The third season of the American television series Star Trek: Discovery follows the crew of the starship Discovery as they travel to the 32nd century, more than 900 years after Star Trek: The Original Series, and learn that Starfleet has nearly been destroyed by a cataclysmic event called "The Burn" that has left the galaxy disconnected. The season was produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment, with Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise serving as showrunners.
Sonequa Martin-Green stars as Michael Burnham, first officer of the Discovery, along with the returning Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, and Wilson Cruz. They are joined by David Ajala and Rachael Ancheril. The season was ordered in February 2019, with Paradise promoted to co-showrunner alongside series co-creator Kurtzman. They ended the second season with the Discovery travelling to the future, beyond existing Star Trek continuity, which allowed them to explore a new time period for the franchise including new designs and technology from production designer Phillip Barker. The season introduces the first explicitly non-binary and transgender Star Trek characters, respectively portrayed by recurring guests Blu del Barrio and Ian Alexander. Filming took place from July 2019 to February 2020 in Toronto, Canada, and on location in Iceland. Star Trek: Discovery was the first visual effects-heavy series to go through post-production during the COVID-19 pandemic, with work on the season's visual effects, as well as editing and music, taking place remotely.
The 13-episode season premiered on the streaming service CBS All Access on October 15, 2020, and concluded on January 7, 2021. It was estimated to be the most in-demand All Access series of 2020, and received positive reviews for its new setting which critics felt had freed the series from the franchise's existing continuity and allowed it to tell the story it was meant to tell. Other praise went to the season's real-world parallels and cast (especially Martin-Green, as well as the introduction of Ajala, del Barrio, and Alexander), while Burnham's character development and the resolution of major issues received mixed responses. It won a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award for its visual effects, and received several other awards and nominations. A fourth season was announced in October 2020, and the third season also sets-up a planned spin-off film to star recurring guest Michelle Yeoh.
Episodes
Cast and characters
Main Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham Doug Jones as Saru Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly David Ajala as Cleveland "Book" Booker Wilson Cruz as Hugh Culber Rachael Ancheril as Nhan
Recurring Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou Tig Notaro as Jett Reno Blu del Barrio as Adira Tal Ian Alexander as Gray Tal Oded Fehr as Charles Vance Noah Averbach-Katz as Ryn Janet Kidder as Osyraa
Notable guests Annabelle Wallis as the voice of Zora David Cronenberg as Kovich Sonja Sohn as Gabrielle Burnham Hannah Cheesman as Airiam Paul Guilfoyle as the Guardian of Forever Rekha Sharma as Ellen Landry Kenneth Mitchell as Aurellio
Production Development
On February 27, 2019, CBS All Access renewed Star Trek: Discovery for a third season, shortly after the second season premiered, citing the positive fan response to the premiere as well as the service's increased subscription count in that time. After joining the series in the second season, writer Michelle Paradise was promoted to co-showrunner for the third alongside series co-creator Alex Kurtzman. Kurtzman explained that Paradise had been essential to his process during the second season, becoming a partner for him while he oversaw multiple Star Trek series in addition to showrunning Discovery. By the end of the second season he felt that Paradise was already running Discovery with him, so it was an easy transition to her becoming official co-showrunner during the third season. In October, Kurtzman said the season would have 13 episodes, and this was unlikely to be extended as happened for the previous two seasons. The season was produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Kurtzman's production company, Secret Hideout, as well as Roddenberry Entertainment.
Writing The writers room for the season included Jenny Lumet, Anne Cofell Saunders, Ken Lin, Alan McElroy, Kirsten Beyer, Brandon Schultz, Erika Lippoldt, Bo Yeon Kim, Chris Silvestri, Anthony Maranville, Sean Cochran, and Kalinda Vazquez. They began work at the end of February 2019, at Kurtzman's Secret Hideout offices in Santa Monica. Astrophysicist Erin Macdonald and biologist Mohamed Noor consulted on the season, after joining the Star Trek franchise as general science advisors, as did frequent Star Trek linguist Marc Okrand who helped develop the season's alien languages, such as Kelpien. After working in the writers room for the series Snowfall, author Walter Mosley was hired by Kurtzman for a similar role on the third season of Discovery. Mosley worked for three weeks before he was notified by CBS of a complaint that had been made against him by another writer for Mosley's use of the word "nigger" while telling a story. CBS told Mosley this was a fireable offence, but said no further action would be taken if he did not use the word again outside of a script. Mosley chose to leave the series, quitting without informing Kurtzman and Paradise. He explained his decision in an op-ed for The New York Times in September 2019. Mosley did not identify the series in the op-ed, but CBS confirmed that it was Discovery in their response.
The second season ended with the USS Discovery traveling over 900 years into the future, freeing the series from the continuity of previous Star Trek stories and allowing it to explore a new time period. Kurtzman compared this decision to that of the film Star Trek (2009)—on which he worked as a writer—starting a new timeline to avoid established continuity. Star Sonequa Martin-Green described the new setting as a "blank slate". In October 2020, Kurtzman revealed that the season takes place following a cataclysmic event, the Burn, that separated people and changed the way that they communicate. He noted that this is "exactly what we are going through right now" with the COVID-19 pandemic, though the season was produced before the pandemic began. Paradise said the season's main theme was the importance of connections, including family and cultural connections.
The writers knew that the protagonist, Martin-Green's Michael Burnham, would become captain of Discovery eventually and decided that they wanted that to happen at the end of the third season. They wanted to give her the best arc possible by first taking the character far away from that goal. The first episode focuses on Burnham, alone in the future until she meets new character Cleveland "Book" Booker, with the rest of the Discovery crew being the focus of the second episode. They are reunited with Burnham in the third, which is set one year after the events of the first episode for Burnham. Burnham declines to become captain then, deferring to Saru who was the acting captain at the end of the second season. Burnham spends the first half of the season questioning her place on Discovery and trying to reconcile her role on the ship with the year she spent with Book. She recommits to Starfleet in "Unification III", and the rest of the season builds to her becoming captain. Saru's storyline focuses on his connection to other Kelpiens and his home planet of Kaminar, and he ends the season with Su'Kal on Kaminar. Paradise said this was not necessarily a way to bring Saru's story "full circle", and was more a way to show his natural progression from his brief interactions with other Kelpiens in the previous seasons.
Kurtzman explained that a planned spin-off to star Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou was not expected to be made until after the third season of Discovery was completed. Executive producer Heather Kadin said Yeoh's third-season role could lead to a direct tie-in with the spin-off. Discovery writers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt were set to work on the spin-off, and developed Georgiou's character arc in the third season. It ends with her being written out of Discovery in the two-part episode "Terra Firma". They wanted a "timey-wimey solution" for sending Georgiou to her new destination, and chose the Guardian of Forever from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Discovery introduces a new personification of the Guardian called "Carl", named for and inspired by astronomer and author Carl Sagan. "Terra Firma" was given as an example of the season's more episodic approach, with each episode having a central character, villain, or standalone story that is connected to the season-long mystery of what caused the Burn. Other examples include "People of Earth", in which Earth is treated like a planet of the week, and the focus on Vulcan culture in "Unification III". Paradise said this approach allowed some characters to be explored that usually would not be. The Burn being an accident caused by a child was inspired by the Ursula K. Le Guin short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973), while the holographic simulation that Su'Kal lives in was inspired by The Matrix (1999).
When asked if the series would directly tie-in with Star Trek: Picard, Kurtzman said it would not, but there would be references to previous Star Trek series. These include a mention of the Temporal Wars from Star Trek: Enterprise, which take place during the 31st century. That was the furthest the franchise had gone into the future until this season, which is set in the 32nd century. The season reveals that a temporal agent crossed over from the alternate timeline created during the events of the film Star Trek (2009), which is the first reference to the film franchise's alternate reality made by a Star Trek series. The episode "Unification III" serves as an informal sequel to the two-part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Unification", which saw Burnham's brother Spock begin to unify the Vulcan and Romulan people; in "Unification III", the planet Vulcan has been renamed Ni'Var and is home to both Vulcans and Romulans, including the Qowat Milat, a sect of Romulan warrior nuns that were introduced in Picard. Kadin stated before the season's premiere that the Star Trek: Short Treks short "Calypso" was set around the same time as the season, and there was a chance that Aldis Hodge could reprise his role from the short, but Paradise later said "Calypso" is actually set many years after the season. Instead, the season foreshadows "Calypso" by showing the Sphere data from the second season beginning to integrate with Discovery, becoming the advanced artificial intelligence Zora that was introduced in the short.
Casting