The crew of the USS Discovery is prepping for one last journey across the stars as Star Trek: Discovery enters its fifth and final season on April 4. As the seventh overall Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery marked many “firsts” for the Star Trek Universe, which itself is an idealized look at what the future for humankind could be… if we could only focus on our own potential.
In Discovery, Sonequa Martin-Green stars as Michael Burnham, the first Black woman to attain the rank of captain as a series regular in Star Trek history. In 1968, the original Star Trek series made history with an on-screen interracial kiss between William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and Nichelle Nichols’ Lieutenant Uhura. And the character of Nyota Uhura herself marked a cultural milestone as one of the earliest depictions of a Black woman in a position of power and leadership on TV. What Uhura meant to fans was so significant that even Martin Luther King Jr. felt compelled to comment on the character, calling himself, according to Nichols, her greatest fan and adding that “I am that Trekkie.”
And so for Martin-Green, taking on the role of Michael Burnham when the show debuted in 2017 was much more than simply an acting job. She was aware from the start of Star Trek’s significant stake in landmark representation and always knew that it would be important for Discovery to continue in that vein.
We recently spoke to Martin-Green and the cast of Star Trek: Discovery for IGN’s Fan Fest 2024, and of course we had to ask her how she feels about Burnham’s journey – and her own – over the past seven years.
“The heights that I soared to as Burnham and the depths that I've dug into as Burnham, they've made an impact on not just my life, but also my spirit and these relationships with these people here with me,” Martin-Green said, referring to her castmates Doug Jones (Saru), Anthony Rapp (Stamets), and Wilson Cruz (Dr. Culber), who’ve been along for the ride all five seasons of the show.
“I get tired of crying, you know… And it's hard to talk about it truthfully without crying,” Martin-Green continued as her castmates listened.
'This is a captain who found herself over the course of the series, found her power, her worth, her value, even her femininity, her strength.' -Sonequa Martin-Green
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Of course, Burnham started Discovery in a very different place. As seen in the two-part pilot, while serving as first officer onboard the USS Shenzhou, she wound up inadvertently helping to start a war between the Klingons and the Federation. Her fall from grace and eventual rise to find respect again in Starfleet was the main thrust of Season 1, and her subsequent ascendancy to the captainship of the Discovery would not come until the end of Season 3.
“It means so many things on so many levels,” the actress told us. “It means so much to me artistically, it means so much to me culturally, it means so much to me relationally, it means so much to me spiritually. Being able to do this ... being able to be Captain Burnham as a Black woman, the first in this way, but then also being able to be a part of this whole [team], it means a lot. It means more than I can say, literally.”
True to form, one of her crewmates stepped in to back up Captain Burnham.
“I always think of her as a female King Arthur sitting at a round table knowing that the most important thing she could do is believe in and support and lift up her team because she believes in them so wholeheartedly,” said Cruz. “She is the best kind of leader in that she understands that she can trust her team to step up. And so we trust her. We put all our trust in her because we know that she trusts us. And so we work even harder to make sure that we really live up to her expectations.”
Some of the other Star Trek “firsts” marked by Discovery include the first LGBTQ+ characters in the main cast, including a marriage between Rapp’s Paul Stamets and Cruz’s Hugh Culber, as well as non-binary and trans characters Adira (Blu del Barrio) and Gray Tal (Ian Alexander).
Star Trek: Discovery also featured the first villainous captain in Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), which was a major departure from Trek’s line of exclusively heroic and upstanding central captain characters. Perhaps the series was signaling all along that it would defy expectations in the best way.
“This is a captain who found herself over the course of the series, found her power, her worth, her value, even her femininity, her strength, through all of those things. Her healing, her restoration,” Martin-Green continued, obviously referring to the “never been kissed” aspect of Burnham’s story from Season 1 and her eventual partnership with David Ajala’s Cleveland "Book" Booker.
“But also, this is a captain who leads from within, who exhibits matriarchal leadership and who will buck when it's necessary for the greater good,” she added.
As noted, Michael Burnham did not start the series as captain of the USS Discovery, but found her way to the seat after several moves up and down the ladder. The series followed along as Burnham made her way to her eventual place in the captain’s chair as she became the version of herself she needed to be.
Where her journey will take her in the final season of the show remains to be seen, but we’ll start to find out when Star Trek: Discovery returns for its final 10 episodes on April 4, 2024.
