Characters / Star Trek: Discovery - Federation

Star Trek: Discovery Main Character Index
The Federation | Michael Burnham | The Klingon Empire | The Mirror Universe | The Emerald Chain

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The United Federation of Planets

In General

The founding governing body of the galaxy, and the Big Good of the Star Trek Universe, this coalition of worlds is designed to act as a peaceful, exploratory organization, dedicated to the exploration of strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no one has gone before.

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• Alien Non-Interference Clause: General Order Number One, alias "The Prime Directive", prohibits any Starfleet Officer from interfering in the natural development of pre-warp civilizations.
• Big Good: They act as this to the Trek franchise, being the more noble of the major galactic powers.
• Death Faked for You: The Federation classifies that Discovery and her crew went to the 32nd century, marking that the ship was lost in 2258 at the Battle of Xahea. Unfortunately, Discovery is met with a hostile greeting by the modern Federation when they do arrive, as the classification of what really happened to them makes it impossible for the crew to corroborate their story until a thorough investigation is conducted.
• Dented Iron: The Burn severely cripples The Federation, but they're still functioning 100 years after it happened, albeit severely diminished in scope and scale. Solving the mystery of what caused The Burn helps to alleviate their woes and begin the process of rebuilding, though it takes some time before they can get everyone onboard.
• Face–Heel Turn: Founding member Andor leaves The Federation after The Burn, and allies with the Orions to form the Emerald Chain. They later enter talks to rejoin after the Chain collapses, and the DMA crisis is resolved.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Romulans, the very reason The Federation was formed in the first place, would join their ranks after the loss of their homeworld and their subsequent reunification with Vulcan. In fact, they were the ones who wanted to stay after The Burn, but their Vulcan cousins won out.
• Hypocrite:
  • In past and future series, they've been willing to overlook some of their Captain's disregards of the Prime Directive (alias their most sacred rule, which Strange New Worlds would later call them out on), but they'll come down hard on lesser infractions. Michael Burnham's mutiny is met with life imprisonment (though she certainly didn't endear herself by doing so in the first place), and they would later go after Commander Una-Chen Riley with 20 years imprisonment and charges of treason for lying about her Illyrian heritage.
  • During the Klingon War, The Federation is appalled by the lengths the Klingons are going to wipe them off the face of the galaxy, but when they decide to drop a bomb in the core of Qo'Nos and detonate it, it's justified as a necessity of survival. Luckily, they're talked out of going through with it.
• Legacy Vessel Naming: By the 32nd century, they're on the 15th iteration of the Excalibur, and the 11th of the Voyager, though strangely there's no new Enterprise flying around.
• The Needs of the Many: Deconstructed. The Federation's efforts to find dilithium alternatives resulted in many of their member worlds being ignored in a time of crisis. Once The Burn happened, said members quit, and were hesitant to rejoin out of concern they would be subject to being ignored again should disaster strike. For extra irony, The Vulcans (who coined this trope) were the most displeased with this focus.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Section 31 creates an A.I. known as Control to act as a threat-assessment algorithm. It decides that the only way to end any threat is to end all sentient life in the galaxy, which results in the events of Season 2 playing out as they did.
  • While The Federation classifying what really happened at Xahea was designed to prevent another threat like control from rising again, their decision to do so led to a great deal of A.I. related tragedies they could have prevented otherwise. This includes the loss of the Excalibur thanks to the malfunctioning M-5 computer, the numerous possessions of Data's personality, the creation of the insane A.I.s Badgey and A.G.I.M.U.S., the Face–Heel Turn of Ensign Peanut Hamper, the construction of the rogue Texas class automated starships, the Living Construct Virus nearly wiping out Starfleet at the Battle of Gamma Serpentis, the synthetic attack on the Utopia Planetia Shipyards, and most recently the near annihilation of Starfleet via Borg assimilation during the Frontier Day Festivities of 2401.
  • Starfleet elects to keep Section 31 going, reframing it as the shadowy organization it will become by Deep Space Nine. This decision results in the near-extinction of the Changeling population during the Dominion War, which results in some of its members allying with The Borg to wipe Starfleet off the face of the Earth, and would have succeeded had it not been for the crew of the resurrected Enterprise-D.
  • The organization's increased reliance on Dilithium saw them stretch themselves too thin to help all of its members. When the Burn did happen and crippled The Federation, there was still a lot of bad blood with a multitude of member worlds (Ni'var, a founding member, included), because they found this single-minded focus on helping the whole instead of the parts left too many people to suffer. It initially makes negotiations for reentry into the Federation difficult until a compromise is reached to appease both sides.
• Rousseau Was Right: In Season 4, a meeting is called to give all Federation and non-Federation members the chance to vote on whether or not to make peaceful contact with Species 10-C, or engage in a risky effort that might provoke them into attacking. A majority votes for peaceful first contact.
• Saved by Canon: In Season 2, Control's attempts to wipe out all sentient life is thwarted because The Federation will still exist a century from now, allowing The Next Generation of explorers to take up the cause of making new discoveries. That very era would repay this series on Picard, where the fact that both Starfleet and the UFP still exist by the 32nd century doomed the rogue Changelings and The Borg Collective's attempts to wipe them out.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The resulting damage caused by The Burn lead many of its members to quit for their own sakes. Once the cause is revealed and The Federation begins to rebuild, some former members are hesitant to join, out of concern another disaster might lead them to ignore its individual members and focus on the organization as a whole.
• Shrouded in Myth: Because The Burn wiped out much of their organization in the 31st century, they've become a myth to the 32nd century, with no whereabouts as to where they might be. It takes a few episodes for the Discovery crew to find them, where they're battered, but not broken.
• Took A Level In Cynicism:
  • The horrors of the Klingon War took a toll on Starfleet's leadership, stretching their resolve to the point they were willing to blow up Qo'Nos with a bomb in the planet's core to win.
  • The Burn did a number on much of Starfleet as well, since most of its members left, the organization's resources become horrendously stretched, and what remained was constantly under the threat of the Emerald Chain. Few of its leadership could afford to spare any hope, at least until Discovery was able to finally solve what caused The Burn.
  • Earth is a particularly noteworthy example. After The Burn, they became increasingly isolationist, and have refused all and any off-worlders. Deconstructed, since it results in them leaving the colony on Titan to a harsher life when their own equipment fails.
• Unperson: They write off Discovery as a loss in 2258, and classify the fate of her, her spore drive, and her crew as KIA, under penalty of treason to anyone would would reveal otherwise.

Starfleet

Crew of the U.S.S. Discovery (NCC-1031 / NCC-1031-A)

Captain Michael Burnham

Captain Michael Burnham

"All life is born from chaos. The world doesn't always adhere to logic. Sometimes down is up, and sometimes when you're lost, you're found."

Played by: Sonequa Martin-Green

The lead protagonist of Star Trek: Discovery, she was raised on Vulcan and was the first human to attend the Vulcan Science Academy. By the start of the series, she is the first officer aboard the U.S.S. Shenzhou, although she ends up being recruited by Captain Lorca aboard the U.S.S. Discovery after the events of the two-part pilot. She is eventually made a bridge science officer, and ship's science officer and Commander again. She gains the rank of Captain at the end of season 3 and becomes the Discovery's commanding officer.

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She has her own page here.

Captain Saru

Captain Saru

"My people were biologically determined for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to sense the coming of death. I sense it coming now."

Played by: Doug Jones

A science officer and the first Kelpien in Starfleet, he serves aboard the U.S.S. Shenzhou and later as the first officer of the U.S.S. Discovery. He becomes Burnham's first officer after she gets the rank of captain.

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• The Ace: Subverted. He's far faster, stronger and more agile than a human, apparently also more intelligent (being able to think on his feet and learning dozens of different languages), has superior eyesight, and has a sixth sense for danger — yet his ingrained baseline fear that is active at all times has rendered him quite neurotic. Still, his sheer capability makes one wonder how strong the predators of his world must be if this species was at the bottom of the food chain.
  • It's eventually revealed that the Kelpiens were the top predators on Kaminar 2,000 years ago, until the Ba'ul used their superior technology to spread misinformation that the Kelpiens second stage of evolution, which gave them projectile spines and increased aggression, was deadly to Kelpiens and would cause madness. The Ba'ul are preventing them from assuming their most dangerous form. When Saru's ganglia fall out, he loses that constant fear and suddenly becomes aware of just how powerful he really is.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's lanky, usually advocates avoiding fights, and freely admits that his race sits at the bottom of the food chain. However, his Required Secondary Powers include being cunning enough to anticipate and quickly understand enemy tactics, being fast enough to run any other member of the crew down, and more than strong enough to throw individuals around and crush objects with his bare hands. To survive as prey on his homeworld, his people Had to Be Sharp.
• Badass Pacifist: Joined Starfleet for the exploration, not the potential for space battle. That said, once they find themselves at war with the Klingons, Saru is shown to be cool-headed and quick-thinking, even getting promoted.
• Big Brother Instinct: When Siranna is abducted by the Ba'ul, Saru unleashes the full power of a post-vahar'ai Kelpien to save her.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Saru's ganglia can sense deadly threats but it appears they also are responsible for instilling the perpetual fear Kelpians feel. When his fall out, Saru doesn't feel constantly afraid for the first time and realizes just how powerful he actually is. It turns out they also regrow into a series of spines that can be shot at high velocity.
• Brutal Honesty: When Burnham tries to apologize for her mutiny, Saru makes it very clear to her that while he understand why she betrayed Captain Georgiou, and believes that she feels remorse for what happened, he now considers her a threat and will be keeping a close eye on her.
• The Captain: Following the reveal of Lorca's treachery, Saru steps up and takes acting command of Discovery until the crisis is over. The crew readily accepts his leadership, and he occasionally has to correct them that he is "Acting Captain". He takes command again following Captain Pike's return to Enterprise, and it becomes permanent once Discovery and her crew travel to the 32nd century.
• Catchphrase: "The Sanctuary" shows him trying to decide on his own catch phrase. He tries putting his own inflection on Pike's "Hit it" and immediately drops it. "Execute" and "Carry on" don't seem to work for him either. And he doesn't even consider "Manifest".
• Cowardly Lion: Despite always being the first to advocate for a graceful retreat, Saru is an extremely competent officer and, given that he's both fast and tough, fully capable of holding his own in a fight. He'd simply prefer never to have to.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Is unhappy about how Lorca often keeps him in the dark and refuses to consult him for advice.
• The Eeyore: Is incredibly cautious and pessimistic, although he also has shades of The Comically Serious.
• Fantastic Racism: Downplayed. He still feels discomfort around the Ba'ul for what they did to the Kelpiens, but since the two races are now at peace, he keeps his feelings under wraps.
• Green-Eyed Monster: "Choose Your Pain" reveals how his lingering hostility to Michael is because her actions at the Battle of the Binary Stars deprived him of the opportunity to eventually follow in Burnham's footsteps and learn from Georgiou as her first officer.
• Lightning Bruiser: Even before his vahar'ai, he's a very fast runner and much stronger than humans, as well as able to withstand phaser hits that would incapacitate almost anyone else. After his vahar'ai, he becomes even more powerful as well as unencumbered by constant fear.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Even though he is Lorca's first officer, he is still kept in the dark about some of the secret projects ongoing aboard the ship. This may be foreshadowing of Lorca's Mirror Universe bigotry.
• Lovable Coward: Despite his pessimism and paranoia, he is generally a thoroughly Nice Guy, and often downright witty when he chooses to be.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: His species can can sense the approach of death, signified by ganglia emerging from the back of their heads, though he can't give any specific details.
  • Inverted in one episode, where his Rousing Speech to the crew is that they're about to go into battle against impossible odds and he doesn't sense approaching death, meaning they're gonna win.
  • In "An Obol for Charon" his ganglia fall out, and for the first time in his life he doesn't feel fear all the time.
• Nice Guy: He's the one member of Discovery's command crew who doesn't really have any major Anti-Hero tendencies and carries himself like a straight-edge Federation officer.
• Number Two: He's Discovery's first officer until Lorca reveals his true Mirror Universe colours, whereupon he becomes The Captain (if temporarily). He also serves as first officer to Captain Pike during his temporary command of Discovery.
• Omniglot: Has learned 94 languages to prepare for his Starfleet duties. In "An Obol for Charon", this comes in handy when the Universal Translator malfunctions and Saru manages to fix it while everyone else is confused, letting a miffed remark about how he feels he's the only one on the crew who bothered to learn more than one language.
• One Head Taller: And then some. Kelpiens are considerably taller than humans of either sex.
• Planet of Hats: His aforementioned sixth sense stems from his race's status on his homeworld; they are a "prey species" that has been hunted nearly to extinction, and have evolved the ability to sense the approach of death as a defense mechanism. This is something of a subversion of the trope, as the predator species is also from his homeworld.
  • Subverted again with The Reveal that the Kelpians used to be the alpha predators on Kaminar and nearly drove the Ba'ul to extinction over 2000 years before.
• Put on a Bus: He takes a leave of absence from Discovery at the end of Season 3 to help Su'Kal on Kaminar and he hasn't decided if he intends to return.
  • The Bus Came Back: Rejoins Discovery to help with the DMA pretty much immediately in Season 4.
• Rank Up:
  • He is promoted from lieutenant-commander to full commander during the Time Skip after the pilot episode, presumably just prior to becoming the first officer aboard Discovery.
  • He gets a de facto field promotion to become The Captain of Discovery once Lorca is revealed to be an imposter from the Mirror Universe. It lasts until Captain Pike comes aboard.
  • After Discovery and her crew travel to the 32nd century, Saru again becomes The Captain as the most senior officer still aboard. This time, the promotion sticks.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Saru has this written all over him.
• Science Hero: Aboard the Shenzhou, he was the ship's science officer, and still tends to have plenty of involvement with scientific operations as first officer aboard Discovery.
• Sour Supporter: He dislikes Lorca for his warmongering tendencies, but he still serves him as a faithful first officer.
• Spike Shooter: When his ganglia fall out, they're replaced by flaps with teeth-like spikes that can be shot at high velocity. When demonstrated in the third season, they're not fast enough to go straight through a person, but they still hurt like hell. It's also not something he can do repeatedly, since they have to grow back each time.
• The Spock: Generally behaves in a calm and logical manner. He isn't as emotionless as Spock's demeanor, though, he's just reserved — he can crack dry jokes, he is troubled by his conflicted relationship with Burnham, etc.
• Super-Speed: He can sprint up to 80 ^km∕_h (50 ^mi∕_h). That's faster than an ostrich, but slower than a cheetah.
• Super-Strength: He can crush Starfleet communicators bare-handed and overpower humans with ease.
• Team Dad: As he grows into his role as Captain, Saru takes a very paternalistic attitude to his subordinates, gently supporting and encouraging them as needed, while not being afraid to give a Disappointed in You speech if that is what's called for.
• You Can't Go Home Again: The short episode "The Brightest Star" reveals that the Kelpien civilization on Kaminar is still at a pre-warp stage, and when Saru accepts then-Lieutenant Georgiou's offer to leave, Federation laws dictate that Saru can never return to his family. Averted after "The Sounds of Thunder", when Discovery's arrival to Kaminar ends up leading to the Kelpians being made aware of what is outside their planet, allowing Saru to return home whenever he wants.

Captain Gabriel Lorca

Captain Gabriel Lorca

"Universal law is for lackeys. Context is for kings."

Played by: Jason Isaacs

The commanding officer of the U.S.S. Discovery in Season 1 and a respected military tactician within Starfleet… or so we are led to believe at first; he is really the Gabriel Lorca from the Mirror Universe. His prime-universe counterpart formerly commanded the U.S.S. Buran before it was lost with all hands during a battle with the Klingons.

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• Absolute Xenophobe: He wants to take over the Terran Empire because the Emperor, who literally eats Kelpiens as a delicacy and deliberately rendered Qo'noS uninhabitable, apparently isn't xenophobic enough for his liking.
• Ambiguously Evil: He fully admits to being pragmatic, ruthless and willing to do whatever it takes to save the Federation, even if it means breaking a few rules. Secretly harboring the creature from the Glenn, for instance. The ambiguous part is thrown out the window when he's revealed to be a Terran from the Mirror Universe who is bad even by their standards. He's just really good at hiding it.
• Asshole Victim: When he is killed in episode 13, it feels very much deserved given that he hamstrung the crew of Discovery into doing his dirty work (not to mention that he makes the already xenophobic Emperor Georgiou look like Fred Rogers).
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: As a brilliant military tactician, he has certainly earned his command.
• Badass Longcoat: Changes into civilian clothes including a knee-length leather coat after Discovery arrives in the Mirror Universe and Lorca, Burnham, and Ash plan to infiltrate the Terran fleet with Lorca posing as Burnham's prisoner. He later gets thrown into an agonizer booth, takes over the Terran flagship, and gets into a martial arts battle with Mirror Georgiou all while still wearing the coat.
• Beneath the Mask: Manipulative Bastard that he is, he’s genuinely afraid that he’ll get his ship taken away from him, panting in anxiety even after Cornwall leaves.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Holds this attitude since he knows what Klingons do to prisoners, which is (supposedly) why he destroyed his last command when it was ambushed by the Klingons.
• Big Damn Heroes: Saves the day as the architect of an impressive Gunship Rescue of Corvan II. It's the first in a string of such feats.
• Blood Knight: Downplayed, but he does seem to have warmongering tendencies, at least compared to the more idealistic members of his crew, which makes complete sense once his Mirror Universe origins are revealed.
• The Captain: Of the U.S.S. Discovery. Both he and his Prime counterpart was formerly in charge of their respective versions of the Buran.
• Character Death: Killed by Mirror-Georgiou in "What's Past is Prologue".
• The Charmer: Manages to convince old flame Admiral Cornwall that he’s more or less okay by flirting with her, and it works until she touches him in his sleep and he assaults her.
• Consummate Liar: Comes with being a Manipulative Bastard. For one thing, he managed to fool every psych test Starfleet put him through, maintaining a Mask of Sanity while suffering from crippling PTSD. He also successfully disguised his true nature as the Mirror Universe version of Lorca.
• The Corrupter: Will drop hints and tips to his crew about how to get around pesky Starfleet orders and regulations.
  Lorca: ''[to the bridge crew after detailing how he's going to ignore an admiral's orders and make it look innocent] ...If you're planning on disobeying a direct order, best not to advertise the fact.
  • This happens frequently enough that the crew is surprised when Lorca does something by the book.
    Lorca: Notify Starfleet Command. Ask for orders.
    Saru: [looks shocked]
    Lorca: Is there a problem?
    Saru: No sir. Uh, just in the past we have engaged in... alternative thinking on these matters.
  • From almost the moment that Burnham came on board, Lorca has been trying to subtly manipulate her into abandoning her Starfleet ideals and join him in ruling the Terran Empire.
• Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Lorca supposedly has a recent battle injury to his eyes that make bright lights and sudden dark-to-bright lighting changes painful and debilitating. In reality there's nothing wrong with his eyes; he's from the Mirror Universe, where the humans there are naturally photosensitive compared to their Prime Universe counterparts.
• Deadpan Snarker: Gets a shot in at Stamets when Saru calls Burnham the smartest Starfleet officer that he knows.
  "And he knows you."
• Dead Person Impersonation: He winds up impersonating his Mirror Universe counterpart, who is missing and presumed dead. It turns out that the reverse is true: this Lorca really is from the Mirror Universe, and was impersonating his (now presumed dead) Prime Universe counterpart all along.
• Do Wrong, Right: His motivation against Emperor Georgiou. Despite her being as brutal as they come, her keeping the aliens that they've conquered as slaves is enough to convince Lorca that she's too soft to rule, and that he should take over so he can rule "properly".
• The Dragon: He served as this to the Terran Emperor. She trusted him with her most sensitive missions and even her adoptive daughter.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He really did love the Michael Burnham of the Mirror Universe, and sincerely wants the Prime Universe version to join him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even he’s disgusted by Mudd choosing someone else to be tortured by Klingons.
• Every Scar Has a Story: He has a mysterious triangle-shaped one on on his back. Turns out it is a scar from an agonizer, thus Foreshadowing his Mirror Universe origins, as well as the fact that he was quite the dissident back in his own universe.
• Evil All Along: At first, he seems like a rough-around-the-edges and somewhat ruthless, but ultimately well-meaning Reasonable Authority Figure who does care about his men. However, he is eventually revealed as an utterly amoral bastard from the Mirror Universe who deems the local Emperor (who keeps conquered aliens as slaves and eats some of them as a tasty delicacy) too soft by his personal standards, and has been using Burnham and others for his personal goals this entire time.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Once the true nature of his personality is revealed, he dismisses the idea of Starfleet and the Federation as nothing but a "failed experiment" for being so open and inclusive with one another. His bigoted values blind him from the fact that such cooperation and trust between the species made it to where they've been able to weather all sorts of disasters, starting from the very Romulan War a century ago that led to their formation, to future conflicts he would never bear witness to like the Dominion War. Meanwhile, his precious Terran Empire would collapse as a result of Mirror Spock trying to make it more like Starfleet, only for vengeful Klingons, Cardassians, and Bajorans to wipe them out in this weakened state as revenge for years of genocide, and enslaved the rest of them for life (and even that didn't last because Starfleet officers managed to get them united in a rebellion for their freedom).
• Evil Virtues: Resourcefulness, ambition, valor, patience, and diligence in particular. He's willing to go to extreme lengths to carry out his true goals, and puts on a very convincing front that often contradicts everything that he believes. He is also, in a sense, genuinely loyal to Burnham and, in his own twisted way, loves her.
• Fantastic Racism: Is xenophobic even by Terran Empire standards. He claims that he betrayed Georgiou because her policy of enslaving all aliens was too tolerant for him. This makes it all the more impressive that he managed to work side-by-side with aliens, including having Saru as his Number Two.
• A Father to His Men: Takes a shine to Lt. Tyler very quickly and refuses to abandon him, and also immediately agrees to help Michael find Sarek after she asks him. The loss of his last command weighs on him heavily. This is something of a half-truth, as he cares for his crew in the Mirror Universe, not the loss of the Buran in the Prime Universe.
• Friends with Benefits: With Admiral Cornwell.
• Genius Bruiser: Brilliant military tactician and a badass with his fists. He's the brains and the brawn in a fight.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: Although Lorca seemed to be a morally-dubious Captain committed to defending Starfleet at whatever cost he could, while suffering from a very bad case of PTSD from losing his crew on the Buran, it turns out he's really a xenophobic conqueror from the Mirror Universe. The real Gabriel Lorca has yet to appear on the show proper, with everyone in Starfleet presuming that he died when he wound up swapping places with his counterpart.^note That said, supplemental material for the show has teased he might still be alive, but there has yet to be any follow-up in the show itself. The real Lorca would eventually appear in Star Trek Online, set before that fateful swap.
• Inappropriately Close Comrades: Has a friends-with-benefits relationship with Admiral Cornwell, his immediate superior officer who is also a psychiatrist that is assessing his mental fitness for command after he displays a pattern of reckless behavior.
• In the Back: How the Emperor kills him.
• Ironic Name: He's named after an angel (who's name also means "Hero" in the Hebrew language), but he definitely isn't one himself.
• Irony: Lorca is an imposter from the Mirror Universe, but fails to realize that Ash Tyler is also an imposter, in the form of a heavily surgically-disguised Voq, who works his way into Lorca's trust very quickly— even more remarkably so when one considers that Terran Empire officers like Mirror-Lorca are usually paranoid to a fault. Then again, that might be exactly why it was so easy for Tyler to gain his trust, since Lorca assumed that the moralistic and pacifist Prime Starfleet counterparts were too soft to be capable of betrayal. Not to mention that Voq/Tyler really believed that he was who he seemed to be, rather than putting on a deliberate front like Lorca.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Despite his rather abrasive personality and questionable command status, Lorca does start showing something of a softer side towards Michael, and it seems apparent that much of his harshness stems from the trauma of war and losing his entire previous crew. Not really: this is all a disguise for the fact that the Lorca that we've been watching has been the Mirror Universe version the entire time, and he's a manipulative, violent psychopath who's racist even by Terran Empire standards.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Lorca's Manipulative Bastard tendencies have always kept him a bit morally ambiguous, but once he fully reveals himself as actually being Mirror-Lorca, he proves himself in every way worse than the Emperor that he's trying to overthrow.
• Kill and Replace: It's ambiguous, but in coming to the prime universe, he may have taken the place of his deceased counterpart. Expanded Universe material, however, indicates that the prime Gabriel Lorca is still alive somewhere in the Mirror Universe.
• Klingon Promotion: Of the highest degree. He attempted to stage a coup against Emperor Georgiou so he could take over the Terran Empire.
• Loophole Abuse: His mission grants him wide latitude to do whatever he needs to to accomplish it, and he decides that includes essentially hijacking Burnham out of prison and getting her on his crew.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: Has his own personal hobby room filled with some of the deadliest and most illegal weapons in the galaxy, including guns, phaser rifles, disruptors, swords, daggers, bat'leths, poisons, and chemical and biological weapons. It also has exotic creatures (presumably test subjects) including Cardassian voles, tribbles (seen dissected on his lab table), a Horta, and the skeleton of a Gorn, as well as a containment pen for larger, more dangerous creatures where Ripper, the giant space tardigrade, is kept. Lorca says he studies war and wants to learn from the best.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • Plays the audio of the Corvan II distress calls over the entire ship's intercom to motivate the crew — and mainly to guilt-trip Lt. Stamets — into pushing themselves to the limit to save the mining colony on Corvan II.
  • He also managed to hide the severity of his PTSD from multiple Starfleet psychological evaluations.
  • Furthermore, he's managed to hide the fact that he's actually the Mirror Universe version of Lorca, having replaced his counterpart around the time the Buran was destroyed, without anyone suspecting any problems except for Admiral Cornwell.
• Mask of Sanity: He's deeply traumatized from the destruction of the Buran, and is prone to violent outbursts if he's reminded of it. However, Lorca is manipulative enough to hide this from all of the psychological evaluations Starfleet put him through to determine whether he was fit to captain Discovery. This in turn is another mask to conceal his background and training as a Terran Imperial Fleet officer from the Mirror Universe.
• Military Maverick: When Admiral Cornwell states that his decision to use Burnham is damaging to fleet morale, he bristles and responds that he was given the latitude to fight the war however he best saw fit.
  "My ship, my way."
• Nerves of Steel: Doesn't even flinch when the giant tardigrade comes crashing into a forcefield mere inches from his face. Saru notes that the captain is not afraid of the things that scare most people.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: For all that Lorca saw Starfleet as a "failed experiment", his little coup attempt is implied to have been the start of the eventual downfall of the Terran Empire in TOS and Deep Space Nine, while the very organization he hid amongst wound up surviving numerous wars, attempted destructions, and major galactic disasters to eventually rebuild.
• No One Could Survive That!: Not for Mirror!Lorca, but for his prime counterpart - Vice Admiral Katrina Cornwell presumes Prime!Lorca dead after assuming that no prime universe resident could survive alone in the Mirror Universe, using almost exactly these words. This, of course, raised to a virtual certainty the chances that we will see Prime!Lorca alive and well at some point in the show, particularly if he's even half as resourceful as his Mirror Universe counterpart. Expanded Universe material has evidently revealed that Prime!Lorca remains alive.
• Pillow Pistol: He sleeps with a phaser under his pillow. Admiral Cornwell considers it not a sign of preparedness, but of paranoia, and together with the way he assaults her when she touches him in his sleep, it convinces her that he should be relieved of his command. After The Reveal, it's implied that the reason he does this is because every Terran officer has to be constantly on guard for any underling or even lovers attempting a Klingon Promotion.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Despite being a vehement xenophobe, he is able to work with a crew that has several aliens, including one serving as his first officer, without once betraying his feelings.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Keeps a pet tribble in his ready room.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Averted. Even after everything he went through, he maintains Nerves of Steel. Subverted when his Mask of Sanity is revealed, and Double Subverted when we learn he is a Mirror Universe denizen, where Terrans are known to be paranoid to a fault.
• Shout-Out: When he meets his end, he screams like a TIE Fighter. Also doubles as an Actor Allusion, as Issacs voiced the Grand Inquisitor, who commanded a customer version of said fighter, for Star Wars Rebels.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Considers the Federation to be a failed social experiment because, in his mind, no society that tolerates diversity and freedom can truly thrive. He holds this mentality because he grew up in the Terran Empire, a fascist dictatorship.
• Sole Survivor: Of the Buran, his former command. He tells Tyler that he destroyed the ship to spare them capture and torture by the Klingons. Averted in the Mirror Universe, where his entire crew was captured and held prisoner on the I.S.S. Charon.
• Southern-Fried Private: Jason Isaacs uses a mild Southern accent to portray Lorca.
• The Starscream: He was a right-hand man to Emperor Georgiou and was given her foster daughter, Mirror Burnham, to mentor. Their relationship turned romantic and he attempted a Military Coup over Georgiou's policies toward aliens, which Lorca felt weren't xenophobic enough.
• The Strategist: Brilliant military tactician tasked with weaponizing the science vessel he was assigned to captain. When the unique propulsion system is finally fully functional, he pulls off a string of impressive rescues and victories in battle. He is also using the ship as part of his own personal long con to go home to the Mirror Universe and overthrow the Emperor.
• Tranquil Fury: Of a sort. He takes eyedrops to relieve his photosensitivity just before ordering and observing the destruction of the Klingons' Ship of the Dead with General Kol aboard.
• Trumplica: While it's not so obvious from the beginning, the moment he reveals himself as being from the Mirror Universe, he shows a few shades of this. His motivation of taking over is that the current leadership isn't being tough enough on their enemies (comments of which Trump made about his predecessor), and he rambles off with "Make the Empire Glorious Again". Considering the show was released at the beginning of Trump's administration, this was not likely a coincidence.
• Walking Spoiler: For much of the first season, he impersonated his Prime Universe counterpart while commanding the U.S.S. Discovery.
• Wall of Weapons: His private laboratory aboard Discovery has a large collection of Klingon and other alien weapons hanging on walls or sitting on examination tables. Harry Mudd decides to test some (or possibly all) of these on him during "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad", with at least one being instantly fatal via disintegration.
• We Have Reserves: Has absolutely no qualms with sacrificing his subordinates in the name of victory.
• Weakened by the Light: See Weaksauce Weakness below.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He suffered eye damage that makes him extremely photosensitive, and any sudden bright light is both painful and debilitating. It's a lie; the reason he is photosensitive is because he's from the Mirror Universe, where Terrans are naturally more sensitive to light than Prime Universe humans.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lorca is willing to bend and break Starfleet regulations if it means winning the war against the Klingons. And that includes giving Burnham a position on his ship without the knowledge or approval of the brass, or bringing a dangerous creature onto his ship without telling the crew. And then subverted when it's revealed he's from the Mirror Universe; he's just a bigot who doesn't really care if he puts his crew in danger if it means hurting aliens.
• Wife Husbandry: According to Emperor Georgiou, he initially was a father figure to Mirror-Burnham until their relationship developed into a romantic one.
• You Did the Right Thing: Tells Burnham that she made the correct decision in mutinying at the Battle of the Binary Stars, even at significant cost to herself.

Commander Jett Reno

Commander Jett Reno

"I'm un-insultable, especially by a guy who thinks he can run a ship on mushrooms that I pick off my pizza."

Played by: Tig Notaro

The former chief engineer aboard the U.S.S. Hiawatha, who transfers to Discovery after her rescue early in the second season and remains aboard as the ship travels to the 32nd century.

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• Badass in Distress: She encounters an away team from Discovery when her vessel is wrecked and left in a precarious position in the grip of a dark-matter asteroid headed for a pulsar.
• Butch Lesbian: She is quite androgynous and has a tough, masculine personality. It's revealed at one point that she was married to a woman, who was killed during the Klingon War.
• Commanding Coolness: Her rank is commander, and she must have nerves of steel to have survived on the Hiawatha for months before rescue.
• Converse with the Unconscious: Talks animatedly with her medically comatose crewmates, although it's unclear if she did this before being greeted by the unexpected rescue party.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: In "Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2", she snaps at Saru to "get off my ass" — then realizes what she did and hurriedly amends "Sir! Get off my ass, sir!" as the turbolift closes.
• The Engineer: The chief engineer aboard the Hiawatha, and stays around in the engineering department aboard Discovery.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Operates several flying drones to assist her and guide the Discovery crew, and keeps her crewmates and patients alive through ingenious means (both biological and mechanical).
• Interspecies Romance: Her late wife was a Soyousian.
• Locked Out of the Loop: In "Brother", she has been stuck aboard the Hiawatha since before the Klingon War ended, and doesn't learn that it's over until Burnham, Pike and Nhan arrive.
• The Lost Lenore: Her wife died during the Klingon War, so she advises Culber not to lose what he has with Stamets.
• MacGyvering: Once again has to use engineering tools for a medical purpose when they need to put a cortical implant in Tilly while engineering is locked down. (Notably, she only held up the drill as a joke before realizing they don't have a way to get the appropriate medical device.)
• Nerves of Steel: Whatever danger occurs, Reno faces it head-on with maybe a deadpan remark to break the tension. This may be most notable with the time crystal — Pike and Burnham were both left (quite understandably) gasping and horrified by the things they saw upon touching it, but Reno just blinks really hard through the visions and keeps working.
• Out of Focus: Despite how prominently she featured in season trailers, as well as serving as a principal character in episodes early in the season, she was notably absent from various engineering crises after "An Obol for Charon" until she returned to relative prominence in "Through the Valley of Shadows" and both parts of "Such Sweet Sorrow". She mostly takes a back seat throughout most of Season 3, which Stamets even lampshades when he bumps into her again.
• The Snark Knight: Upon being told that the Hiawatha and the asteroid it crashed on is headed for a pulsar, she sarcastically reacts with relief after she "thought you said we were all going to die".
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Engages in this with Stamets when she's tasked to help him stabilize the spore drive during "An Obol For Charon". They manage to barely put their bickering aside when they need to free Tilly from "May" attaching herself to the ensign.
• They Call Him "Sword": Introduces herself as Jett, which is fairly apropos, being The Engineer.
• Unbroken Vigil: Not that she had much choice. She spends ten months aboard the shipwrecked Hiawatha working to (successfully) keep the surviving patients alive.
• You Are in Command Now: Somewhat by default; by the time Discovery arrives, she's the only crew member still active aboard what's left of the Hiawatha. Her crewmates are either dead or in varying states of medically-induced comas.

Commander Ellen Landry

Commander Ellen Landry

"Vulcans should stick to logic."

Played by: Rekha Sharma

The first chief security officer aboard the U.S.S. Discovery.

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• Action Girl: Comes with the territory of being the security officer.
• All There in the Manual: Star Trek Online fleshes out her backstory, and explains how she came to be the way she is when we meet her in Discovery. In a nutshell, her fiance died in a Heroic Sacrifice moment while fighting the Klingons, and Landry is now eager for payback, resulting in the joyless, harsh, borderline sociopathic Landry of the series.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: She is the chief security officer, and also holds a relatively high rank among the crew. As a Commander, she's second only to Lorca himself and tied in rank with First Officer Saru (though technically, she would be under Saru's command thanks to his position as First Officer, though whether that would be true in practice is never demonstrated).
• Dead Star Walking: Rekha Sharma has been in quite a few sci-fi series, but only lasts two episodes. And unfortunately, her character does not get the benefit of Cylon resurrection in Star Trek (though her Mirror Universe counterpart does make a cameo in "What's Past is Prologue").
• Fantastic Racism: Makes several comments disparaging Burnham's Vulcan upbringing, and then there's how she disparages one large-scale tardigrade, which itself is quite possibly more intelligent (in its own way) than many of the crew and the main computer put together. This attitude ends up being a subtle foreshadowing flag pointing at Lorca's origins — since of course this version of Lorca, being a Terran Empire officer in disguise, would be far more comfortable with her general belligerence and bigotry than most captains.
• Foreshadowing: Her own Fantastic Racism is an early mirror for Captain Lorca's own Terran Empire bigotry—as is her closeness to him for her mirror counterpart's also being an ally of his.
• Jerkass: Rather harsh towards most people, Burnham in particular, and she shares Captain Lorca's warlike attitudes to a large degree.
• Mauve Shirt: Is treated like one of the main cast, but she gets killed partway through her second episode. Her death goes completely unmentioned and apparently unmourned, apart from Lorca's one line about not letting it be in vain.
• Psycho Lesbian: Star Trek Online shows her fiance Amna Patel, the female security chief of the Buran. As a result of losing her and the Buran in a Klingon attack (and likely not helped by serving under Mirror!Lorca), by the time we meet her on Discovery she's in this trope (though her sexuality doesn't come up in the series proper).
• Secret-Keeper: Is aware of her captain's pet projects, and facilitates his work. It raises the question as to when, exactly, she first entered Lorca's confidence, and just how much she knew or didn't know about his true origins in the Mirror Universe, though she is definitely not from the Mirror Universe herself. Star Trek Online shows that she'd served with Lorca for quite awhile, and was his First Officer on the Buran. Mirror!Lorca replacing him came around the same time as her Start of Darkness (see All There in the Manual), and implies Mirror!Lorca recognizd and manipulated her loss and desire for revenge, so he could basically mold her into his Dragon.
• Too Dumb to Live: She decides to let Ripper, the giant tardigrade, out of its containment field so she can cut off its claws to study, blithely ignoring Burnham's warnings that the sedative Landry used on Ripper might not work. And this is after Landry witnessed first-hand what the creature did to a squad of Klingons. Unsurprisingly, Ripper proceeds to maul Landry to death.
• Vasquez Always Dies: She is notably more hardnosed, rough around the edges, and, not least, gun-toting than both Michael and Tilly, who are more level-headed, calmer, and science-focused. She only lasts a few episodes.
• What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: She dubs the tardigrade "Ripper". Guess what it fatally does to her not too long afterwards?

Commander D. Nhan

Commander D. Nhan

"My job is to preserve as many lives as possible at any cost."

Played by: Rachael Ancheril

A Barzan engineering officer from the U.S.S. Enterprise, who comes aboard Discovery with Captain Pike. She stays aboard as Chief of Security while the Enterprise is out of action.

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• Achilles' Heel: Yanking out her breathing implant incapacitates her.
• Custom Uniform: She's the only female crewmember we see whose uniform includes a skirt. It's not explained, but given the uniform alterations we see in other series it's safe to assume that it's for cultural reasons.
• The Engineer: Specifically noted as being an engineering officer prior to beaming aboard, and she remarks on the ingenuity of Reno's work aboard the Hiawatha.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: To Pike; he brings her aboard Discovery as an engineer, but she ends up serving as the security chief aboard the ship.
• I Choose to Stay:
  • Decides to stick with the Discovery crew in "Such Sweet Sorrow" and traveling into the future with them, instead of rejoining Pike aboard the Enterprise.
  • Does this again in "Die Trying" in season 3, when she volunteers to stay aboard a seed vault vessel and return to her home planet of Barzan in the 32nd century.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: As of the second episode of season three, Rachael Ancheril is a main cast member.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: She wears opaque tights under her Custom Uniform.
• Put on a Bus: Returns to her home planet of Barzan after Discovery reunites with Starfleet in the 32nd century.
  • The Bus Came Back: Rejoined Starfleet after this didn't work out, but only returns to Discovery temporarily in "Rubicon" as a security specialist.
• Red Shirt:
  • Inverted in "Brother". Despite the fact that she's the only one on the away mission that wears red, she not only survives the experience but is the only person to make it without any problems whatsoever.
  • Subverted in "Project Daedalus"; she gets disabled early in the fight against Control-infected Airiam, but manages to get at least some of her breathing implant back in place to struggle back on her feet and activate the airlock control at Airiam's request.
  • Either played straight or subverted in "Such Sweet Sorrow, part 2". See Uncertain Doom below.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: She's a Barzan, the same species that would discover a natural wormhole to the Gamma and Delta Quadrants a century later in TNG's "The Price".
• Shoot the Dog: In "Project Daedalus", she flips the switch which blasts Airiam out of an airlock (at Airiam's own request) while Michael is still futilely trying to save her.
• Uncertain Doom: She's last seen lying unconscious after getting her head slammed repeatedly into a wall by Leland/Control. However, she is shown to be just fine by the second episode of Season 3.

Commander Paul Stamets

Commander Paul Stamets

"At the quantum level, there is no difference between biology and physics."

Played by: Anthony Rapp

An astromycologist and science officer aboard the U.S.S. Discovery, who by extension serves as the ship's chief engineer.

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• All Gays Love Theater: Stamets and Culber both seem to have a passion for theater (Culber in particular loves Kasseelian Opera, much to Stamets' dismay). Also counts as Actor Allusion, since both actors were known for their work on Broadway.
• Bio-Augmentation: Injected himself with an experimental tardigrade gene therapy method to allow himself to act as a Wetware CPU for the spore drive in Ripper's absence. The space-time side effects on his physiology grant him Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, among other things, which he uses to great effect in "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad". On the other hand, it leaves his mind open to being influenced by his Evil Counterpart in the Mirror Universe through the mycelial network.
• Commonality Connection: Warms to Adira after he learns they've both experienced losing their partners but having them still be around.
• Cyborg Helmsman: Uses cybernetic implants to communicate with the spore drive, until he can get rid of them in season 4.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Especially in season 1, when he's stressed and frustrated and doesn't care who knows it. Michael manages to get past his defenses with a mix of being damn good at her job and sharing his drive to figure out puzzles and mysteries.
• Endearingly Dorky: His outright awe (and naked jealousy) at Ripper being able to communicate in several ways with his beloved intergalactic mycelial network is definitely this. If he's not being sarcastic and snippy, he usually is instead geeking out enthusiastically over a science problem.
• The Engineer: Mainly by title, as the "spore drive" that he helped develop is the revolutionary propulsion system at the heart of Discovery, so he is assigned as the ship's chief engineer in addition to being a science officer.
• Family of Choice: Stamets and Culber have informally adopted teenage Adira Tal.
• Fan of the Past: Enough to sing part of "Space Oddity" with Tilly. He also has an uncle who plays in a Beatles cover band.
• Happily Married: Has been partnered with Dr. Culber for at least several years by the time of the series.
• Insufferable Genius: His first words to Burnham are "Who are you?" and demanding to know who assigned her to him, as "I give the assignments around here!" He soon ends up as a Defrosting Ice Queen.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Stamets is caustic, arrogant, and impatient—especially in season 1 when Starfleet is trying to weaponize his life's work and Lorca keeps pushing Stamets for more and longer jumps even at the expense of safety—but he does care deeply about others, and especially about peaceful applications of his beloved science. (He's the first person to openly tell Burnham that Lorca is a "warmonger", when others like Saru tried to shy around the topic.) Though he mellows out considerably after the tardigrade DNA incident, he's apparently still enough of an arrogant git to annoy Detmer as late as Season 3's "Forget Me Not".
• The Lost Lenore: Culber becomes this for Stamets, prompting Stamets to make plans for leaving Starfleet after the Klingon War ends. Then Culber comes Back from the Dead.
• Mentor in Queerness: He and Culber end up as queer surrogate dads to the non-binary teenager Adira Tal.
• The Navigator: Essentially becomes this after using the tardigrade DNA to become a transgenic to be able to interface with the Spore Drive.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Saru calls him "Doctor Stamets" once. Presumably, he would have a doctorate in astromycology.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Necessary, given the way his "spore drive" links fungal mycelia with interstellar travel. We don’t know much about his education, but he’s clearly an expert in biology, physics, astrophysics, and math. For starters.
• Power-Strain Blackout: In "Into the Forest I Go", Stamets—already weak from an unprecedented 133 jumps in a row—tries one last jump... but Lorca's sabotaged the coordinates to send them to the Mirror Universe. Stamets is left alternating between catatonia and delirium.
• Professor Guinea Pig:
  • He injects himself with tardigrade DNA to serve as a replacement for Ripper. It works, but leaves him with some side effects including growing dissociation with normal space-time — not to mention violating the Federation's laws on eugenics and bioaugmentation.
  • Depending on how canon you count it, the Discovery 2018 comics annual made him this even before the above happened: during research on the mycelial domain, Stamets apparently consumed some of the spores to get a better picture of what was going on with the fungus' network. We don't see much of his trip, but when his research partner finds him passed out the next morning, he reads Stamets the Riot Act over being that reckless.
• Psychic Starship Pilot: A sentient being who can communicate with the spores is required to use the spore drive. Stamets can do it after he acquires tardigrade DNA.
• Rank Up:
  • Is promoted from lieutenant up a grade to lieutenant-commander at the end of the first season, in recognition of his actions during the Federation-Klingon War.
  • Is promoted again (offscreen, this time) to full commander between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth season, as of "Kobayashi Maru".
• Reluctant Warrior: At best, he barely tolerates the fact that he and his research have been dragged into a war. He would rather be back in his nice little laboratory than serving aboard a Starfleet vessel. It's not simply for his own comfort, though: he has deep-seated moral reservations about his research being used for military applications, when he was investigating it purely for the pursuit of knowledge and out of awe at the natural world.
• Retirony:
  • After Kol's death, Stamets decides to leave Starfleet so he can find a cure for whatever the tardigrade DNA has been doing to him and so he can spend more time with Culber. However, Stamets decides to do one last jump to get Discovery back safely to Federation space and that one jump sends the ship to the Mirror Universe and leaves Stamets catatonic.
  • By the second season, Stamets is still so broken up over Culber's death that he plans to leave Starfleet for a position at the Vulcan Science Academy — but the urgent mission to investigate the "red bursts" under Captain Pike causes those plans to be put on hold. Fortunately, in the process, he gets to help resurrect Culber.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: The tardigrade DNA grants him a sort of immunity to time anomalies, because he doesn't get confused by the strangeness the way normal humans do. He's the only crew member to experience the "Groundhog Day" Loop in 1x07 "Magic to Make the Sanest Men Go Mad". (He does experience Time Loop Fatigue, though.)
• Sadistic Choice: His own actions with the spore drive force him into one, as he develops increasingly debilitating cognitive issues. If he tells Dr. Culber about the side effects, Culber's choice will be to either ground Stamets indefinitely for his own safety and the good of Starfleet's only spore drive... or lie for him, which would end his own career if he's caught. If Stamets does not tell Culber, he's betraying his partner's trust and straining their relationship, plus depriving himself of any opportunity to get help managing the side effects. He ends up trying to Take a Third Option by co-opting Cadet Tilly to help him deal with the side effects, but this only puts her career in jeopardy as she tries to aid him as best she can while keeping Stamets' confusion a secret. This ends up falling apart when Lorca makes Culber run diagnostic scans in "Into The Forest I Go", and they reveal neurological problems. Stamets still agrees to make a series of micro-jumps to help expose the Klingon flagship's cloak, followed by one more to get Discovery back to a starbase — which ends up Tempting Fate one time too many, landing Stamets in a Heroic RRoD and Discovery in the Mirror Universe.
• Straight Gay: He's gay but not flamboyant. This makes him the first original character^note Sulu was Retconned to be gay in Star Trek Beyond, but Stamets is the first character designed to be gay from his inception in Star Trek who is explicitly gay.^note Jadzia Dax from Deep Space Nine is canonically bisexual, though given the unique peculiarities of Trill biology, it's not clear that terms like "sexual orientation" even apply to them. Malcolm Reed from Enterprise was widely suspected to be gay by fans—helped considerably by actor Dominic Keating stating outright that he played Malcolm as gay—but it was never confirmed onscreen.
• Science Hero: Specializes in astromycology, or the study of fungi in space.
• The Stoner: After the first time he jacks himself into the spore drive, he starts acting like one might expect of someone who's exposing himself to magic mushrooms.
• Time Dissonance: After his Bio-Augmentation, he has a little trouble keeping himself focused within space-time. Exaggerated after his ill-fated final jump in "Into the Forest I Go", which leaves him catatonic in a Heroic RRoD.
• Trapped on the Astral Plane: He (and his evil counterpart) both end up stuck in the mycelial network while their respective bodies are comatose in HeroicRRODs.
• The World Is Just Awesome: What motivates him to unravel the mysteries of the "mycelial network" that spans the cosmos.

Doctor Hugh Culber

Doctor (Commander) Hugh Culber

"One tends to worry when they're doomed to love a brilliant but reckless maniac who's willing to risk his life for glory."

Played by: Wilson Cruz

A senior medical officer aboard the U.S.S. Discovery.

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• All Gays Love Theater: Both Stamets and Culber seem to have a passion for theater, with Culber's favorite being Kasseelian Opera (which he often inflicts upon a much-less-enthused Stamets). Also an Actor Allusion, as both actors were known for their work on Broadway prior to the show.
• Back from the Dead: When Stamets kissed Culber's corpse while trapped in the mycelial network, he inadvertantly pulled Culber's consciousness into the network. After Stamets discovers this, he convinces May to use her transport cocoon to fashion a new body for Culber to inhabit, effectively resurrecting him.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: More subtle than most, but his snarking at Stamets is very clearly this. Subverted when it's made clear they are in fact a couple.
• Bury Your Gays: Subverted. Tyler/Voq kills him, but Stamets later manages to resurrect him with the help of the JahSepp, a species living in the mycelial network.
• Came Back Wrong: After receiving a brand-new body, he still remembers his old life, but doesn't feel the emotions attached to his memories. It leads to him becoming detached and angry, lashing out at Stamets, attempting to violently goad Tyler into "letting out" Voq, and finally telling Paul that his old self is gone. He gets over it, though.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Transfers from Discovery to the Enterprise shortly before the final battle of Season 2 to try to get over Stamets. When Stamets is badly injured, he is taken to Discovery's sickbay, where Culber treats his wounds. Culber explains that he realized that he still loves Stamets and couldn't let him go off into the far future alone.
• Happily Married: Has been partnered with Stamets for at least several years by the time of the series.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness:
  • Culber is the only character who doesn't compromise his morals over the course of the series. Stated by the producers as the reason why a Mirror Culber didn't appear. They didn't want to tarnish that by having a having an evil version.
  • Averted in the second season, where he gets more moody and aggressive in the wake of coming Back from the Dead. The third season does show Mirror Culber, though firmly Out of Focus.
• The Lost Lenore: To Stamets, which weighs heavily on Stamets even into the second season.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Until "Despite Yourself," Culber seems to be staffing sickbay all by himself; there are only a couple of other whiteshirts and even they rarely appear in the scenes he's in. Later on, Doctor Pollard becomes a recurring medical character after Culber's death. Yet in Season three Culber also acts as the crew's counselor.
• The Medic: Aboard Discovery, but not the Chief Medical Officer.
• Mentor in Queerness: He and Stamets end up as queer surrogate dads to the non-binary teenager Adira Tal.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: His attempts to defend himself from May's people nearly cause their extinction.
• Neck Snap: Voq takes over from Tyler and breaks Culber's neck when Culber decides to relieve Tyler for duty until he can get to the bottom of whatever is wrong with Tyler's memories.
• One-Steve Limit: With the ex-Borg formerly known as Third of Five.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When the snarky-yet-kind, laid-back Medical Officer gets belligerent with Tyler to the point of physically assaulting him, everyone realizes he's really not handling being Back from the Dead well. Beating the tar out of the man who murdered him helps, but Culber still has a way to go before he's really okay.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: After being a recurring actor in Season 1, Wilson Cruz becomes a regular and part of the main titles in Season 2 — ironically, while his character was still believed to be dead.
• Rank Up: Apart from Wilson Cruz getting a Promotion to Opening Titles a couple of seasons earlier, between the third and fourth seasons, Culber is promoted from lieutenant-commander to full commander.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When Tilly apologizes for Stamets' condition, Culber says that it's not her fault—Stamets was her superior officer and bears the blame both for his own decisions and for putting Tilly in an impossible situation.
• Samaritan Syndrome: In Season 4, he runs himself ragged as ship's counselor looking out for the crew's mental health. Stamets eventually calls him on it and tells him to take time for himself as well. And when Stamets is telling you to slow down...
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In season 1 Hugh is nearly always dressed in his medical whites, possibly signifying his role as one of the most moral characters. After his resurrection in season 2, we see a shift to him wearing civilian clothing in all black, which matches up with his more troubled and depressed demeanour.
• Straight Gay: He's in a relationship with Stamets.
• That Man Is Dead: After his resurrection in a new body seemingly severs the links between his memories and emotions attached to them, he feels this way about his "old self."
• There Are No Therapists: So Culber takes it on himself to look after the mental wellbeing of the crew of Discovery after their 900-year time jump in addition to their physical care. Turns out he quite enjoys it and is rather good at it.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In the wake of his resurrection. By "If Memory Serves", he ends up engaging Tyler in a fistfight in Discovery's mess hall in a fit of pent-up rage over his death at the hands of Voq.
• Trapped on the Astral Plane: Gets stuck in the mycelial network, courtesy of Paul and copious handwaving.

Doctor Tracy Pollard

Doctor (Commander) Tracy Pollard

Played by: Raven Dauda

A physician aboard Discovery.

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• After Action Patch Up:
  • Averted with Stamets, whose case gets reassigned to her from Dr. Culber after Stamets falls into a catatonic state in the first season. Stamets ends up needing more radical treatment.
  • In "Brother", she gets Burnham back on her feet in a matter of hours after Burnham takes a jagged piece of red-hot metal through her leg while escaping from the wreck of the Hiawatha.
• Deadpan Snarker: She has ample opportunity to use this skill, given how often officers end up in the sickbay due to their own actions.
• The Medic: The most frequently seen doctor on the ship, at least after Culber is killed. It is unclear whether or not she is the Chief Medical Officer.
• The Perfectionist: Burnham notes in "Brother" that Pollard is "the definition of meticulous".
• Rank Up: In a big way; in her early appearances in the series she is a lieutenant junior-grade, but by the start of the fourth season in the 32nd century, she has reached the rank of full commander.

Commander Rayner

Commander (formerly Captain) Rayner

Played by: Callum Keith Rennie

Formerly the captain of the 32nd Century Federation ship USS Antares and the current first officer of the Discovery after Saru retired to become an ambassador.

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Lieutenant-Commander Airiam

Lieutenant-Commander Airiam

Played by: Sara Mitich (Season 1), Hannah Cheesman (Season 2)

The spore drive operations officer aboard Discovery, and a cybernetically-augmented human crewmember.

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• Bit Character: Frequently visible, but not integral to any episode's plot until she is hacked by a hostile futuristic probe in "Light and Shadows" and starts sabotaging Discovery's mission going forward.
• Commanding Coolness: Between her stated rank, and being the most emotionless visible bridge officer aboard Discovery.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Project Daedalus" provides her with a backstory and shows glimpses of her social life with her fellow crewmembers. It also features her dying heroically to save Michael and the whole crew from being killed by Control, who had been taking over Airiam intermittently since "Light and Shadows."
• Grand Theft Me: Essentially what Control does to her during the second season.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: When Control tries to make her upload the sphere's AI data and kill Michael, Airiam tells Michael to open the nearby airlock to kill her because Control won't let Airiam herself stop it.
• Mind-Control Eyes: After "Light and Shadows", Rule of Perception allows the audience to see a pattern of three red dots in Airiam's eyes — the same which was visible on her computer screen during the probe's attack on Discovery's databases, indicating that she has also been hacked.
• The Mole: She becomes one for a mysterious Big Bad enemy from the future, after being hacked by a probe which was sent back in time.
• The Other Darrin: The role of Airiam switched from Sara Mitich to Hannah Cheesman between the first and second seasons.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes glow red after she has been taken over by Control.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Done to her in "Project Daedalus" (at her own request) to stop Control from forcing her to kill Burnham and upload Discovery's information from the Sphere.
• We Can Rebuild Him: She's a human who received significant cybernetic augmentation after being critically injured in a shuttle crash.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: We find out some elements of her backstory in "Project Daedalus", such as her augmentations being a result of heavy injuries sustained in a shuttle crash which killed her husband. Unfortunately, the same episode also sees her making a Heroic Sacrifice to save her crew from the hostile AI which was controlling her actions.

Lieutenant-Commander Keyla Detmer

Lieutenant-Commander Keyla Detmer

Before the Battle of the Binary Stars

After

Played by: Emily Coutts

Formerly the helm officer of the U.S.S. Shenzhou who, like Saru, was re-assigned to the U.S.S. Discovery.

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• Ace Pilot: Par for the course among federation helmsmen like Sulu and Paris. When Discovery screws up a jump and ends up in the gravity well of a star, she gets them out. She also mentions in "New Eden" that she got her pilot's license when she was twelve years old.
• Back from the Dead: Badly injured during the Battle at the Binary Stars, Burnham apparently assumed she had died and was startled to encounter her serving on Discovery.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Zig-zagged. The Battle of the Binary Stars left her with injuries requiring a cranial implant. The hair on the left side of her head is shaved off around it, leaving visible surgical scars where they put the implant in, and she's missing her left eyebrow. If you look closely, she also lost her left eye and needed it replaced with a prosthetic; prior to the battle both of her eyes were green, but now her left eye is a mismatched, artificial-looking blue. That said, even with the implant, she is still attractive.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: She has some commonalities to Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager (double with the cranial implant on her head that counts as a Mythology Gag), being that they're both cybernetically augmented humans who struggled having the sensation of being loved throughout their entire lives, as well as losing someone they loved. While Seven is a human-turned Borg who was assimilated by the Collective when she was a child, Detmer is simply a human whose prosthetics are due to her injuries she sustained in the Battle of the Binary Stars. Seven is the Voyager's science officer who prefers analytical, straightforward thinking when solving problems, while Detmer is Discovery's helm officer, preferring to escape from out of it with her piloting skills, as shown when she skillfully gets the Discovery out of a gravity well. While Seven struggles to become a human and is emotionally detached likely due to being a Borg (at first), Detmer is more emotional than Seven and suffers from not having the sensation of love and safety.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Implied in "Rosetta", in which after the away teams' exposure to the 10-C pheromones, she admits that she's never felt a sensation of being loved and safe in her entire life.
• Funny Background Event: She and an unknown male crewmember are busily making out during the party at the start of "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" (and every subsequent time loop).
• Heroic BSoD:
  • In "Such Sweet Sorrow", before her departure to the 32nd century alongside the rest of the crew, she records a letter to a close friend crediting them with helping her survive one of these in the wake of her earlier injury in the Klingon War.
  • Her panic-inducing crash-landing of Discovery in "Far From Home" at the start of the third season builds up to one of these a couple of episodes later in "Forget Me Not".
• Mythology Gag: Her cranial implant gives her more than a little resemblance to Annika "Seven of Nine" Hansen.
• Rank Up:
  • She was a lieutenant junior-grade aboard the Shenzhou, but six months later aboard Discovery, she is now a full lieutenant.
  • Between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth season, she was promoted to lieutenant-commander.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Upon arriving in the future, Detmer begins to experience this right after Discovery crashes. She tries to hide this, but her traumas eventually come out and causes a dinner Saru is hosting for the senior staff to quickly turn sour.

Lieutenant-Commander Gen Rhys

Lieutenant-Commander Gen Rhys

Played by: Patrick Kwok-Choon

The tactical officer aboard Discovery after the loss of Commander Landry and through the end of the Klingon War.

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• Bit Character: He's mainly on-screen to be another officer on the bridge.
• Bridge Bunny: A male example; he is Discovery's tactical officer.
• Graceful Loser: Doesn't take it badly when Tilly rejects his advances at the party in "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad".
• Rank Up: Originally a lieutenant; between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth season, he was promoted to lieutenant-commander.
• Token Minority: The only visible Asian bridge officer.

Lieutenant-Commander Nilsson

Lieutenant-Commander Nilsson

Played by: Sara Mitich

A spore drive operations officer aboard Discovery. Joins the bridge crew after Airiam dies. In Season 3 she fills the role of Second Officer, taking command of the bridge when Saru and Burnham are absent.

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• Actor Allusion: Sara Mitich played Lt. Cmdr. Airiam, the augmented spore-drive operations officer, in Season 1, and was replaced by Hannah Cheesman in Season 2, taking on the role of Lt. Nilsson instead. In "The Red Angel", Nilsson takes over the bridge position of the spore drive operations officer for the deceased Airiam, leading to her taking over her old function, but with a new character.
• Casting Gag: Of sorts; see above.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Nilsson appears as a background character in a few episodes of season 2 before being promoted to a bridge position.
• Rank Up: Originally a lieutenant; between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth season, she was promoted to lieutenant-commander.

Lieutenant-Commander Joann Owosekun

Lieutenant-Commander Joann Owosekun

Played by: Oyin Oladejo

The operations officer aboard Discovery.

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• A Day in the Limelight: "New Eden". She accompanies the landing party on Terralysium, the audience finds out more about her backstory, and she's the one who comes up with the way of escaping the basement they're locked in, not the uber-competent Burnham or experienced Pike.
• Bit Character: In season one, she's mainly been on-screen to be another officer on the bridge. She gets fleshed out more starting with Season 2.
• Bridge Bunny: A female example; she is Discovery's operations officer.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Detmer, especially around Season 3, when she helps the navigator get through her own set of traumas.
• In-Series Nickname: Gets referred to as "Owo" by several of her crewmates in season 2.
  • In the season 4 episode "All In," she is introduced before a prize fighting match as "'Oh Wow' Owosekun" by Burnham, and the face she makes indicates that that's a new one.
• Nerves of Steel: Alongside Detmer, she has to help Pike, Burnham and Nhan navigate an Asteroid Thicket at high speed in "Brother".
• Rank Up: Originally a lieutenant junior-grade; between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth season, she was promoted to lieutenant-commander.

Lieutenant-Commander R.A. Bryce

Lieutenant-Commander Ronald Altman "R.A." Bryce

Played by: Ronnie Rowe Jr.

The communications officer aboard Discovery.

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• Ace Pilot: To some extent. He piloted the shuttlecraft carrying Burnham, Landry, Stamets, Tilly and a Red Shirt to the U.S.S. Glenn in "Context Is For Kings".
• Bit Character: He's mainly on-screen to be another officer on the bridge. In "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad", Harry Mudd lampshades this by disparagingly calling him "random communications officer man".
• Bridge Bunny: A male example; he is Discovery's communications officer.
• Communications Officer: The main one on the bridge.
• Rank Up: Originally a lieutenant junior-grade; between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth season, he was promoted to lieutenant-commander.
• Token Minority: The only visible black male bridge officer.

Lieutenant Sylvia Tilly

Lieutenant Sylvia Tilly

"You guys, this is so fucking cool!"

Played by: Mary Wiseman

The resident Ensign Newbie of the U.S.S. Discovery. In the first season, she was still a cadet in her final year at Starfleet Academy.

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• Abusive Parents: She admits that her mother never really says anything to her unless it’s criticising her hair.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Tilly is noticeably more heavyset than usual for Starfleet personnel, and is portrayed as no less attractive than the other female characters.
• Big Sister Mentor: She's roommates with Burnham, who develops this kind of relationship with her.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She has all the personality quirks mentioned in this section, but also was brilliant enough to be fast tracked through Starfleet Academy, and is (or at least thinks she is) "the best theoretical engineer on the ship".
• Character Development: In the third episode, she tries to keep Michael away from her, afraid that others will judge if they think Sylvia is friends with the mutineer. In the penultimate episode, she conspicuously changes seats to eat with Tyler in the mess hall, inspiring others to do the same.
• Compressed Hair: On-duty she wears her hair in a very severe bun. Off-duty, she looks more like Merida from Brave.
• Endearingly Dorky: So much. She squee-geeks by hopping up and down. The franchise’s first use of “fuck” comes from her excitement over science.
• Ensign Newbie:
  • The most naive member of the cast, although it takes her a season to Rank Up to become an actual ensign.
  • Later averted again, as she reaches full lieutenant before the start of the fourth season.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: As Tilly gets more comfortable with and confident in herself, and grows to be accepted among the crew of Discovery, she lets her hair loose from the severe bun to fly free, just as she lets her personality fly free.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Averted. Of all the Discovery crew except Burnham (who had a year to adjust), Tilly doesn't seem too thrown by the changes and seems quite adept at working with 32nd century equipment.
• Future Badass: Subverted. A confused Stamets at one point looks at her and asks why The Captain is there, when it's still just Cadet Tilly. The implication is that Stamets had become Unstuck in Time and foreseen that Tilly would eventually reach her lifelong dream of being a captain... but it's revealed within a few episodes that he's actually been getting impressions from the Mirror Universe, where Tilly is The Dreaded Captain.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Downplayed, as her inherent social awkwardness applies, but she seems to like parties and drinking. In the climax of season two, she even performs a critical repair with her eyes closed because she did it once blindfolded as part of a bar bet. Upon succeeding, she quips that she's owed a beer.
• The Heart: The most open and caring person on the ship, she is in many ways the glue that binds the crew of Discovery together. Especially prominent when she offers emotional support to Ash after his true identity as Voq is revealed in Season One, and in Season Three when the entire command staff agrees that, rank and seniority aside, they would willing follow her as First Officer of Discovery.
• Hollywood Autism: It’s never outright said, but she babbles when she’s anxious, info dumps, squees, has sensory issues and the ship Discovery accommodates her special needs.
• Hollywood Midlife Crisis: Spurred on by the cadets at the academy feeling so sure of what they want, and not helped by the death of Nalas, it takes the form of therapy with Culber and trying new things.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Michael takes a while to open up, but initially Tilly is excited about having a roommate because “it’s an automatic friend”.
• Meaningful Name: Sylvia Tilly. Silly.
• Mommy Issues: She snarks that if she could delete memories she didn't want to keep, like Airiam, she wouldn't even recognize her mother. Yikes.
• Motor Mouth: By her own admission, she talks more when she's nervous.
• Naïve Newcomer: She's rather excited by things that are happening compared to the other more jaded characters.
• Nice Girl: She shuts out Michael for about five minutes because she wanted to make a good impression, but almost immediately apologises for it.
• Precision F-Strike: She's the first character to use the word "fuck" in any Star Trek series, turning a previously fairly serious scene comical.
  "You guys, this is so fucking cool!"
• Put on a Bus: She takes a teaching job at Starfleet Academy in the fourth season.
• Rank Up:
  • She's commissioned as an ensign and enrolled in the Command Training Program for her actions in the Klingon War.
  • In the third season episode "Unification III", Saru offers her the temporary position of First Officer despite many others being ahead of her in rank and seniority. She accepts at the end.
  • Between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth season, she was promoted to full lieutenant.
• Sadistic Choice: She ends up with one of these courtesy of Lt. Stamets’ deteriorating mental state in season 1. Since Stamets is, honestly, a danger to himself and others and in no condition to jump, she is honor-bound to report his condition to Starfleet Command. That would get him into a heap of trouble, setting the spore drive back for decades and undoing the whole reason for Discovery's existence. If she does not report Stamets’ condition (which is his explicit request, and he is her commanding officer), they could both get found out and end up in a heap of trouble anyways, with the addition of her own future career on the line. She could go to the ship's medical staff, but Dr. Culber, who is Stamets’ husband, would be obligated to report Stamets' condition to Starfleet Command—endangering Stamets’ career, Culber’s career, and Stamets and Culber’s relationship. It’s something an ensign should never have been stuck dealing with.
• Science Hero: She often assists Burnham with scientific analyses, and originally works for Stamets in the engineering department aboard Discovery.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Exhibit A, Tilly in her alternate universe outfit. She also looks damn nice in the party scene of "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad".
• Space Cadet: During the first season, she is on her midshipman cruise before graduating from Starfleet Academy.
• Teacher's Pet: She jokes nervously that she was the kid in front row who was asked to let someone else have a turn.
• Training from Hell: Protip for rookies: don't let anybody with Vulcan training work out how badly you want to improve in any given activity. Their idea of an itinerary hurts, especially in the beginning.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Her mother is very doubting of her abilities and compares Tilly unfavorably to her stepsister, as we see in "The Runaway."
• The World Is Just Awesome: She may have fast-tracked her career under Stamets, as well. With the power of squee, of all things.

Lieutenant Christopher

Lieutenant Christopher

Played by: Orville Cummings

A relief communications officer aboard Discovery in the 32nd century.

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• Bit Character: He sits in for R.A. Bryce in the fourth season premiere, "Kobayashi Maru", while Bryce is away as a "consultant" aboard the U.S.S. Curry.
• Bridge Bunny: Much like Bryce, he is there to run the communications station on Discovery's bridge.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: A dark-skinned male bridge communications officer subbing in for ... a dark-skinned male bridge communications officer.

Lieutenant junior grade Linus

Lieutenant junior grade Linus

"Sorry, the universal translator sometimes has trouble reconfiguring my lingual clicks and pops."

Played by: David Benjamin Tomlinson

A Saurian science officer aboard Discovery.

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• An Alien Named "Bob": Given that he's a reptiloid whose language is incomprehensible without a UT, it's possible that "Linus" is just a name that Starfleet gave him so that people can call him something pronounceable.
• Lizard Folk: He is a Saurian, after all.
• Noodle Incident: A bit of a Running Gag is him suffering various ailments or situations offscreen. Saru mentions him being barred from the mess hall till "he finishes shedding". Adira Tal once gets to replace him on the bridge and expresses sympathy for his having to spend the entire day under a heat lamp.
• Sick Episode: Has a respiratory illness in the second season premiere; after all, even Enterprise showed that colds can occur on a sealed environment like a starship.
• Starfish Language: His species communicate through clicks and other throat noises that even the universal translator has trouble parsing at times.

Ensign Adira Tal

Ensign Adira Tal

Played by: Blu del Barrio

A human with amnesia and a curious knowledge of 23rd-century technology. They join Discovery, with the permission of the United Earth Defense Force, to find out about the past of their Trill symbiont, Tal.

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• Coming-Out Story: In "Sanctuary" Adira tells Paul that they are non-binary, preferring "they/them" pronouns. Paul accepts this immediately, and is seen calling Adira by these with Hugh later.
• Ensign Newbie: After they join the crew of Discovery. Stamets and Culber jointly take the role of their mentor.
• I See Dead People: Still sees the previous Tal host (and their late partner) Gray.
• The Nth Doctor: The seventh host of the Tal symbiont, after Kasha, Jovar, Madela, Cara, Senna, and their deceased lover Gray.
• Older Than They Look: Before Adira, their Trill symbiont was joined with six other hosts, three of whom were Starfleet officers.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: From a UEDF uniform to a Starfleet uniform at the end of season 3, after being commissioned as an ensign in Starfleet.
• Trans Nature: They come out as non-binary in "The Sanctuary", correcting Stamets when he refers to them as "she". Previously they had only told Gray about this.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Because Gray died in their arms, their memories of their lover are repressed, as is their connection to the Trill symbiont.
• We Used to Be Friends: Shades of this with Admiral Vance, because Vance had been close friends with Admiral Senna Tal. In sharp contrast to the relationship between Captain Sisko and Dax, Vance makes it clear on their first meeting that this relationship does not extend to Adira Tal.

The U.S.S. Discovery

U.S.S. Discovery (NCC-1031 / NCC-1031-A)

^{Click to see refit appearance}

"All things can be understood once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."

The titular ship and primary setting of the series. A Crossfield-class starship designed for scientific purposes, she is assigned a new mission under the command of Captain Lorca.

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• 2-D Space: Zig-zagged. At warp or impulse speeds, Discovery tends to remain on the same plane as other vessels (as is the norm for Star Trek). When using the spore drive, however, she often seems to "drop in" vertically or obliquely, which makes sense if we assume that the geometry of the mycelial network is very different from normal space.
• Big Damn Heroes: Rescues Burnham's disabled prison shuttle at the beginning of "Context is for Kings". Later uses her spore drive to break the siege of Corvan II and (unsuccessfully) defend the U.S.S. Gagarin from a Klingon fleet.
• Bigger on the Inside: Especially post-refit — instead of running through tubes, the turbolift cars float and follow rails through a truly cavernous space that shouldn't be found in such a lean-looking ship.
• Brought Down to Normal: With the Klingon War over, at the start of the second season, the spore drive is being taken out of commission due to the practical, legal and ethical drawbacks on its use. Zig-zagged in short order, however, as Captain Pike orders occasional use of the spore drive to facilitate the investigation of the "red bursts", including a rapid arrival to answer a Distress Call from New Eden. Later on, it gets used more frequently — if still sparingly — to keep the ship and her crew ahead of Control and its forces.
• Cool Starship: As expected of any Star Trek vessel in a starring role.
• Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel: While Discovery's exterior wouldn't look too out of place in an episode of TOS, the interior looks even more advanced than the Enterprise-E in the late 24th century. This may be justified, since the ship is testing new technologies as part of her long-term mission.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: In addition to standard warp drive, Discovery is a prototype for "displacement-activated spore hub drive", a new FTL propulsion technology that operates using the mycelium spores on an interdimensional species of fungus to make quantum jumps across the universe-wide "mycelial network".
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Thanks to the spore drive, Discovery is fully capable of pulling off a Gunship Rescue or a Sneak Attack virtually anywhere in Federation or Klingon territory, making for plenty of in-universe Paranoia Fuel for the Klingons. That said, such operations need to be pulled off with lightning speed and precision, since if the initial attack fails to more-or-less end the battle, then Discovery, being designed and built fundamentally as a science vessel, does not last long at all in an outright firefight. This is best demonstrated when the ship attempts to rescue the U.S.S. Gagarin from a Klingon fleet: when Discovery jumps into the battle, the Klingons simply cloak and regroup before making a coordinated counterattack that destroys the Gagarin and forces Discovery to retreat.
  • Fatally exemplified by the I.S.S. Discovery, whose crew tried to immediately take the fight to the Klingons upon arriving in the Prime Universe, and got their ship swiftly destroyed and the crew Killed Offscreen.
  • Later averted in the 32nd century. At one point, Discovery tanks two modern quantum torpedoes from United Earth patrol vessels, although it was mentioned that another hit probably would have destroyed the ship. After reuniting with the modern-day Federation (or what's left of it), the vessel gets a complete overhaul to Lightning Bruiser standards.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: The spore drive allows Discovery to essentially teleport to any location, allowing them to appear anywhere undetected. This takes the Klingons completely by surprise at Corvan II, and makes Discovery critical to the war effort thereafter and in Season 3, the rebuilding of the Federation.
• Hyperspeed Escape: The other thing that the spore drive is good for. Combined with the aforementioned Hyperspeed Ambush, this makes Discovery good for Hit-and-Run Tactics.
• It Can Think: Or at least the Sphere database can, after the crew download it in "An Obol for Charon" and it starts to work its way into the ship's systems.
• Legacy Vessel Naming: Invoked. Starfleet rechristens her the Discovery-A to hide the fact she's the original ship from the 23rd century.
• Made of Iron: For a science vessel, Discovery is pretty damn tough. Particularly for a ship from the 23rd century. In season 3's "People of Earth" she even managed to tank a pair of 32nd Century quantum torpedoes, albeit completely losing shields and being left disabled afterwards. (And this was after fighting a massive space battle, crashing on an alien planet, and nearly being crushed by parasitic ice.)
• Magic Mushroom: She has a cultivation bay full of magic space mushrooms, and she's designed to travel across the galaxy via the mycelial network of said mushrooms.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: In season 3, once the crew reunites with the Federation and prove themselves, the ship is retrofitted and enhanced with 32nd century Federation tech. The improved ship is re-designated NCC-1031-A and has detached nacelles, programmable matter control panels, a cloaking device, and an improved Spore Drive interface that no longer requires Stamets to directly plug himself to the ship, finally allowing him to make Spore Jumps without pain. This particular upgrade also allows Book (and possibly other Kwejian) to interface with the Spore Drive.
• Mythology Gag: The ship's design comes from Ralph McQuarrie's concept art for Star Trek: Phase II.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Her name is a reference to the space shuttle Discovery. Also, the entire Crossfield-class is named after a test pilot named Albert Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly at Mach 2. Accordingly, Discovery's sister ship USS Glenn is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Despite having the same basic saucer-engineering-nacelle configuration as ships like the Enterprise, she brings plenty of variation to the table. For one thing, her saucer is made of cocentric rings instead of being a solid disc. For another thing, her engineering hull is wider and flatter than the cylindrical hull of the Enterprise. There's also less (if any) distinction between the hull and the nacelle pylons.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Played with. Lorca certainly has many plans to convert her and the research run on her into primary weapons, but many seem to be works-in-progress, or depend on complete scientific crapshoots. Discovery is functionally the last remaining of her class (unless a U.S.S. Crossfield is out there somewhere or the Glenn's remains were reverse-engineered), and duplicating her drive is not going to be easy. Hence, the ship has no physical backup in the foreseeable future, even if the data and schematics are already secure with Starfleet.
• Organic Technology: Several characters describe the Spore Drive this way, since its basic operating mechanism involves a network formed by interdimensional fungal spores.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The spore drive originally needed Ripper the giant tardigrade plugged into it for long-distance jumps. Since Ripper turned out to be sentient and in obvious pain during the procedure, they found a way to use a willing Lt. Stamets instead. After the end of the war, Starfleet forbids Stamets from using himself as the navigator due to the Federation's anti-eugenics laws, so the spore drive is to remain unused until an alternative means of safely navigating the network is found. This doesn't stick, as Captain Pike and Stamets reactivate the spore drive to chase the Red signals and then stay ahead of Control.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Discovery is a science vessel, built as a testbed for various new and developing cutting-edge technologies (including black-ops experiments), and specifically built around Stamets and Straal's^note Stamets' deceased best friend from "Context Is For Kings" new spore-drive. It wasn't meant to be built for some time, but after the war with the Klingons began, it was fast-tracked through construction to be finished in only a few months. The result is that much of the crew is composed of Science division personnel used to working in planet-side labs, who were fast-tracked into field work (Stamets in particular). Wanting to pursue dangerous or even aggressive black-ops military projects, however, Lorca also hand-picked more than a few crewmen from ships lost in the Klingon war, who (he hoped) wouldn't be opposed to getting payback, including Burnham, Saru and Detmer from the crew of the Shenzhou. So the crew are an odd mix of Ensign Newbie and/or Bunny-Ears Lawyer scientists on the one hand and Shell-Shocked Veteran types on the other, initially resulting in a Dysfunction Junction.
• Sapient Ship: She's become increasingly sapient and self-aware since absorbing the Sphere data. Her A.I. has even taken the name "Zora".
• Science Hero: A Starfleet ship that pulls double duty as a mobile scientific research platform and a deep-space, long-range warship operating behind enemy lines, kicking Klingon ass, crewed by scientific elites and commanded by a genius tactician, and operating experimental technology. She is designed to carry out more than 300 different scientific experiments at any one time, and simultaneously engage in combat as part of a drawn-out war.
• Sentient Phlebotinum: Has this embedded in its computer core after receiving the download from The Sphere. It eventually develops the ability to control the entire ship by the end of Season 2, up to and including being able to abort the self-destruct sequence and activate the defensive systems.
• Standard Establishing Spaceship Shot: When we first see Discovery in "Context is for Kings", the camera pans around the ship for a solid forty seconds while she tractors Burnham's shuttle aboard.
• Superweapon Surprise:
  • Discovery is Starfleet's answer to Klingon cloaking technology, and by the middle of the first season, the ship's capabilities have singlehandedly turned the tide of the war. Gradually subverted though, as the Klingons realize this, and are actively seeking to capture the ship and the secrets of its technology. Further subverted when soon thereafter the Klingons are once again ascendant as they spread cloaking technology through their fleets. Discovery can appear suddenly anywhere, but can't be everywhere, while the Klingons can also suddenly appear anywhere but not being restricted to a single ship means they can attack in multiple locations at the same time.
  • Even in the more advanced 32nd century, her spore drive gives her an advantage over all other warp-driven starships. Vance therefore designates her as Starfleet's rapid responder for critical situations.
• Teleport Spam: Is capable of using the spore drive to this effect, but it's extremely taxing to its organic navigator (Lt. Stamets). In "Into the Forest I Go", the ship makes 133 jumps in rapid succession to map the Klingons' cloaking frequencies, which nearly kills him.
• Too Awesome to Use: Even by 32nd century standards, her spore drive is more advanced than the warp drive on other starships. As a result, Admiral Vance doesn't send her on supply runs like the other ships, but instead retains her as a "rapid responder" for critical situations.
• Took a Level in Badass: After arriving in the 32nd century and reaching Federation Headquarters, she's refit with new technology.
• Villain Killer: Generally in David Versus Goliath situations as well.
  • Successfully destroys the Klingons' Sarcophagus in "Into The Forest I Go".
  • Takes down the I.S.S. Charon in "What's Past Is Prologue" by firing mycelium-spore-charged torpedoes into the Terran ship's core.
  • Single-handedly destroys the Emerald Chain's flagship, the Viridian, near the end of "That Hope Is You, Part 2" when Discovery ejects and detonates its warp core while inside the Viridian.
• When Things Spin, Science Happens: The two concentric rings that make up the primary hull have their dorsal and ventral hull surfaces counter-rotate whenever the ship uses her spore drive, right before the ship herself spins around her longitudinal axis and vanishes.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Control probably made this impossible, as all information about the ship and its crew had to be wiped to keep Control from destroying all organic life. And the Mid-Season Upgrade it received in the 32nd century has made the ship's return to its home time even more impossible, as doing so would violate the Temporal Prime Directive. To say nothing of the fact that after the Temporal Wars, all time travel technology was banned and destroyed.

Starfleet Command (23rd Century)

Fleet Admiral Brett Anderson

Admiral Brett Anderson

"Next time, you might try not disturbing the property of a warrior race we've hardly spoken to for a hundred years."

Played by: Terry Serpico

A fleet admiral in Starfleet; his command ship is the U.S.S. Europa.

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• Big Damn Heroes: Briefly pulls this off, arriving with his ship just in time to save the disabled Shenzhou from crashing into an asteroid with the use of a Tractor Beam.
• Da Chief: At the start of the series, he is in charge of whichever Starfleet subdivision includes the Shenzhou.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Attempts to pursue a negotiated solution to the standoff and the battle with the Klingons, and does his best to bring it to fruition. T'Kuvma and his followers are having none of it, so it gets him and his crew killed.
• Taking You with Me: When a cloaked Klingon ship rams and wrecks the Europa, his last act is to order an overload of his ship's warp core, taking the enemy vessel with it.
• Uncertain Doom: The Europa was destroyed at the Battle at the Binary Stars, but it is left unclear whether he died with the ship or made it to an escape pod.

Admiral Katrina Cornwell

Admiral Katrina Cornwell

"I can't leave Starfleet's most powerful weapon in the hands of a broken man."

Played by: Jayne Brook

An admiral in Starfleet, who oversees Discovery and, at least in part, Section 31 in Season 2.

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• Da Chief: The admiral overseeing Discovery, and presumably the Glenn as well, before the latter was destroyed.
• Defiant Captive: After Kol captures her, his interrogators have no luck getting any information out of her, even though she is shown as being barely able to stand when we see her again.
• Enemy Mine: Teams up with L'Rell (who is claiming to want to defect) in a short-lived escape attempt that's interrupted by Kol.
• Entertainingly Wrong: After being alarmed by Lorca's instability and paranoia, she thinks it's a symptom of PTSD. She doesn't realize that "Lorca" is actually his counterpart from the Mirror Universe.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even after authorizing Mirror-Georgiou's plan to destroy Qo'nos at the end of Season 1, she can scarcely hide her disgust for Section 31's methods and solutions in Season 2.
• Face Death with Dignity: Sealed in a room with an armed torpedo, she stands facing it with her hands clasped behind her back until it blows.
• Friends with Benefits: Her friendship with Lorca has a sexual component but little actual romance.
• The Handler: She is the flag officer who Lorca reports to, and has intimate knowledge of his research projects, though she had no idea he was an imposter in the form of Lorca's duplicate from the Mirror Universe.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When an armed photon torpedo gets lodged inside Enterprise in "Such Sweet Sorrow", Cornwell uses a failsafe to lower a malfunctioning blast door, trapping her with the missile, but saving Enterprise from destruction.
• The Medic: She formerly served as a medical doctor in Starfleet.
• Old Flame: She and Lorca have a history, though their careers keep them apart. This doesn't keep Lorca from talking her into bed when she makes a personal visit. It just serves to infuriate her more when she finds out Lorca was really an imposter, in the form of his duplicate from the Mirror Universe.
• Only Mostly Dead: The beatdown and electrocution that L'Rell administered to Cornwell didn't kill her, as initially seemed to be the case, but left the admiral partially and temporarily paralyzed.
• Put on a Bus: Towards the end of "Into The Forest I Go", she is sent via medical shuttle to a starbase to undergo surgery and treatment for her injuries.
  • The Bus Came Back: Returns in "The Battle Without, the Battle Within'' fully recovered, although she looks exhausted given the situation Starfleet is in.
  • Commuting on a Bus: Does this throughout Season 2, first appearing aboard a Section 31 ship to meet with Pike and Leland in "Saints of Imperfection", then coming to Discovery via shuttlecraft for "Project Daedalus" and "The Red Angel", before departing yet again and bringing back the Enterprise in "Such Sweet Sorrow".
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She and her colleagues independently arrive at the same conclusion that Burnham does, and order Lorca to stop using the tardigrade, lest they damage their only means of using the spore drive.
• She Knows Too Much: When Cornwell gets captured by the Klingons shortly after determining that Lorca is not psychologically fit for command, Lorca tries to slow-walk her rescue so she won't be able to recommend that he be relieved of his position. While Michael and Tyler manage to rescue her, Starfleet declares Lorca a war hero, meaning that Cornwell's reservations will likely go unheeded.
  • The malfeasance of Lorca's Mirror Universe counterpart eventually comes to light when Discovery returns to the Prime Universe, but with every scrap of information relating to the Mirror Universe being kept top-secret by Starfleet, it's unclear whether the truth will ever come to light.
• The Shrink / Warrior Therapist: She was a psychiatrist by training before rising to the Starfleet admiralty, and is assessing Captain Lorca as she supervises his activities.
• The Spymaster: She is in charge of all sorts of classified black ops projects, including some aboard Discovery, and has some authority or oversight with regards to Section 31.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Starts drifting towards Jumping Off the Slippery Slope as the Federation gets more desperate in their war with the Klingons, to the point of putting the Mirror Universe's former Emperor, Philippa Georgiou, in charge of an assault on Qo'noS.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: She believes that Lorca and Tyler are both suffering from Post-traumatic stress, when the former is an imposter playing a part and the latter is a Manchurian Agent.
  • In Season 2, she thinks Admiral Patar's actions, including framing Spock and cutting off Cornwell's access to Control, are due to Patar being a Logic Extremist (and by extension, an anti-human bigot). To be fair, she had no reason to assume that Control had murdered Patar and her colleagues, and was impersonating her for its own ends.

Vice-Admiral Terral

Admiral Terral

Played by: Conrad Coates

A Vulcan Admiral.

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• Bald of Authority: A Vulcan with no hair and an Admiral in Starfleet.
• The Handler: He takes over as the Lorca's contact with Starfleet Command once Vice-Admiral Cornwell gets captured by the Klingons.
• Not So Stoic: After Lorca goes off on his own to rescue Sarek against Terral's orders, Admiral Cornwell claims that she thought he was about to throw a fit. Which she notes is impressive, given that he's a Vulcan and all.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: He is reluctant to order Sarek's rescue, presumably because Sarek isn't that popular on Vulcan, so Lorca just says he'll clean up the mess on his own and hangs up.
• Tranquil Fury: Many of his on-screen interactions with Lorca tend to carry an undercurrent of palpable dislike and frustration.

Starfleet Command (32nd Century)

Fleet Admiral Charles Vance

Fleet Admiral Charles Vance

"We have been in triage for a long time."

Played by: Oded Fehr

The commander-in-chief of Starfleet in 3189. From a hidden space station headquarters he oversees the remnants of Starfleet in a Federation of now only 38 worlds.

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• Da Chief: It is not that he is really opposed to Starfleet officers doing good deeds, but Starfleet in his time lacks enough ships and personnel to handle the problems that he already has. So he is forced to focus on the big picture and not indulge Military Maverick behavior from subordinates like Burnham.
• Family Man: He has a wife and daughter who had to leave HQ for their safety. He's clearly happy when they return.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He is suspicious of the Discovery crew's stories since they contradict historical records, yet is willing to listen to and eventually trust them. While Michael rubs him the wrong way in the beginning, he is open to be convinced by her demo run that Discovery is most useful to Starfleet with her original crew. He also supports Burnham's efforts to solve the mystery of the Burn, even when her Military Maverick behavior pisses him off. He's also willing to negotiate with Osyra to merge the Federation with the Emerald Chain, and he agrees to concede to a few details she wants — it's when he asks her to stand trial for her crimes as proof of her sincerity that things turned pear-shaped. He also comes to respect Burnham's more questionable methods after she defeats Osyraa for good, and places her in command of Discovery on Saru's recommendation.
• Seadog Beard: He's a self-admitted "old salt" with a greying beard.

Lieutenant Audrey Willa

Lieutenant Audrey Willa

"Your relationship isn't very professional."

Played by: Vanessa Jackson

Chief of Security at Federation Headquarters, under Fleet Admiral Vance.

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• Took a Level in Kindness: She's intially standoffish and dismissive of Discovery and her crew, since she doesn't yet trust them, but gets more personable after they prove themselves.

Doctor Kovich

Doctor Kovich

"I have a curious nature."

Played by: David Cronenberg

A mysterious man with some kind of intelligence responsibility for Starfleet.

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• Fan of the Past: Expresses a fascination with Terran culture, even as he acknowledges that their Empire collapsed centuries prior.
• Good Is Not Nice: His personality doesn't seem to have any middle ground between mischievously sinister evasiveness and brutally blunt honesty, but he's essentially one of the good guys.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Why would anyone in the 32nd century wear glasses?
  Kovich: They make me look smart. I like them.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: In the debate over whether Zora should be allowed to stay in control of Discovery he takes a middle view between the all-loving Adira and the AI-fearing Stamets.

Lieutenant Aditya Sahil

Lieutenant Aditya Salil

Played by: Adil Hussain

A Federation loyalist who starts out monitoring an isolated outpost. He eventually becomes a commissioned Starfleet officer at Federation Headquarters.

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• Undying Loyalty: To the Federation, as demonstrated by his keeping a forty-year vigil in the hope that he'd meet someone from the Federation. He's delighted when Burnham shows up to ask for his help, and even more so when he reaches Federation Headquarters and is officially commissioned as a Starfleet Lieutenant.

U.S.S. Voyager (NCC-74656-J)

A 32nd century Intrepid class starship and the eleventh starship to bear the name Voyager, as started by the original vessel commanded by Captain Kathryn Janeway, she currently serves as the biggest name in the Federation fleet in the post-Burn era.

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• Big Good: As of now, she's the most prominent name in Starfleet to carry the torch of exploration and peaceful missions, even more so than the conspicuously absent Enterprise of this era.
• Legacy Vessel Naming: She's the eleventh ship to bear the name of Janeway's Voyager. Of the other ships who've carried it thus far, only three of them have been seen—the original, preserved at the Fleet Museum, a Voyager-A whose existence was revealed at the end of Star Trek: Prodigy, and Voyager-B Pathfinder class that was to be brought online in 2401 in Star Trek: Picard (Star Trek: Lower Decks sees Mariner make up the existence of a Voyager-D to try to get into a party, but the ship couldn't have existed in the early 2380s).

Crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou (NCC-1227)

Captain Philippa Georgiou

Captain Philippa Georgiou

"Starfleet doesn't fire first."

Played by: Michelle Yeoh

The commanding officer of the U.S.S. Shenzhou, she is a mentor figure to Burnham within Starfleet.

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• The Captain: Of the U.S.S. Shenzhou.
• Da Chief: To Burnham and the crew of the Shenzhou; she does not hesitate to chew out Burnham for openly questioning in front of the crew and sends her to the brig for her attempted mutiny.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her Establishing Character Moment is walking into a near-combative agreement between her Number Two and her Science Officer, and ordering that the time and date of the agreement be noted in the log.
• Dead Star Walking: Michelle Yeoh is credited as a "special guest star", and Captain Georgiou does not survive the two-part pilot episode. Massively subverted when Yeoh returns later in the season as Georgiou's Mirror Universe counterpart, the Emperor, who has proved enough of a Breakout Character to get her own, as yet untitled spinoff series.
• Desecrating the Dead:
  • Running out of food supplies on their damaged ship, the Klingons ate her corpse to sustain themselves.
  • She herself was guilty of this for having a photon warhead beamed onto a dead Klingon as their body was being collected by the Klingon flagship; an act which constitutes multiple war crimes under the Hague and Geneva conventions.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Georgiou is stabbed through the chest by T'Kuvma's dagger, and dies from it immediately.
• Martial Pacifist: Maintains that Starfleet never acts out of aggression, but engages the Klingons anyways to safeguard the Federation.
• The Mentor:
  • One of two for Burnham, the other being Sarek; she thinks it is high time that her Number Two got her own command.
  • Also serves as this for Saru; as "The Brightest Star" reveals, it was then-Lieutenant Georgiou who first met Saru on Kaminar and successfully lobbied for an exception to be made to the Prime Directive so that he could leave his homeworld and join Starfleet.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: T'Kuvma stabs her in the heart during the raid on his ship in the second episode.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Advocates a level-headed approach to the predicament facing her crew and her ship.
• Reluctant Warrior: Would rather be a diplomat and an explorer than a soldier, although that doesn't mean that, when the soldier is needed, she isn't as pragmatic and ruthless as any warmonger.
• Sacrificial Lion: She's a veteran and high-ranking Starfleet officer, and still falls victim to the savagery of the Klingons.

Doctor Nambue

Doctor Nambue

Played by: Maulik Pancholy

The chief medical officer of the U.S.S. Shenzhou.

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• The Medic: Aboard the USS Shenzhou. He treats Burnham's radiation burns after she is recovered from the debris ring where she investigated the Klingon beacon.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It is left unrevealed whether or not he survived the eponymous "Battle at the Binary Stars".

Ensign Danby Connor

Ensign Danby Connor

Played by: Sam Vartholomeos

A junior officer assigned to the bridge crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou, he is described as being "Starfleet through and through".

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• Bridge Bunny: A male example. He appears to crew the Operations station on the bridge of the Shenzhou.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Turns out to be a bit more important than the audience was left to believe in "Despite Yourself", when his mirror-universe Evil Counterpart shows up as captain of the I.S.S. Shenzhou. Michael is forced to kill him in self-defense when he tries to assassinate her so he can remain in command.
• Ensign Newbie: He is addressed as "Ensign" in the pilot, and seems relatively young.
• Heroic BSoD: He suffers an injury when the Klingons attack the Shenzhou, and goes wandering into the brig in a despairing daze, as he maintains that he's an explorer and not a soldier.
• Kill the Cutie: The most idealistic of the main characters aboard the Shenzhou, and gets blown out into space when the Klingons attack the ship, as if the audience needed any further confirmation that the series intends to be Darker and Edgier than past Trek installments.
• Oh, Crap!: Has one of these upon detecting a lot of incoming Klingon ships.
• Sacrificial Lamb: He gets blown out into space in the second episode when the Klingons attack the Shenzhou. He's the first character with significant screentime to be killed off.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Is said to be "Starfleet through and through".

Crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Captain Christopher Pike

Captain Christopher Pike

"Wherever our mission take us, we'll try to have a little fun along the way, too, huh? Make a little noise? Ruffle a few feathers?"

Played by: Anson Mount

The current captain of the Enterprise and the forerunner to James T. Kirk. He takes temporary command of Discovery in the face of a crisis in Season 2.

For tropes relating to his appearance in the Original Series, please see the TOS character page and for his appearance in Strange New Worlds see SNW character page.

For tropes relating to his appearances in the Kelvin Timeline, see here.

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• Berserk Button: He's very personable and patient, but won't stand for is his authority being undermined after repeated attempts at being understanding and diplomatic. He doesn't mind his orders being questioned, so long as there's some kind of counter-argument to back it up — hell, he'll even give you some time and elbow room to do so. That being said, even when someone does cross the line, he doesn't hold a grudge. Unless he's dealing with Ash.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Is one of the nicest guys in the Federation, but he will not hesitate to lay down the law if his crew is in any danger.
• Breakout Character: Mount's portrayal of the character became so quickly beloved by the viewers that they almost instantly began petitioning that he get his own series so they could continue to follow him on his adventures. It worked.
• Buffy Speak: He often does this when his adrenaline is up.
  "I was expecting a red thing! Where's my damn red thing?"
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Well known for operating outside of the box at times. He also actively encourages his crew to do the same if they disagree with any of his commands.
• The Captain: Normally for the Enterprise and a temporary one for Discovery, with Commander Saru still assigned as the ship's first officer. Pike describes this as a "joint custody-type situation." He retakes his usual command by the end of Season 2.
• Catchphrase: "Hit it."
• Connected All Along: He knew Philippa Georgiou at the academy and thus realizes pretty quickly that something is off about the Philippa Georgiou he meets on Discovery — who is, of course, Mirror-Georgiou pulling a Dead Person Impersonation of Captain Georgiou. He was also friends with Leland, a senior agent in Section 31.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: Is almost a mirror opposite of Gabriel Lorca. He's honest, kind and very likable, compared to Lorca being an unlikable, manipulative jackass who turned out to be Evil All Along. He made it a point to assert this early on to earn the crew's trust.
• Dare to Be Badass:
  "Be bold, be brave, be courageous."
• Deadpan Snarker: Displays an enormous amount of dry humour and snarkiness when he shows up to take command. He's also the one who points out how weird the spore drive sounds to someone who isn't used to the concept.
  (to Saru) "If you're telling me that this ship can skip across the universe on a highway made of mushrooms, I kinda have to go on faith."
• Doomed by Canon: Winds up being a plot point in the later episodes of Season 2. He travels to Klingon Space to get a time crystal the ship needs, only to be met with a horrific vision—a vision where he tries saving the lives of the cadets aboard a J Class starship and gets bombarded with Delta radiation, leaving him a vegetable trapped in a wheelchair, unable to speak aside from his chair's built-in beeper, just like he did in "The Menagerie". He's left horrified at what he sees, but is told that this won't happen to him if he puts the crystal back. He refuses, reciting his oath to Starfleet, and letting his fate be sealed.
• Endearingly Dorky: Is almost endearing to a fault. When he first takes over Discovery, no one on the crew trusts him — especially given who their former captain was. By the end of their first scrape, not only do they trust him but they immediately start to like him. Even the aloof Michael openly confides in him a number of times.
  Pike: Rhys, charge phaser cannons. Bryce, start transmitting standard Federation greeting. Owosekun, Saru, Connelly, Burnham, scan what you can. Detmer… fly… good?
• Famed In-Story: A display graphic in the first season showed him as already having received commendations during his service in Starfleet. When the Enterprise sends out a distress beacon calling for help, Discovery recognizes exactly who it is when they drop out of warp.
• Foil: To Gabriel Lorca. While Lorca was a (seemingly) morally ambiguous man who was willing to push the envelope of what Starfleet could do, only to be a massive bigot and xenophobe who wanted to conquer an entire empire via a coup because he felt it's leadership was being too soft, Pike is a morally upstanding and easily personable Captain that believes in the ideals of Starfleet, even if he's all too aware of some of the more morally grey things the organization does.
• Future Me Scares Me: In "Through the Valley of Shadows" he gets a good long look at his ultimate fate as seen in "The Menagerie". Needless to say, he's left screaming in horror for several seconds.
• Good Counterpart: To the mirror Gabriel Lorca as captain of Discovery.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Non-fatally in "Through the Valley of Shadows". After seeing his future, and being given the chance to walk away from it (at the cost of rejecting the time crystal, potentially endangering the galaxy), he accepts the crystal and dooms himself to the fate he foresaw.
• Hero of Another Story: Along with the rest of the crew of the Enterprise.
• Locked Out of the Loop: While he is aware of the Mirror Universe and Lorca's involvement with it, problems arise when he reunites with his old friend Captain Georgiou and finds her acting like an entirely different person (because unknown to him, she was replaced by her Terran doppelganger in season 1).
• Meaningful Name: It's rather appropriate that the Token Religious Teammate is named "Christopher" (Christ-Bearer).
• Mildly Military: Even by Starfleet standards, he's got a very informal and easy-going style of leadership.
• Mythology Gag / Casting Gag: In a very meta way, his Token Religious Teammate status on Discovery may be an echo of the fact that the character was originally played by Jeffrey Hunter, who had played Jesus.
• Nice Guy: Almost painfully patient, sweet and considerate to everyone. Whereas most everyone aboard Discovery loathed Lorca from the get-go, it's practically effortless to like Pike.
• No One Gets Left Behind: A defining characterization of his. He goes through extreme lengths to save a single member of his crew (such as Tilly or Saru). Though he does make it a point to have the crew consent before they do anything genuinely reckless. This is infact what his future self was in the middle of doing during his vision.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: His introductory episode makes a point of contrasting him with Lorca. He understands why the crew doesn't trust him and makes a point of learning the names of the primary bridge crew as introduction. When Burnham quietly calls him out for thinking the crew wouldn't do their utmost to rescue stranded Starfleet personnel, he silently acknowledges and accepts her criticism. One of the first things he wants to do is change the captain's ready room to have seats so that, unlike with Lorca, his subordinates would be comfortable to stay and talk with him.
• Retcon: In "The Menagerie, Part One", Commodore Jose Mendez states that Pike is Kirk's age (which for several reasons did not make a lot of sense in the chronology the same episode gives). Discovery clearly shows him as being a good 10-15 years older than Kirk at the beginning of The Original Series.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Although the rules insist that the crew have no further interactions with the people of New Eden, which Pike himself insists on earlier in the episode, before they leave Pike beams down alone and meets with Jacob, telling him that his family was right: humans did survive on Earth, and civilization recovered. And on top of that, leaves a power cell behind so that Jacob can use it to power the church's lights.
• Self-Deprecation: When Tilly accidentally puts his personal file up on the main screen, Pike specifically points out the F he received in Astrophysics at the Academy.
• Survivor Guilt: The Enterprise was on a five-year mission of exploration when the Klingon War broke out, and Pike was ordered to keep going since it would have taken too long to get back to Federation space. He feels no small amount of guilt at having missed the fight.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He isn't thrilled to have to work with Section 31 to find Spock. Nor does he want to have Tyler on board Discovery as their liaison — though he still prefers him over Mirror-Georgiou or Captain Leland.
• Token Religious Teammate: Downplayed. Pike mentions having come from a religious home, a source of much friction between himself and his father. While Pike isn't himself religious, he shows the most sympathy for the religious beliefs of the people of New Eden and displays a willingness to believe there might be something greater at work. He's also the first one to call the building the signal is coming from what it obviously is, a church.
  • It also shows in more subtle ways. In "Brother", he jokingly paraphrases one of the Ten Commandments ("Do not covet thy neighbor's starship, Commander."); and in "An Obol for Charon", he's the one who makes the "Tower of Babel" reference when they suffer the Curse of Babel.
  • His intense curiosity about the people of New Eden and their potpourri faith shows that, while he may not be religious himself, he is fascinated by religion, and specifically how these people successfully mingled so many different faiths into one.
• Took a Level in Kindness: He's far less abrasive and moody than he was in "The Menagerie", thanks to the experiences he had on Talos-IV, and is better able to channel his Survivor Guilt than he was in that episode.
• What You Are in the Dark: When he's shown the fate he'll face in "The Menagerie", he's outright told he can avoid it if he puts the time crystal he needs back. Pike could have easily walked away and lived out the rest of his days in comfort, but he won't violate his oath to Starfleet and takes the crystal, dooming him to become what he will see.

"Number One"

Una Chin-Riley, more commonly called "Number One"

Played by: Rebecca Romijn

The first officer of the Enterprise and the second-in-command to Captain Pike. For tropes relating to her appearances in Strange New Worlds see the relevant character page.

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• Bizarre Taste in Food: She orders a burger and fries... and a bottle of habanero sauce, which she uses to liberally douse her fries. Pike wonders if she'd also drink lighter fluid.
• Commanding Coolness: As per her rank as first officer.
• Consummate Professional: Advises the newly-arrived Ensign Spock to "hide your freaky" when you're in a command position. She's happy to let her hair down in less formal situations though.
• Everyone Calls Her "Barkeep": Everyone calls her Number One, all the time. She's also the first officer of the Enterprise.
• Hero of Another Story: Along with Pike and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise.
• Hidden Depths: In "Q and A", it turns out she's a Gilbert and Sullivan fan.
• Knowledge Broker: Pike employs her as a way to get more information on what's happening with Spock through various less-than-official channels.
• Number Two: As the Enterprise's first officer.
• Punny Name: Her actual name is said once in the season finale. It's Una. Which means "one."
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: When Starfleet interrogates her over the events of "Such Sweet Sorrow", she responds to being asked her name and rank with "Number One. How long is this gonna take?"
• Unaffected by Spice: She puts a lot of habanero sauce on her burger.
• You Are in Command Now: Is left in charge of the Enterprise while Pike temporarily takes over Discovery.

Lieutenant Spock

See his page.

Lieutenant Evan Connolly

Lieutenant Evan Connolly

Played by: Sean Connolly Affleck

A science officer from the U.S.S. Enterprise, who comes aboard Discovery with Captain Pike.

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• Bait-and-Switch: When told that a "science officer" is coming aboard Discovery from the Enterprise, Burnham initially assumes it will be Spock. Instead, it's this guy.
• Butt-Monkey: In his only episode, he gets snarked at by his captain, sneezed on by Linus (the Saurian crewmember), and then Killed Mid-Sentence on the way to the U.S.S. Hiawatha.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: He mockingly brushes off Burnham's warnings that his calculations are off while flying through an Asteroid Thicket, and is Killed Mid-Sentence while doing so.
• Red Shirt: Played straight, as he crashes into an asteroid when Burnham and Pike lead the mission to rescue the survivors from the Hiawatha. Ironically, as a science officer, he wears blue.
• Too Dumb to Live: Ignores Burnham's advice while piloting at high speed through a debris field, leading to a Surprisingly Sudden Death.

Cadet Thira Sidhu

Cadet Thira Sidhu

Played by: Amrit Kaur

An engineering cadet featured in the Short Treks episode "Ask Not".

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• Secret Test of Character: Pike tests her dedication to Starfleet regulations by giving her a chance to buck said regulations and fight the Tholians to save her husband. She refuses, and it then turns out that her husband isn't really in danger.

The U.S.S. Enterprise

For tropes relating to the ship's original appearance, see Star Trek: The Original Series.

The Living Legend

Starfleet's flagship and the original iteration of the iconic vessel NCC-1701^note No bloody A, B, C, or D., a Constitution class vessel under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, and later James T. Kirk.

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• Adaptational Badass: Her TOS and movie appearances put her into the thick of the action, but not to the degree of danger she faced when she and Discovery teamed up to take on Control.
• The Alleged Car: She's supposed to be Starfleet's finest ship ever constructed, yet the ship conks out while on the way to investigate the multiple signals sent by the Red Angel. It turns out the hologram transmitter caused a cascade failure, forcing her to be towed back to dry dock for repairs. After the battle with Control, she's forced to spend a few more months in dry dock undergoing extensive repairs (though you can blame a torpedo exploding in her ready room and blasting a hole in her hull for that).
• And the Adventure Continues: After undergoing another series of repairs, she and her crew head out to explore Strange New Worlds for the upcoming spinoff of the same name, setting the stage for when Kirk and company will take over.
• Back for the Finale: After she's pulled out for repairs at the start of Season 2, Pike is able to call her back for a planned evacuation of Discovery, only to instead join her sister ship in holding off Control's forces to buy her enough time to escape to the future.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: With Discovery in the Season 2 finale, where the two take on Control.
• Badass Crew: She wouldn't be the Federation's Flagship without them. Only the best from Starfleet are allowed to serve on her.
• Call-Back:
  • The glowing interior sections of her nacelles call to mind the NX-01, her immediate predecessor, from Star Trek: Enterprise.
  • Her service file indicates Commodore Robert April was her first commanding officer.
• Call-Forward:
  • Her various details in this stage, like the exhaust ports on the back of her nacelles, call towards her appearance in the second pilot, while the angled struts and detailed hull aim to homage her refit appearance in TMP. Her sloped impulse drive also brings to mind the Enterprise-B from Generations (who also had the same designer).
  • She wouldn't be the first Enterprise to be forced to stay out of a major conflict. Jump ahead to Star Trek: Insurrection, her successor, the Enterprise-E, was ordered to stay out of the Dominion War.
  • When discussing repairs with Una, Pike mentions that he hasn't seen a chief engineer that loves Enterprise more than anyone. Give it a few years, laddie.
  • The climactic Battle of Xahea would see a sizeable chunk of her front saucer blown out, foreshadowing the sequence of her self-destruct throes a few decades later.
• The Cameo: Her design from Discovery is briefly seen at Starfleet Academy in the second episode of Star Trek: Picard before giving way to the Enterprise-D.
• Cool Starship: Undoubtedly so, given her sleek lines and iconic shapes.
• Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel: She's much more detailed than her appearance in TOS, including a more TMP style hull plating and angled nacelle struts, but her shape is Enterprise down to the core. It's Justified In-Universe due to the implications that Pike had the fleet downgraded when he got promoted, given how the tech of this era was a little glitchy.
• Dynamic Entry: When she first appears on screen, the camera flies out of Discovery's bridge through the view screen into outer space, where Enterprise triumphantly arrives to greet her, in all her Constitution class glory, as a stylized version of the TOS theme plays.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Not the Enterprise herself, but the Constitution class, made a brief appearance as a wireframe diagram when Discovery is trapped in the Mirror Universe. Said Constitution is the ill-fated Defiant from "The Tholian Web" and the Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly", which looks closer to the class's TOS look, albeit modified by the Terran Empire. Only a handful of episodes later does Enterprise debut.
• Famed In-Story: Even by this time, Enterprise is a name worthy of recognition. The crew of Discovery are shocked when they get the distress call from her, and Starfleet is quick to come to aid in repairs so she can get towed back home to dry dock.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Discovery is on its way to Vulcan, she gets a distress signal. The view screen in comms pulls up a Starfleet registry, which slowly adds up to "NCC-17" before the camera cuts away to Saru ordering a dropout from warp speed. A few seconds later, it's confirmed the distress call is from Captain Pike, and sure enough, the old gal flies onto the screen to greet her sister ship.
• Foil: To Discovery. While that ship was run by a shady captain who wasn't what he seemed pulling all sorts of black-ops missions using an experimental spore-drive, Enterprise was under the command of one of the greatest captains in Starfleet history, boldly exploring the galaxy in the public eye. She's also more of the traditional Starfleet build, and a Jack of All Stats capable of handling any job, while Discovery was primarily a science vessel of a more streamlined design. Even more ironic is their final fates; Discovery is forced to flee to the future, and it's name is all but forgotten on purpose, only becoming a hero in that timeline, while Enterprise would have a long and storied career under many captains, only to be destroyed, and let others take its name for their missions.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Discovery pulls up her files, you can see glimpses of data that reveals Robert April was her first commanding officer, Pike served as First Officer under him, and her design (based on earlier concept art of the ship for her appearance on the show) bore a stronger resemblance to her TOS look.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: As Starfleet's flagship, she's explicitly the most powerful and most advanced vessel in the fleet. Coupled with her crew being the best in the Federation, she would have been a key asset to securing victory against the Klingons. Instead, Starfleet orders her to proceed with her five-year mission, just in case they did lose. Pike and his crew weren't too happy about being benched.
• Legacy Vessel Naming: She's following in the tradition of two spaceships, a space shuttle, and a handful of naval vessels by exploring. Others will follow suit in later years, including the 32nd century, where Saru casually mentions she has a successor by that name operating in the post-burn era.
• Made of Iron: She tanks a torpedo lodged in her hull and is able to walk away from it, albeit with a big hole in her hull until a few months worth of repairs buffs that out.
• Master of All: She was explicitly sent on a five year mission because she and her crew are the best at everything they do. When Pike calls out Admiral Cornwell for benching the ship during the Klingon War, she counters by pointing out that Enterprise is the best Starfleet has to offer—if they lost, then they would survive through her.
• Midseason Upgrade: She's much more advanced and powerful than she was in the original pilot "The Cage", though as time shows, this will change by the time Kirk takes over.
• Retcon: Her appearance in Discovery is much more advanced and industrial than her more simplistic and streamlined look in TOS. This, combined with a view screen showing her in an earlier design phase, indicates she was built to more advanced standards before "The Cage" occurred, and underwent a couple of refits before she settled on her iconic look by the time Kirk took over.
• Shout-Out: When she first arrives on screen, the Enterprise is positioned exactly like the space shuttle she was named after In-Universe (which was named after her in real life) when the Smithsonian traded her for Discovery's real-life namesake as part of a special event.
• Put on a Bus: During the Klingon-Federation War, she was forced to pursue her five year mission as ordered, as Starfleet didn't want their flagship in harms way (or, if they lost, they could chug on through her). Then, when she gets back to Federation space, she has a cascade failure and is forced into repairs for the majority of the season. When she does come back, the Enterprise only sticks around for the last two episodes until Discovery jumps into the future. Since she's supposed to stay in the 2250s to carry out her own journey, it's Justified in that sense.
• Saved by Canon: She's not scheduled for destruction until 2285, so any trouble she bumps into here is a minor inconvenience at best.

Crew of the U.S.S. Cabot (CVL-28)

Captain Lynne Lucero

Captain Lynne Lucero

"We're all scientists here. Learning is kind of in our wheelhouse."

Played by: Rosa Salazar

The former chief science officer aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise who served under Pike, she was eventually promoted to Captain and given command of the science vessel Cabot to aid a humanitarian crisis. Little did she know, she would be subjected to one of the greatest interstellar incidents the Federation will ever experience...

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• Action Survivor: In the end, she manages to save pretty much the entire crew of the Cabot (save Larkin) from the Tribble infestation, which was pretty impressive considering the ship was minutes away from buckling under internal pressure.
• Brutal Honesty: So how did a Starfleet ship under her command end up in scraps on her first day? Which resulted in a planet's infestation with Tribbles? Who then made their way towards Klingon space and sparked an international incident?
  Quinn: But according to your report, this entire calamity was all caused by one crew member. How do you explain that?
  Lucero: He was an idiot.
• Endearingly Dorky: Rosa Salazar's naturally occurring perkiness translates well to Lucero, whose likability and sense of humor quickly endears her to the crew. Except Larkin, of course.
• Fall Guy: The Admiralty Board tries to pin the Tribble incident on her, but seeing as she saved every other crew member, has their testimony, and Edward Larkin has a long, known history of being a petty moron, it's doubtful it'll stick to her career as a black mark.
• Good Is Not Soft: Bless her, she really tries to be diplomatic with Larkin but it's nigh impossible. She quickly finds herself putting her foot down and shutting him down. On the other hand, she fails to impose any real sanctions on Larkin, even when it becomes blatantly clear that he is disobeying her orders and continuing his unethical avenue of research, allowing him continue to perform his experiments pretty much unimpeded. The disaster leading to the loss of the vessel she commanded is thus partially down to her being too soft on an insubordiate crew member.
• Naïve Newcomer: Pike did warn her not to show any weakness, even if he meant it as a joke. As amiable as she is, the fact is her inexperience led her to put up with Larkin for far too long and it resulted in complete disaster. If he was under Kirk's, Picard's, or even Pike's command, he would've been off the ship after their first meeting.
• Nice Girl: She is genuinely very sweet, and quickly befriends her new crew.

Specialist Edward Larkin

Specialist Edward Larkin

Played by: H. Jon Benjamin

A brilliant biologist and geneticist. Despite this, he is still arguably the worst, and singularly dumbest, officer to have ever graced Starfleet's cultured history, being responsible for one of the worst, and most idiotic international incidents in the Federation.

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• Brilliant, but Lazy: First he denies he was responsible for the Tribble infestation when everyone knows it, then refuses to do anything about it.
• Evil Is Petty: Almost immediately after Lucero puts a stopper on his research, he files anonymous complaints to the Admiralty — even calling her dumb — like a modern internet comment troll. Apparently, he has a storied history of this behavior.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He dies by his own, "brilliant" creation: Rapidly self-replicating Tribbles. Though it's unknown whether he suffocated from all the Tribbles that were piled on top of him, or if he ended up getting spaced after they broke through.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: He ends up buried by his Tribbles mid-rant.
  Larkin: I JUST MADE ONE OF THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES OF ALL TIME! I'M NOT THE DUMB ONE! YOU—(gets buried by Tribbles)
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: He was brilliant enough to splice his own DNA onto a Tribble to cause it to self-replicate. Unfortunately, that's precisely where his intelligence outright stops.
• Person of Mass Destruction: He is singularly responsible for destroying a Starfleet ship and an entire planet's ecosystem due to his rapidly multiplying Tribbles. To make matters even worse, those Tribbles rather quickly made their way into Klingon space and sparked an international incident. As all Trekkies know, the Klingons will eventually dub Tribbles to be their mortal arch-enemies.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He is utterly incapable of accepting any kind of criticism or opinion that's not his own. He argues at length with Lucero when she orders his transfer, and brazenly ignores a direct order to put the kibosh on his Tribble research.
• Too Dumb to Live: He refuses to be rescued from the wave of Tribbles unless Lucero admits that he isn't dumb. She... doesn't, and he very much dies (either buried under the tribbles, or when the ship eventually collapses).
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The point of his research was to introduce Tribbles as a sustainable food source to aid in a humanitarian crisis, although his obsession with eating the poor things seems to go a lot deeper than that.

Section 31

Leadership

Control

Control

The space station housing Control (until it got its nanites into Leland)

The artificial intelligence that Section 31 uses to coordinate its operations. When Discovery's crew investigates Section 31 Headquarters, they find that Control has an agenda of its own.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It turned against Section 31 and murdered its leadership. It seeks to fulfill its purpose of ensuring the survival of sapient life by becoming the only sapient life form in the galaxy.
• Assimilation Plot: It can take control of humanoids and starships using nanites (not unlike the Borg, though to a much greater degree of control). By the end of "Through the Valley of Shadows" it's hijacked Section 31's entire fleet of ships for the purpose of capturing Discovery. However, the present day version is noticeably much less virulent than most examples (including the Borg), requiring what seems to be relatively extensive medical equipment to take over a human, being unable or uninterested in controlling more than a couple of humanoid hosts at one time, and also suffering from No Ontological Inertia if its primary host is destroyed.
• Bad Future: By absorbing the millennia of data from the Sphere, it managed to evolve into to a sentient lifeform, then proceeded to use Starfleet's resources to wipe out all other sentient life in the galaxy. The entirety of Season 2 is a series of manipulations by the time-traveling Red Angel in an attempt to prevent this apocalyptic future.
• Big Bad: Of Season 2. It's gone rogue and killed the Starfleet officers at Section 31's headquarters, including the admirals in charge of Section 31, then impersonated the dead admirals and framed Spock for murder, sending Section 31 after Spock to gain his knowledge of the future. It wants to get its hands on the Sphere archive to evolve itself into an entity capable of exterminating all life in the galaxy.
• Canon Immigrant: Control first appeared in the Star Trek novels that focused on Section 31 (though set in the 24th century), which were released a couple years before Discovery season 2. In the novels it also pulls a Zeroth Law Rebellion, except against Section 31 (reasoning that the amoral and unaccountable agency was the primary threat to its prime directive to preserve sentient life) rather than against sentient life in general.
• Contagious A.I.: It can remotely take control of computerized systems, including cyborgs and entire starships.
• Dead Person Impersonation: It used holographic technology to impersonate the admirals in charge of Section 31 for two weeks after it killed them.
• Evil Is Hammy: Enthusiastically chews the scenery once it has taken over Leland.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Not so much with the holograms, but whenever it takes control of a physical lifeform, their voice tends to drop (sounding somewhat similar to a Borg).
• Logical Weakness: After one of its host bodies is destroyed, Spock manages to defeat the nanites containing Control by magnetizing the floor. They are made of metal, after all. Phillipa repeats this feat in the final battle to defeat Control once and for all.
• The Man Behind the Man: It has been manipulating Section 31 for its own ends and is the entity who remotely pulled a Grand Theft Me on Airiam and later a more direct one on Section 31 leader Leland.
• Nanomachines: It makes use of swarms of nanites to control humanoids, and is even capable of forming Combat Tentacles with them.
• No Ontological Inertia: Killing Leland and disabling his nanites is apparently sufficient to completely shut down Control, as the Section 31 fleet under his control immediately shuts down once this happens. It seems the present-day version of Control didn't yet have the capacity to distribute itself as widely as the viral future version inside Airiam did.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Control can infect humans with nanites or even reanimate dead corpses, and use them as host bodies. Said Control-controlled humans can pass perfectly as normal (other than scanners being able to detect the nanites), and are resistant to phasers or the Vulcan nerve pinch since they're being operated by nanites rather than by the body's nervous system and the nanites can reform tissue damage caused by lethal phaser settings. However, when Control is "resting" and not putting in active effort to maintain the body, it partially dissolves into a Body Horror state.
• Sickly Green Glow: Its nanites glow green, possibly in a Call-Forward to the Borg.
• Villainous Breakdown: Rapidly loses its temper as Georgiou keeps foiling its attempts to steal the sphere data. It roars in rage as Georgiou magnetizes its Leland body to death.
• Voice of the Legion: Once its ability to take over human bodies has become general knowledge, a deep mechanical voice occasionally overlays the host's normal voice when it speaks through them.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: By its reasoning, protecting life is impossible so long as other life exists, so it plots to evolve itself into a true lifeform then wipe out all sapient life everywhere.

Captain Leland

Captain Leland

"There are always lives at stake. That's what keeps us employed. See, we do what we do so you can do what you do."

Played by: Alan van Sprang

A senior agent in Section 31 who leads field operations. In the second season, he also captains a starship owned by Section 31.

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• Bald of Evil: Of the "shaved bald" variety.
• Beard of Evil: To a degree; also plenty of Perma-Stubble.
• Connected All Along:
  • He is an old friend of Pike's, though their relationship is clearly strained.
  • He was responsible for the death of Burnham's parents due to carelessness.
• Dark Is Evil: Dresses all in black, and wears a black Section 31 badge and uniform.
• Eye Scream: He gets taken out by Control driving a needle through his eye.
• Grand Theft Me: Control takes control of his body via nanites in "Perpetual Infinity". Exactly how much of Leland's consciousness remains is unclear, but Saru considers him lost forever.
• Hate Sink: In-Universe, as Mirror-Georgiou is only too happy to tell him.
• Immune to Bullets: Like Gant, after being taken over by Control he becomes resistant to lethal phaser fire thanks to the nanites inside him.
• One-Man Army: This is probably one of the deciding factors why Control decided to use him as host; he's damn near unstoppable against anyone less than a Khan-level adversary, though Phillipa barely manages to scrape by.
• Refitted for Sequel: Originally appeared in a scene that was deleted from the first season finale, where he recruits Mirror-Georgiou into Section 31. His first official appearance on the show is in "Point of Light".
• The Spymaster: He is the commanding officer of Mirror-Georgiou and Ash Tyler, and explicitly works for Admiral Cornwell.
• Token Evil Teammate: He's a loyal agent for Section 31, but he seems to genuinely regard Pike as a friend, and as Cornwell points out, they are all on the same side.
• Villainous Rescue: He and his crew help stabilize Discovery when it's sinking into the mycelial network — though it takes Tyler calling in to get him to drop his ship's camouflage, and Georgiou threatening him to keep up his efforts a few crucial minutes longer.
• We Used to Be Friends: He and Pike were close, but the darker elements and underhanded methods of Leland's work have put a strain on their relationship.
• You Killed My Father: Michael's parents worked for Section 31 on "Project Daedalus" which was according to Leland part of a "temporal arms race" with the Klingons. Through carelessness, Leland brought the Klingons onto the Burnhams' trail, resulting in an assault. When Michael finds out, she reacts by punching Leland twice and telling him "this isn't over!"

Commander Ash Tyler

Commander Ash Tyler

Played by: Shazad Latif

The second chief of security aboard the U.S.S. Discovery, and formerly a prisoner of war of the Klingons. He eventually turns out to be Voq, who had been subjected to extreme surgery to appear human, and turned into a sleeper agent with a copy of the original Ash Tyler's personality superimposed on his own.

The procedure didn't quite take and the resulting conflict between the two identities threatened Tyler's life, until his Klingon handler, L'Rell, subdued Voq's personality for good. The resulting person is now a mix of both Ash Tyler's and Voq's memories and experiences and Tyler's personality.

In Season 2, he returns as an operative of Section 31 and ends up becoming their new commander in the season's coda, since everyone else is dead or presumed dead.

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• All of the Other Reindeer:
  • Ends up alienated from the rest of the crew once his takeover by Voq comes to light. Thanks to Tilly, it doesn't last very long, although Stamets still feels It's Personal due to Dr. Culber's murder.
  • This happens again in Season 2, when he returns to Discovery as Section 31's liaison. Captain Pike is suspicious of him because he killed Culber under Voq's influence, and is greatly irritated by having someone from Section 31 on board in the first place. This isn't helped by Tyler's new captain, Leland, being a former friend of Pike's.
• Artistic License – Biology: Even if you consider the surely extensive progress medicine has made in the 23rd century, what Tyler/Voq has gone through certainly dwarfs this — it's not just merely surgical alteration of his appearance (like that of Arne Darvin in TOS), but basically reshaping him into a human down to his bones and organs. It's incredible that his physiology was able to take all this and survive.
• Becoming the Mask: Played with. It's not that Voq likes humans or actually wants to be one — only his cover personality became so convinced he was still real that he proved impossible to suppress, leading the personalities to clash violently and harming themselves. L'Rell puts an end to it by erasing Voq, leaving Tyler in control with access to both Voq's and Ash Tyler's memories.
• Body Horror: The surgery done to Voq to turn him into Ash Tyler was apparently so extensive and painful, it led to Ash remembering it as torture and developing PTSD-like symptoms from it.
• Death Faked for You: L'Rell pretends that he and their child were both killed to protect both of them and secure her own chancellorship.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • When asked by Lorca about his family, Tyler mentions that he never knew his father, with his mother claiming he "didn't miss much there." Meanwhile, Voq doesn't seem to have known his family at all, calling himself "Son of None".
  • In Season 2, Tyler almost averts becoming this himself, by promising to stay with L'Rell and be a father to her and Voq's infant son, though they ultimately decide to give the child away to protect him from L'Rell's opponents.
• Face–Heel Revolving Door: Goes back and forth due to some conflicting issues. After his memories of being Voq start to resurface, he kills Culber, regains his dedication to T'Kuvma's xenophobic ideals, and attempts to kill Michael. However, his brain and neural system start to fail as a result of the clashing human and Klingon consciousnesses, so L'Rell makes the decision to give Voq a Mercy Kill, leaving Tyler with control once more. After this point, he takes no more villainous actions, although he is still wracked by guilt over what "he" did under Voq's influence.
• Fake Memories: His memories of his time as a prisoner of war are all faked to give him cover as a Manchurian Agent.
• Fall Guy: In Season 2, Airiam — who herself has been taken over by unknown forces — sets him up to take the blame for her sabotage.
• Genuine Imposter: He and Burnham infiltrate a Klingon ship with devices that make their life signs register as Klingon. He is later revealed to be a Klingon surgically modified to appear human.
• Give Him a Normal Life: At least with regards to L'Rell and Voq's child, or as normal as a life being raised by monks and never knowing your parents can be, anyway. L'Rell and Tyler both decide that this is the best for their son, after it becomes clear how much his mother's status puts him in danger, and put him with a group of reclusive monks on Boreth to be raised in ignorance of his lineage.
• Gone Horribly Right: By changing Voq's body surgically and genetically, and hiding his suppressed personality under the copied one of a real Starfleet officer, the Klingons attempted to create the perfect Deep Cover Agent. Instead, they ended up with an artifical Half-Human Hybrid whose cover personality proved to be so strong that it sabotaged the whole mission.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Of the LEGO Genetics variety. He's treated as such after L'Rell kills Voq's personality and merges Voq's identity with Tyler's. With the Klingons, this means that most of them openly despise him, while on the Federation side, people outside Discovery's Season 1 crew tend to regard him with suspicion.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Agrees to accompany L'Rell to help her unify the Klingons and keep the peace with the Federation, even though it means living among people who despise him for looking and being part-Human.
  • When he finds out that L'Rell and Voq had a son, he promises to stay by L'Rell's side as her companion and be a father to the child, even though he can't bear her touching him due to his confused memories. Luckily for him, Mirror-Georgiou finds a better solution for everyone involved.
  • After several people decide to accompany Michael Burnham and Discovery into the future at the end of Season 2, he opts to stay behind and make sure that something like Control can never happen again, despite clearly being heartbroken about leaving Michael.
• Human Resources: His original human body was vivisected and dismantled to provide Voq with substitute organs, tissue and neural patterns.
• Klingon Promotion: Inverted. In Season 2, Tyler does end up becoming Head of Section 31 because he is the only one left of the organisation, but he killed none of his superiors.
• Love Interest: To Burnham. The two of them clearly have feelings for one another and they have sex later in the first season.
• Manchurian Agent: "Ash Tyler" is Voq, who has been transformed into a Klingon sleeper who can be awakened if L'Rell utters a code phrase, although something went wrong and the code phrase doesn't work as completely as it should. Encountering Voq's mirror counterpart fully awakens Voq.
• Mr. Fanservice: In the Mirror Universe, while posing as Burnham's guard, he gets a fair amount of time being scantily-clad in their quarters.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When he realizes that he killed Culber under Voq's influence, he is horrified.
• Odd Friendship: Seems to develop one with Georgiou after they both start working for Section 31.
• Posthumous Character: The original Ash Tyler more than likely is long dead before the copy of Ash Tyler ever appears on the series. Even after the truth comes to light, his crewmembers act like That Man Is Dead and the "new" Ash Tyler is a distinct person (which is basically true).
• The Power of Love: It's pretty heavily implied that L'Rell's trigger phrase to re-activate Voq didn't quite take because Ash genuinely fell in love with Michael Burnham.
• Rank Up: In Season 2, this is subverted, inverted, and finally played straight. Tyler goes from being a lieutenant in Season 1 to a liasion from Section 31 in Season 2, which leads to him being referred both as "Agent" and "Specialist". He's promoted to Commander and Head of Section 31 in the finale, since everyone else has either been killed by Control, performed a heroic sacrifice, or is missing alongside the crew of Discovery.
• Rape as Backstory: As Tyler, he believed L'Rell spared him from beatings in return for sexual favors. While he's seemingly fine with it when he first tells Lorca about it in "Choose Your Pain", he reacts to meeting L'Rell during their flight by beating her up in a rage, and is thrown into a Heroic BSoD suffering a traumatic flashback when meeting her again a few episodes later. With the reveal that Tyler really is Voq and was given faked memories to make him believe he had always been Ash Tyler, it is implied that he interpreted Voq's memories of a consensual relationship as a forced one. This is later reinforced when he rejects L'Rell in Season 2 by stating that being touched by her seems like a violation to him, causing her to back off at once in horror.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Is hesitant when Leland — who has been taken over by Control — asks him to steal data from Discovery, allegedly to prevent Control from getting access to it, and wavers for a bit, but then decides to trust Michael's assessment of the situation instead. When Leland tries to bully him into taking the data anyway, he flat out tells him he won't do it.
• Shadow Archetype: Voq is called Ash's shadow in universe in Season 2, with Ash lamenting that there's no way to get rid of him. Despite that, Voq's influence is so far mainly apparent when Ash's life is danger.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He's a former prisoner of war who is traumatized by his experiences. He tends to present a composed facade, but seeing L'Rell causes his PTSD to relapse at the worst possible moment. Later inverted when it turns out that his PTSD is from emerging memories of Voq's horrific surgery, instead of trauma he endured as a prisoner of war.
• Split-Personality Takeover: In Season 1, Voq eventually pulls this on Tyler to advance his own plans and infiltrate Starfleet. It's a variation on the usual trope, in that Tyler is just a copy of his original self's personality overlain onto Voq's body, which has been Stripped to the Bone and rebuilt with Tyler's original human organs and tissue in an extreme surgical technique.
• That Man Is Dead: When L'Rell removes Voq's personality allowing Tyler to take control again, Tyler is considered by everyone, including himself, to be someone new due to having the original Ash Tyler's personality and memories combined with Voq's memories. No one is sure who or what he will turn out to be.
• Token Good Teammate: He becomes a member of Section 31 between "Point of Light" and "Saints of Imperfection" and appears genuinely convinced that they're good people — despite someone like ex-Terran Emperor Georgiou working for them — or at least working for good ends, however questionable their tactics.
  "I don't always agree with their tactics, but I do believe in their mission."
• Walking Spoiler: He's not the original Ash Tyler, since Voq assumed his identity and appearance in order to infiltrate Starfleet and the Federation. Voq has since been given a Mercy Kill by L'Rell when the conflict between the two personalities reached a breaking point, so the "new" Ash Tyler is now in charge of Voq's former body. Meanwhile, the original Ash Tyler is presumably dead.
• You Are in Command Now: In the second season finale, Starfleet appoints him the new head of Section 31, after the rest of Section 31's leadership was taken out by Control (or in Georgiou's case, believed by Starfleet to be dead).

Operatives

Captain Phillipa Georgiou

Phillipa Georgiou

Played by: Michelle Yeoh

Officially Shenzhou's former captain, who was allegedly saved from Klingon imprisonment, she is actually the Terran Emperor, who was brought over to the Prime universe by Michael Burnham, and recruited by Section 31 after she settled down on Qon'oS. Currently presumed dead by most people in Starfleet, she actually went to the future with Discovery.
For tropes on Agent Georgiou, see her entry as the head of the Terran Empire.

Dr. Gabrielle Burnham

Gabrielle Burnham

Played by: Sonja Sohn

Michael Burnham's biological mother, an astrophycisist and engineer, who was killed in a Klingon ambush when Michael was ten. In Season 2, it turns out that Gabrielle used to work for Section 31 - and that she is still alive, having escaped in a time travelling suit. She has been trying to return to her daughter ever since, but her circumstances don't allow her to stay in the past for long.

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• Back from the Dead: In a fashion. She didn't really die, but escaped in a time travel suit. She then gets separated from her time suit and pulled back into the future, leaving her fate uncertain — until it turns out that she survived again and went on to join the Qowat Milat.
• Gadgeteer Genius: She developed and build the first Red Angel suit, a time travelling device.
• Meaningful Name: Like her biblical namesake, the archangel Gabriel, she is an "angel" (specifically, the first Red Angel) due to her time travelling suit - and she functions as a messenger, alerting Spock to Michael's peril when he is a child, and later warns him of the impending end to all life due to Control's devastation.
• Prescience Is Predictable: Due to her extensive time travel, she knows everything about everyone, and has seen all biological life die several times. No wonder she's a bit jaded by now.
• Time Travel: What she has been doing for the last 20 years, at first in trying to save her family, then to avert the devastation Control will apparently wreak on the galaxy.
• Walking Spoiler: Gabrielle is not only not dead, as everyone was led to believe, she is also the first Red Angel, a mysterious time traveler who has been contacting Spock and Discovery to warn them about an impending apocalypse.

Dr. Mike Burnham

Mike Burnham

Played by: Kenric Green

Michael Burnham's biological father, and like his daughter a xeno-anthropologist. He was killed in a Klingon ambush when Michael was ten. In Season 2, it turns out that he and his wife Gabrielle both worked on a secret project for Section 31.

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• Casting Gag: Kenric Green, who is Sonequa Martin-Green's husband, plays her character's biological father.
• Go Through Me: Prepares to hold off Klingon intruders, while Gabrielle saves Michael. This costs him his life but buys Gabrielle enough time to hide their daughter and escape in the time travelling suit she developed.
• Posthumous Character: He's been dead for 20 years when we first meet him in a flashback.
• Real Men Cook: He prepares dinner, while Gabrielle works on their project and Michael studies the supernova through a telescope.

Specialist Kamran Gant

Specialist Kamran Gant

Played by: Ali Momen

The former tactical officer of the U.S.S. Shenzhou, who then joined Section 31 in the wake of the Klingon War.

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• Assimilation Plot: His reanimated form is just a cover for Control to get close to Burnham and inject her with its nanites, as she is a factor that Control cannot properly counteract.
• Back for the Dead: Burnham thinks that she's talking to the actual Gant in "Through the Valley of Shadows", but in reality, Control killed him, reanimated him, and is pulling a Dead Person Impersonation.
• Bit Character: Initially, he is a Shenzhou bridge officer with few lines and no real development. Then he reemerges as a Section 31 crewman or agent.
• The Bus Came Back: If you were expecting him to be a Bit Character who would never show up again after the two-part series premiere ... think again.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Reanimated by Control, much like Leland, in an effort to get close to and take over Burnham.
• Immune to Bullets: After he is reanimated and Control's cover is blown, Burnham repeatedly tries to shoot his body with a phaser. It fails, mainly because Control's nanites grant a rapid Healing Factor via Pulling Themselves Together.
• Put on a Bus: Apparently evacuated the Shenzhou at the end of "Battle at the Binary Stars" along with Burnham, Saru, Detmer and the rest of the vessel's surviving crew.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: His fate was ambiguous like most of the Shenzhou's crew — until he showed up again in the second season as a member of Section 31.

23rd Century Civilians

Ambassador Sarek

Sarek

"Change is the essential process of all existence, Commander Burnham. You must challenge your preconceptions, or they most certainly will challenge you."

Played by: James Frain

A Vulcan astrophysicist, ambassador and the father of Spock. For tropes relating to his appearance in TOS, please see here.

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• Ambadassador: When first introduced in a flashback he was still an astrophysicist. By the time he re-appears in the series present, he's an ambassador. He gets the badass cred when, in a mind-meld with Burnham, he demonstrates he's as proficient in hand-to-hand combat as she is.
• Category Traitor: Extremist Vulcans consider Sarek to be too enamored with humans in general, let alone marrying one, having a half-human son, and having a full-human foster daughter. Even non-extremist Vulcans tend to look askance at him.
• Dark Secret: He lied to Burnham for years about her rejection from the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. In reality, they accepted her application, but they warned Sarek that they would not accept Spock if Burnham entered since they were only willing to accept one "non-Vulcan", so Sarek decided that Burnham would join Starfleet instead. This was ironically for nought, since Spock ultimately decided to join Starfleet and not the Expeditionary Group.
• Happily Married: With Amanda, in contrast to his relationships with both his biological (Spock) and adopted (Burnham) children.
• Locked Out of the Loop: To the point where it's practically a Running Gag in Season 2. The guy spends an absurd amount of time trying to figure out what happened to his son, while everyone else is constantly getting new information and keeping it from him. It comes to a head when his own wife hides Spock on Vulcan without telling him. All things considered, he takes it remarkably well.
• Master of the Mixed Message: In “Lethe”, Sarek from the past punches Michael out of his memory, when he was the one who bought her in the first place. Even she’s annoyed at this point.
• The Mentor: A civilian mentor to Burnham, who was raised on Vulcan and attended the Science Academy.
• Not So Stoic: He trembles when asked to choose between his human ward Michael and half-human son Spock for the expedition, blames himself when it turns out to be All for Nothing (as Spock chose Starfleet) and lashes out at Michael.
• Parents as People: Sarek has to juggle a lot of contradictory balls (and roles, and ideals) in his day-to-day life, and Burnham finally realises how many he actually (and unwittingly) fumbles while trying to find compromise, both privately and publicly, on a very regular basis. He is no perfect, "classic" Vulcan; and, certainly no perfect father, either. But at the same time, he is not abusive or neglectful, and is quite flexible in surprising ways — and he genuinely loves his wife and children, though he rarely lets these feelings show in any outward manner. Coming to terms with his limits and flaws is something all those who love him have to eventually learn, and he constantly has to learn to come to terms with theirs.
• Parental Substitute: For Burnham; she is his adoptive daughter. In some ways, Burnham and Sarek are closer than Spock and Sarek are, especially as Spock and Sarek end up not being on speaking terms by TOS, one decade later.
• Saved by Canon: His death is 112 years from now, so he'll live through this series.
• Stern Teacher: Seems to be his attitude towards Burnham, guiding and encouraging her but adamant that she will never be able to learn to speak Vulcan as a human. He implies that he regrets not being more encouraging to her when she was younger.
• Time-Shifted Actor: James Frain plays a younger Sarek.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Michael rescues him and all he can do is tell her they’re technically not related.

Amanda Grayson

Amanda Grayson

Played by: Mia Kirshner

Sarek's human wife, the biological mother of Spock and foster mother of Michael Burnham.

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• Happily Married: Though restrained in their show of affection, as is proper for a Vulcan couple, Sarek and Amanda are clearly very fond of each other.
• Mama Bear: When Spock appears to be in trouble, she tries to find and help him even against Starfleet's resistance and enlists Michael and even Pike to help her. She also refuses to believe that Spock murdered his doctors.
• Nice Girl: Amanda is generally a kind-hearted woman, to the point that she goes easy on T'Pring during the Vulcan Awareness Ritual (when she's supposed to point out the latter's faults) because she doesn't wish to be needlessly cruel.
• Parents as People: Amanda confesses that trying to raise Spock in a detached and emotionless Vulcan manner led to her becoming estranged to her own emotions, and she's afraid that it caused emotional damage to Spock himself.
• Parental Substitute: She and Sarek adopted Michael after her parents were killed.
• Proper Lady: She always wears nice dresses and carries herself in a refined manner.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She's gentle and soft-spoken, but doesn't hesitate to speak up when she perceives an injustice, especially against her children. After Spock's doctors refuse to let her speak to him or tell her what's wrong with him, she is not above stealing his medical files.
• True Blue Femininity: Amanda is a refined, elegant woman, and most of the clothes she is seen wearing are either blue or turquoise.

Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd

Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd

"Better hurry — we're getting very close to ... *boom*"

Played by: Rainn Wilson

A charismatic Con Man and swindler, who will one day cross paths with the crew of the Enterprise. For tropes relating to his appearance in TOS, please see here.

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• Actually a Doombot: In "The Escape Artist", he poses as a bounty hunter selling "Harry Mudd" to local civilians for half the Federation bounty on his head — but these are only androids designed to distract their captors until the real Mudd has made a clean getaway.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Unlike his TOS self, Mudd is shown to be more than capable of committing murder. Although, thanks to time travel shenanigans, none of the people he kills aboard Discovery stay dead, he had every intention of murdering Lorca and selling his crew to the Klingons to be slaves.
• Affably Evil: If he is anything like his TOS self.
• Beard of Evil: Sports a somewhat scruffy one, in contrast to his mustache in TOS.
• Beware the Silly Ones: After acquiring a time travel device, he creates a time loop and manages to murder Lorca and destroy Discovery well over 50 times before being stopped.
• Cardboard Prison: Whatever control Stella Grimes and her father promise to exercise on him apparently didn't last long, if "The Escape Artist" is any indication.
• Character Outlives Actor: Much like with Sarek, Harry Mudd lives on with a new actor in the role.
• Deadpan Snarker: Always has a wisecrack ready, especially in the episode where he gets Discovery caught in a time loop. Probably helps that he had, quite literally, all the time in the world to think of them.
• Dirty Coward: And pretty unapologetic about it.
• Evil Is Petty: He wanted Lorca dead for leaving him behind on that Klingon prison, fine. Repeating it over 50 times For the Evulz? That's a whole 'nother story.
• Irony: Mudd got into financial trouble as a result of wanting to impress his future wife Stella so she'd marry him ... in a decade or so he's probably going to admit he really regrets that decision.
  • It's later revealed that Mudd never actually loved her, he just wanted to get his hands on her dowry. And once his father-in-law gets him under his control and forces Mudd to stay with her, he already regrets the decision.
• The Hedonist: Much like his TOS self and comparing Kirk to his nagging wife, he’s selfish, only thinks about his own pleasure and calls Starfleet no fun at all.
• It's Personal: He swears revenge on Lorca for leaving him on the Klingon prison ship as retaliation for selling out to the Klingons.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • He points out that a lot of people get caught up in the 'crossfire' between Starfleet and other cultures, and he for one is sick of it.
  • When Lorca claims Starfleet didn’t start a war, Mudd asks what did they think would happen “going boldly”; they were bound to run into someone who didn’t want them in their backyard.
• Les Collaborateurs: Uses his horrible little pet insect to spy on his fellow prisoners and pass the info on to his Klingon jailers.
• May–December Romance: Maybe, depending on how actor ages are interpreted, as Rainn Wilson is 51 and Katherine Barrell, who plays Stella, is 27. The characters' original actors in TOS, however, were only three years apart.
• Me's a Crowd: Pulls this with his android duplicates in "The Escape Artist", in a Call-Forward to his appearances in TOS.
• Right-Hand Cat: Has a pet bug/scorpion thing called Stewart.
• Saved by Canon: He has to live to become Kirk's occasional problem in TOS.
• Smug Snake: The trailers seem to play up this aspect of him, which was always present, but makes him seem a bit darker and more obviously evil. He's seen cheekily reminding the officers that they don't have much time left until an explosion, and when Burnham exclaims to him "You're mad!" his response is a smirking "I'm Mudd!"
• Time-Shifted Actor: As the series is a prequel, Rainn plays a younger Mudd.
• The Trickster: As per usual.
• Took a Level in Kindness: He will in the future, at least if his TOS self is any indication.
• Villain Ball: Had he kept his mouth shut about Stella and simply been content with killing Lorca once, he would have gotten away with his revenge plot.
• Wild Card: As he tells Lorca, he’s not on anyone’s side but his own, but understands why the Klingons pushed back at Starfleet arrogance.

Stella Grimes

Stella Grimes

Played by: Katherine Barrell

The daughter of Barron Grimes, she is Harry Mudd's bride-to-be and his wife by the time he crosses paths with the crew of the Enterprise.

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• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Considering that she knows what sort of person Harry is, loves him anyway, and doesn't seem interested in trying to change him, it's safe to assume this trope is in play.
• Daddy's Girl: Her father adores her, and he is willing to do anything to make her happy.
• I Can Change My Beloved: Defied. When Harry (desperately trying to explain why he ditched her) claims he left to work on his (many, many) character flaws, Stella assures him that she's well aware he isn't perfect, always has been, and is fine with that.
• Informed Flaw: During his run-ins with Kirk and company, Harry always made Stella out to be a shrewish harridan, as exemplified by the android replicas he made of her. However, when she appears in the flesh she is an attractive, amiable and very understanding young woman. Of course, ten years of being with Harry might have put her over the edge...
• May–December Romance: By all appearances she is considerably younger than Harry.
• Silk Hiding Steel: While she seems just overjoyed to have Harry back, willing to forgive him anything if she can just have him again, even stating she understands he's not perfect and loves him anyway, she quickly shows she's not his Extreme Doormat. When Harry says he can't possibly explain where he's been and what he's been doing, she firmly grabs a fistful of his coat, yanks him closer, and says in an icy, threatening tone, "Try."
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Stella is considerably more attractive than Harry.
• Warts and All: She knows Harry's a conniving lowlife. She doesn't care; she wants him anyway, and has no illusions about being able to change him.

Baron Grimes

Baron Grimes

Played by: Peter MacNeill

A wealthy individual and Stella’s father.

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• Arms Dealer: One of the quadrant’s preeminent weapons dealers, and he has made a fortune from the Federation-Klingon War.
• Debt Detester: He doesn't want to remain in debt to the crew of Discovery for helping him find Mudd and immediately asks how he can repay them. Tyler's answer is simple — keep Mudd on a tight leash.
• The Dreaded: Harry is absolutely terrified of him.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Certainly seems to be, at least in his limited screen time.
• No Name Given: At least in regards to his first name, whereas "Baron" is his title.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: He absolutely detests Harry, but he makes damn certain that Harry marries his daughter, because Stella loves Harry ... for some reason.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Grimes dresses in an impeccable suit complete with a stylish cape.

32nd Century Civilians

Cleveland Booker

Cleveland "Book" Booker V

Played by: David Ajala

A civilian courier living in the 3180s whom Burnham encounters upon her arrival from the 23rd century. His real name is Tareckx.

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• Berserk Button: Never say anything bad about Grudge. She's a queen!
• Crash-Into Hello: How Burnham encounters him; she collides with his ship as the Red Angel suit tumbles out of control after exiting the time-travel wormhole.
• Doomed Homeworld: His home planet, Kwejian, falls victim to an Earth-Shattering Kaboom via a gravitational Negative Space Wedgie in the fourth season premiere, "Kobayashi Maru". And this is after the same planet and its residents suffered extensive ecological damage due to The Burn and decades of abuse by the Emerald Chain.
• The Empath: Burnham describes him as an empath, and he has psychic powers, focused through a kind of ritual, to communicate with plants and animals.
• Fluffy Tamer: He can soothe trance worms, creatures capable of swallowing people whole.
• Green Thumb: One of the uses of his empathic abilities is to encourage the growth of plants.
• Human Alien: Book is a Kwejian; he appears human, but is one of a few of his species who display telepathic abilities that allow him to commune with plants and animals, making his forehead glow in the process.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: He has a big fluffy Maine Coon cat named Grudge.
• Last of His Kind: All indications are that he was the Sole Survivor of the destruction of Kwejian, and if there were no others of his kind off-planet at the time, then he's the last surviving Kwejian, period.
• Legacy Character: It turns out that the name "Cleveland Booker" has been passed down through a Master-Apprentice Chain. This is the fifth person to carry the name.
• Meaningful Rename: He was born Tareckx, but took the name of his mentor.
• Psychic Starship Pilot: Can operate the spore drive, like Stamets, because his empath powers allow him to communicate with the spores.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Plays this line with the Emperor, in regards to Michael. The Emperor does not believe him. Neither does anybody else.
• Trauma Button: The birds of Kwejian. When one is in the dust layer that he and Stamets are trying to scan, he starts having a flashback and dissociating.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He genuinely doesn't want to see any other planets destroyed by the DMA, so he gets on board with Tarka's plan to destroy the DMA with an isolytic weapon — which could damage an entire sector of space and risk hostilites with Species 10-C. And then he proves that he's not so extreme when Burnham convinces him to stand down because the Federation has a window of one week to make peaceful contact with 10-C and will still keep Tarka's plan on the table should that fail.

Gray Tal

Gray Tal

Played by: Ian Alexander

A joined Trill who was Adira's partner, and died in an accident aboard a transport vessel, leaving the Tal symbiont to Adira.

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• Back from the Dead: He's resurrected in a synth body created by Dr. Culber.
• Eccentric Artist: To an extent. As seen in Adira's flashbacks while conversing with Gray, he was a master of various musical instruments, and took up the cello after being joined (based on a former host's memories).
• I See Dead People: Usually only visible to Adira, the current host of the Tal symbiont, until returning to life in a specially constructed synth body.
• The Nth Doctor: The sixth host of the Tal symbiont, after Kasha, Jovar, Madela, Cara and Senna, and immediately preceding Adira.
• Perpetual Smiler: The few times when Gray isn't constantly smiling broadly are either instances of unconsciousness or O.O.C. Is Serious Business.
• Posthumous Character: Gray died about a year prior to the events of the third season. Most of Gray's interactions are as a manifested past consciousness of the Tal symbiont, only visible to Adira, until returning to life in a synth body.
• Projected Man: The holographic environment aboard the wreckage of Su'Kal's vessel creates a physical (though virtual) form for Gray, which is not only visible to Adira but to Saru and Culber as well. Consequently, Gray's holographic form is erased when the environment is shut down.
• Trans Nature: All There in the Manual according to Word of God from the series' writers and producers as a form of Actor-Shared Background. Finally, briefly mentioned in the S4 episode "Anomaly".

Grudge

Grudge

Played by: Leeu and Durban

Cleveland Booker's cat and constant companion.

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• Cats Are Mean: When things go poorly with the Alshain in “Kobayashi Maru”, Book and Michael tease that she’s not grateful at all for cat treats.
• Cats Are Superior: Book would like it to be known that Grudge is a "queen", and won't tolerate anyone saying otherwise.
• Cross-Cast Role: Though stated on-screen as being female, Grudge is actually played by two male Maine Coon cats, Leeu and Durban. Thanks to natural sexual dimorphism among cats, this backs up the on-screen claims of Grudge being unusually large for her species.
• Cuteness Proximity: Has this effect on nearly everyone she comes across, including Tilly (who doesn't like cats ordinarily), Ryn (who's never seen a cat before) and Georgiou (who shows her affection in her own way).
• Meaningful Name: Booker says he named her Grudge because "she's heavy, and she's all mine".
• Mega Neko: Booker describes her as being unusually large for her species (because of a thyroid condition). In reality, she is a normally-sized Maine Coon cat, which is still one of the largest domestic cat breeds.
• The Other Darrin: On an ongoing basis; the role of Grudge is tag-teamed between Maine Coon brothers Leeu and Durban, depending on the acting needs involved.
• Parrot Pet Position: Booker sometimes carries her on his shoulders.
• Pocket Dial: Played for Laughs when she manages to accidentally hail Discovery from Book's ship in "Scavengers".
• Team Pet: For Booker, and soon Burnham after she joins them in their travels.

President T'Rina

President T'Rina

Played by: Tara Rosling

The President of Ni'Var (the planet formerly known as Vulcan).

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• Interspecies Romance: She enters a relationship with Saru at the end of Season 4.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • When Discovery shows up to request the SB-19 data, she's initially displeased to deal with The Federation — but when Burnham forces the issue by invoking the T'Kal-in-ket, T'Rina acknowledges her right to do so as both a citizen of Ni'Var and a graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy.
  • Even before Ni'Var rejoined the Federation in season 4, T'Rina was still willing to work with them to deal with the threat caused by the gravitational anomaly. She also (along with President Rillak) approves the compromise that allows Ni'Var to rejoin the Federation.

President Laira Rillak

President Laira Rillak

Played by: Chelah Horsdal

The newly-elected President of the Federation.

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• Allegorical Character: She's a perfect representation of the problems that the Federation has always faced, in that she preaches about unity and goodwill in public, but in private she's The Needs of the Many (even if Jerkass Has a Point about it).
• Big Good: As President of the recovering Federation, she serves this role beginning in Season 4.
• Heinz Hybrid: She's a mix of human, Cardassian, and Bajoran, but the percentages are unknown.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In “Kobayashi Maru”, she calls Michael out on how her trauma has given her a pathological need to save everyone she can. She’s cold about it, and Michael has no plans to stop any time soon, but it’s admitted she’s right.
• The Needs of the Many: Warns Burnham that her Chronic Hero Syndrome is going to end badly sooner or later, and that she needs to be more careful about putting Discovery at risk on the off chance she can save everyone.
• Our Presidents Are Different: President Minority mixed with some President Iron - if she can't charm her way through, she'll just plow right over the people in her way through the weight of her office.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite clashing with Michael and having some jerk moments, she ultimately has good intentions.
• Space Trucker: She used to fly cargo ships for a living, and is appropriately realistic about the risks of space travel.
• Twofer Token Minority: exaggerated. She represents two alien races, being some combination of human, Cardassian and Bajoran; also a woman. Additionally, her sexual orientation is at question, as she only ever refers to her "partner," indicating she has one but not what gender(s) that partner is.

Su'Kal

Su'Kal

Played by: Bill Irwin

A Kelpien who was trapped in the Verubin Nebula for almost his entire life. It turns out that he was inadvertently the cause of The Burn.

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• Death Wail: He's reduced to screaming in grief when he witnesses Issa's death. Due to his mutations and the large quantities of dilithium in the barren world the Khi'eth crashed in, his scream reached through subspace and drained the energy of most of the galaxy's dilithium, leaving it inert. Unfortunately, it also affected the dilithium inside warp cores, detonating them and destroying countless starships across the galaxy.
• Manchild: Not surprising, as his mother died when he was a child and he had no one to raise him except a bunch of holos designed to educate him, and all he's ever known (that he isn't intentionally avoiding due to trauma) is the holographic equivalent of a 90s PC activity center.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: His biological mutations, the bizarre environment where he was trapped, and the death of his mother led to the worst galactic cataclysm ever known, and he had no way of knowing about it.
• Older Than They Look: He's 125 years old, and he physically looks around the same age as Saru.
• Sole Survivor: He's the only survivor of the Khi'eth's crew, after the crash-landing and the radiation killed everyone else, including his mother Issa.

Dr. Ruon Tarka

Doctor Ruon Tarka

"I know anger. It's a wonderfully productive emotion."

Played by: Shawn Doyle

"I've studied your work extensively. So much to admire... and improve upon."

A Federation scientist hailing from Risa, once enslaved by the Emerald Chain, who is assigned to help Discovery and her crew investigate and resolve the Dark Matter Anomaly in the fourth season.

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• Ambiguously Gay: While there is nothing explicit shown through his friendship with Oros, a fellow prisoner of the Emerald Chain, the body language they exhibit in the flashbacks of The Galactic Barrier (including holding hands at one point) indicate he could very well be this.
• Ambiguous Situation: The last we see of Tarka is him messing with his teleportation device, musing that it's better than just dying. We never see if he got it to work or if he was killed when Book's ship was destroyed.
• Always Someone Better: Is this towards Stamets, as he managed to miniaturize the spore drive into a portable module able to interface with any vessel, making Discovery's capabilities no longer unique. It still requires a compatible pilot, however, as he hasn't worked that issue out.
• Cultural Rebel: A jerkass Omnidisciplinary Scientist hailing from Risa, a Pleasure Planet of chilled-out hedonists.
• Dark and Troubled Past: A relatively recent example, as he was enslaved by the Emerald Chain in their efforts to find an alternative to dilithium, before the organization fell and he was repatriated to the Federation. A fellow scientist who was a close friend of his wasn't nearly as lucky, although whatever happened to Tarka's compatriot is still an Uncertain Doom.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: Inverted — he wants to ditch this universe for a more idyllic one, and if that means screwing over the Federation and Species 10-C, so be it.
• Foil: For Paul Stamets. Both men are extraordinarily intelligent, outstanding scientists, and have a somewhat arrogant/brusque manner that can be off-putting on first acquaintance. But underneath the Insufferable Genius schtick, each is capable of—and, ultimately, motivated by—deep and powerful emotional connections. The comparison with Tarka helps define Stamets's boundaries: Stamets does have a high risk tolerance, but unlike Tarka he isn't actually reckless, especially when other people's lives are involved. Tarka is also far more selfishly motivated.
• It's All About Me: He's driven by his own goals, and has no regard for the people he has to screw over to get there. He wants to destroy the DMA to use its power source to travel to another universe, and while he tries to justify what he's doing as good for the galaxy, it's clear his main concern is getting home, ignoring the consequences of provoking such a powerful species.
• Insufferable Genius: Easily the smartest scientist working within the Federation, and isn't afraid to let everyone know it at every possible opportunity.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In his arguments to the Federation Council, he does fairly note the apocalyptic and unpredictable threat that the DMA poses, as well as the limited to nonexistent progress made by the various spacefaring nations so far in understanding or containing it.
• Lack of Empathy: At the age of five, he is said to have atomized a live caracal to prove a scientific point. He really isn't much better as an adult scientific expert.
• The Lost Lenore: Oros is this for him, assuming there is more to their friendship than is already shown throughout Season Four. In fact, finding a way to 'get home' to Oros is what motivated Tarka to go renegade and find his own way to stop the DMA, namely because he believes that the civilisation that created it has a powerful enough power source to provide enough energy to cross into another universe and find Oros.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Already a fairly shady character, Dr. Tarka calls for the use of isolytic weaponry to destroy the DMA rather than study it. He also endangers Discovery and her crew with his experiments on board.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He initially presents himself as a ruthless pragmatist who wants to stop the planet-destroying Dark Matter Anomaly by any means necessary. It's later revealed that his true objective is to gain control of the Anomaly so that he can use its energy to transport himself to what he believes will be a better alternate timeline, and by the end in pursuit of this objective he's repeatedly betrayed people who trusted him, nearly started an intergalactic war, endangered many billions of people, and finally attempted to commit genocide on an entire sentient species.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Tends towards this, as he is the foremost expert called upon to investigate the Anomaly, and had plenty of time to refine the spore drive technology down to a portable unit that can interface with any programmable-matter-bearing modern vessel. He also knows his way around isolytic weaponry, which can have subspace effects theoretically sufficient to destroy the DMA.
  Tarka: I could've told you it wasn't the Metrons or the Nacene or the Iconians well before I got here.
  Book: So why the experminent? Why risk the lives of everyone on board?
  Tarka: Science has many purposes.
  Book: Try again.
  Tarka: I constructed a model of the DMA controller at a scale of 3.22 x 10^-17 and this entire ship couldn't provide enough juice to keep it stable. Which means the actual device has an energy source equivalent to a hypergiant star. Unfathomable power.
• Screw the Rules, I Have a Nuke!: His idea to destroy the DMA with isolytic weapons gets voted down by the Federation Council in favour of more peaceful contact, so Tarka feels entitled to steal a portable prototype spore-drive unit, install it on Book's ship, and then fly off with Book to acquire the supplies to construct and fire the isolytic weapon on his own.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Claimed to have felt this way growing up on Risa, and acts the same when he sees the Federation Council as being too disposed to "talking" and not enough to his idea of decisive action against the DMA.
• Tech Bro: His personality and dress sense invoke this stereotype when he's first introduced, although he turns out to have a much less privileged and more traumatic past than it implies.