Review: Star Trek: Discovery, "Legrange Point" | Season 5, Episode 9
I wonder if it's bigger on the inside
We’ve already agreed that arguing about what “is” and “isn’t” Star Trek is a bad opening to any conversation, let alone an ostensibly critical one. For one thing, Trek means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and part of the minor miracle of the franchise is that all those people can generally get together on enjoying a thing regardless of their myriad differences. For another, it gets dangerously close to those miserable gatekeeping conversations we’ve all come to loathe—“No, your fandom doesn’t matter because this isn’t real” or “You don’t love what I love, which means your love counts less than mine.” That sort of nonsense.
So I’m going to be careful here, because I want to critique Discovery for failing to deliver effectively on the science fiction part of its remit, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of comparing it to Star Wars, the other culturally dominant ostensibly sci-fi genre franchise that’s more interested in…