The next Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, lost its showrunner Bryan Fuller. In his place CBS Television Studios hired one of the worst hacks in the industry: Akiva Goldsman. It’s not looking good for Star Trek: Discovery (DSC), which transformed — in a single day — from the most exciting TV series in development to a chew toy for the worst sci-fi screenwriter of the past 20 years. Yes, worse than Damon Lindelof.
But that wasn’t all the bad news this horrible 24-hours had in store for Star Trek. The Hollywood Reporter has some details on the cast who will crew USS Discovery NCC-1031 and it’s a depressing list. “Sources tell THR that the rest of the cast also will feature an openly gay actor as one of the male leads (which Fuller confirmed), a female admiral, a male Klingon captain, a male admiral, a male adviser and a British male doctor.”
Yes, for all its progressive talk it looks like Star Trek: Discovery has embraced the new tokenism of the Star Wars series: female lead, guys everywhere else. We now know of six Star Trek: Discovery crewmembers, of which four are male. And since admirals are often tertiary characters in Star Trek series, we’re probably looking at a woman first officer — the leader is a lieutenant commander loosely based off Majel Barrett’s character, Number One, who appeared in the original, unaired Star Trek pilot — and a majority male crew.
Is it really too much to ask of our utopias that they have gender parity even somewhat close to real life?
