Last post on this before I sign off on this debate and wait for the second half of "Such Sweet Sorrow". Potentially we can keep going, but soon I have to look at and edit footage I shot over the weekend (for those who don't know, I'm a Videographer). And Thursday can turn out to prove me wrong on a lot of what I said. So arguing my position and getting it all out is one thing. But fighting tooth and nail for it right up until the minute of the Season Finale drops will be something else. It would make the potential egg on my face look a lot worse.
We all know Harberts/Berg, Kurtzman, and now Paradise have inherited Fuller's creation. So they had to decide what to do with it. Kurtzman seems like an interim showrunner. He wants to be the "Rick Berman" handling the Bigger Picture, not the "Michael Piller" handling the day-to-day. So, post-Fuller, we really have Harbert/Berg's vision of what they wanted to do and Michelle Paradise's vision of what she wants to do.
I don't know if Bryan Fuller wanted to include the Mirror Universe or if that's something Harberts/Berg added, or how far along they got in planning out the season before Fuller left, but if the Mycellial Network took them from the Mirror Universe to Nine Months Later, I think they wanted to show the range of what the Spore Drive can do by giving us examples of something we know. It can take us not only through Space, but also through Time (nine months later) and through Different Universes (The Mirror Universe). Time might've been Bryan Fuller's idea for how Discovery would've gotten to the TNG Era. Different Universes an "out" if, in the future, what he did with the Prime Timeline turned out to be unpopular and he could say the crew only thought they were in the Prime Timeline or come up with some roundabout PR bullshit excuse like "They end up in the Prime Timeline!" as a fail-safe.
If, emphasis on if, Fuller's intention was to spend one season in each of the timeframes, then Harberts & Berg probably felt that it wasn't enough to just go from the Klingon War to the Mirror Universe to "TNG" (quotations because I'm using it as a shorthand for TNG/DS9/VOY/Post-NEM/Picard). Also, one the Picard Series became a thing, presumably they didn't want DSC to go there because the Picard Series might have its own ideas about what they wanted to do with that timeframe that wouldn't have meshed with DSC's ideas. So they probably opted to skip out on going to "TNG".
I don't know at what point the Picard Series was thought up as a concept, but at the end of developing the story for the first season, Harberts & Berg had a choice of going to another time frame at the end of the Mirror Universe Arc or stay in the same timeframe. They probably decided there was more story to tell in the 23rd Century and decided to only jump nine months. Basically the same time period but just enough of a difference in the Klingon War that the crew would be wondering "What the Hell happened?" when they got back. And then there was the finish, which was a rush.
So that brings us to Season 2. By now they've heard the complaints about Spock having a sister, Discovery having its Spore Drive, and why Kirk never mentioned or was involved in a Klingon War. I'll address each of these one-by-one but not in the order I mentioned:
First: Pike says the Enterprise was on a five-year mission far away and that's why he was never involved in The War. If the Enterprise can be "too far way", then so can the Farragut. One issue addressed. Whether or not it's to everyone's satisfaction is another story.
Second: Complaints about Spock having a sister. They came up with the Red Angel concept. Now they have time travel in play. Mysticism in play. And they can use "timey-wimey" to explain away Burnham and why she's never mentioned. I don't think why she's never mentioned had to be addressed but they felt it needed to be addressed, so I'm defending their position and not what I personally think. What I personally think is: he never mentioned her because it never came up.
Third: Time travel can conveniently be used to explain away why the Spore Drive isn't used on ships after Discovery. On top of what Culber's precence in the Mycellial Network was doing to it. They used the echo of Culber in the Mycellial Network as a way to get them out of another criticism: that Discovery had fallen into The "Kill Your Gays" Trope. So, as far as Harberts & Berg wrote, the Spore Drive probably would've been dangerous to Mycellial Life and would've been lost. This is where it gets hairy. It's hard to say if the Spore Drive would've been responsible for time travel or the Red Angel in their version of the full DSC S2, but I'm leaning towards the Red Angel. Either way, the Spore Drive being lost from this time period is a way to get it out of the 23rd Century.
Then we get to Alex Kurtzman taking over before Michelle Paradise steps in. I think, and a lot of us think, he discarded or changed Berg & Harberts original plan for the second season. I think he's the one who came up with Control. Control would serve two purposes. First is to serve as the reason he'd want for why Discovery can't return to the 23rd Century once it leaves there, so this is his answer and his take to the previous showrunners' ideas and putting his own stamp on it. The second purpose is to have it interface with Airiam. He might've -- emphasis on might've -- decided to use Airiam's undeleted memories as the basis for the what leads to the creation of Zora. If he was looking for a direction for the series to go, in the wake of firing Berg & Harberts being fired, he probably looked to "Calypso" for inspiration and his new guide. And you can't have Zora unless it's in a timeframe much later than the 23rd Century. And Control is the reason to keep them out of there.
Long story short: I don't necessarily think Kurtzman or Harberts & Berg intended to stick to Bryan Fuller's outline, so much as they just partially found their way back to it.
And IF Discovery leaves the 23rd Century, then they have the Section 31 Series, the Academy Series, and a Pike Series (if they make one and assuming it's not also the Academy Series) to continue what they developed there, along with whatever else they might come up with in the future. The groundwork for the CBSAA's 23rd Century has already been laid down. Michelle Paradise would get the honor of developing the groundwork for a whole other timeframe that takes place in a foreign time after everything else we've seen. Something that hasn't been done in Star Trek since 1987.
Done. The rest will have to wait until after Thursday, or someone else can pick up my end of the slack.
Here’s hoping Disco winds up nowhere near him, because I’m out if they do.
