I attended a panel about Star Trek: Discovery a few weeks ago, and for the most part the panelists talked about what they didn’t like about the show. The common thread through the discussion was that Discovery was not Star Trek the way they knew it. The main argument being that the hope was gone from Star Trek. While I agree that it’s not the same Star Trek that we had thirty or more years ago, I don’t believe it’s because the hope is gone, I believe it’s because the conflict changed and hope for what we as a race can become moved to the background. (Minor Spoilers for Discovery Below)

Many of the panelists felt that Discovery felt more like Star Trek in the first two episodes, when Georgiou was in the captain’s chair of the USS Shenzhou. Phillipa Georgiou was the captain we expect to see on a Star Trek series. She’s respected by her crew and Starfleet. Later in the series it’s revealed that she’s one of Starfleet’s most decorated captains, on a list with the likes of Christopher Pike, Robert April, and Jonathan Archer. She tells the Klingons that she comes in peace. Georgiou wants to use diplomacy to resolve the conflict.

Like the conflicts in the previous shows, the first two-episodes center around the prime directive and the Federation’s mission of peace. How we, as a now enlightened race, handle the challenges the galaxy hands us. We do this in the name of peace, to be friends with the other aliens. These are the best people humanity has to offer, and they’re being sent out to be the emissaries of our race. The prime examples of what we strive to be. The crew of the Shenzhou are these people.

The plot of the first two episodes, progresses like others in the previous iterations of the franchise, where the captain does something dangerous to ultimately negotiate with the enemy. Georgiou and Commander Burnham go aboard the Klingon ship. Then Georgiou is killed, and that’s the moment is when the entire conflict of the show changes. Starfleet is now part of a war against the Klingons. It’s very possible that they aren’t going to make it out of the war.

Diplomacy isn’t going to work. Friendly Starfleet isn’t going to work. Starfleet needs to become the military organization it was in the beginning. The conflict’s moved from the philosophy of the previous shows to a fight for the Federation’s very survival.

Then we meet Captain Gabriel Lorca. Captain Lorca is almost the opposite exact of Georgiou. Lorca is not a shining example of what humanity will be in the future. He’s battling his own Post Traumatic Stress, he’s ruthless and demanding. He is not the friendly, diplomatic captain that Georgiou was, and he believes he’s the only man that can win the war. His goal is not to explore, not to be a diplomat or a scientist. He makes it clear, right from the start, that he’s willing to do anything to win the war. The Discovery is an experimental ship, his bridge crew is mostly made of former Shenzhou officers, because Lorca figures they want to help end the war they helped to begin.

The philosophy behind Starfleet and the Prime Directive doesn’t have a place in this atmosphere, where the Federation is simply trying to survive and not be wiped out of the universe. That is where we are during Discovery, seven months into the Federation-Klingon War, thousands of casualties on the Federation side, many ships lost, survival took precedence over the moral dilemmas of earlier series. We as an audience know that this war stretches on for years, and the Federation are the victors at the end. But the characters in Discovery know that the war isn’t going their way, and they aren’t sure if or how they will be able to win the conflict.

This is not to say that the hope from the past is completely gone. The occasional glimpses of who these characters were before the war shows us that the hope and enlightenment from the other series is still present during Discovery. on the Shenzhou, or when Captain Lorca and Admiral Cornwell discuss their old Academy days, when all that was in front of them was hope and adventure. Lorca’s smile when he explains that the Spore Drive isn’t just a new way to fight but a new way to fly, The smile that says, “this would be the coolest thing ever, if we can ever get out of this damned war”.

The Hope that we can become our enlightened selves hasn’t disappeared from Discovery, but it is subtle in its application, and once the war is over, I think Discovery can be the all important stepping stone that leads from Enterprise into the Original Series.