The reality of 2018 – and the unfolding reality of 2019 – poses some major challenges to Roddenberry’s progressive, anti-war optimism. Set about a decade before The Original Series, it showed, often too forcefully, that the smug righteousness of Starfleet shouldn’t be taken for granted. While it got tangled up in its evil web of cleverness towards the end, the first season of Discovery provided some much-needed context for the franchise as a whole.
Read more: 45 of the best Netflix series to binge watch right now As Frakes put it in a recent interview with Deadline, the series is now “embracing the Roddenberry canon in a more valid way”. Directed by Frakes, it is both a return to and an expansion on what Star Trek does best – a magic formula of clever conceits, philosophical pondering, comical timing and an away team snooping around an intergalactic reimagining of ye olde worlde America.
“New Eden”, the second episode in season two of Discovery, takes things further still.
