pilot titled “The Cage,” selling it to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) network that then bought a second pilot titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC introduced the show to its fall 1966 lineup, with the first episode “The Man Trap” airing on Sep. 8. To put that date in perspective, NASA launched Gemini XI four days later, one of the missions that helped the agency achieve the Moon landing nearly three years later. Meanwhile, Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise continued its fictional five-year mission through the galaxy to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” The makeup of the Enterprise’s crew made the show particularly attractive to late 1960s television audiences. The major characters included an African American woman communications officer, an Asian American helmsman, and a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, later joined by a Russian-born ensign. While the show enjoyed good ratings during its first two seasons, cuts to its production budget resulted in lower quality episodes during its third season leading to lower ratings and, despite a concerted letter-writing campaign from its dedicated fans, eventual cancellation.

Despite the show’s cancellation, Star Trek lived on and prospered in syndication and attracted an ever-growing fan base, turning into a worldwide sensation. Often dubbed “trekkies,” these fans held the first of many Star Trek conventions in 1972. When in 1976 NASA announced that it would name its first space shuttle orbiter Constitution, in honor of its unveiling on the anniversary of the U. S. Constitution’s ratification, trekkies engaged in a dedicated letter writing campaign to have the orbiter named Enterprise, after the starship in the television series. This time the fans’ letter writing campaign succeeded. President Gerald R. Ford agreed with the trekkies and directed NASA to rechristen the first space shuttle. When on Sept. 17, 1976 , it rolled out of its manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California, appropriately accompanied by a band playing the show’s theme song, it bore the name Enterprise. Many of the original cast members of the show as well as its creator Rodenberry participated in the rollout ceremony, hosted by NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher . Thus began a lengthy relationship between the space agency and the Star Trek brand.

During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, the need arose to recruit a new group of astronauts to fly the vehicle, deploy the satellites, and perform the science experiments. When NASA released the call for the new astronaut selection on July 8, 1976, it specifically encouraged women and minorities to apply. To encourage those applicants, NASA chose Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, to record a recruiting video and speak to audiences nationwide. She came to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1977, and accompanied by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan L. Bean , toured the center and filmed scenes for the video in Mission Control and other facilities. NASA hoped that her stature and popularity would encourage women and minorities to apply, and indeed they did. In January 1978, when NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts from more than 8,000 applicants, for the first time the astronaut class included women and minorities. All distinguished themselves as NASA astronauts and paved the way for others in subsequent astronaut selections. Nichols returned to JSC in September 2010 with the Traveling Space Museum, an organization that partners with schools to promote space studies. She toured Mission Control and the International Space Station trainer accompanied by NASA astronaut B. Alvin Drew . She also flew aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope aircraft managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, in September 2015.

Meanwhile, the Star Trek brand renewed itself in 1979 as a full-length motion picture with the original TV series cast members reprising their roles. Over the years, several sequels followed this first film. And on the small screen, a reboot of sorts occurred in 1987 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new series set in the 24 th century aboard the Enterprise-D, a next generation starship with a new crew. That series lasted seven seasons, followed by a near-bewildering array of spin-off series, all built on the Star Trek brand, that continue to this day.

James Doohan, the actor who played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, had early associations with NASA. In April 1967, Doohan visited NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, spending time with NASA test pilot Bruce A. Peterson. A month later, Peterson barely survived a horrific crash of the experimental M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. He inspired the 1970s TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man, and the show’s opening credits include film of the crash. Doohan narrated a documentary film about the space shuttle released shortly before Columbia made its first flight in April 1981. In January 1991, Doohan visited JSC and with NASA astronaut Mario Runco (who sometimes went by the nickname “Spock”) toured the shuttle trainers, Mission Control, and tried his hand at operating the shuttle’s robotic arm in the Manipulator Development Facility. In a unique tribute, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong , the first person to step on the lunar surface , spoke at Doohan’s retirement in 2004, addressing him as “one old engineer to another.”

George Takei, who played Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and his husband Brad, visited JSC in May 2012. Invited by both Asian American and LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Groups, Takei spoke of leadership and inclusiveness, including overcoming challenges while in Japanese American internment camps during World War II and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He noted that Star Trek remained ahead of its time in creating a future when all members of society could equally participate in great undertakings, at a time when the country struggled through the Civil Rights movement and the conflict in Southeast Asia. The inclusiveness that is part of NASA’s culture greatly inspired him. JSC Director Michael L. Coats presented Takei with a plaque including a U.S. flag flown aboard space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission. He also visited Mission Control and spent some time with Robonaut.

Leonard Nimoy played the science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock. The actor watched in September 2012 when space shuttle Enterprise arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the last leg of its journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it currently resides. “This is a reunion for me,” observed Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” As noted earlier, the Star Trek cast attended the first space shuttle’s rollout in 1976. Following his death in 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti paid tribute to Nimoy aboard the International Space Station by wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform, giving the Vulcan greeting, and proclaiming, “Of all the souls I have encountered … his was the most human.”

Captain James T. Kirk, played by actor William Shatner, a life-long advocate of science and space exploration, served at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. His relationship with NASA began during the original series, with references to the space agency incorporated into several story lines. In 2011, Shatner hosted and narrated a NASA documentary celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program , and gave his time and voice to other NASA documentaries. NASA recognized Shatner’s contributions in 2014 with a Distinguished Public Service Medal , the highest award NASA bestows on non-government individuals. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert “Bob” N. Jacobs presented the medal to Shatner. The award’s citation read, “For outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” In 2019, Shatner narrated the NASA video We Are Going , about NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon. He has spoken at numerous NASA-themed events and moderated panels about NASA’s future plans. On Oct. 13, 2021, at the age of 90, Shatner reached the edge of space during the NS-18 suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness.

Elements of the Star Trek universe have made their way not only into popular culture but also into NASA culture. As noted above, Star Trek fans had a hand in naming the first space shuttle Enterprise. NASA’s Earth observation facility aboard the space station that makes use of its optical quality window bears the name the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). The connection between that acronym and the name of a Klingon officer aboard the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series seemed like an opportunity not to be missed – the facility’s official patch bears its name in English and in Klingon. Several astronaut crews have embraced Star Trek themes for their unofficial photographs. The STS-54 crew dressed in the uniforms of Starship Enterprise officers from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the second full-length feature motion picture of the series. Space shuttle and space station crews created Space Flight Awareness (SFA) posters for their missions, and more than one embraced Star Trek themes. The Expedition 21 crew dressed in uniforms from the original series, while the STS-134 crew chose as their motif the 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek.

As much as Star Trek has influenced NASA, in turn the agency has left its mark on the franchise, from episodes referencing actual and future spaceflight events to NASA astronauts making cameo appearances on the show. The first-season episode “Court Martial” that aired in February 1967 featured a photograph of the December 1965 Gemini VI launch adorning a wall aboard a star base. In the second-season episode “Return to Tomorrow,” airing in February 1968, Captain Kirk in a dialogue about risk-taking remarks, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the Moon?” a prescient reference to the first Apollo mission to reach the Moon more than 10 months after the episode aired. Astronaut Mae C. Jemison , who credits Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration to become an astronaut, appeared in the 1993 episode “Second Chances” of Star Trek: The Next Generation , eight months after her actual spaceflight aboard space shuttle Endeavour. In May 2005, two other NASA astronauts, Terry W. Virts and E. Michael Fincke , appeared in “These are the Voyages…,” the final episode of the series Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the 2016 documentary “ NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space ,” host NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover states, “Science and Star Trek go hand-in-hand.” The film explores how for 50 years, Star Trek influenced scientists, engineers, and even astronauts to reach beyond their potential. While the space station doesn’t speed through the galaxy like the Starship Enterprise, much of the research conducted aboard the orbiting facility can make the fiction of Star Trek come a little closer to reality. Several of the cast members from the original TV series share their viewpoints in the documentary, along with those of NASA managers and scientists. Over the years, NASA has created several videos highlighting the relationship between the agency and the Star Trek franchise. In 2016, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden led a video tribute to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode.

In 2021, on the 100 th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, his son Rod hosted a virtual panel discussion , introduced by NASA Administrator C. William “Bill” Nelson , about diversity and inspiration, two ideals the Star Trek creator infused into the series. Panelists included Star Trek actor Takei, Tracy D. Drain, flight systems engineer for the Europa Clipper spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim , Swati Mohan, guidance and operations lead for the Mars 2020 rover at JPL, and Hortense B. Diggs, Director of the Office of Communication and Public Engagement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mutual attraction between NASA and Star Trek stems from, to paraphrase the opening voiceover from the TV series, that both seek to explore and discover new worlds, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. The diversity, inclusion, and inspiration involved in these endeavors ensure that they will live long and prosper.

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