After an 18-month hiatus, Star Trek: Discovery has finally returned with “That Hope Is You, Part 1,” kicking off the long-awaited third season. The premiere introduces us to the 32nd century, answering the questions about when — and where — Burnham drops out of the wormhole, while also posing a few others.

Namely, where is Discovery, and what happened to the Federation? Also: there’s a really fantastic cat.

Beginning directly after the events of Season 2’s fast-paced and action-filled “Such Sweet Sorrow” finale, this week’s “That Hope Is You, Part 1” throws the viewer far into the future — and then slams the brakes.

The plot of the episode can be summarized in just four sentences: After exiting a wormhole to the year 3188, Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) ricochets off  the hull of Cleveland “Book Booker’s (David Ajala) ship, causing both of them to crash land on a planet. Burnham and Book encounter each other again on the surface, briefly fight, reluctantly decide to work together, and head to a trading hub where they hope to sell Burnham’s “antique” 23rd century survival kit for some much-needed cash.

Book betrays Burnham to the authorities (before being captured himself), Burnham and Book escape, and the two of them earn each other’s trust once more while returning Book’s cargo — a giant endangered nudibranch called a trance worm — to a wildlife sanctuary planet. Finally, Book takes Burnham to one of the Federation’s last lone sentinels so she can attempt to contact Discovery and learn more about the fate of the Federation.

In terms of broad strokes, that’s it. And this is a good thing.

Writers Michelle Paradise, Jenny Lumet, and Alex Kurtzman are smart to give not only the characters, but also the audience, time to adjust to their new surroundings. We as viewers have just as much to learn as Burnham does, and I appreciate the fact that show gives us plenty of time and space to do it. This is not to suggest that the episode is slow by any means — as the summary suggests, there are plenty of fight scenes and chase sequences and other shenanigans — but that it wisely limits itself to a single storyline.

In service of the strangers-to-friends story, here are quite a few moments in this episode that seem odd on paper, but that are successful on screen due to the dedication of the actors. Burnham is sprayed with a mind-altering substance during an interrogation, and the unexpected tonal shift works — and is frankly pretty fun at times — because Sonequa Martin-Green commits fully to the bit.

The same is true of her being eaten and then spit back out by a giant glowing slug. It’s cartoonish for sure, but given everything else she’s been through in the last day or two it feels just on the right side of “what a week I’m having!” to work.

In between the story beats and slug stuff, we also get some critical worldbuilding. Right away, we learn from Book that something called ‘The Burn’ occurred 100 or so years prior to Burnham’s arrival: most of the galaxy’s dilithium crystals destabilized, and what little is left is in tiny fragments.

Dilithium crystals act as the focusing element for matter and antimatter in warp drive systems; if the crystals destabilize, the M/AM reaction in a starship’s engine will overload and explode with an incredible amount of energy — putting good meaning to the name ‘The Burn.’

As a result, warp travel has become restricted to the domain of smugglers and couriers whose employers dole out only enough dilithium to complete a job. Other methods of extrawarp travel exist — Book mentions quantum slipstreams (“Timeless”) and tachyon solar cells (“Explorers”) specifically — and other highly advanced technology still seems to be commonplace, but high-speed interstellar travel appears to no longer be routine.

Second, and presumably as a result, the Federation no longer exists. Sure, there are a few “true believers” who insist it’s still around and wear delta shields in defiance of popular opinion, but as a functioning institution, it is no longer. The Federation collapsed after ‘The Burn,’ and it seems that effectiveness of — and faith in — institutions will be one of the central themes of this upcoming season. But more on that later.

While the cause of ‘The Burn’ is likely to be the season’s overarching mystery to be solved, its effects on the galaxy seems like a perfect opening for the USS Discovery and its antiquated technology: a ship that would otherwise be beyond obsolete, but will find itself equipped with not one, but two highly-valuable propulsion systems.

“That Hope Is You, Part I” is, in a word, gorgeous. Director and executive producer Olatunde Osunsanmi — who helmed the “Such Sweet Sorrow” Season 2 finale two-parter — keeps with the series’ tradition of a cinema-quality experience.

This is a beautifully shot episode; the slower pacing gives us plenty of time to appreciate the incredible Icelandic vistas used as shooting locations, and the visual effects and art design are excellent as always. Touching on a few other returning production folks, costume designer Gersha Phillips continues her streak of designing coats and jackets that I wish were hanging in my closet.

Composer Jeff Russo has also returned, as well as production designer Tamara Deverell. As usual, the show looks lush and interesting and Russo’s score is top notch, even after it was pieced together remotely due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Discovery’s signature makeup and prosthetic designs have also made the journey to the 32nd century. While I would personally prefer a more subtle approach for some of the designs, I’ve accepted that the “makeup forward” aesthetic is a deliberate and at this point well established choice.

That said, I cannot call this review complete without drawing attention to the absolutely bizarre choice in designing Ithor (Jake Michaels), the Orion interrogator, to sculpt a perfectly normal human face… and then apply it to another perfectly normal human face. It’s clear they wanted to show that Orions have strong jaws and straight noses, but I’m baffled as to why they felt the need to sculpt these features after the fact, instead of cast an actor with a look closer to their needed look.

Combined with the unnatural skin tone and painted on eyebrows, the interrogator looked very artificial, coming across more Soong-type android in appearance rather than Orion.

All of the new design work showcased in “That Hope Is You, Part 1,” is great, but I need to give a special mention to Book’s ship (not specifically named, though he uses ‘code Nautilus’ when arriving at the trance worm sanctuary). The design clearly draws inspiration from maple seeds, both in terms of its appearance but also its movement in flight. The long ‘wing’ of the cargo hull flutters slowly on one side while the ‘seed’ that is the crew compartment acts as the ship’s center of mass. It’s inventive and unusual and very striking.

The blending of natural elements with highly advanced technology continues into the interior design of the ship as well. The walls of the bed nook — off to the side of the bridge — are made of warm, dark wood that’s been shaped and molded into organic curves that complement the cold blue and grey of the nearby instrumentation panels.

We’ve seen the strategic use of wood before, most notably the strip of wood that circles the central dais of the bridge of the Enterprise-D, but its use on the ship feels less like a reminder of natural materials than an embrace of them.

This ties neatly into one of the most intriguing things we learn about Book: he has the ability to connect and communicate with nature on a conscious level. It’s unclear if this is an inherited alien trait or a deliberate enhancement that his family introduced at some point — Book seems otherwise human — but regardless, it’s refreshing to see Star Trek take a different approach to transhuman themes that often appear in science fiction.

Traditionally concerned with the convergence of humans and technology, Star Trek has long explored the potential dangers of transhumanism, most notably with the Borg, and has more recently begun including positive examples of it as well with characters like Lt. Detmer (Emily Coutts) and Lower Decks’ Ensign Rutherford. It appears now that we might be getting an exploration of a kind of empathetic transhumanism that centers on the convergence of, or at least connection between, humans and nature.

As important as all the worldbuilding and other character moments are, it’s possible that the most significant character development in “That Hope Is You, Part I” will end up coming in the form of just a few short words of dialogue. No, not “She’s a queen!” spoken in reference to Book’s enormous and frankly perfect cat, Grudge — this would be the second most important thing, obviously! — but Burnham’s repeated mantra of “I am done being reflexively supportive.”

We’ve watched Burnham perform incredible amounts of emotional labor in support of others across two seasons, two cultures, and even two universes, and I wonder if now in Season 3, we’ll see her find new — and possibly more — self-caring ways to navigate conflict and crisis.

In addition to Book and Grudge, we meet one other significant new character: lonely Federation faithful Aditya Sahil (Adil Hussain). Sahil bookends the episode, appearing first in a sequence that teases a dull and administrative, but otherwise fairly normal, Federation job.

We learn at the end of the episode, however, that he’s actually a lone ascetic sentinel, spending his days in service of a Federation that might not even exist in any meaningful way: listening for any of the few remaining Starfleet ships that are said to wander the galaxy but with which he has never made contact.

He is, in at least a functional way, a monk. He appears to have zero possessions other than a Federation flag (one he’s not even permitted to hang on display); everything else, from his bed to the desk at which he sits all day every day, appears and de-materializes as needed. (He doesn’t even own a toothbrush!)

Is it taking things too far to see Sahil’s monastic, faith-driven existence as the show framing the Federation as something worthy of religious devotion? This would hardly be the first time Star Trek as a franchise — or Discovery as a series — has painted Starfleet or Federation ideals as guiding principles by which members live their lives.

But an ethos is not by necessity a religion, and living by a principle is a very different thing than living exclusively in service of a principle, as Sahil is doing. Individually, he certainly seems like an acolyte, but without additional context it’s impossible to say that this is anything more than Sahil’s personal perspective as a character.

The notion that without the Federation, the galaxy would descend into a lawless frontier of poaching and smuggling is a bit simplistic, and something I hope the show develops further as the season progresses. This — combined with Sahil’s intense devotion to an essentially mythological Federation — sets the season up for what I hope is a nuanced and critical discussion of faith in institutions.

25 years have passed since Star Trek: Deep Space Nine examined these issues and presented a rebuttal to the easy perfection of Starfleet; revisiting these questions in 2020 can only add to a complex conversation that continues to be relevant.

Other Observations

• In case it’s not clear from the little I wrote about her in the body of the review, I hereby do my duty and tell Grudge that she is a pretty cat. And a good cat.
   
• Burnham’s first actions upon landing are to scan for life readings — as Control’s mission was to exterminate all organic life — and then launch the Red Angel suit back to the wormhole to send the final Red Signal back to Captain Pike and company in the 22nd century.
   
• Burnham’s survival pack includes a Starfleet delta badge, tricorder, phaser, communicator, and ration pack.
   
• In her first scuffle with Book, Burnham fights using the Suus Mahna martial art form she learned on Vulcan (“Lethe”).
   
• According to Book, all time travel technology was destroyed after “the temporal wars,” which may be the most closure we’ll ever get on the Star Trek: Enterprise Temporal Cold War storyline.

• Dilithium is shown in various shades of pink and red in The Mercantile, just as the mineral appeared in “Skin of Evil” back in 1988. Book also wishes for a a dilithium recrystalizer, invented as we saw last season by Queen Po of Xahia.
   
• In addition to dilithium, Book also discusses benamite crystals which are needed for slipstream technology (“Timeless”), as well as trilithium, an unstable energy source mentioned on many occasions.
   
• In addition to ‘The Burn,’ a two-light-year wide segment of subspace was destroyed by the Gorn.
   
• Sahil notes that he can only scan out to 600 light years — or 30 sectors — which is the maximum scanning distance possible after ‘The Burn.’

• Portable transporters have been seen before, though in 24th century appearances the devices are either larger appliances or one-time-use gadgets. 32nd century portable transporters take 30 seconds to recharge, and according to Book, their activity cannot be tracked underwater.
   
• Familiar alien races seen in the 32nd century include Andorians, Tellarites, Orions, Cardassians, and at least one Lurian — Morn’s species.
   
• Book’s nemesis, Cosmo Traitt, is apparently a revived alien design from Star Trek: The Motion Picture a Betelgeusian.

• “That Hope Is You, Part 1” is the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery not to feature Doug Jones (Saru), and the first episode without an appearance of the USS Discovery since “Battle at the Binary Stars” in 2017.
• “The Mercantile” on planet Hima is filmed in the Hearn Generation Plant in the Toronto area, the same location which served as the crashed USS Hiawatha in “Brother,” and the Essof IV base in “The Red Angel” and “Perpetual Infinity.”

“That Hope Is You, Part 1” is only the first step into the new world of the 32nd century, as the rest of Discovery’s crew has yet to arrive into the far future — but the clear mysteries of the season have already been clearly laid out.

What caused ‘The Burn’? Is the Federation still out there, and can it be revived to its former glory? When will the USS Discovery drop out of the wormhole, and how long will it take Michael Burnham to be reunited with her crew? Will they ever make it to Terralysium? What role will Book play in the season to come?

With twelve chapters left in the Star Trek: Discovery story this season, there’s still plenty of time for all of those questions to be answered — and to uncover even more mysteries to uncover along the way.

Star Trek: Discovery returns for the second episode of the season, “Far From Home,” on October 22 exclusively on CBS All Access (USA) and CTV Sci Fi Channel (Canada); episode then arrives October 23 on Netflix for all other global regions.