Now that we’ve gotten our best look yet at the brand-new Star Trek: Discovery trailer from Saturday’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con, it’s time to do what you know we do best: digging into the images revealed to find out what story points we can uncover!
First, if you haven’t seen ’em, check out our new gallery of screencaps from the new trailer, which we’ll be using below!
Note: our analysis will be arranged in our best guess at story order — and we will be including a few caps from the first trailer from back in May as well, for additional context — so if you are watching out for spoilers, be warned!
While this is mostly our speculation, we feel pretty good about much of the below ideas – but if things don’t turn out quite this way in the finished episodes, well, it’s certainly possible! (After all, we freely admit that we may have a few things out of order here – or may be totally incorrect in some spots – but isn’t that half the fun of this kind of analysis?)
Thanks to Alex Perry for the assistance!
* * *
In a flashback to childhood, we see Sarek (James Frain) discover a young Michael Burnham – we know from today’s panel that her parents are killed, likely in this incident – and Sarek initiates a mind-meld to connect with the child.
An attack (?) leaves this location in flames – note steps up to the triangular lit area, and steps apparently down into each circular division.
Years later, Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) is seven years into her tenure serving under Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), aboard the USS Shenzhou.
On an away mission to a desert planet, where the two avoid contact with the crepuscular alien which has a mass of tentacles and a tail that truly makes this non-humanoid appear dangerous.
During this mission they must fashion a sign for the Shenzhou to location them and extract them from the surface. Following Georgiou’s lead, Burnham trudges through the desert, chatting about the first officer’s career path and such…
…until she hears a noise overhead: the Shenzhou breaking through the clouds above.
The Shenzhou then breaks orbit, revealing that Georgiou and Burnham were creating a Starfleet delta in the sand with their footsteps.
Meanwhile, Klingon T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), who hasn’t had great luck in his past — attacked and beaten by others — has now risen to power as leader of his house.
T’Kuvma seeks to unite the warring factions of the Klingon Empire, so he locates and takes over the ancient Sarcophagus ship, parked on a desolate planet.
As part of his goal to “Light the Fire” — a ritual that “sounds the call for all [Klingon] houses to unite” (per SDCC display signage) — T’Kuvma and his house gather aboard the vessel after piloting it to a distant star system to commit one of their own warriors to the Sarcophagus.
This dead (?) Klingon is interred in the Sarcophagus, which is floated up to be released to space after being turned into the Torchbearer — who then wears the armored suit only available to “a warrior… who is chosen through a sacred ritual.”
As the warrior is sacrificed to become the Torchbearer, his fellow Klingons cry out to Sto’vo’kor to announce his impending arrival.
Meanwhile, the Shenzhou arrives at that distant star system, where they detect an “object of unknown origin” and investigate (from Trailer 1) – the Klingon oblisk seen in concept art.
Burnham jets over in her Starfleet spacesuit (after persuading Georgiou to let her check it out), and finds the ancient Klingon obelisk — possibly launched from the Sarcophagus ship? — where she inadvertently interrupts the Klingons’ ritual and encounters the Torchbearer.
She clearly doesn’t do well in the encounter, as we then see her tumbling off into space with cracked and damaged suit, her heads-up display failing.
Presumably she’s rescued from this dangerous state, as she lies getting scanned for injuries in the Shenzhou medical bay – note Martin-Green’s short hair, which she wears during her time on the Shenzhou.
Burnham has a conversation with Sarek about their encounter with the Klingons, and learns from the Vulcan that “the Klingon Empire has been in disarray for generations…”
…and that (as detailed in May’s trailer), “great unifiers are few and far between, but they do come… often such leaders will need a profound cause for their followers to rally around.”
Who do we know is a “great unifier,” but T’Kuvma, who has been described as someone who seeks to unite the Klingon houses together. Drawn to the Shenzhou by the Torchbearer’s encounter on the oblisk — perhaps while Burnham is still away from the Shenzhou — T’Kuvma and his Sarcophagus ship confront the Federation vessel.
“We have been waiting for someone worth of our attention,” T’Kuvma states ominously.
At some point after the Sarcophagus ship arrives, Burnham and Georgiou beam over to that Klingon vessel to try and stop T’Kuvma’s actions, and are attacked by the Klingons on site.
After their return to the Shenzhou, possibly after learning some crucial information that drives her decision-making process, we believe at this point is where Burnham makes the big choice that drives the ongoing arc of the season.
It’s something that seems to clearly disadvantage the Shenzhou against the Klingons — after pleading her case (and failing) with Georgiou (that ‘cut off the head’ speech in Trailer 1), Burnham decides to take action on her own.
After she takes unauthorized action, Burnham is escorted off the bridge by security.
During this affair, a fleet of Klingon battle cruisers arrives on the scene — likely drawn by “the Fire,” that white-hot energy that affected the crew in Trailer 1 — as Ensign Connor’s sensor display is flooded by incoming warp signatures.
Meanwhile in the Klingons stop playing nice and attack the Shenzhou, leading to a big space battle.
The battle between the Klingons and the Shenzhou rages as weapons fire is exchanged on both sides.
Burnham is talking to another officer who is blasted into space when a hull breach forms nearby — and the explosive force from the Klingon’s weapon knocks Burnham unconscious while trapped inside a forcefield.
…and the force of that last Klingon volley does a number on the Shenzhou, blowing up half the consoles on the bridge.
At some point the USS Europa — another Starfleet vessel — collides with a massive, cloaked Klingon ship when responding to the Shenzou‘s notice of engaging the armada.
Perhaps this occurs if the ship arrives in response to Georgiou’s signal to Starfleet.
Shocked but resolved to keep fighting, Georgiou looks to be engulfed by more explosions on the bridge.
Burnham finally awakes, shocked to find that she’s surrounded on all sides by hull breaches to the vacuum of space.
As the crew begins to evacuate the Shenzhou…
The only option Burnham has to survive is to blast herself through hard vacuum to the main part of the ship, so she can reach the escape pods.
After making that journey, she evacuates the Shenzhou with the rest of the crew.
* * *
Some time – or years – later, we find Burnham locked up in prison for her actions that lead to the end of the Shenzhou, where Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) comes to recruit her for a new mission.
“You chose to do the right thing,” Lorca says, “even at great cost to yourself.” Admitting, perhaps, that her actions lead to the Shenzhou‘s abandonment?
“You helped start a war,” Lorca continues. “Don’t you want to help me end it?”
We now follow Burnham aboard the USS Discovery, where Lorca has claimed that they “are creating a new way to fly” – whatever that means.
While we see Lorca poking around a force field in some kind of laboratory, Burnham (still in her gold prison jumpsuit) finds herself sharing a room with Cadet Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), and seeing some odd science.
Note now that for all scenes post-Shenzhou, Martin-Green sports a different hairstyle.
Exploring the Discovery, Burnham find a large agricultural lab which confuses the heck out of her – perhaps something astromycologist Lt. Stamets is studying?
Finally, in what seems to be the big second-half action sequence, Burnham — along with Tilly, Lt. Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and security officer Landry (Rekha Sharma) — appears to return to the not-actually-destroyed Shenzhou for some mysterious reason.
Whatever happens over there can’t be good, as it leads to Burnham and crewmates sprinting through the corridors, tearing through the Jeffries tubes and yelling at her new crewmates to blast off in their shuttle.
The shuttle crew makes it back to the Discovery, and the ship goes to warp:
Later — and we suspect this occurs in a subsequent episode — Burnham somehow encounters Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson) in the first of what is rumored to be several appearances this first season.
Note the curiosity of Burnham’s now-silver uniform highlights — also seen in this production photo released Saturday — and only three shoulder stripes compared to her previous four gold ones.
Remember, as we said in the beginning: this is just our speculation about how this story goes, but with the evidence at hand we feel pretty good about this layout — but we’ll see how things play out when Discovery arrives in September.
Sound off in the comments below with your thoughts on what you’ve seen so far!