“Star Trek Discovery has been a wild ride for me. However, I wasn’t too keen about the U.S. S. Discovery when I first laid eyes on her.”

By G.P. Avants

If you have followed our blog or podcast for very long you know my love affair with space-faring vehicles. You can read about a piece dedicated to one of my favorite ships, the magnificent Millennium Falcon called, “They Hate that Ship!”

At God Among Geeks and Neekology 101 I am  the resident Sci-fi contributor who actually loves Star Wars and Star Trek.  (It the fandom universe lover in me that can’t pick one fandom to follow.) I’ve actually followed Star Trek since it’ inception in 1966. That series has introduced us to a wide variety of fantastic warp capable starships such as:

 

the iconic Federation flagship, the U.S.S Enterprise. I have enjoyed all the headliner ships from the Enterprise in all it’s many incarnations 1701A-E.

The Enterprise A (Found in the Star Trek feature films)

 

The Enterprise B (made an appearance at the beginning of the movie, Star Trek: Generations)

 

The Enterprise C (Quick appearance on Star Trek the Next Generation)

The Enterprise D (Star Trek Next Generation)

 

The Enterprise E (Star Trek feature films)

 

The U.S.S Defiant. (Deep Space 9 )

The U.S.S. Voyager (Star Trek Voyager) 

We saw the NX Enterprise in the sequel series Enterprise which came about 100 years before the TOS Enterprise that started it all.

 

Then my jaw dropped when I first saw the U.S. S. Discovery. Like everyone else I was excited to see a new Star Trek series return to television. I wasn’t prepared for this vessel which boasted a design that was fit into a timeline about ten years before Captain Kirk and his crew.  I popped on the quick sizzle trailer on You Tube that gave us the Discovery emerging from what looks
like an asteroid.

It was the ugliest starship I had ever seen.

Sorry, but what was I looking it? The U.S. S. Discovery looked like a weird angular slapped together, artsy- looking attempt at interstellar travel.  I had instantly began to make some snap judgements by doing what I know I shouldn’t: judge a book by it’s cover. I should know by now that things are often much different below the surface. I needed to give the Discovery a chance and be a little more open-minded.

That’s when it all changed.

I saw USS Discovery and her crew get busy. The Discovery was designed with an experimental Spore Drive. Only two Federation starships were equipped with this radically different form of space travel. When the ship goes into black alert the drive is accessing natural microscopic living network of space. After learning how to mire-safely access the “micelial network,” the ship can jump instantaneously from one point in space to another. In preparing for jump, the Discovery has parts of the ship that rotate and adjust for the wild ride. When she travels the entire ship folds, twists, and bends into a moment of colorful disconnecting. As I think about it, it’s  works like a natural transporter: molecules break apart, turned into pure energy, and reassembled in another location. Whoa, if that is the concept that another reason why my perception of this out-of-the-box ship has altered.

The Discovery has been part of the Klingon/Federation War, found a way to use Tardigrade DNA to travel safetly, breached the reality barrier between the Mirror Universe and our own, and actually for a rescue mission bridged the macro universe with the microscopic one.  

Now that I have seen the Discovery in action from the inside out I understand why form follows function. Now I know why she looks the way she does. So, yes, I will add the U.S.S. Discovery to my list of amazing starships. Oh, and this isn’t the end surprises on this CBS All Access series.  In almost a complete circle, the Discovery receives a distress call from this show’s version of the ship that started it all, The U.S.S. Enterprise.

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