Sonequa Martin-Green Talks “Lovely” Season 5 Of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ And Burnham’s Future With Book

Last week, Sonequa Martin-Green took time away from the set playing Captain Burnham for Star Trek: Discovery to help promote the launch of Paramount+ in the UK. We already reported some tidbits from the blue carpet, but while in the UK, she also did a sit-down video interview (which you can watch below) where she offered a bit more information about the season and her hopes for a crossover.

“Lovely” season 5… and Michael’s connection to Book

In a video interview with the UK’s Digital Spy, Sonequa Martin-Green said she couldn’t give away any spoilers for season 5, but she did describe it in general:

I can say that it’s going to be refreshing. It’s going to be invigorating. And I think it’s going to be… I’ll just say lovely. I think it’s gonna be lovely, in the true sense of the word.

While similar to what she said on the blue carpet to another outlet last week, the full interview included more context where Martin-Green talked about how this “lovely” season 5 will contrast with season four, which she noted was produced during an era of “tragedy,” during the height of the COVID pandemic, adding that “art was imitating life and life imitating art and there were a lot of parallels there.”

It still hasn’t been confirmed what role, if any, David Ajala’s Cleveland Booker will have in season 5. Season 4 ended with Book and Michael saying goodbye as the Federation sent him to help those displaced by the DMA as a way to make up for his crimes during the season. When asked what the future held for Book and Michael, Martin-Green indicated they can’t be kept apart:

I think that it’s very much what they say in that last moment they have together in season four. It’s very much that Kwejian quote. I get the sense that these two, that they’re always going to be in each other’s space somehow. They’re connected at this point. And I think that for Burnham, Book has come to represent a great deal of things for her. He represented the new future for the longest time. And then this actualization that has happened in Burnham was certainly because of the influence of Book. And I am grateful to him for that as Burnham and just as he’s grateful to me for what I’ve influenced in him. So yeah, those two are always going to have something to do with each other.

Martin-Green referred to the pair’s final scene in the season 4 finale, when Booker shared a Kwejian saying hat meant “We’ve parted a hundred times. May we rejoin to part a hundred more.”

Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham and David Ajala as Book

Still talking crossover… wants to get animated

When asked if there was some iconic part of Star Trek lore she would like to explore in Discovery, Martin-Green again brought up the notion of doing a crossover:

I love the idea of crossover episodes. I would love that. I would crossover with anyone… Come on, let’s figure this out. That’s what I would really love to see, especially as we’re expanding.

When Digital Spy followed up with the idea of an animated Michael Burnham on Lower Decks, Martin-Green jumped at the idea:

Ooh, yes! That would be lovely. I would love that. I’d be down.

Executive producer Alex Kurtzman has confirmed there is going to be a Star Trek Universe crossover of some sort.

Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham

Watch it

Here is the full video interview with Digital Spy.


Keep up with the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.

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Refreshing, invigorating, AND lovely? OK, Star Trek. You’ve got my attention.

Obviously I would love if Discovery crossed over with another show but being so far from everything else it just makes it more difficult. But maybe there are ideas for it if she keeps talking about it. I would like to see one with Picard (or whatever future spin off that replaces it). SNW would be the other obvious show and a cool way to reunite her Spock. It’s Star Trek, anything is possible. And when you have stuff like the Temporal Wars or GOF lurking somewhere, it’s really not that hard I guess.

Another possibility would be to tell a story where the characters don’t actually meet in person but that transcends both time periods.

Crossovers for the sake of crossovers are almost always cheesy at best, a disaster at worst. Surely GENERATIONS taught us this lesson vividly. That is particularly true when you’ve unfortunately trifurcated the franchise into kiddie fare, workplace comedy, and serious branches (of which at least two were prequels), none of which mesh well with the other. Seriously, can you imagine the TNG, DS9, or VOY casts doing a group hug?

As for “refreshing, invigorating, and lovely,” those are glittering generalities that could mean anything. Really, I’m coming round to the notion that Discovery’s sole real contribution to Star Trek is Saru and the Kelpians, and perhaps bringing back Pike & Co.

No offense but I really wish people stop bringing up Generations. It was bad because Paramount DIDN’T want a true crossover movie and gave them all these ridiculous parameters on how they can even use the TOS cast. And it’s been 27 years lol.

And funny how no one complains about the last big movie crossover between Prime Spock going to the Kelvin universe. That seem pretty popular (even if the movies themselves are mixed).

And FYI, there were tons of crossovers on the shows. Picard and Riker in DS9. Spock and Scotty in TNG. Barclay, Sulu and Troi in Voyager. Troi and Riker in Enterp—Sigh, yeah you’re right, crossovers can suck. I take it all back!

But isn’t there some crossover material on Lower Decks multiple times per season?

Yep LDS is another great example. I was only thinking about the classic shows. And I think we’re getting a lot more on that show next season too. We know Riker and the Titan will be back!!

But I think what Kurtzman and Martin are suggesting is that we haven’t seen any of the characters from NuTrek shows crossover yet.

Because we’ve already had crossovers on all the new shows and not just Lower Decks if you include legacy characters from the classic shows, right? So I assume that’s what they are talking about.

I can complain about “Prime” Spock going to the Kelvin timeline, if it helps! :p

Lol!

What do people in the Prime universe think happened to Spock? They can’t know he went to the so-called Kelvin universe. Do they think he died in the destruction of Romulus?

Also, when Spock died on “New Vulcan,” did he pass his katra to anybody? Shouldn’t Fake Spock have been curious about that?

Who is Fake Spock?

Fake Spock is the character played by Zachary Quinto. I call the Kelvin films “the Fake Star Trek movies,” because although they are decent science fiction, they don’t seem “Star Trek–y” to me. So the characters in the Fake Star Trek movies are Fake Kirk, Fake Spock, etc.

According to the producers of Picard, no one knows what happens to Spock, he basically just disappeared after the events of the super nova but probably assumed dead. I still wish they gave Picard a line in first season at least referencing that Spock was gone.

And it looks like they still don’t know what happened to him even in the 32nd century when Burnham goes to Vulcan/NiVar.

Given how Kovich knew about Yor, the soldier from the Kelvin timeline, and that the Kelvin timeline itself was kicked off by ‘a temporal incursion from a Romulan mining vessel’, it seems likely that 32nd century Starfleet Intelligence knows about where Spock ended up.

Since Yor’s file was classified, I’d guess that any material relating to the Temporal Wars, particularly temporal, trans-timeline and trans-dimensional incursions, was made secret to avoid a reoccurence, maybe even as part of the Temporal Accords.

Yeah certainly a possibility. It has been 800 years since he disappeared though but as you said since they knew Nero went back in time to the Kelvin universe you can infer they knew Spock went there with him too.

That’s really interesting, thanks. What is the source of that Picard information? I agree it would have been nice if Spock’s disappearance had been acknowledged in canon. Maybe Q knew, being omniscient and all, and could have told Picard.

One of the show runners said it in an interview before season one started. I have no idea which interview lol, but where it was confirmed. And Spock’s name was mentioned in season one too but just that Picard knew him IIRC. I guess they didn’t want to get too much into the weeds with the Kelvin movies and just focused on Romulus being destroyed.

The MCU has lived up to the crossover potential that Trek always had and dipped its toe in. We’d get an episode and it was like yes, all of these people are in Starfleet and why wouldn’t they interact or deal with each other and then they’d back off like “but no we can’t do that.” I wouldn’t be surprised if we someone from Lower Decks or Prodigy come into live action. Or if we see some time travel games allow for someone from SNW to meet someone from Disco. Or a flashback scene in SNW that allows for someone to show up from Disco. There are a lot of options where it could be done in service of the story. Star Wars (though they stumble in the execution at times) has done this well in their shows when another character from animation or an old movie shows up.

Star Trek crossovers have always been a little off. But one show that nailed how to have a franchise and do crossovers is Stargate. You would be watching an episode of Atlantis and all of sudden there you were in the SGC with characters from SG-1 and it was no big deal. That’s how I always felt Star Trek should’ve been. I thought the novels did a great job with crossovers.

On another note, has anybody noticed how the language hasn’t changed in over a thousand years? I mean, look at how much our language has changed in just a hundred years, yet in a thousand it’s still the same? This isn’t just a Star Trek problem, of course, but it would be interesting if someone came up with a sci-fi that had a believable evolution of language…

Looking forward to seeing season 5. Season 4 was one of the best seasons of Trek i have seen and yes i have seen every single episode/season of every Star Trek show.

I watched paint dry once and it was more entertaining than seasons 3 and 4 of Discovery.

I totally agree and the season was so on point with what was going on in the world at the time. The visuals were stunning.

In reality she may not really know much about the season since filming just started and the writing continues through production. It sounds like she doesn’t really know if Booker will be back because she speaks about him only in the past-tense. I feel like his character’s story was concluded neatly in Season 4 so he’s probably gone for most of Season 5, but I have to think he’ll make a return. Still, it’s hard to really get a sense of anything from this interview…which is fine. Compared to Picard and SNW, there are very few voices behind the scenes itching to tease Discovery tidbits on social media so it’s more of a stealth production compared to those two.

I prefer it that they keep stuff under wraps until just a couple months before the new season starts. I mean it was embarrassing how much stuff Matalas kept leaking on Picard S3 during the middle of Picard S2 — nice dude, but he can’t keep his mouth shut.

I’d be surprised at this point if they don’t keep in touch informally having worked together for more than two years now. So it would be odd if she didn’t know unless he doesn’t. I think though they’d also have to know the contractual positions of the cast so as not to write in major dependencies on actors they don’t have.

Here’s how you get this series to cross over. You have them jump again to a different time-period in Star Trek where you have character’s that cross-over.

And I’ve been saying all along that I would not be surprised if they do this given it’s in the spirit of Fuller’s original concept for the series.

Or…. The holodeck

Yeah I forget Discovery has holodecks now. Be cool to have a holographic Janeway or Riker appear! 😁

In the ’90s, there was a rumor that Shatner might appear on Voyager. Posters to the Voyager newsgroup were almost unanimous in saying there was no way they could make a Kirk appearance on Voyager plausible. I posted that Janeway could face some captain-y issue, go to the holodeck, and summon up a holographic Kirk to discuss it with. Someone else said, “Yeah, that could work. But how would they explain that it’s the old, fat, bald Shatner, instead of the young, fat, bald Shatner?”

Interesting, never heard that until now but yeah that would’ve still been difficult to explain why he looks so different. But then again people could just suspend their disbelief if they wanted him that badly. Data still looked much older in Picard versus when he was in TNG or the movies.

Or you know, they could just wrap the show and give more money to SNW and Lower Decks

Or they could keep the money and give us Trekkies at least 7 seasons of Discovery since it is still the most watched Trek show with SNW being the 2nd most watched according to Paramount themselves.

Paramount, which is to be believed about all things, especially how Trek hadn’t generated any profits till Shatner threatened an audit in the mid-80s? Paramount, which said TMP made 175 mil worldwide right up until said audit, and suddenly it downgraded to 139? Paramount, which has spent decades blocking any objective TMP coverage by withholding imagery from offending — read objective — stories?

That Paramount?

Forgive me if I’m sounding cranky, but I just read that less than supreme court (lower case deliberate) has now rolled back enforcement on greenhouse gas emissions. I swear, it’s like TPTB have turned into Peter Boyle in SOLAR CRISIS. Between this and ROE alone, it’d be enough to get me to emigrate if anybody would have us, just out of embarrassment.

So they are going to directly tell lies about their viewership levels when it’s a metric that investors and shareholders use to assess the stocks value and could actually get them in big trouble with the SEC… just because they are personally embarrassed for whatever freaking weird reason that strange New Worlds has better viewership numbers than Discovery?

LOL, yea right. (-:

Ocaam’s Razor, dude.

Agree with you on Supreme Court – it’s embarrassing to be an American these days. if CA wanted to secede, I’d be for it.

Yeah, Facebook got into HUGE trouble for inflating its video audience numbers by about 60-80% more than they were. It caused a chain of layoffs and budget cuts across many popular websites because these numbers had caused the management to want to ‘pivot to video’ instead of commissioning written content, which then turned out not to be true.

I cannot imagine Paramount, a publicly traded company, fudging its numbers like that today without evidence being visible to auditors.

That said, the idea of ‘ratings’ really is a throwback to linear broadcast television. Before VCRs, it was a zero-sum game; you were either watching Show A or Show B, so one of those shows captured the audience for that hour. If you missed it, you had to wait for reruns, if there were any.

Streaming is a world where there isn’t that kind of scarcity. You can watch whatever they have at any time, and it doesn’t take audience numbers away from any other show. They’re also not (for now, anyway) selling ads, so who would they impress with viewership numbers, anyway?

Exactly!

Where did Paramount say that? I can’t find any evidence for that claim.

I really don’t see how the last season was analogous to the covid pandemic at all except maybe in a very philosophical sense. If they were trying for that, maybe they were trying a bit too hard, or not at all.

Which isn’t a bad thing.

I suppose “lovely” may indicate that for pretty much the first time in Discovery’s history we won’t be dealing with a Big Bad that wants to wipe out all life in the universe. It’s getting a bit tired.

“I really don’t see how the last season was analogous to the covid pandemic at all “. Well, covid was bad and so was last season of Discovery. They both sucked and went on for far too long and people just wanted it to end already.

It’s Burnham and Booker’s wedding, all ten episodes. Will Grudge manage not to swallow the rings? Will T’Pring catch the bouquet?

(apologies for my sense of humour)

*T’Rina. Getting my Vulcans mixed up.

Mel Brooks version of Star Trek: “T’Pringtime for Hitler.”

Also need to have a surprise wedding appearance from Wesley Crusher!

Why u moving to paramount plus ure pricing out people on fixed incomes

Money money money (at least that’s what they anticipate).

Instead giving the rest of the Cast more screentime, they introduced Book and now this charakter already had more Screentime then any other original Cast-Members together beside SMG.
One Mistake after another.

Spreading the Discovery disease across other shows will not be a good look, would rather her character does not get NEAR another show.

Refreshing, invigorating, lovely….yes yes, heard it all before…

I’m just glad that out of all the new Trek shows including SNW. Discovery according to paramount themselves has the most viewers of them all. Goes to show that some fans that hate on Discovery are just a vocal minority in the fandom and that most of the fandom love Discovery.

We’re just not vocal enough, but we’re also not dying off fast enough (yet) to stop being a thorn in the side of those demonstrating less discriminating tastes when sucking at the Trek teat.

quantity does not equal quality. Are Michael Bay’s movies masterpieces because they made tonnes of money and lots of people watched it? No..they are low grade bottom of the barrel poorly written films..discovery gets away with cutting corners as i genuinely don’t think majority of the audience that watch it are traditional trek fans.

Ditto here, Commander.

I’m not sure if my opinion is in the minority or if it just looks that way in comments sections, but I absolutely LOVED every moment of season 4, and I feel nothing but hype for season 5.

I think maybe Discovery has had more crossover appeal than previous shows but perhaps also alienated slightly more of the traditional fan base.

At least that’s the way it feels to me.

Personally, I think it’s a perfectly decent TV show though it has struggled with a lack of coherent plot and has really been eclipsed quality-wise by SNW and LDS now. But it has also got much better as of season 4 and maybe the general improvements in the franchise will bleed into season 5 and take it to another level!!

Question is how many seasons does it need to get it right? How many more chances can it get? God forbid it goes onto a seventh season and we are still saying, hope they get it right this time.

‘Lovely’ is not a word often used to describe a thrilling season of Trek. And I closed the book on… well Book several many episodes ago, so I’m good in that departement.

In another thread, I posted a comment saying I didn’t like Kirk’s brother’s “p*rn ‘stache” in SNW, although I used the actual word. Upon tapping the “Post Comment” button, I saw a message saying that my comment was “under review” or something like that. I assumed that was because of the “p” word I used. When I came back later, my comment wasn’t there. I have seen far more explicit “dirty” words used in posts here. Why was my comment rejected?

I had the same problem yesterday with all comments.

It would be great if they use the full potential and revisit other quadrants or try to jump into another galaxies.