Star Trek: Discovery Pilot Script Predicted Show’s Worst Problem

Part of what made that pilot episode (“The Vulcan Hello”) and the next episode (“Battle at the Binary Stars”) peculiar is that they didn’t feature the starship Discovery. Instead, all of this serves as a kind of extended prequel setting up later plot lines for Michael Burnham and Saru. As such, these early Star Trek: Discovery episodes took place on the Shenzhou, though the script for the pilot illustrated a problem that would plague later episodes all the way to the end.

This info comes to us courtesy of prolific Star Trek author David Mack, who was hired to work on Discovery’s first tie-in novel (this ultimately became the very solid book Desperate Hours). He wasn’t shown any of the earliest drafts of the show’s pilot, but he eventually got to review the different production drafts. That’s when the Star Trek: Discovery novel writer discovered a major problem that would make writing his book that much more difficult.

According to Mack, only three of the Shenzhou’s bridge officers had names in these scripts: Philippa Georgiou, Michael Burnham, and Saru. Everyone else was simply referred to by their duty station, like “helm” or “tactical.” This understandably surprised the author, who later said “Wow…In the TV show, to a certain degree, you can get away with that.”

Only three of these early Star Trek: Discovery crew members having names was going to be a major problem for his writing, so Mack got permission to invent character names and biographies for various characters (for example, he gave fan-favorite character Detmer her name). This came in handy for the Shenzhou bridge crew actors: they were later handed the biographies Mack had written, and this helped them bring their otherwise underwritten characters to life. While it was cool Mack went the extra mile like this, the fact that he had to do this highlights the most persistent issue of the series.

Early on, Star Trek: Discovery focused so much on only a handful of characters that by the end of season 1, the fandom had no idea who most of the Discovery bridge crew was because these characters were just as underwritten and often forgotten as the Shenzhou crew. This led to a hilariously goofy “roll call” scene in season 2 where Captain Pike practically looked directly at the audience and rattled off the names of these characters. 

Unfortunately, that didn’t lead to these characters getting many scenes, so it was understandably difficult to remember who someone was by the end of season 5 when the biggest thing that ever happened to them was Pike mentioning their name in season 2. For example, in the show’s final season, even if you happened to remember names like “Detmer” and “Owosekun,” you’ll soon find yourself wondering why they’re never onscreen anymore because we need such scintillating scenes as Booker playing video games (no, really).

Star Trek: Discovery was designed to be Michael Burnham’s show in the same way that The Original Series was designed to be Jim Kirk’s show, but that very comparison highlights this NuTrek show’s biggest problem. Sure, the original show might have mostly focused on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, but we all knew the names of iconic officers like Scotty and Sulu because they were given plenty of screen time. Discovery never gave its supporting cast much to do, and it all goes back to a pilot episode where many of these characters didn’t even have names, much less stories.

It’s sad to see when the cast is this talented. But Discovery basically gave its supporting cast “The Vulcan Hello” by slapping them in the face from the very beginning.