Star Trek: Discovery’s Greatest Homage To The Next Generation
At first, Star Trek: Discovery didn’t have too many connections to The Next Generation, and for good reason: because this new show was a prequel to The Original Series, there was little opportunity for callbacks or Easter eggs to the adventures of Captain Picard.
That changed once the show jumped into the 32nd century, and the entire final season of Discovery followed up on a largely forgotten TNG episode. However, what most fans of both shows don’t realize is that Discovery’s ultimate TNG homage was hidden in the Season 1 episode “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad.”
The Return Of Harry Mudd
Amid an otherwise very dark first season of Star Trek: Discovery, this episode provided plenty of laughs thanks to the return of guest star Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd.
In addition to his funny lines and funnier line deliveries, the episode found serious comedy from its premise: namely, that Mudd had trapped the ship in a time loop so he could pilfer its secrets and sell Discovery to the Klingons. The time loop allowed Mudd to kill characters like Lorca repeatedly, and the increasingly over-the-top nature of these deaths made the violence far funnier than it should have been.
Echoes Of The Next Generation
So, why do I think this Star Trek: Discovery episode was the show’s greatest homage to The Next Generation? Let’s start with the obvious: the plot about the ship being stuck in a time loop and characters trying to figure out how to break out of it is highly reminiscent of the TNG episode “Cause and Effect.” That particular episode inspired copycats in plenty of other genre shows (including The X-Files), so it was pretty cool to see Trek getting so self-referential with its own history.
A Relationship Callback
Another way this Star Trek: Discovery episode calls back to The Next Generation is by having Burnham begin her relationship with Ash Tyler in an alternate timeline before it begins in the main timeline. This is an echo of something that happened in TNG: in “Parallels,” Worf visited multiple alternate realities, including one where he was married to Deanna Troi. He had never considered dating the Betazed counselor, but by the series finale “All Good Things,” the two were officially a couple.
Stamet Knows What’s Going On
The final way this Star Trek: Discovery episode homages The Next Generation is by having a character (in this case, Stamets) who is aware that the timeline has changed. In “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” that happened to Guinan, whose El-Aurian nature made her aware that she was now in an altered reality where the Federation was at war with the Klingons.
In “Magic to Make the Sanest Go Mad,” the very human Paul Stamets is aware of the time loop because he has injected himself with the DNA from a multidimensional tardigrade in order to help make the ship’s spore drive work.
More References Were Planned
Obviously, Star Trek: Discovery has plenty more overt references to The Next Generation in its final season, going so far as to include multiple references to Captain Picard and even providing an appearance from Geordi LaForge’s VISOR.
However, for my latinum, nothing beats “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” from being the ultimate homage to TNG…specifically, to three of that show’s finest episodes. Unfortunately, this was the only comedic episode of early Discovery, making the rest of the season feel like we were stuck in our own time loop of endlessly bleak NuTrek storytelling.
