Posted in: Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: Michelle Paradise, paramount, Sonequa Martin-Green, star trek: discovery, Star Trek: The Next Generation

Star Trek: Discovery Showrunner on "Next Gen" Nods in Season 5 Opener

Star Trek: Discovery EP and Showrunner Michelle Paradise on how Star Trek: The Next Generation inspired the fifth and final season.

Star Trek: Discovery is off to another fast start as the key to preserving the 32nd century is tied to something in the distant past as a theme for the fifth and final season. While there hasn't been a shortage of references with the new franchise canon on Paramount+, Discovery dug deep into their syndicated legacy's past as showrunner Michelle Paradise broke down the inspiration behind its meaning and how she originally considered evoking it for season four. The following contains major spoilers for "Red Directive" and "Under the Twin Moon."

Star Trek: Discovery: Goes into The Next Generation's Lore

As Saru (Doug Jones) mulls his future in the U.S.S. Discovery, Captain Michael Burnham (Soneqa Martin-Green) is tasked by Kovich (David Cronenberg) about a top-secret red directive mission that she's not to let her crew know anything about that's only cleared with the brass that also includes Captain Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) of the U.S.S. Antares offering operational support trying to find the secret behind a mysterious 800-year-old abandoned Romulan vessel stuck in the Beta Quadrant.

At the end of the episode, Kovich reveals what they're looking for emanates from a mission led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in the TNG sixth season episode "The Chase" that found the Federation, Klingons & Cardassians in pursuit of a mystery of all life in existence. The aliens they found are revealed to be the Progenitors, and Kovich wants Discovery to solve the mystery and recover the relic before letting it fall into the wrong hands, like Moll (Eve Harlow) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis).

"I remember watching that episode and at the end of it just being blown away that there was this huge idea where we all come from," Paradise told Variety. "And then they're going to have another mission the next week. I found myself wondering, 'Well, then what? What happened? What do we do with this information? What does it mean?'" The showrunner also revealed the arc was originally intended for season four. "As we dug deeper into the season itself, we realized that it was too much to try and get in."

Instead, it was repurposed for season five. "Burnham and some of our other characters are on this quest for personal meaning," Paradise said. Searching for the origins of life itself, she adds, "feels like a big thematic idea that fits right in with what we're exploring over the course of the season and what our characters are going through." Fortunately, the additional time also allowed her to fill in more of the blanks from "The Chase". "We had a lot of fun talking about what might've happened when [Picard] called back to headquarters and had to say, 'Here's what happened today,'" she says. "We just built the story out from there." Star Trek: Discovery streams on Thursdays on Paramount+.

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