Today’s Star Trek: Discovery update includes video of a talk show appearance by Jason Isaacs and Sonequa Martin-Green. Plus we have more video of the cast talking about their favorite episodes, a showrunner challenging fans to cosplay and more.
Isaacs talks Discovery hippies + Bryan Adams wants in
Some of the Discovery cast have been promoting the show in Europe. This includes an appearance with Jason Isaacs and Sonequa Martin-Green in the UK yesterday on BBC’s The One Show. When asked about the moral ambiguity of Captain Lorca, Jason Isaacs replied:
He is trying to win the war against the Klingons and he is surrounded by a bunch of hippies and idiots on his ship. So, I need to stock the ship with people like Sonequa’s character, who can think outside the box to kill people before they kill you.
Also appearing on the show was singer Bryan Adams who revealed that a month ago he was approached about appearing on the Discovery and he said he would love to do it, joking that he was “naturally looking like a Klingon,” but then “it went away.” Jason and Sonequa invited him to come on for the second season.
Martin-Green also shared this image of the press snapping her outfit on social media.
She and Isaacs were joined earlier in the week by co-star Shazad Latif and co-showrunner Aaron Harberts at a convention in Lucca, Italy. They shared some images from from that event too:
Cast talk favorite episodes
Space Channel’s InnerSpace talked to Discovery castmembers at NYCC about their favorite classic Star Trek episodes
Uniforms created for cosplaying challenge
In a TV Guide feature about Star Trek: Discovery costumes, Aaron Harberts said
“Part of the fun is [creating a] new uniform. We wanted the fans, the cosplayers, to get out there and try something new. Like, you can always pull out your red or yellow shirt… But let’s give them a challenge.”
More Disco Bits
Here are a few more quick links with what some other sites are saying about Discovery.
Washington Post: The new ‘Star Trek’ has gotten darker and more pessimistic — just like our politics
Tor: We Can Safely Say That Sarek of Vulcan is Sci-fi’s Worst Dad
Cracked: Why The New ‘Star Trek’ Series Is The Best One Ever Made
Star Trek: Discovery is available exclusive in the US on CBS All Access with new episodes released Sundays at 8:30 pm ET. In Canada Star Trek: Discovery airs on the Space Channel at the same time. Discovery is available on Netflix outside the USA and Canada with new episodes made available Monday at 8 am BST.
Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery news at TrekMovie.
Looks great.
The cast really seems to have bonded as a crew. I just hope their characters survive what is shaping up to be a tumultuous first season. I’m particularly worried for Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Tyler (Shazad Latif) making it to the end of episode 15.
Tyler will probably make it to episode.15.
But will we see him in Season 2?
Well, Tyler is clearly Voq, so don’t expect him to hang around long.
I’m optimistic that even if he is, he’ll come around to the Federation and be the arbiter of peace in the end.
Tyler is clearly SUSPECTED to be Voq.
There has been no reveal yet.
And even if he is Voq, there are plenty of possibilities that would allow Shazad Latif to continue on the show. For example, there could be a real Ash Tyler still being kept in Rura Penthe or somewhere, and he could have to deal with whatever Voq does while impersonating him…
I read one of the TrekMovie links at the end of this article. From the a Washington Post.
I never thought o would read an article like this about Star Trek. My heart is breaking.
“Sometimes by accident, more often by design, the various “Star Treks” have reflected the politics of their eras. The franchise has often held out the hope of a better future. Not this time. “Discovery” is a stark warning about where we may be headed. The triumph of the good is not inevitable. We may be boldly going where our species has so often gone in the past: in fear,”toward violence and dissolution.”
What I think many are missing is that the serialized nature of the series means that the development of the sense of hopefulness is not embedded in every episode, but comes at the end of the arc, the end of the season. We are so used to jumping in to a Star Trek where the main characters really function as archetypes, not people. Each episode ends with the moral and the feel good reassertion of a hopeful future. And there was rarely any subtlety in that assertion. Think of Kirk reciting the preamble or giving us a rousing “risk is our business” speech. Or Picard pulling out a speech about how humanity has evolved to throw down on Q after whatever was the latest moral test set for the Enterprise crew. Other issues were solved more often than not with modifying some system or other to emit tachyon particles or changing the polarity of some system or some such technobabble. (Honestly, if I every hear the work tachyon in Star Trek again, I may drop kick my TV!). What a series like Discovery does is even more hopeful to me. Eschewing the tidy solutions, Discovery presents us with real people with many shades of gray. I am sure by the end of the season, these real people will have found those moral solutions, learned how to aspire to greater things, to overcome some of the brutality of human nature. But we have to give them time to do that. It makes the story so very much more interesting to me, and also, makes it so very much more relatable. Escapism solves the problems magically at the end of each episode and resets everything for the beginning of the following one. Drama shows us all of the hard work and hard learned lessons that make it really possible in the real world where we face real monsters to achieve all of those great thing Start Trek represents. TOS achieved this many times, with Kirk and company often responding first with aggression, phasers, and raised voices only to find the real solution was more nuanced (How many times in TOS did Kirk have to apologize to this senior staff and others for biting their heads off?!? And how many times did he order phasers fired as the first course of action?!?!). TNG era shows found ways to do it at times as well (right, Captain Ahab/Picard?). This show is working us there as well, at different paces for different characters, and perhaps some of them will never make it (TOS & TNG had their fair share of less than perfect folks in positions of power in the Federation), but whatever happens will play out slowly, over the course of an entire season or more, the way life happens. This is more hopeful to me… a life lived day to day where we can celebrate the small steps toward self actualization as opposed to relying on epiphany moments to suddenly make everything right.
I agree, Hutch$, and we always have the older Star Treks to make us feel better. I like the drama of “Discovery.” And I LOVE character development, something we didn’t see a lot of in the earlier Treks [except on DS9].
Let’s not forget the ‘hopeful’ future of the original Star Trek comes after the Eugenics Wars and a nuclear Third World War, which wipe out a significant portion of the Earth’s population. While Star Trek had a sense of hope and optimism in what people were trying to do in the aftermath of such horrors, it was a universe born in worse global violence than we’ve experienced and one in which Captain Garth, Dr Adams and Kodos, the Executioner could still exist.
I don’t find Discovery any less ‘hopeful’ than the original Star Trek – I actually consider it to be the best TV spinoff by a mile – but it’s faithful to the original show’s credo of humans striving to learn and do better, which was often lost in the later Roddenberry/Berman spin-offs about ‘perfected’ humans.
And, at the end of the day, it *is* still a spin-off, which allows a little more leeway in terms of what the show’s creators want to do.
I agree and the best way to show that credo is with a character like Burnham who is in the process of learning so much.
Dom, YES! Seconded.
I think I love this new series and its cast. In fact, I always have loved the series, but the fact that this cast is so telegenic, even for stars, makes me happy to be associated with Star Trek as a lifelong fan. The idea that Star Trek always must be optimistic to work is and always has been questionable, since there are many things in life that are not at all optimistic — even our religious or ethical leanings may vary from time to time. Nor, really, is Discovery actually pessimistic in nature when compared to such offerings as Blade Runner (original and current movie) or the rebooted BSG. (I do realize that the ultimate outcome in BSG was that Earth was found… but the entire series prior to the end revolved around the loss of humanity’s home, only to evolve rather unwillingly, at the hands of Cylons….). Nor, in the Trekverse, has everything always been happiness and light — and quite to the contrary, it seems.
All hail Discovery: A new frontier in televised Star Trek, and an entertaining promise of television yet to come.
The main cast are all very good [although I’m having a hard time warming to Shazid Latif –or maybe his character– I think he’s very handsome, though].
If Lorca isn’t a member of Section 31 man he should definitely be recruited.
“Who are you people and what are you doing on my ship?”
“We are from a group called Section 31 and we like your style. You in?”
“Oh thank god, I thought you guys would never get here!” **big bear hug**
That’s an excellent point. A universe in which Section 31 and the time police have to exist is not one that is entirely optimistic and certainly not utopian. This goes toward my point that the Trekverse is and has been from the beginning significantly conflictual.
Tiger, LOL
The One Show did that lame beam in effect you get whenever most programmes do a Star Trek piece and then ended by getting the fattest, ugliest, nerdiest people they could find to do “Klingon Karaoke”, complete with semi glued on £3 prostetic head pieces. No wonder Jason Isaacs looked nonplussed.
Yeah i’ve been seeing that stupid “guests beam in” nonsense for absolute *decades*. I sigh every time.
Millennials in space!
I laughed out loud at Issac’s comments because Lorca probably does feel that way. Issac’s portrayal of the morally ambiguous Lorca has consistently been one of the season’s best aspects and I hope they keep him for a second one.
Indeed, Steph; I find myself hoping really hard that Lorca survives!
Discovery makes me sad. I don’t think it’s a terrible show, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it will never be what I want it to be. I don’t think it’s star trek, at least, not in the ways that matter to me. I can understand why people would say the orville is more star trek than discovery, and I sort of agree. At least orville aspires to a high moral standard and portrays people trying to do the right thing. I’m not really a fan of orville either, but I feel like it’s heart is at least in the right place overall. As someone who has for years said that neither voyager nor enterprise deserves to be part of the franchise, I think, on reflection, I actually like Voyager more than Discovery; flawed, derivative, repetitive and poorly made though it was.
I hate Lorca. I hate everything he stands for and everything Isaacs says about the character. I hate that he’s the captain. I hate that idealism has been replaced by narcissistic cynicism in the name of “drama”. I hate the empty headed war arc that seems to lack for any real insight, and I hate that I’m supposed to wait for the end of the season, or the series, for it to actually be about anything.
Still, I don’t hate the show. I don’t have enough energy to get all that worked up about these things anymore, despite what this comment would suggest. There are many more important issues in the world. But it really does make me very sad. This isn’t a dig at discovery fans, you’re entitled to your opinion. I guess this is just where me and the franschise part ways, because truthfully I just don’t recognize it anymore.
Very well said. I can’t get that angry anymore either, though for different reasons. You actually have to have your expectations dissapointed or betrayed in some way to feel that strongly. The people in charge now have been so dismissive from day one I just knew hackeyed fight filled nonsense was going to be the main thing served up. Obviously taking a single second to listen to anything those online uber dweebs were saying about what made the franchise unique was a complete non starter.
Their peers in Hollywood will probably purring away to them as we speak on the brilliance of their “re-invention” of the franchise. Meanwhile those countless millions of average people who used to enjoy the simple pleasures of a likable crew, and a good moral tale well told have basically been made to feel their entire previous feelings about Star Trek were invalid.
Thank you for your reply, Soren. It’s nice to think that I’m not totally alone in my thoughts, and it’s nice to be heard, even if it doesn’t make a difference. I know it’s pointless to care about such things and that Star Trek is, at the end of the day, a product, but it really did mean something to me, morally and philosophically. It taught me more about how to be good person than I know how to express. I can’t help but be sad that something I used to think stood for peace and justice has had everything meaningful stripped out of it to maximize mass market appeal. But I’m not surprised either. Like you said, it was pretty obvious what we were going to get. I’m just not going to hold out hope anymore. The Star Trek I loved is dead.
Live long and prosper.
Michael, Optimistic Trek’s not dead, as long as we remember it :^)
Keep hope alive for the human race, and LLAP.
There are certainly likeable MEMBERS of the crew, but like real people, we like some better than others, and some, not at all. I am finally warming to Saru, for example, and I’m silly for Tilly.
Other Trek shows are still there for us to enjoy and be optimistic with — I never discourage optimism — but it’s critical to remember that Disco takes place in wartime. And I prefer the reality of movies like “Dunkirk” and Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Alan Turing, to sanitized portrayals of WWII. Even M*A*S*H had its very dark moments while it made us laugh at the absurdity of war.
I certainly understand your desire to maintain an optimistic tone in Star Trek, but, as you sadly point out, the marketplace is different nowadays and Moonves wants to make a profit. In the era of “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” and “Better Call Saul,” we’re seeing the foibles and heartbreak of being human. And personally, I think that’s perfectly appropriate in a wartime setting. /”Our mileage varies”
Very well written even though I have a different opinion of the show. It is without a doubt Trek. It just isn’t the Trek you fell in love with. These are similar reactions to TNG by those that grew up with TOS. A lot of TNG fans hated DS9 for similar reason you mentioned. ENT was totally different and I didn’t like it. But, without a doubt they are all Trek. They are different from each other, but that’s a great thing. Star Fleet can’t be all happy exploration fun. There is always a dark side to everything and I, for one, and happy we get to see it to allow us to have a full, well rounded vision of Trek.
“orville aspires to a high moral standard” I didn’t know dick jokes were a representation of high standards now. You learn something every day.
“portrays people trying to do the right thing”… like cheating on your husband? forcing a sex change on a kid? dry humping a statue?
Sorry, the Orville is an ok show, but that ain’t Trek.