Star Trek: Discovery tore itself apart for the good of Star Trek’s future

polygon.com:

If you were to jump directly from the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery to its finale — which just debuted on Paramount Plus — the whiplash would throw you clear out of your seat like your ship had suffered an inertial damper malfunction. Since its first two chapters premiered on CBS All Access in 2017, the series has moved to a different ship and a different century, and has acquired an almost entirely different set of characters. Moreover, Discovery has received a radical tonal refit, evolving in fits and starts from a dark and violent war story to a much sunnier action-adventure serial.

Though it never won the mainstream attention or critical acclaim of its spinoff, Strange New Worlds, nor the gushing fan adulation of Picard’s Next Gen reunion, Discovery spearheaded Star Trek’s return to television, the franchise’s maiden voyage into the frontier of premium streaming content. Like any bold pathfinder, Discovery encountered obstacles, suffered losses, and made some major course corrections. But, if you ask the cast and crew, the adventure has been more than worth the tumultuous journey.

“We were on wobbly legs for a long time,” admits star Sonequa Martin-Green, whose character, Michael Burnham, has had the rug pulled out from under her a number of times over the course of the series. In the first season and backstory alone, Burnham lost her parents, saw her mentor murdered, was tried for mutiny, discovered that her first love is a Klingon sleeper agent, and was betrayed by not one but two Mirror Universe doppelgängers of trusted Starfleet captains.

Move over, Deep Space Nine — this was instantly the grimmest canonical depiction of the Star Trek universe on screen. Season 1 of Discovery was rated TV-MA and featured more blood and gore than the franchise had ever seen, not to mention an instance of graphic Klingon nudity. (Actor Mary Wiseman recalls seeing her co-star Mary Chieffo walking the set wearing prosthetic alien breasts and thinking, What the hell?)