WMG / Star Trek: Discovery

Be advised, unmarked spoilers for Discovery are below.

Prerelease

Star Trek: Discovery is such a paradoxical achievement that it will cause the universe as we know it to collapse.

A fifty-year franchise in the hands of TV's most Screwed by the Network showrunner? If that's not a matter-antimatter mix right there, I don't know what is.

• Jossed. Bryan Fuller is no longer showrunner. (However, he has written the entire season story.)

Star Trek: Discovery will be set between Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: The Original Series.

The design of the Discovery is very old-school, and the registry number is lower than that of the classic Enterprise.

• Confirmed.

Star Trek: Discovery will be set after Star Trek: Voyager.

• Jossed.
  • From the 3rd season onward, this becomes confirmed.

The captain of the the USS Discovery will be a woman.

If only so Janeway is no longer the only woman in command of a ship in this franchise.

• Still undetermined, but Michelle Yeoh has been tapped to play the captain of another ship slated to be important in Discovery's first season, so Janeway has company already.
• Jossed. The Discovery's captain is played by Jason Isaacs. However, for the first time in Trek history, the captain will not be the series lead character. The lead is "First Officer Michael Burnham", as portrayed by Sonequa Martin-Green.
  • However, Quasi-Confirmed as of season four, with Burnham taking over the ship after a...long journey.
• Janeway isn’t the only woman to command a starship,she isn’t even the first. There was the captain of USS Saratoga in Star Trek IV (she was first on-screen), Zaheva (USS Brattain), Benteen (USS Lakota), Silva La Forge (USS Hera) and Hernandez (Columbia) and probably others...
• The Enterprise-C (predecessor to the Enterprise-D) was captained by a woman.

The Discovery will have a mixed Federation/Klingon crew

The ship design looks like they grafted a Saucer onto a Klingon ship, and the music on the trailer that introduced it has a lot of Klingon-sounding drums.

• Not likely given the time period.
  • The time frame is ten years before TOS. There most definitely will not be Klingons on Discovery (as part of the ship's crew, that is).
  • What little we know about the Klingons' role in the series definitely does not suggest they will be allies (reluctant or otherwise) with any Starfleet crew.
• Technically Confirmed, but not as a cooperative thing. Ash Tyler was revealed to be a Klingon sleeper agent disguised as a human and used to infiltrate the crew. They also have another Klingon as a prisoner in the brig for a time, who they convince to help them when it serves her interests.

An Orion woman will be a main character.

Unlike a stereotypical Orion woman, she'll be a very professional officer who wears a normal uniform and wants people to appreciate her for her mind.

• Jossed, but an Orion woman and man do show up in the first season finale, "Will You Take My Hand?". This does, however, occur later with Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Characters from previous shows who could possibly appear in Discovery

Fuller has already confirmed that after the first season, he's open to re-introducing characters from elsewhere in the Star Trek mythology. Possible inclusions, given the time period-

• Spock, most likely after the events of "The Cage". Would be interesting to see Spock and the Enterprise in the period between Pike's captaincy and Kirk's.
  • Looking more likely, as it turns out he's Burnham's brother.
    • Looking even more likely now that the Enterprise showed up at the end of the first season.
    • Confirmed for season 2, Ethan Peck has been cast.
• James T. Kirk, as a young hot-shot lieutenant serving aboard the USS Farragut (before the tragic accident that killed all of its crew ... which actually could be the subject of an episode).
• Ensign Gary Mitchell, who shows signs of both latent psychic talent and, disturbingly, mild sociopathy. He reminisces a bit about the philosophy courses he took at the Academy, taught by a student instructor called Kirk.
• An aged Admiral Jonathan Archer.
  • ... who is forever haunted by the more questionable decisions he made during his earlier career.
  • Doubtful, since the events of the series take place almost a century prior, and he was already a middle-aged man back then.
• T'Pol, who, as a Vulcan, would presumably still be alive.
• Captain Jean Luc Picard (reprised by Patrick Stewart), via Time Travel.
  • With Picard apparently set for his own sequel series, a crossover with Discovery to promote it would probably be a no-brainer.
• A member of the Denobulan species, who are chronologically subjected to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome after Enterprise.
  • Possibly even Phlox himself, if Denobulans are that long-lived.
• Christopher Pike, who would be either captain of the Enterprise or a fleet captain depending on the time.
  • Again looking a lot more likely as he is commanding the Enterprise when it shows up to rendezvous with Discovery at the very end of the first season.
  • Confirmed for season 2!
• M'Ress or Arex from The Animated Series, as CGI has advanced enough to make this possible in live action.
  • It would have to be them as younger cadets in the academy or something like that, but this would be interesting to see.
• Ambassador Sarek and Amanda Grayson, Spock's parents.
  • Sarek is confirmed, and is to be played by James Frain.
  • Amanda is mentioned, and eventually appears in a flashback, played by Mia Kirshner.
• A younger Scotty or McCoy, who were the more veteran members of Kirk's senior staff on the Enterprise. Like Kirk, they would probably be at a lower rank at the time (ensigns or possibly lieutenants).
• Captain Robert April, either at the end of or shortly after his command of the Enterprise.
  • Robert April gets a Shout-Out, being on a list of the 5 most decorated Starfleet captains... Note, however, that list also includes Jonathan Archer...
• Commodore Robert Wesley, the Reasonable Authority Figure from "The Ultimate Computer", again earlier in his career (probably a captain).
• Captain Ron Tracey, before his fall from grace.
• Commodore Matthew Decker, long before his Despair Event Horizon in "The Doomsday Machine", possibly with at least a mention of his young son Will.
  • Decker shows up on the list of highly decorated captains mentioned above, while an apparent Shout-Out to his son comes later, as "Cadet Decker" is mentioned over the Discovery intercom at one point.
• A disgruntled janitor by the name of Ben Finney.
• "Number One" first seen in "The Cage", possibly with a full name (finally).
  • Confirmed for season two.
• Another member of the Soong family, probably once again played by Brent Spiner as per their usual tendency towards Generation Xerox.
• Rainn Wilson has been confirmed as Harcourt Fenton Mudd.
• One of the young Changelings sent out to explore the Alpha Quadrant (aka The Hundred).
• A younger Sybok, seeing as Burnham is Sarek's adopted daughter.
• A younger version of General Chang as a foot soldier or junior officer. Maybe he loses his eye in a "warrior to warrior" encounter with Burnham or Lorca (who is rumored to be pretty handy with a bat'leth).
• Gary Seven, griping to his cat that he knows that timeline juncture point is around here somewhen.
  • The Temporal Cold War never really got a proper coda. Maybe Gary might be revealed, as long suspected by many fans, to be working for the faction that Agent Daniels represented in Enterprise. Maybe Future Guy might reveal himself to Burnham in some grand fashion, telling her that "I've been the architect behind all your pain."
  • Future Guy himself will be revealed as a rogue Romulan trying to subvert the Temporal Accords, and will complain of his latest time-agent, ("that Nero guy"), making a real mess of things.
• Q. You know you want it.
  • Officially, humanity's first contact with the Q was in TNG. Probably best to leave it that way.
    • The Q Continuum do not experience time in a linear fashion, so it's not unfeasible for Q to visit Discovery in a TOS-Era appropriate disguise then, in a Breaking the Fourth Wall moment, muse something along the lines of "I can't see how Jean-Luc evolved from these troglodytes."
• Admiral Marcus, who has sporadic and highly secretive meetings with a mysterious and aged security officer called "Harris".
• Since's it's 92 years too early for The Borg, the Tholians can fill that role of that third party that makes the Discovery and the Big Bad both go Oh, Crap! whenever they show up. They're the most powerful civilization during this time period, and even during Deep Space Nine people are still afraid of them. And who isn't afraid of 7 foot Silicon spiders? The expensive CGI would be an incentive for the writers to use them sparingly and preserve their mystique.
• A younger Kruge, in his past as a Klingon warrior before he became The Captain of a bird-of-prey.
• General Korrd, presumably still in his prime as a Four-Star Badass (or at least a Colonel Badass, or Majorly Awesome) leading Klingon warriors in battle.
  • Korrd was a key figure in creating the Klingon/Federation Nuetral Zone, after his son was killed in the pre-NZ "war" that Discovery is apparently covering. Losing his son was also what made him The Alcoholic.
• An Olympic gymnast named Emony Dax.
• The falling out between the Federation and the Sheliak Corporate could be a plot point of a later season.

The focus of the series will be ...

Bryan Fuller has indicated that Discovery will be set a decade before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series, and will focus on "an incident in the history of Starfleet that had been talked about but never fully explored". Possible events include:

• The Klingon War(s), which surprisingly, doesn't have a specific established date in other canon. The trailer makes this seem a very likely possibility.
  • More or less confirmed, assuming that the Klingon War mentioned in TOS and this one in Discovery are indeed one and the same.
• The USS Farragut encounters a deadly cloud.
• The Treaty of Armens.
• The fall of Garth of Izar. Fuller has stated that the main character will start as a Lieutenant Commander and go through several ranks by the time the show's over, and this might be why. Garth begins to become more and more unstable and have delusions of grandeur until eventually our unnamed protagonist has to step up and take command.
  • Jossed. Or at least it is for the first season. The USS Discovery will be commanded by Captain Gabriel Lorca, not Garth, Garth himself is not one of the announced characters. It is important to note that Captain Garth's actual name was Garth, that it was not an alias he took on after he went mad, as the exploits of "Fleet Captain Garth" are required reading at the Academy. Lorca, despite rumors that he will become a villain, is not Garth.

The female lead character will eventually become the captain of the USS Discovery

Bryan Fuller recently revealed that the main protagonist, while female, is a lieutenant-commander instead of The Captain, and that somewhat of a personal journey is in store for them. It's a fairly senior rank, probably not enough to make the lead character the first officer, but certainly enough to make them the head of a shipboard department (e.g. science officer, chief engineer, etc.) at the start of the series. The other main characters could be her immediate colleagues or subordinates as well as some of the other senior officers on the ship.

What if the as-yet-unidentified lead character overcomes personal and professional struggles to earn the captaincy of the Discovery after one or more seasons? It wouldn't be unprecedented for the lead character of the series to change in rank — Sisko went from Commander to Captain during the run of DS9 (although he commanded the titular station the whole time). It might also be more relatable and more satisfying than in Voyager, where Captain Janeway was introduced fully-formed and her backstory was generally All There in the Manual (or the novels). DSC would probably evolve from a Lower-Deck Episode type of series to a more traditionally-focused Trek series along the way.

• Semi-Jossed, semi-confirmed. She will indeed start the journey as the First Officer...of the USS Shenzhou, and as of yet we don't know for certain what her role on the Discovery is to be, only that a galaxy-altering decision she makes is what leads her there. The trailer certainly seems to be setting up her arc to be her journey to a command of her own.

Alternatively, she becomes captain in episode 1, and gets officially promoted at the end of season 1.

The original captain and XO die in combat, and she takes command at the rank of Lt.Cmdr. At some point, like in Deep Space Nine, she gets promoted to an actual captain.

• Jossed. The producers have stated repeatedly that she is not the captain, a decision which will offer a fresh perspective for this new series, at least for the first season.

She starts out as a captain, Bryan Fuller is just trolling us.

Jossed. CBS has confirmed that the character, actually named Michael Burnham, is the First Officer.

The Xindi will appear.

It's kind of obligatory, isn't it?

• If they came up in Beyond, there is no hesitance to use them.

The main protagonist is the chief science officer aboard USS Discovery

Both regular cast members identified so far are playing science officers and specialists, but they are not playing the main protagonist, who as a lieutenant-commander would outrank both Stamets and Saru and could very easily be their direct superior in the department. Plus it would seem to generally fit with the Star Trek spirit to have the main character be a scientist (if they cannot initially be The Captain). A parallel could be drawn to the Original Series, where under Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock was both the science officer and the ship's first officer, and Will Decker did the same in the first film, meaning it's not out of the question for DSC's lead character to follow a similar role.

• Initially Jossed, as Michael Burnham is the First Officer of the Shenzhou as the series begins, and then becomes an unranked, unofficial science specialist.
  • ... and later confirmed, as Burnham is reinstated as a full commander and the chief science officer of Discovery at the end of the first season.

The Discovery will have a Middle Eastern bridge officer at some point.

Similar to how Chekov, a Russian, became a popular character among Americans during the Cold War.

• Semi-confirmed, as Maulik Pancholy has signed aboard ... but his character is stationed on the Shenzhou.
  • That doesn't necessarily mean that he stays on his original ship. Several of the characters connected with the Shenzhou do not appear to have counterparts among the senior officers of the Discovery. Much like how Voyager ended up with "gaps" that Chakotay, B'Elanna and The Doctor filled among the senior staff, this might indicate that the prominent crew members aboard the Shenzhou (so far, the captain, the medical officer, and the conn officer) get merged, in whole or in part, with the known crew of the Discovery.
• Seemingly confirmed, as Ash Tyler as played by Shazad Latif is Ambiguously Brown.

The "previously mentioned but unexplored event" that Discovery will be about will be the Klingon-Federation War(s). A subtheme may be the aftereffects of the Augment virus shown in Enterprise.

Numerous comments by characters in other Trek series and movies have indicated that the Federation and Klingons have been at war at some point, maybe multiple points. What's not clear is when exactly this happened.

• Spock once mentioned that the Battle Of Donatu V (between Starfleet and the Klingons) happened 20 years before the original series, or about 10 years before Discovery.
• Spock also mentioned in The Undiscovered Country that the Federation and Klingons had been totally hostile for seventy years (between 2223 and 2293).
• Captain Picard once mentioned that 'centuries ago, a disastrous contact with the Klingons led to decades of war,' causing the Federation to do surveillance on species before initiating contact. Apparently, this would indicate that the Klingons and Federation did not get off on the right foot after the Romulan War.

There's a few reasons that the creators seem to be revisiting and fleshing out this piece of the backstory:

• Most obviously, this event has been discussed but never portrayed in canon.
• Bryan Fuller mentioned that his 'touchstone' for the series would be The Undiscovered Country.
• Several of the casting announcements thus far have been for Klingon officers or nobles.
• When the production designer for the series, Mark Worthington, was announced, designs for Klingon-looking 'sarcophagus ships' began to circulate.
• Fuller, when asked about the possibility of Section 31 appearing in Discovery, said that their involvement would be open to the interpretation of those versed in that element of Trek lore. Section 31, of course, was created in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to represent dark, pragmatic, amoral philosophy employed in wartime, even by the Federation.

Now, other details seem to imply that they'll combine this element of known backstory with the Klingon Augment virus story from season four of Star Trek: Enterprise. To summarize, after a few seasons of relatively friendly (for the Klingons, of course) bumping shoulders with the humans, the Klingons try to steal DNA from the leftover genetically enhanced superhumans of Earth to make super-Klingons. This doesn't work. One of the test subjects was carrying a normally harmless flu which mutated and started transforming and killing Klingons in the thousands. Dr. Phlox had to engineer and release a countervirus that would do the same thing, but leave the Klingons alive (hence the "inconsistencies" in the Klingon's appearance).

This would explain easily why Klingons don't like the Federation, especially humans, and why they would go to war with them eventually. Also:

• Bryan Fuller mentioned at one point that they would be experimenting with the look of already established species in Discovery. It could be that this means that there multiple Klingon types, just as there were the QuchHa and HemQuch in the books.
• One of the Klingon characters announced thus far was said to be a leader "seeking to unite the Klingon houses", which sounds awfully like the arc of the Rise Of The Federation series.

• Confirmed, at least where the Story Arc of the first season is concerned.

Why the USS Shenzhou is getting so much focus

There have been several updates on casting so far, but most of the Federation characters identified to date are crewmembers of the USS Shenzhou (captained by Michelle Yeoh's character) — so clearly, this starship and her crew are getting a lot of focus in the parts of the pilot episode that are being filmed and produced so far. This introduces questions over why there is so much focus on a ship that is explicitly not the titular USS Discovery, nor the ship that the Klingon characters are serving on.

• Perhaps Burnham (the lead character) starts off on the Shenzhou before transferring to the Discovery for some reason, whether by necessity or by choice. Captain Georgiou might be her mentor in Starfleet and might agree to Burnham bringing several officers with her when transferring to Discovery.
  • Confirmed, at least to some extent, by the latest (May 2017) trailer. Burnham and Georgiou discuss having served together for seven years and the captain is of the opinion that her first officer should be moving on to her own command.
  • Confirmed. Burnham is First officer on the Shenzhou, and other characters are also crewmembers, forced to abandon the ship when it takes too much battle damage.
• It's possible that the captain and crew of the Shenzhou are Decoy Protagonists who will take the lead in the story prior to the focus shifting to the Discovery and her crew. This may take the form of a prologue providing the impetus for the rest of the first season's storyline.
  • Seemingly confirmed as well; the Shenzhou goes to investigate an unidentified object in the latest (May 2017) trailer and ends up under attack by the Klingons. The Discovery and her crew haven't been shown as of yet.
• Rescuing the Shenzhou may be part of the plot.
• The mission may be a joint one, focusing mostly on the Discovery but also with focus on the Shenzhou.
  • Jossed. The Shenzhou is abandoned after nearly being destroyed in battle.
• The Shenzhou may be destroyed in the first episode and the crew rescued by Discovery.
  • Going a little more extreme, this could mean Michelle Yeoh is perhaps a Dead Star Walking or subject to the Mentor Occupational Hazard.
  • Jossed and confirmed. Shenzhou is abandoned at the end of the second episode. Captain Georgiou is killed just before that. The Discovery has yet to make an appearance.

Burnham was raised on Vulcan.

Or at least has some connection to that planet and/or its people, especially Sarek, who appears to have tried to teach her to speak the Vulcan language. Additionally, in the official promo poster, she is making the classic Vulcan V, invented by Leonard Nimoy.

• Confirmed.

Burnham will start off as a Jerkass Hero and undergo Character Development into a more classic Trek protagonist

The series is said to revolve as much around personal "discovery" as it does around exploration of the cosmos, and in particular a lengthy journey is said to be in store for Lt.-Cdr. Burnham, who is the lead protagonist.

From the first series trailer, Burnham is distinctly impulsive and hawkish compared to Michelle Yeoh's Captain Georgiou. Later articles have also clarified that Burnham was raised for at least part of her life on Vulcan and was the first human to attend the Science Academy. Quite possibly, this path of high achievement molded her into a strident and uncompromising officer over the early parts of her career in Starfleet.

By the start of the series, Captain Georgiou is talking about Burnham being due to take on her own starship command. But the USS Shenzhou stumbles upon ancient Klingons in deep space who promptly awaken from being Human Popsicles, and Burnham advocates an aggressive strategy to end the threat. But the crew has no idea what they're facing, and Surprisingly Realistic Outcome as a Curb-Stomp Battle leads to the ship getting overwhelmed and wrecked with the loss of many of the crew. Quite possibly, Capt. Georgiou falls victim to the Mentor Occupational Hazard in the process and the survivors abandon the ship to save their lives.

With The Captain dead or incapacitated, Burnham ends up the ranking survivor of the Shenzhou and takes the blame (both deserved and undeserved) for the incident, as tends to be the case in Starfleet. Far from starting off on her own command, to Burnham, it becomes My Greatest Failure and a major Break the Haughty from her earlier overconfidence. But Starfleet (or at least Admiral Anderson) still sees potential in her^note (because, you know, it's not like Starfleet would go back on their long-held modus operandi of favouring hyper-ambitious jerkasses over steadier, quieter officers), so whatever court-martial or punishment Burnham faces, she ends up reassigned (along with other Shenzhou survivors) to learn from the widely-respected strategist Captain Lorca aboard the newest ship in the fleet: the USS Discovery.

As a result, Burnham will start the series off as a relative Jerkass, most likely causing her to be a Base-Breaking Character or even The Scrappy to many viewers. However, as she undergoes Character Development over the course of the series to become a more worthy Starfleet officer, she will eventually earn her way to captaincy in her own right.

The series premiere will not involve the Discovery at all, or barely so

Given all the talk about having a "second pilot" that introduces the plot for the rest of the season, and the clips and snippets that have come out in trailers to date, here's one take on what could happen:

• A flashback to Burnham's childhood forms an Action Prologue, showing how she lost her parents in a Klingon attack on a Vulcan outpost and was taken in by Sarek and Amanda.
• The narrative returns to the present, where Burnham and Georgiou are journeying through the deserts of an alien planet. A storm or some sort of atmospheric disturbance approaches and they must get clear, which they do, but the Shenzhou must descend through the clouds to penetrate the interference and beam them out successfully. The Shenzhou and her crew are introduced and resume their exploration mission.
• Deep in Klingon space, T'Kuvma and his people have returned from their long exile (or being a Human Popsicle). Some Klingons, such as Kol, flock to his side, but many others see him as a pretender. He decides to venture out to seek a worthy adversary to prove himself and his followers before the Empire in glorious battle.
• The Shenzhou stumbles upon an "object of unknown origin" floating in an Asteroid Thicket. Since the ship's sensors cannot identify the object, Burnham volunteers to investigate it in person. The Klingons, having been hiding in the system, jump in and confront the Shenzhou, and Capt. Georgiou sends a distress signal to Starfleet.
• Meanwhile, Burnham reaches the Obelisk, and is confronted by Voq, the warrior selected by the House of T'Kuvma to have the honour of being the Torchbearer who will sound the signal for the Houses to unite. Burnham fights Voq, and though she succeeds in fatally wounding him, he manages to sound the Obelisk and leaves Burnham unconscious and adrift in space.
• Georgiou has managed to stall long enough for a few nearby Federation starships to arrive, among them the USS Europa, which recovers Burnham. But the Klingons, having achieved their immediate goal in sounding the Obelisk's signal, decide to attack the Federation ships before superior forces can be gathered. The Shenzhou is damaged, and the Europa is overwhelmed and wrecked.
• Aboard the Europa, Burnham crosses paths with an escaped prisoner from the ship's brig — Harry Mudd. He taunts her before leaving to steal a shuttlecraft (or maybe his own craft) to flee the ship before the warp core loses containment. Burnham manages to seal herself into a room or section of corridor with protective forcefields just before the Europa explodes, leaving the crew on the Shenzhou in shock and Burnham trapped in a dwindling cube of air.
• Scanning the wreckage of the Europa, Saru or another bridge officer notices a lifesign or a signal from Burnham's communicator. In desperation (or perhaps because the Shenzhou cannot get a lock through all the debris), Burnham drops the forcefield and launches herself through space across the gap back to the Shenzhou, where another forcefield is briefly dropped to allow her aboard. Burnham is taken to Doctor Nambue in sickbay.
• With the Shenzhou clearly outmatched, Capt. Georgiou orders a retreat. But Burnham advocates taking the fight to the Klingons while they still have a chance, and targeting their leader, without whom the Klingons might disperse back to their Empire. Saru manages to find a way to sneak both Georgiou and Burnham aboard the Klingons' flagship and it is initially successful, but they are both overwhelmed by the warriors, and Georgiou pulls a You Shall Not Pass! (and gets killed or captured in the process) to allow Burnham to escape back to the Shenzhou.
• With the Klingons thus alerted to the Federation ship's presence, they pounce on the Shenzhou, overwhelm both the ship and the crew, and start boarding the vessel. As the new commanding officer, Burnham realizes that you have to Know When to Fold 'Em and safeguards as many of the crew as she can while they Abandon Ship. Satisfied with their victory, T'Kuvma and his Klingons decide not to Sink the Lifeboats (as it would be dishonourable) and instead recover their own dead, including Voq.
• The lifeboats and shuttlecraft from the Shenzhou and any other starships that managed to evacuate are picked up on the fringes of the system by the USS Discovery. Seeing what faces him and his crew, Capt. Lorca decides not to stay and fight, and chooses to transport the survivors back to the nearest Starbase (or to Starfleet Command on Earth). Burnham faces court-martial for losing the Shenzhou and starting what could be a new Klingon War, but Lorca feels that she did what was necessary to survive.
• The Klingons have recovered Voq's body and, to honour his great sacrifice for their cause, assemble their warriors for a funeral ceremony in the heart of T'Kuvma's battleship. They scream out to Sto-Vo-Kor as Voq's coffin rises to join the others layered throughout the ship.

Confirmed, on a very general level. The USS Discovery is apparently to first appear in the third episode.

Worf knows why the Klingons look so differently

But he does not discuss it with outsiders.

Burnham is Pike's Number One, the character originally played by Majel Barrett in the first pilot

This has been rumored for a while, and even though there are some black marks against it by now I think it could still turn out to be true. There's still room for her to have served as Pike's first officer for a few years before transferring to the Shenzhou. Barrett's Number One was specifically noted as presenting a facade of emotionlessness, which sure sounds like a human raised in Vulcan climes. Sure, the actors don't look anything alike, but Quinto and Pine aren't exactly dead ringers for Nimoy and Shatner.

• Jossed. The pilot of Discovery is set after the events of The Cage, at which point Burnham has been serving seven years on the Shenzhou.

The Evil Universe episode will feature a three-way cross-universe dilemma...

Between the Prime timeline, the Evil timeline, and the Reboot timeline. JJ Abrams will be cruelly mocked as the Burnham et al of the latter are portrayed as quippy, gun-toting, metal-blaring action heroes.

• Jossed. It never happens.

Holodecks will appear

Because at this point holodeck technology appearing earlier than the timeline suggests is possible is just part of the tradition, dammit.

• Of note is that holodecks were actually introduced in the 70s animated series. Harve Bennett ignored this development for the movies, so that's why so many people equate TNG with their first appearance.
  • TAS was considered non-canon by Gene Roddenberry. That's why Encounter at Farpoint (TNG) treated it like new technology and Flashback (VOY) stated that holodecks didn't exist as late as Star Trek VI.
• Jossed, at least so far; a virtual-reality environment does appear aboard Discovery at one point as a training simulation for Lorca and Tyler, but it's not composed of tangible holograms.

Season One

Episode 1 - The Vulcan Hello

Voq, the Klingon albino, is the same one killed in Blood Oath

He is a contemporary of Kang, Koloth and Kor during the era of Discovery and TOS, and might take revenge upon their first-born descendants decades later due to something that occurs during this series. With Klingons having longer lifespans, he could very well survive long enough to remain a threat into the 24th century, and as with humans, Klingon albinism should be quite rare.

• This has some basis, in that Kol is a member of House Kor, thus Voq would have some reason to hold a grudge at least in that case.
  • And Kol is dead as of "Into The Forest I Go", giving Kor a reason to hold a grudge as well.
• Additionally, the Albino from "Blood Oath" is implied to be a Klingon but only roughly looks like one. If the WMG below about Tyler being Voq-in-disguise is true, perhaps surgical modification and de-modification is what leads to the Albino's sub-Klingon appearance. And if it involved deep memory modification and he doesn't remember that he is Voq, that might be why he goes by the pseudonym of "The Albino".
• Very likely Jossed, since Voq is almost certainly gone from Ash Tyler's mind. Though, that doesn't preclude the possibility that Tyler will seek to be remade Klingon, and later become the Albino.

Voq was a member of the House of Mogh

For no particular reason other than that it would make an interesting connection and contrast to another disgraced member of that household.

• Appears to be Jossed since a female high council member in season 2 can be seen wearing the emblem that Worf wore on his baldric.

Sarek and the lessons of "The Vulcan Hello" indirectly prevented a second Romulan War

• This episode has some striking similarities to the TOS episode "Balance of Terror." In "Balance of Terror," Enterprise came face-to-face with a long-absent enemy that had developed heretofore unknown cloaking technology. When a Romulan bird-of-prey probes Federation defenses by destroying several Starfleet outposts along the Neutral Zone, Spock insists that the only way to prevent catastrophe is to fire on that bird-of-prey. Like Burnham (another child of Sarek), Spock is essentially suggesting that Enterprie give the Romulan ship "The Vulcan Hello." Kirk, who is canonically a history buff, readily accepted the plan; probably knowing what happened the last time a Federation starship found itself in this position but waited too long to take action.

Episode 2 - Battle At The Binary Stars

Sarek's actions to save Burnham did have a lasting cost

Sarek relates that he shared a part of his katra with Burnham when she was a child, to save her life during the Klingon attack that killed her parents. He also alludes to his long-distance telepathy having physical costs, making it arguably a Dangerous Forbidden Technique, which he only resorts to out of critical urgency.

What if this accumulated toll on Sarek is what led to him contracting Bendii Syndrome by the era of The Next Generation? Moreover, it might be part of the reason he was so agitated in The Search for Spock about the importance of recovering and returning Spock's katra intact after his Heroic Sacrifice in the battle at the Genesis Planet.

• Being human, Burnham would almost certainly have died of old age by the TNG era. That would mean part of Sarek's katra died with her. This could be considered an exacerbating factor.
  • Doctor McCoy survived until at least "Encounter at Farpoint", so it's not impossible, but short of the fal-tor-voh ritual (if that's what it was called) performed by the priestess at Mount Seleya, there's probably no way to rejoin that part of Sarek's katra with the main part that still resides in him.

Episode 3 - Context Is For Kings

The main reason the two lead researchers were separated.

Starfleet didn't want to lose both of their lead researchers in a single accident such as the one seen in the episode.

• Jossed; apparently, it was a crude attempt to get faster results.

Captain Lorca will betray the Federation and will become the main antagonist.

• It's Jason Isaacs. When was the last time he played a good guy?
  • Other than being the star of the series "The Dig" most recently? Quite often.
  • Confirmed. Lorca is actually from the Mirror Universe. And Jossed, since he doesn't live long enough to be the Big Bad. But, his actions do screw over the other characters, big time.
• As a consequence of this, Michael Burnham will inherit command of the USS Discovery.
  • Jossed. Saru gets Discovery, at least temporarily.

Burnham will not be first officer on the Discovery, at least initially.

• Even having someone with pull get her out of prison doesn't mean she gets her rank back. Also, descriptions released of the characters indicate Cadet Tilly is going to be bunkmates with Burnham; senior officers, especially ship senior officers, do not bunk with cadets. Someone who's been busted down, on the other hand ...
  • The real first officer could be Commander Landry, who (somewhat suspiciously) hasn't been detailed at all above and beyond being the ship's chief of security, and who is played by Rekha Sharma of Battlestar Galactica fame.
    • Jossed, Landry is subordinate to Saru (see below), and at any rate, she is killed by "Ripper" fairly early on in the series.
  • Maybe Burnham becomes the chief engineer — no such character has been announced as of yet, and from pre-release articles, she seems to do a lot of work down in the engineering sections of the ship with Lt. Stamets, Cadet Tilly and their subsection of the sciences department, which is somehow related to the Discovery's means of warp-drive propulsion.
    • Jossed, Stamets is nominally the chief engineer, as it was his work that contributed to the development of the spore drive.
  • Maybe Burnham becomes a strategic operations officer, much like Worf did on DS9.
• And confirmed. Saru was promoted and is first officer of the ship, while Burnham is an unranked, unofficial crewmember. Until Burnham is reinstated to full commander and the chief science officer at the end of the first season.

Those other prisoners are already dead.

• Saru sensed death as the shuttle was leaving, and given Burnham was transferred 'hush hush', the prisoners are a massive loose end. That shuttle will later be conveniently found lost with all hands, and 'Michael Burnham' will be officially declared dead.

The entire shuttle mishap at the start of the episode was a con job

• The timing is a little too just so, with the Discovery happening across the shuttle within moments of the pilot's tether breaking and sending her tumbling off into space. Also, many of Lorca's crew imply that if he wants something, say, the addition of a convicted mutineer to his crew, there's little that will stop him. On top of this, Burnham notes that the shuttle made a course change during the trip, implying that it adjusted course to rendezvous with the Discovery. This brings up two possibilities:
  • Captain Lorca arranged the whole accident, seeding the shuttle's path with the lightning bugs and sabotaging the pilot's tether and the autopilot, essentially murdering an innocent Starfleet officer to get what he wanted.
  • Captain Lorca arranged the whole accident, seeding the shuttle's path with the lightning bugs, and having the pilot fake a broken tether, picking her up later. Note a seemingly unrelated PA announcement while the prisoners are disembarking aboard Discovery, summoning an Ensign Chiefowitz to the sick bay. Presumably they wanted to give her a once-over to ensure she wasn't injured in the freefall EVA.
• Seemingly confirmed. Captain Lorca is revealed in "Vaulting Ambition" to originally be from the Mirror Universe, and his partner-in-crime was Mirror-Burnham, meaning he picked her for his crew based on his familiarity (or favouritism) with her.

Captain Lorca is a Section 31 operative.

• Jossed as of "Vaulting Ambition", unless Section 31 also exists in his native Mirror Universe.

Episode 4 - The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry

Burnham will become Discovery's Tactical Officer at some point

• She's not averse to using weapons and Discovery's short of one now.
  • Jossed. At the end of the first season, she is reinstated to her former rank and appointed the ship's science officer.

The "Everything" Voq will have to give up is his Klingon appearance

The House of Mo'Kai is said to be known for being deceivers. What better deception, and what better way to win the war on a wider, more tactical scale, than to disguise yourself as the enemy and infiltrate them? As a follower of T'Kuvma, remaining Klingon is of upmost important to Voq, which would make it the ultimate sacrifice. This could end up being a completely different explanation for why the Klingons look far more human by the era of the Original Series. Also, this could tie into theories about the tribbles, since a Klingon-detecting device isn't very useful when they're extremely alien, but would be a lot more useful when they start looking so different that you don't realize they're there.

• Confirmed. He became the "Ash Tyler" we met.

Lorca is a Klingon.

Add to the fact that Lorca acts more like a Klingon captain than a Starfleet one, there are several things that ought be noted:

• The tribble on his desk is a red herring. Normally tribbles are terrified of Klingons, but this Tribble doesn't eat the abundant starch products near it. It's not your normal tribble. Who is to say it has been altered or trained not to freak out over Lorca?
• There's a clear two second establishing shot of Lorca eating some sort of seafood with tentacles when he's interrupted by Admiral Caldwell. It happens to be the same seafood the Klingons are eating when Kol bribes Voq's crew.
• Lorca claims to have recently had cosmetic surgery for his eyes and prefers dark spaces. Klingons have always canonically preferred dark spaces.
• Landry explicitly notes that he isn't afraid of the same things as other humans are.
• This is Prime 'verse, so human-looking Klingons have always been a factor.
• Maybe he is a renegade Klingon working for Starfleet, or has his own axe to grind against the Empire? This also makes him much more heroic, ironically.
  • All Jossed. Lorca is captured and tortured for information by the Klingons in "Choose Your Pain". It's revealed that his sensitivity to light is a result of injuries sustained during the destruction of the USS Buran, his previous ship, that he's refused to have corrected as a form of penance at being the sole survivor.
  • How do you know? He's sole survivor, *and* he says he blew up the ship to save his crew from humiliation. Sounds like how a Klingon captain would act and rationalise being the sole survivor, doesn't it? Perhaps he is a modified impostor and the real Lorca died on the Buran.
    • You do realize that Admiral Cornwell, who is a trained psychologist, has been in a relationship with Lorca since apparently well before the destruction of the Buran, and evaluated him thereafter? Contrary to Lt. Tyler's lack of family ties (see "Choose Your Pain" below), Cornwell has been in regular contact with Lorca for a while and would realize immediately if he had been replaced with an impostor, given how well they know each other (at the very least in the biblical sense).
    • It's still open, since she found some rather strange looking scars on Lorca's back (which he gets *really* angry about) and actually can't read him properly. She doesn't know if it's PTSD or something else entirely. Amusingly, the only on-screen evidence against this theory is that Lorca suddenly acts cowardly when she calls him out on it, begging to keep his ship.
    • But if Lorca has been replaced by a Klingon at some point, Cornwell presumably would have noticed a sudden lack of intimate familiarity on Lorca's part as soon as the next time that they bedded one another. If Lorca is a Klingon in disguise, then he must have been one since long before the destruction of the Buran, or at least before his relationship with Cornwell started, which is implied to have been ongoing for some time.
• Jossed indeed — he's from the Mirror Universe, and if the Terrans' paranoia and Fantastic Racism are any indication, he's a genuine human.

Episode 5 - Choose Your Pain

Tyler is really Voq

• The discussion between Tyler and Lorca makes no sense, given the timelines involved. Tyler claims he was captured at the Battle of the Binary Stars, and therefore has been a prisoner for 7 months, however he stated he's survived so long because L'Rell took a liking to him, implying they've been involved a fairly lengthy period of time. The previous episode, however, established that L'Rell had been stranded for six months before she and Voq made their own escape from the system. There's no indication that T'Kuvma's followers had any human prisoners, and if they did, given the situation the Klingons found themselves in, it's unlikely any prisoners would have lived very long one way or the other, and certainly Voq and L'Rell didn't have any with them when they left. Also, at best, it's been only three weeks or so since L'Rell could have assumed command of the ship, which doesn't fit with Tyler's implied timeline (and why would she have been given a ship?). Given L'Rell's belonging to T'Kuvma's Klingon purity cult, even though she's practical when it comes to survival, it seems unlikely she'd be the type to take a human as a sex partner. Thus, the whole thing with capturing Lorca and the escape may have been a Batman Gambit to get a disguised Voq on board the Discovery where he could get the secret of the ship's drive, and any problems he had fitting in with the Starfleet crew excused by claiming the trauma of his imprisonment.
  • If Mudd wasn't in on it, then his comment abut Tyler being a bit nuts also fits in: a disguised Voq would find trouble initially fitting in, and the excuse of trauma causing him to act a bit weird provides cover. Pretending to be a prisoner gives him the opportunity to practice; if any other prisoner catches on, they can quickly be eliminated and replaced to allow him to continue until he's capable of fooling other humans. Being a "sex toy" for L'Rell also provides an explanation for him being taken and spending private time with her, giving her the opportunity to continue training him in spycraft or review his performance.
  • Assuming the preceding is true, it makes Lorca's pet tribble a Chekhov's Gun, and that "Tyler" is probably going to have to eliminate Saru at some point due to his danger sense.
  • This also explains pre-release news that Shazad Latif was originally supposed to play a Klingon but was recast as Tyler for some reason. If Tyler is really Voq, then any leaks about Tyler being a Klingon could be dismissed as confusion due to his actor supposed to have been a Klingon.
  • Another red flag is that Javid Iqbal, Voq's credited actor, is most likely a pseudonym. His IMDB page has no bio or other credits — very unusual for such a high-profile role — and an internet search shows no apparent online presence. This leads to suspicions that he is being played by another cast member, with Latif being the prime suspect due to his height, build, previous casting as a Klingon, and the suspicious timing and circumstances of his first appearance. Of course, even if true, that doesn't necessarily mean Voq and Tyler are connected. It may have simply been to avoid misleading people into thinking that.
  • It could just as easily be a Red Herring — Latif may well have had trouble with the extensive prosthetics required to play a Klingon (Kol, if reports were correct) on the show and got recast as a result. And one would reasonably expect that the very first thing that the Discovery crew would do, after bringing Lt. Tyler aboard, is to haul him straight to Dr. Culber in sickbay for a thorough medical exam after seven months of imprisonment. There would at least be some traces of Klingon physiology or surgical modifications left after such an extensive procedure, and a holographic disguise would presumably be seen through immediately. Unless the Klingons have some means of overwriting Voq's brain patterns and consciousness onto Lt. Tyler's neural physiology as a means of infiltration?
    • And note that in "The Trouble With Tribbles," a Klingon spy's human facade couldn't stand up to even a cursory scan by a medical tricorder.
    • Though, it is worth noting that the tricorder used to scan Darvin is 10 years ahead of the current model. It is reasonable to assume, especially since the Federation doesn't have a great deal of knowledge about Klingon physiology at the time of this series, that current medical scan technology isn't advanced enough to pick up the physiological inconsistencies that would give Tyler away.
    • It's not like there isn't precedent for such a ruse succeeding, though — in the DS9 episode "Tribunal", the Cardassians managed to pull a Kill and Replace on a human prisoner who was O'Brien's shipmate from the USS Rutledge, and it actually more-or-less worked for something like eight whole years until Dr. Bashir was able to uncover the modification by Spotting the Thread of the imposter's first molar having been removed (as happens to all Cardassians at age 10) and consequently freeing O'Brien from the Kangaroo Court he was facing on Cardassia Prime. It must have been some seriously robust surgical modification to stand up to inspection to such an extent that it fooled all of "Boone"'s friends and colleagues into ascribing all his personality changes to PTSD.
  • Potentially Jossed in "Lethe", where Lorca subjects him to detailed questioning over his personal history. Not like memories haven't been faked before, but with 23rd century medical technology in Trek, it seems unlikely.
    • Lorca didn't ask anything that someone well-prepared with a background briefing on the real Tyler wouldn't know. Note also that Tyler's mother is conveniently dead, and his father was long gone, thus there are no close family who could ruin the impersonation by asking things about his childhood that only a parent would know. Then there's the fact he knew how to fly a Klingon raider well enough to impress Lorca, the comment Lorca drops about him "fighting like a Klingon" and Tyler's response that he picked it up as a prisoner ... really, they're dropping hints really hard at this point.
    • "Dropping hints really hard"? With shows written the way that they are today, that's all the more reason to believe that the prospect of Tyler being a Klingon is just a Red Herring. Of course we're supposed to suspect him at this point, so that the twist that someone else is a traitor, a Section 31 operative, or a Klingon spy is preserved to better blindside the audience.
  • In episode 7, Mudd attempts to steal the Discovery to sell it to the Klingons. If Tyler were really a Klingon agent (Voq or someone else), why would he not help Mudd carry this plan out?
    • Because Tyler doesn't remember who he really is. In episode 9, the flashbacks he's having could refer undergoing torture, but could also be interpreted as undergoing surgery to alter his appearance. Tyler is the perfect deep-cover agent; he doesn't realize he's an agent until triggered by his handlers. Mudd was a Wild Card that wasn't planned for.
    • It jives with L'Rell's line about him having to "give up everything" — perhaps everything included his own personal identity and memories as Voq. Though, if this process involved surgical modification, there's still no reason why the complete physical examination that "Tyler" must have received upon his arrival aboard Discovery didn't pick up at least some deep traces of Klingon physiology (when a simple tricorder scan of the spy in "The Trouble With Tribbles" was enough to conclusively unmask him).
• Given L'Rell's statement to him at the end of "Into The Forest I Go" about her protecting him from anyone causing him harm, the odds that he isn't Voq are significantly lower.
  • Of course, the sentiment also tracks with her having a creepy Yandere thing for him. Of course, it's possible that he is Voq, serving as an unwitting deep cover agent for L'Rell, and also the subject of a creepy Yandere thing. For all we know, even Voq might not be a willing participant in that.
• It may be that Lieutenant Ash Tyler is genuinely a human being and a former POW of the Klingons who suffered relentless trauma during his incarceration — but at some point, L'Rell had Voq undergo a procedure that transferred Voq's mind or consciousness into Tyler's brain, turning Tyler into an unwilling Sleeper Agent and leaving Voq's personality ready to pull a Grand Theft Me at a moment's notice. And L'Rell just enjoys taunting Tyler For the Evulz.
• Confirmed as of Episode 10 "Despite Yourself". Voq was surgically altered into a human, enough to pass basic medical scans but in-depth scanning revealed more extensive alteration, and "Tyler" is a personality overlying Voq's own. A prayer to Kahless was supposed to be the trigger to awaken Voq, but something went wrong.

Tyler is a Klingon altered by the Augment virus.

We know that human-looking Klingons should be somewhere out there during this time period, so Tyler may be one of them. Note that this must not be mutually exclusive to the theory above - perhaps infecting Voq with the virus and then giving him the cure was exactly the way L'Rell altered his appearance.

• As above, that wouldn't alter his inner physiology. And it really stretches disbelief that he wouldn't retain his albinism.
• Jossed. He's been surgically altered.

Ripper's biology will be used for later-era bio-neural computing by Starfleet

The Discovery crew released Ripper and Starfleet can't find any more giant tardigrades to run their spore drive units. At the same time, the biological knowledge gained so far allows Stamets to inject himself to act as a replacement, but that seems unsustainable in the long run. It seems reasonably that even if the spore drive gets mothballed, as seems a Foregone Conclusion, Starfleet could at least eventually put some of the research to good use by developing the bio-neural gel packs by the era of Voyager, which allowed for much faster computing (and plenty of plot devices).

Episode 6 - Lethe

Admiral Cornwell is Lethe

• The episode title shares the same name as a character in a TOS episode, "Dagger of the Mind." Said character used to be a former patient in a psychiatric facility who "got better" and became a therapist herself. Now, this episode title (a river in Hades that makes you forget) makes no sense because it's all about memories and remembering a) Sarek's failure as a stepfather b) what Burnham recalls as the lowest point pre-mutiny and c) Cornwall and Lorca's past together. Could it be possible that Cornwall, who is captured later in this episode, be that same Lethe?
  • Seemingly Jossed when L'Rell apparently kills her in "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum", but then Cornwell turns up alive, albeit half-paralyzed, in "Into The Forest I Go".
    • Might still be Jossed, since the future Lethe wasn't paralyzed, was she?
    • And just like that, Cornwell undergoes medical treatment and is no longer paralyzed, and shows definite signs of Jumping Off the Slippery Slope towards the end of the first season. No outright Sanity Slippage, though.

Captain Lorca will eventually assume a Nom de Guerre: "Garth of Izar"

• The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Whom Gods Destroy" introduced a one-off character: Garth of Izar, a highly-decorated former Starfleet officer who was regarded as a tactical genius that lead his forces to a victory during a key battle against an unspecified enemy. At some point prior to TOS, Fleet Captain Garth was said to have gone mad and attempted a genocide, for which he was confined to a Federation mental hospital. With the events of Star Trek: Discovery, it seems fairly safe to assume that the unnamed foe that Garth is said to have defeated was the Klingons.
  
  Captain Lorca is introduced to us as a highly-decorated Starfleet officer who is regarded as a tactical genius, and who is fighting a war against the Klingons. While his ship is considered a secret weapon, and therefore does not participate in fleet actions, Discovery has already won a number of skirmishes against the Klingons, and Lorca seems to be gaining quite a reputation among the Federation and the Klingons, alike. He seems to be something of a Blood Knight, though, and is more than willing to do some very questionable things to win the war. "Lethe" makes a point of showing that he's also a little unstable. It's not hard to imagine that the stress and trauma of the war could lead to some significant sanity slippage in Lorca that eventually results in an attempted genocide. There are also a few other reasons to suspect that they might be the same person:
  1. The timeline would match up pretty well, and Garth's conspicuous absence from the computer's list of the most decorated Starfleet captains that Saru requested suggests that he and Lorca are contemporaries, and that the battle that made him famous hasn't taken place yet.
  2. The episode's title, "Lethe," refers to a river in Hades, the waters of which, according to Greek mythology, would cause someone to forget their earthly troubles. At the end of "Whom Gods Destroy," Garth is given a treatment that seems to have virtually cured him, but which has also caused him to forget everything that happened since he went mad.
  3. "Lethe" was also the name of a character from TOS who just happened to be a therapist in a Federation mental hospital. Foreshadowing, perhaps?
  4. "Lord" Garth and Captain Lorca look remarkably alike. The two could easily pass for brothers—to the point that it's not even remotely difficult to picture Lorca looking exactly like Garth in about a decade's time.
• Jossed. It's a Red Herring, as Lorca is really his duplicate from the Mirror Universe, and dies in a failed coup.

Episode 7 - Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad

Mudd killed Lorca for the 54th time with a Varon-T disruptor

Immediately after the Death Montage of Mudd's previous time-loop murders of Captain Lorca, Mudd then tries a seemingly unidentified weapon on Lorca which vaporizes him distinctly slower than any other energy weapon shown so far in the series. Granted, it doesn't seem to cause extreme agony in the process, but maybe Lorca was dead before he could react. Even worse, what if this is one of the pistols that Kivas Fajo later collected in the 24th century?

Episode 8 - Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

Saru or Stamets will die.

• Jossed. The "time to grieve" mentioned by Lorca was for the crew of the Gagarin, not Saru or Stamets.

In the mirror universe, Tilly is the Captain of Discovery.

• Confirmed

Tilly will become a Captain.

Stamets exists outside of linear time; he's clearly referring to Tilly's future in Starfleet (considering the timeline, that would logically put her in a Romper Red by the time she's gained the experience needed.)

Admiral Cornwell isn't dead.

In their fight, L'Rell makes it a point to *shock* Admiral Cornwell, instead of using a knife which she literally had in her hand. She then is tasked with body removal duty, and dutifully drags Cornwell (surprisingly carefully) into a room with a bunch of Klingons who will not be missed (as the classic Klingon cultural norm of not caring about dead bodies appears to hold sway with the rest of the Empire). She is also a member of the House of Mo'kai, established to be a house skilled at subterfuge. It is also in L'Rell's interest to keep her alive - either she is accepted by the House of Kor and she can bust her out of the ship later, or she is banking on her waking up later and being a variable / nuisance for Kol, which would be a useful distraction from her own troubles if Kol believes she has double crossed him (as is the case in the episode).

• Confirmed. Cornwell is found by Burnham and Tyler still alive and is rescued in "Into The Forest I Go".

Episode 9 - Into the Forest I Go

The Discovery has emerged in the Mirror Universe.

It may be that the jump took the Discovery between universes instead of between points in space, and that the Klingon wreckage around them is due to a Curb-Stomp Battle delivered by the Terran Empire.

• Confirmed on both counts. In fact, the Mirror Universe's Discovery is implied to have wrecked the Klingon fleet by herself.

The Discovery has emerged into the Kelvin Universe.

After their jump, they are surrounded by wreckage of Klingon ships, possibly the fleet of battlecruisers which attempted to intercept the Narada. Not likley, but fun to consider.

• Jossed.

Captain Lorca actually selected the Discovery's destination.

Lorca deliberately programmed a jump to an unknown destination, rather than the Discovery arriving in an unknown location due to an accident.

• Seemingly Jossed when they arrived exactly where they were supposed to, but in the Mirror Universe.
• Later Confirmed. The Lorca we met is actually from Mirror Universe, and used Discovery and Michael Burnham to get back to his home universe to get revenge on Emperor Georgiou.

This Lorca is originally from the Mirror Universe, having taken the place of the real Gabriel Lorca.

It could be a case of Kill and Replace, or the prime-universe Gabriel Lorca is still out there somewhere (e.g. hidden or imprisoned).

• Alternately, the original Captain Lorca died with his crew, and Mirror!Lorca made up the story of destroying his ship to spare his crew from Klingon hospitality. This could also explain how he was able to pass Admiral Cornwell's psyche screening: There's nothing wrong with him, psychologically, he hasn't suffered the many hardships everyone assumed he did due to the Buran's loss.
• Confirmed.

What's happening to Stamets is the same thing that happened to Gary Mitchell

• After the final jump with the spore drive, Lt. Stamets collapses and his eyes film over. He then starts babbling about how he can see "infinite permutations" of something. We've actually seen something similar happen before, in the second TOS pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," when Enterprise crossed the inexplicable energy field at the edge of the galaxy, and two crew members gained what they described as god-like powers. Those powers included greatly-expanded perception, and filmed-over eyes.
  
  It should be noted that there's also a very suspicious bit of dialogue between Lorca and Stamets that, at first glance, seems to be an offhand nod to the famous TOS opening narration, but takes on an entirely different meaning if Stamets has been changed as Gary Mitchell was:
  Lorca: ... You could have stayed on Earth, but you chose to go where no one has gone before.
  • This would also explain why the Spore Drive disappears from later use: if one of the potential side effects of using it is "becomes psychopathic god-like entity", it would be in the Federation's interest to bury all information on it so deep that even Section 31 has no interest in fooling around with it due to the potential threat.

Episode 10 - Despite Yourself

From Now on the Show Will Switch to a Voyager/Sliders Format

• Episode 9 largely wraps up the Discovery's original Story Arc. The Klingon flagship and war leader have been destroyed, and a way for the rest of the war to be won has been sent off to the Federation, so we don't have to worry about what will happen there without the Discovery. Meanwhile, all of the main characters, including the Klingon ones (assuming Voq was turned into a Sleeper Agent and is on the ship) are on the ship. Also, Stamets' dialogue has been hammering in not simply the idea of a Mirror Universe, but an entire Multiverse. Therefore, I'm guessing that from now on they will be jumping between a variety of different Star Trek universes and time eras trying to find their way home. As an extra note, this could explain why the Discovery universe has always contradicted ours: it was just one of many different universes all along. ^note This theory was made believing that the Discovery got to send out the information about the cloak, but upon rewatching realized that was not the case.
  • Taking a "quantum leap", perhaps? Who knows, it could be an apt Actor Allusion to The Captain of an older Trek series.
  • Except taking out Kol didn't result in a Decapitated Army, and the Klingons actually redoubled their attack once he was killed, presumably as a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Also, the cloak-detection specifications were never sent to Starfleet — if anything, once the Discovery and her crew find a way back from wherever (or whenever) they are, they might find a Federation wondering where the Discovery went or if it was destroyed, up against the ropes facing an enraged Klingon Empire. Stamets has certainly been coming Unstuck in Time by interfacing with the spore drive, but he doesn't seem to be hopping the multiverse, and nothing portrayed in Discovery is so radically different that it isn't covered by the Broad Strokes that Trek canon has used on plenty of occasions before.
• Jossed. The Discovery gets back to the prime universe before the end of the season, and the lead-in to the second season is a straightforward Sequel Hook.

Mirror-Burnham will be revealed to have taken command of the Shenzhou by killing Georgiou

• While this wouldn't be particularly surprising, in the Mirror Universe, it will cause Burnham angst.
  • Jossed — Georgiou is very much alive in the Mirror Universe (see below).

The Terran Empire's Emperor will be either Mirror-Burnham or Mirror-Lorca ... or perhaps both as partners.

• The foreshadowing about how no one knows what the Emperor looks like combined with both Lorca and Burnham being missing leads to the possibility that one or both of them in cooperation secretly carried out a coup and seized power without the outside world being any the wiser and they (one or both) continue to rely on obscurity for defense; after all, who would suspect a missing and presumed dead captain or a well-known traitor who is on the run really being in charge?
  • Jossed, unless one of them pulls a successful coup before the Mirror Universe Story Arc is complete. Although it is revealed that they actually were partners who tried to seize control.

The Terran Empire's Emperor will be Mirror-Georgiou

• It's not mentioned who the previous captain of the Shenzhou was, and Mirror-Burnham seems to be very obedient to the heir of Empress Hoshi Sato.
  • Confirmed.

Discovery just created a paradox that split it from the main Star Trek timeline

• The Discovery crew has just learned that in about ten years, the USS Defiant will be transported back in time and into the Mirror Universe. That's information that Starfleet Command can likely use to prevent the Defiant from ever disappearing at all. This means that Defiant's crew won't kill each other, the ship will not be pulled into interspace, and that Enterprise will not have a violent confrontation with the Tholians. This will change both the regular and the Mirror universes in completely unpredictable ways.
  • No, Burnham has postulated that some time in the future the Defiant will be transported back in time. Heck, as far as they know it's already happened since the last update they received on its position. Unless they specifically get all its records (assuming the way home involves them actually getting them) they won't know when it happens. It could be next week, it could be years after the ship is pulled from active service and is decommissioned.
  • And as the "commanding officer" of the ISS Shenzou, Burnham now has access to records that would easily allow her to pinpoint exactly when Defiant will be lost; or, at the very least, when her original crew stops making routine log entries—which are always prefaced by a precise stardate. It would be ridiculously negligent of her not to make every effort to get that information back to Starfleet Command. If the Empire knows when the Defiant disappeared — and it would be ridiculous to assume that it wouldn't — Burnham will soon know, as well.
  • Not necessarily. The Defiant has been in the Empire's possession for a century, and early on was jealously guarded, first attempted by Archer and then obviously by Hoshi when she carried out her campaign to become Empress. While more information became known about it, it's entirely possible the details were classified and secured and not available to just everyone, even Fleet captains. Right now, Burnham and Lorca's best guess is that they can find out more information by Burnham gaining access, but it's only a guess. Given that the Mirror Universe arc will cover several episodes, it would seen the information isn't just in the Shenzhou's database because otherwise Burnham could just get it and then have her, Tyler, and Lorca beamed back to the Discovery.
  • Didn't Mirror-Archer or someone else state in "In A Mirror, Darkly" that they were going to wipe the memory banks of the Defiant in order to prevent people from learning about their Good Counterparts in the prime universe and the Federation? So the logs, records and related data in the Defiant's main computer may no longer exist any further back than when it was taken over by the Terran Empire.
    • Specifically, Archer ordered Sato to wipe the historical records—though, admittedly, that would probably include any log entries that reference historical events in the regular universe. Everything else was presumably left intact.
  • Jossed. As "Vaulting Ambition" reveals, those records are heavily redacted. Burnham and the crew have no idea where or when the event will happen, only that it will, and they aren't likely to be given exact dates at this point. No paradox.

Episode 11 - The Wolf Inside

Discovery will be severely outclassed by anything in the Imperial fleet

• The starship Defiant was already about ten years more advanced than Discovery when she was recovered by Archer. Since then, the Empire has had a full century to study her systems and the contents of her library computer. Once they understood the principles on which Defiant's systems operate, they could have even started to build on that technology. The result is a Terran fleet equipped with stronger deflector shields, more powerful weapons, faster engines, and better sensors than anything used by Discovery. In fact, this might have already been hinted at when the ISS Cooper seemingly had no trouble targeting the Vulcan ship that Discovery couldn't get a fix on, and by the wreckage of a Klingon fleet that seems to have been absolutely curbstomped by the Mirror Universe's version of Discovery. Worse, the one advantage our Discovery might have had over Imperial warships — namely, the spore drive — seems to be out of commission for the foreseeable future.
  • The Emperor's cloaked ship — quite possibly the Defiant itself — certainly seems able to outclass Discovery by a large margin, what with being able to lay waste to a planet.
    • Laying waste to a planet is not necessarily conclusive evidence — by repeated (eg. more reliable) reference in TOS doing so is well within the capacity of a Federation Constitution-class and established enough as a possibility that Starfleet has orders invoking its use — it's just that the Federation Starfleet are the sorts to be very reluctant to do so and would only permit it in extreme need, while the Imperial Starfleet... isn't. That having been said, the other evidence is still indicative.
    • Based on some statements in the quasi-canonical technical manuals, photon torpedoes have a theoretical maximum blast of 600+ gigatons. For comparison, the last eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano is estimated at 875 gigatons. The Empire, basically, caused the equivalent of a dozen or so supervolcanoes going off all at once on one small area of the planet.
• Ultimately Jossed, as the Discovery takes down the I.S.S. Charon itself.

Mirror!Sarek and Prime!Sarek are now connected by their katras.

• Just as Sarek was able to connect to Burnham after sharing his katra with her, Mirror!Sarek has potentially connected with his Prime counterpart by mind-melding with her while part of his counterpart's katra is in her mind.

Georgiou is a descendant of Hoshi Sato

• Assuming that Mirror!Hoshi’s coup in ‘’In A Mirror, Darkly’’ was successful, and assuming the position of Terran Emperor is hereditary, and assuming there was never another coup, Mirror!Georgiou would have to be a descendant, or at least relative, of Mirror!Sato. Since genealogies are seemingly always identical between the prime and mirror universes, Prime!Georgiou would therefore also have to be a descendant/relative of Prime!Hoshi. Tentatively backed up by the fact that both are played by Asian actresses, albeit of different backgrounds, but Georgiou’s background hasn’t been established.
  • As of the series finale, it's confirmed that Georgiou is from Pulau Langkawi, Malaysia (and that it has beautiful beaches, an endorsement which pleased the real-life residents of Pulao Langkawi quite a bit). Then again, her cognomens include "Iaponius", Latin for Japanese. The writers indicated that she might have affected that cognomen simply to claim a connection to Hoshi, rather than to indicate any blood relation.

The living Ash Tyler from the Mirror Universe will show up and take his prime-universe counterpart's place

• So the prime-universe Voq has now revealed himself as being surgically modified to become a fake Starfleet officer. However, Tyler's counterpart in the Mirror Universe has conspicuously not yet been encountered. Prime-universe Voq has pretty much crossed the Moral Event Horizon by murdering Dr. Culber and trying to do the same to the mirror-universe Voq and prime-universe Michael Burnham. Sometime in the remainder of this season seems a good time for the living Ash Tyler to show up, confront his imposter, and end up travelling back to the prime universe along with the Discovery and her crew to live in a more peaceful non-Crapsack World. Even better, the Rule of Drama applies, since the mirror-universe Tyler would be in a state of relationship dissonance with Burnham as he probably has no idea who she is (aside from name and maybe reputation in the Mirror Universe), and Burnham has just been dealing with the profound shock of the fake Tyler revealing himself as a Klingon agent right after the two of them got a Relationship Upgrade.
  • Apparently Jossed, as the Discovery returned to the prime universe without ever meeting the Mirror Ash Tyler.

The living Hugh Culber from the Mirror Universe will show up and take his prime-universe counterpart's place

• Clearly the prime-universe Dr. Culber is beyond anyone's medical aid after his Neck Snap at the hands of the prime-universe Voq. However, the producers have stated that they're explicitly trying to reject the Bury Your Gays trope, and interviews with them and Wilson Cruz have indicated that Dr. Culber's story and his relationship with Lt. Stamets are not yet over. Since the show has already shown a dead character via hologram or flashback (the prime-universe Captain Georgiou), it might make more dramatic sense to have the mirror-universe Culber show up very much alive and (re)unite with Lt. Stamets, with them working through the mental dissonance of Stamets having been in a largely stable relationship with Culber in the prime universe, while in the Mirror Universe their relationship may have been rocky, abusive or nonexistent.
  • Apparently Jossed, as the Discovery returned to the prime universe without ever meeting the Mirror Hugh Culber. Word of God states that this was intentional, thanks to Culber's Incorruptible Pure Pureness cheapening the effect of meeting any Evil Counterpart.

Mirror Voq survives the Terran attack on his base, flees and ends up finding a new hideout... on Cardassia.

Determined to revive his resistance movement, he then starts planting the seed of what will later become the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, which will many decades later finally succeed in overthrowing the Terran Empire.

Episode 12 - Vaulting Ambition

The Imperial Flagship is the U.S.S. Defiant.

• This explains why the ship wasn't revealed in the last episode, why its data is so heavily guarded, and also, interestingly, possibly why the Terran Empire was defeated. Defiant is now roughly only 10 years ahead technology-wise compared to the rest of the galaxy, and the Empire's relative technological supremacy has now ended. The only thing they have now is to put more and more guns on their ships, and that will lead to the "breaking point" Mirror Spock will speak of ten years later. It doesn't seem likely that Terran scientists would get anything done in the meantime, what with the paranoia and random executions and all.
  • There are some interesting tidbits to consider here: First, the wire-frame model of the Defiant that we're briefly shown is not the standard TOS Constitution-class cruiser. The version we see has several recessed notches around the perimeter of its primary hull, a small superstructure added to the dorsal engineering hull, a different hull configuration around the navigational deflector, and heavily modified nacelle pylons — incorporating what appear to be (and this is speculation) larger versions of the phaser cannons mounted on the "roll bar" of some Miranda-class starships. This is especially interesting because establishing shots of the Mirror Universe Enterprise in "Mirror Mirror" reused the filming model used in the second TOS pilot episode; implying that Mirror!Enterprise was somewhat less advanced than her regular timeline counterpart. This means either that the show has pointlessly redesigned the appearance of the most iconic ships in the entire franchise — and, arguably, all of modern science fiction — or that Defiant has been modified over the last century to the point that it looks like a different class entirely, and did not share those modifications with the rest of the Imperial fleet.
  • If the Defiant really is the Emperor's personal flagship, what's to say it hasn't had a number of "special modifications" to it over the near-century that it's been in the Mirror Universe? In fact, it'd be a pretty solid plan on the part of the Emperor to keep all other ships at least somewhat inferior to the Emperor's own vessel, just to further discourage or forestall some power-hungry Imperial captain from trying to obtain a Klingon Promotion. And even without such precautions, how often do we see Starfleet vessels lasting a century in continuous service? Enterprise NX-01 was retired after about a decade (in the series and the novels), the Enterprise NCC-1701 was supposed to be retired in The Search For Spock after "thirty years" despite an extensive refit a decade before, the Enterprise-A barely got seven years in service before being decommissioned, and the Enterprise-B (if it wasn't lost in service at some point) could not have served more than forty years before the Enterprise-C was launched. The implication being that, without massive upgrades, starships become obsolete or structurally worn out in a couple of decades, never mind a whole century of active service.
  • As far as pointless redesigns, it wouldn't be the first time the iconic design was redesigned, in-universe or out.
    • That was a update of an existing design with an in-universe explanation—ie., technology marches on. This would be a retcon of a design that we've known and loved for more than 50 years. There's a difference. This would be like Disney releasing a special edition of Star Wars where they paint flames and a racing stripe on the Death Star.
• Jossed. It's the I.S.S. Charon, a completely different ship.

The version of Culber in the Mycelium Network isn't Culber nor a figment of Stamets' imagination

This version of Culber is the Mycelium Network itself speaking to Stamets, via a form he's comfortable with. It tells him what he needs to hear in order to both escape from the network and to stop it's decay and death. Which means that Stamets finally got his wish, and was able to communicate with his mushrooms.

Episode 13 - What's Past Is Prologue

The version of Landry shown in the preview is actually the "Prime" Landry

The Landry introduced earlier in the series had far too much familiarity and similarity with who has now been revealed to be Mirror-Lorca to be a coincidence. So, the Landry introduced earlier in the season was Mirror-Landry, and the Landry shown in the preview is Prime-Landry, who got stuck in the Mirror Universe when Mirror-Lorca and Mirror-Landry crossed over. She's been stuck there the whole time, barely surviving.

• The extreme loyalty that Landry showed to Lorca, plus her blatantly racist attitude toward Burnham's Vulcan upbringing — which one would expect of a Terran far less capable of an actor than Lorca turned out to be — lends credence to the idea.
  • Jossed, she's the Mirror version.

Mirror-Landry is more "Prime-like" than Prime-Landry was

As a counter-theory to the one above, Prime-Landry is the same person as in the earlier episodes. But the Mirror Landry is a kinder, more stable person than her Prime counterpart who would fit right in with the Prime Universe crowd.

• Jossed, she's even worse.

Mirror-Landry will get to go back to the Prime Universe with the Discovery crew

Corollary to both above theories, it'd be nice to have Rekha Sharma back on the cast.

• They may need a new chief security officer, assuming Ash Tyler doesn't resume the position in the absence of Voq's personality.
• Or a new first or second officer, if Mirror-Lorca gets deposed as the captain of Discovery, as seems extremely likely at this point.
• Jossed, given that she's killed in the destruction of the Charon.

Prime!Lorca is alive and locked in an Agony Booth on the ISS Charon

Burnham will rescue him and take him back to the Prime Universe. He will be a standard-issue Nice Guy Starfleet captain, and the fandom will tediously split over whether We Want Our Jerk Back! or not. This is partially based on the supposition that they are not going to replace the extremely hot Jason Isaacs with Doug Jones in a metric tonne of latex.

• Jossed. All the prisoners are released early in the episode and he's not among them.

Prime!Lorca also died along with his entire crew.

There was no self-destruct because the Klingons simply destroyed the ship. Since Lorca's story about his light sensitivity being because of torture is now bunk, it's quite likely he made up the whole thing both to take his counterpart's place and having "PTSD" would help to cover any holes in his character.

The version of Burnham that Lorca is saying "welcome home" to in the promo is Mirror!Burnham.

She has been in hiding for some reason, and last twelve episodes have been all about Lorca trying to seize control of the Empire and get back to his girl. Which could be seen as being sweet, if you ignore the astronomically large amount of shitty things he has done.

• Jossed, it's the regular Burnham. Everyone (including Lorca) seems to think her mirror version is dead and there's nothing to indicate that isn't the case.

The version of Burnham that Lorca is saying "welcome home" to in the promo is Prime!Burnham.

He is trying to convince her to stay in the Mirrorverse with him, as his Michael is now dead.

• Confirmed.

Episode 14 - The War Without, The War Within

Time travel will a) fix the Klingon War b) bring Culber back

Word of God has said that the Stamets-Culber relationship is not over - going back nine months would allow them to rescue him; it'd also reset things as far as the Klingon War went.

• Jossed. The Klingon situation isn't as bad as assumed in the last episode, as 80% of the Federation remains free of Klingon occupation, although Starfleet has taken brutal losses.

Episode 15 - Will You Take My Hand?

The U.S.S. Discovery will battle the I.S.S. Discovery

Earlier on, the mid-season finale was centered around a Big Badass Battle Sequence against General Kol and the "ship of the dead". It seems possible that, in a form of Book Ends, the prime-universe Discovery and her crew have to travel back to their universe, but somewhere in the process they have to eliminate their Evil Counterparts from the Mirror Universe who are wreaking untold havoc amidst the chaos of the Federation-Klingon War (and presumably threatening any chance for peace). Since both ships appear to possess a spore drive, the only ship capable of catching the mirror Discovery would be the prime Discovery, and such a Mirror Match would be symbolic of the rejection of the racism and fascism of The Empire in favour of the ideals of The Federation.

• Jossed. Apparently Captain Tilly wasn't that great a captain, as the I.S.S. Discovery was destroyed in combat with the Klingons almost immediately after arriving in the Prime Universe.

Burnham's heroics will get her pardoned and re-instated in Starfleet.

Assuming they get home, presumably it will be thanks in large part to Burnham. The end of the season will demonstrate that her actions (among them rescuing Cornwell and Sarek, and getting the ship and crew home) have been noticed. She thus will go into Season 2 once more as a Starfleet officer.

• Confirmed. She's a commander again, and chief science officer on Discovery.

Q'onos won't be destroyed

This is pretty low-hanging fruit, since in both Original timeline and Kelvin timeline, Q'onos is still around. It's a Foregone Conclusion that Emperor ... err, "Captain" Georgiou's plan will fail.

• Confirmed

Q'onos will be destroyed

Then again... in the words of the late Captain Lorca: anything is possible.

• The series' creators have generally gone out of their way to ensure that the Trek prime-universe timeline hasn't ended up with any contradictions, save the cosmetic redesigns around the Klingons.
• Jossed

Burnham will get a pardon due to the implications of "Captain" Georgiou's return

Part of the reason she was convicted was the death of her captain. Now that the official record is that Georgiou is still alive (she's not, but only the top brass, Burnham herself, Captain Saru and a random transporter tech know that), there's cause to suspend the sentence.

• Jossed. Burnham's pardon and reinstatement is due entirely to her own actions.

The coming attack on Qo'nos is the reason why the Ketha Province is a run-down, poverty-stricken, ecologically-devastated area

Some form of the assault will indeed happen, and Mirror-Georgiou will try to devastate the planet, but the firepower isn't enough or the attack is cut off before it can get too out of hand, and only isolated areas are brought to ruin. This ends up including the Ketha Province, where generations later, a certain Klingon named Martok begins earning his rise through the ranks of the Empire's forces.

• Jossed. The attack on Qo'nos is aborted.

Burnham will have to mutiny against Georgiou again

In a different form of Book Ends, Mirror-Georgiou will probably start Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and trying to commit atrocities to end the war with the Klingons. But Burnham, and other characters supporting her, have strong enough principles to oppose that, so Burnham has to lead an uprising — legitimate this time — to remove Mirror-Georgiou from control and stop things from going off the deep end. Bonus points if Burnham is forced to kill Mirror-Georgiou to get the job done. To further invert the situation, Burnham may earn reinstatement from preventing war crimes, whereas her original mutiny against the prime-universe Georgiou was what led to her downfall from Starfleet.

• L'Rell will witness Burnham fighting to save Klingon lives, which will continue her re-evaluation of humanity that she's begun with Cornwell.
• Confirmed, somewhat. The crew threatens mutiny unless Starfleet rescinds the order to destroy Qo'nos. Georgiou isn't present when they do it, so when Burnham goes to stop her she has authority to do so. Burnham is reinstated in part for her moral stand. And L'Rell does witness Burnham saving her people.
• Plus, since Georgiou doesn't think these are "her" Klingons and she has no other reason to care about carrying out the mission other than her parole (which is granted in any event) she stands down without much resistance.

The attack on Qo'nos spurs the building of power generation facilities on Praxis

Starfleet's planned assault under Mirror-Georgiou will probably proceed, and as per WMGs above, will likely fail since Qo'nos continues existing into the 24th century in the prime Trek universe. But the Klingons will be caught by surprise and by their own complacency that no enemy had dared assault their homeworld in generations and their entire economy had been geared towards offensive warfare. So they decide to focus inwards and build up their defenses for a while, but for a planet on the scale of Qo'nos, that means a lot of power is needed to maintain those new fortifications. And so they start thinking — hey, that moon seems a good place for a massive new energy production facility, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? — and it ironically sows the seeds for lasting peace with the Federation by the end of the 23rd century.

Tyler will end up with L'Rell

They'll be very confused about it, but it seems the only people they have to turn to is each other.

• Confirmed

General, Season 1

The Tardigrade and Mycellium were the first "Sporocystian" life forms Star Fleet encountered before Star Trek: Voyager.

Mostly because of the "spore" part but also because of the spore's interdimensional nature and the caretaker's ability to access a special domain in subspace. The Tardigrade had Mycellium DNA and existed in a symbiotic relationship with the spores, so I include it too. Sporocystian could refer to interdimensional creatures linked to the mycellial domain.

The extra ring around the saucer section is part of the Spore Drive.

None of the other Federation ships we've seen have the extra ring around the saucer section and the Discovery is the only ship with a spore drive. The although there are Spore Drive components in engineering the ring might be a part of the Spore Drive in the same way the pylons are part of the warp drive.

• Confirmed. When the Discovery activates the spore drive, the dorsal surfaces of the two rings counter-rotate.

Michael Burnham will survive the events of this series and become captain of the USS Saratoga.

• The captain of the ill-fated Saratoga from The Voyage Home (played by Madge Sinclar) was not named onscreen and does bear some resemblance to an older Burnham. It would be fitting if she turned out to actually be the first (onscreen) female starship captain.
  • Related to the above, since the same actress later played Captain Silva La Forge, Michael Burnham is also Geordi's great-grandmother. This would of course make Geordi related to both Spock and Sarek by adoption.
  • If the above were true, why doesn't La Forge mention this when they meet Sarek or Spock?

The USS Discovery NCC-1031 is a Section 31 ship.

• Michael Burnham's prison transfer is sketchy.
• Black Badges are black uniforms. Section 31 is seen with black uniforms.
• Captain Lorca's projects are shady. The space fungi is useful for spying and propulsion. Bringing in a monster that killed its sister ship crew and some Klingon boarders the USS Glenn.
• Lorca recruited Burnham because she has already shown she would break the rules for the greater good.
  • Lorca's involvement, at least, has been Jossed by The Reveal that he's from the Mirror Universe. Whilst Lorca Prime might still be involved with that agency, he had nothing to do with Michael's recruitment and presumably the spore drive.
• Star Trek: Enterprise established that Section 31 existed during its timeframe, so the chronology works.
• A deleted scene from the first scene finale shows that the black badges are indeed Section 31 insignia.

Burnham may join Section 31 at least for a time.

• Even though Bryan Fuller is no longer the show runner, considering that Lorca is just as manipulative as Hannibal, while Michael does seems as shell-shocked as Will, what to say she isn't like Will, and will first deny she is anything like them before ended up totally agreeing to Lorca/Section 31's work and joined them?
• Given that Discovery has already done a direct sequel to a Star Trek: Enterprise episode ("In a Mirror, Darkly"), the possibility of bringing back Section 31 (chronologically introduced in the Enterprise timeframe) in a future episode is not out of the question.
  • Confirmed, although Burnham does not join Section 31. Mirror!Georgiou and Tyler do.

Burnham may end up falling in love with Lorca...

• ... and a few generations down we have Ben Sisko. That darkness, do anything neccessary including genocide, have to come form somewhere...
  • Confirmed after a fashion; Mirror-Burnham did in fact fall for Mirror-Lorca. Prime-Burnham did not.

The Discovery is responsible for the Tribbles we know

Lorca has a tribble on his desk next to some food, and the tribble doesn't eat the food or reproduce out of control. Meanwhile, the Discovery is experimenting with ways to win the war against the Klingons, and they're working with biological agents and things that can grow out of control very quickly. Perhaps the massively-reproducing, Klingon-hating tribbles are a result of some experiment on the Discovery (intentionally or not).

The differences from what we knew of this era in the original timeline are intentional

The series already goes beyond Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel, for instance having holo-communication that was explicitly treated as new a century later. The Klingons also stand out. Their physical redesign is said to be nothing more than a new design, but it seems odd that the creators would go to the trouble of making the language more accurate and realistic than ever before, while simultaneously portraying a subtly but importantly different culture. Others have also pointed out similarities between Discovery's visuals and the reboot movies over the original timeline. Perhaps not all of these things are a result of Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel, but are signs that something isn't quite right with Discovery's setting.

• Holo-communication is hinted to be on its way out. It's incompatible with the Enterprise's systems, so Pike orders it removed (he also hates how everyone looks like a ghost with it). Possibly the rest of the fleet will follow suit. Even on the Discovery, Pike prefers the good old-fashioned viewscreen.
• Klingons are also going back to their more canonic appearance. Even the canonic D7 is introduced as a replacement for the wildly different custom-designed House ships. No more unnecessary spikes or curves. Presumably the Bird of Prey will get the same treatment. Plus they're regrowing their hair, which they stopped doing for some reason in Season 1.
• As for something being "not quite right", Season 2 confirms that time travel is involved. The Red Angel has been active as far back as the 21st century. Some fans speculate the continuation of the Temporal Cold War from Enterprise.

Most of the massive tech difference will be swept under "Section 31"

There are some that is simply "technology marches on," or timeline differences, such as the Holographic communicator and Screens. However, some of the more glaring one, such as the Spore Drive, will be kept from other ships because of Section 31.

• While it may not be due to Section 31, there is precedent for profound knowledge to be withheld, most notably the Borg. In the TNG episode "Q-Who", Picard and his crew - with the aid of the Godlike Q - encounter the Borg for the first time and it is established as being - as far as Picard is concerned - the first-ever contact between the Federation and the Borg. However, Voyager later revealed in Seven of Nine's origin story that the Federation had been aware of the Borg for a number of years prior; Enterprise further established that Starfleet had knowledge of the Borg centuries earlier. Yet none of this made its way to Capt. Picard.
  • The same way Discovery introduced Starfleet to the Mirror Universe ten years before Kirk ended up there in a different manner. Why didn't Kirk know about it? The knowledge of it was classified above his pay grade. There's a reason Burnham can't tell Pike about why Georgiou is so different from the one he remembers.
  • Section 31 does indeed have tech centuries ahead of the curve, such as combadges and holographic disguises. It's not unreasonable to see why they might want to keep that tech to themselves in order to do their job. Besides, Starfleet would probably refuse the holo-disguise tech for the same reason they accepted the no-cloak rule - it's underhanded.

Possible reasons the new propulsion system will not be used:

• It will draw the attention of the Q, because a gigalight scale speeds will throw too much disarray into the galaxy, especially at the Borg's hands.
• It will draw the attention of the Undine (AKA Species 8472), because it's organic and uses something close to their propulsion systems.
• It will draw the attention of Chaos, because it digs too deep to their realms. Maybe a Warp Storm or two.
• It will draw the attention of the Andromeda powers, all the way to the Avatars and Abyss, because it's similar to their slipstream.
• As the technology appears to hurt Ripper, it will be abandoned at the conclusion of the Klingon Arc for ethical reasons.
  • May also have something to do with the detrimental effects on Stamets when he acts as a replacement for Ripper.
  • There is precedent for this in the TNG episode that established Warp 5 as the galactic speed limit due to the fact warp engines were damaging the space-time continuum (at least until technology advanced enough in-universe to solve the problem).
• The technology wears out the structural integrity of Starfleet vessels that use it, much like the catastrophic failure that befell the USS Glenn, which bore spiral markings all over its hull and was scuttled by a mere two photon torpedoes. If the Crossfield-class ships, which were designed around the drive, cannot use it — what does that say for others later on?
• Or following on from "Vaulting Ambition", the mycelial network indeed dies out as both Stamets(es?) have concluded it is doing. Or the Federation completely bars all future usage of the spore drive in order to let the mycelial network recover, however long it takes.
• There are several reasons, but the main one appears to be that it requires an organic navigator, like the tardigrade or a genetically-modified human. The former is tantamount to slavery (or, at least, cruelty to animals), while the latter is illegal under Federation law (the whole Khan bit). There was also what happened to the Glenn. Yes, the tech would've been immensely useful to the Voyager crew, but it would also be too dangerous to use without a navigator. It's not like the Voyager crew encountered any spice— err, tardigrade DNA.
• All Jossed: It's revealed using the drive damages the network, and Starfleet later erases the information regarding it at Spock's recommendation.

The reason Klingons look so different is due to genetic engineering.

Since T'Kumva and pals look so drastically different from what Klingons have been established to look like, it's possible that genetic engineering is to blame. Specifically, they tried to modify themselves to undo the "damage" done to the Klingon genome by the Augment virus back in Enterprise. But something went wrong during the process, and it transformed their appearances into what we see now.

• It's not just T'Kuvma. All Klingons look different.

The crew that are actually with Section 31...

• Captain Lorca. His mindset fits the modus operandi of Section 31.
  • Jossed. He's actually from the Terran Empire of the Mirror Universe.
• Cadet Tilly. Her acts are ... acts, carefully crafted to monitor Burnham's responses and to determine if she is fit to work for Section 31, and even to manipulate her if needed.
• The entire ship. Even CIA have a front facing group.

The spore drive will eventually undo itself.

Eventually it will be figured out that the spore drive can jump in time as well as in space. The crew will return to an important time in the past (the Klingon attack on Vulcan? the destruction of Shenzhou?) and change the timeline forever. A side effect of this will be that the spore drive will never be invented.

There is a connection between the space tardigrades and the sinister subspace aliens from the TNG episode Schisms.

Either the aliens from Schisms are the tardigrades' nastier cousins, or the tardigrades turned hostile to the Federation after learning about the mistreatment of Ripper.

The Klingons will face an Updated Re-release of the Augment Virus

Starfleet and the Federation will end up fighting the Klingon Empire to a standstill (since we know they exist in later series), and to tip the balance, Section 31 could unleash a new version of the Augment Virus with selected modifications to overcome however the Klingons originally cured it. With the Empire already united by the war, this might make the Klingons more docile and less confrontational (or just embarrassed), and they end the war and retreat to their own territory, establishing the Neutral Zone in the process. And although they cure the new iteration of the virus by the 2270s, they never fully undo the damage this iteration causes, leading them to appear as they do in the films and the TNG era.

Alternatively, related to a WMG further up in this folder, the Klingons' appearance in ENT, the films, and TNG and later really is their "true" appearance, and the Federation earns the Empire's trust by releasing to them a way to eventually restore their true appearance (to help them "remain Klingon") instead of their more drastically alien features in this series (and, indeed, the reboot films) after the first Augment Virus either wore off or was cured.

The "spore drive" was Starfleet's later inspiration for Transwarp drive

What if the drive proves unusable with mid-23rd-century technology, but by the 2280s, propulsion technology advances enough for Starfleet to take another crack at harnessing it? The Excelsior was referred to as "The Great Experiment" and could achieve speeds far exceeding Constitution-class vessels, and as Scotty demonstrated, Excelsior was heavily reliant on its engineering computer core to make it all work properly. Perhaps Stamets survives and carries on his research in a Federation facility somewhere until he is able to make a computing breakthrough so that the drive never requires a living creature to navigate through space-time?

The Spore Drive Entity is friendly.

We've seen that when Paul Stamets plugs himself in something came back with him, seen by his reflection moving independently from him. Perhaps this new entity is benevolent and just there to observe or protect the ship. It did after all play a part in saving them from Mudd.

• It's now known that the "reflection" was in fact his Mirror Universe counterpart and played no role in the Mudd scenario.

The reason we never see the Spore Drive after ST: Discovery...

The Vulcans, almost 100 years before the events of the show, were hold outs who wouldn't sign the Federation Charter until it was amended with a "Stupid Reckless Humans" Clause that only the Vulcans can invoke; it's meant for situations where human technological progress combined with our recklessness endangers whole planets or species. Which it seems to do every other week. So when this happens (usually a new technology goes awry), after the heroes of Star Fleet fix the problem, Vulcan sends a delegation to Earth with an affidavit or something that pretty much says "Okay guys, New Rule. Limiting potentially lethal and unpredictable technology on starships. Spore Drive or transporter, pick one, lose the other."

The Season will End with a Switch to a Voyager/Sliders Format

The mycelial network will be falling apart, and we'll be led to believe that this is the reason that the Spore Drive was never seen in previous series. However, at the last moment, they'll save the network, Stamets will be capable of using it regularly, and everything will be looking fine! ...and then they'll end up in another wrong universe, and the series will be about hopping universes in hopes of getting home and delivering the information needed to stop the Klingon War.

• Jossed. The Discovery gets home to the correct universe, the war is ended, and the season concludes with a more straightforward Sequel Hook.

Spore drive will still work. However research will be lost for over a century

There had been precedent, with USS Bozeman (from TNG's "Cause and Effect"), that it is possible for a ship to be "flung" into the future. Considering they hopped universe, featuring a ship that was flung into its past, it's possible that by the time they return to their own universe, they were flung to a future where temporal prime directives may prevent them to return to their time of departure.

• Jossed. Discovery will end up in the future, but by taking The Slow Path. The computer will grow sentient but will be unable to break the crew's last order to maintain position.

The Discovery and the crew will end up back to the Prime Universe, without any universe-hopping or temporal paradoxes

Contrary to popular WMG opinion, the Discovery and her crew will manage to jump back to their Prime Universe — but the accumulated damage to the mycelial network will lead to all further use of or research into the mycelial network being utterly banned^note Will Starfleet still have their "top people" on it?, and the crew still have to deal with the extreme disrepute brought upon them by their Mirror Universe counterparts, who have been rampaging unchecked across the prime-universe warzone for days, if not weeks. In an ironic juxtaposition, Burnham's reputation will be quietly restored, while that of her ship and crewmates will be utterly trashed, and the rest of the Federation either will disbelieve the existence of the Mirror Universe, or the information will be firmly hushed by Starfleet and the rampage probably pinned on Captain Lorca (whether his Evil Counterpart comes back to the prime universe or not). The formula to break the Klingon cloak will be brought back to Starfleet, but the Klingon War will just recede into a Space Cold War as the Klingons begin to fragment among themselves, and the war will not truly end until the Organians force negotiations to take place a decade later.

• Confirmed, at least broadly. The I.S.S. Discovery and her Imperial crew were Killed Offscreen. Starfleet deeply classifies all mention of the Mirror Universe. The Klingon War is over, at least for the time being.

The events of the Mirror Universe trip will somehow be erased from everyone's memory

When Kirk & co. end up in the Mirror Universe in "Mirror, Mirror", none of them have ever heard of the place. And when contact with the MU is made again in Deep Space 9, the Starfleet characters only mention the incident with the Kirk's crew, not the earlier trip by Discovery. Now, it seems quite unlikely that no one aboard Discovery ever reported about the Mirror Universe to Starfleet, so the reason why no one has heard of their trip in the future must be that they can't remember it anymore.

• Jossed. The Discovery crew is sworn to secrecy regarding the existence of the Mirror Universe and the records of it erased, which is why Kirk and crew never heard of it a decade later.
  • As for the Mirror Universe characters, anyone who knew anything was killed when the ISS Charon blew up (the ISS Discovery was destroyed with all hands by Prime!Klingons). The crew of the ISS Shenzhou were unaware that Burnham wasn't their Burnham. All they know is that she went over to meet the Emperor, after which the flagship/palace blew up. Given the turmoil resulting from the Emperor's supposed death, it's doubtful anyone would wonder about Burnham at all.

The series takes place in a parallel universe that's neither the Prime nor the Kelvin Universe

There's a mounting amount of evidence that suggests that Discovery takes place in a parallel universe we hadn't seen yet. Here are some facts that support this theory:

• The Klingons look nothing like their Prime Universe counterparts, and no explanation is given for this. They do look kinda similar to the Kelvin Universe Klingons, but the history of the relationship between the Federation and the Klingon Empire is different here than what was established in Star Trek Into Darkness, so Discovery can't be set in the Kelvin Universe either.
• The design of Klingon ships is also different from anything we've seen in the Prime Universe.
  • Cosmetically, yes, but there's nothing preventing technology from marching on in the meantime.
    • Well, the problem with that is that Klingon ships have had a very clear design lineage from the Enterprise era up to the late TNG era. Even though Enterprise was set hundreds of years before DS9, Enterprise's birds-of-prey are easily identified as Klingon Birds-of-Prey, and its battlecruisers are recognizable as Klingon battlecruisers. In fact, in all of the Star Trek universe, the only fleet that sticks more stubbornly to the same general layout in their ship design is probably Starfleet, itself. Discovery's Klingon ships look nothing like any Klingon ships we've ever seen before.
    • Season 2 attempts to explain it as Klingon Houses using their own custom designs during the war and only going back to unified designs after the fact, under the guidance of Chancellor L'Rell. L'Rell is even shown introducing the D7, which looks like its canonical self, without any unnecessary curves or spikes. L'Rell effectively pushes the Empire back into purely utilitarian ship designs rather than the "form over function" that the disparate Houses preferred.
• In the first episode of this series, which is set in 2256, it's said that there has barely been any contact between Starfleet and Klingons for a hundred years, yet Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country established that the Klingon Empire and the Federation had gone through "70 years of unremitting hostility" starting from 2223.
  • Those are not mutually exclusive. If essentially every contact, however rare, resulted in Starfleet and the Klingons shooting at each other (with contact becoming more common after 2256), then both statements can be true.
  • The Battle of Donatu V, to which T'Kuvma refers, was canonically in 2245 and supports the intervening period being a series of isolated hostile encounters.
• Starfleet has technology that's way more advanced than it should be at this point in the Prime Universe. For example, holographic communicators are commonplace and Discovery also has a holodeck, even though the former was said to be a new piece of technology in Deep Space 9, and Voyager established holodecks had only been around a few years.
  • Discovery isn't shown as having a holodeck as established in prior series, as Lorca and Tyler don't physically interact with the Klingon targets, only shoot them. The implication is that they're using a VR simulation, not a fully interactive holodeck.
  • Pike has the holo-comms removed from the Enterprise since they interfere with the ship's older systems. He also has a personal aversion to the "ghostly" appearance of people using the holo-comms. It's possible he'll influence the rest of Starfleet to follow suit. It's possible the tech will be forgotten until a hundred years later.
• The mycelial network is never mentioned in the series that take place after this one. Not even in Voyager, where the crew is desperate to discover any means of travel faster than a warp drive so it won't take decades for them to get home.
  • Given that it's now established that overuse of the network can result in ships being tossed around across universes and through time, not to mention potentially killing all life in the multiverse, it's no wonder it gets put away and over a century later people don't think about it a whole lot, if at all.
    • The tech and knowledge may end up being classified.
• Even though the Discovery makes it to the Mirror Universe and back, by the time Kirk and his crew members get there they have no knowledge of the MU. Nor does Deep Space 9 crew mention this first contact when they in turn travel to the MU, citing only Kirk's trip to this parallel universe as if it was the first.
  • It's quite possible that Starfleet and the Federation flatly disbelieve the crew's account of the Mirror Universe, or the Discovery crew decide to keep it secret (although, inevitably, rumours would leak out somehow). Or Starfleet believes them, but they (or Section 31) wipe Discovery's memory banks and bury the reports so deep that nobody else can find them until Kirk stumbles on the Mirror Universe a second time.
  • Explicitly mentioned by Cornwell and Sarek in "The War Without, The War Within": the records regarding the Mirror Universe are to be destroyed and the crew sworn to secrecy about it. The rationale is that knowledge there's a parallel universe and technology to get there could be tempting to someone who's lost loved ones in the Prime Universe to try and reunite with them in the Mirror Universe, ignoring the fact those counterparts are likely paranoid sociopathic fascists. Burnham grabbing Mirror-Georgiou unintentionally proves the point.
• Michael Burnham is revealed to be the adopted daughter of Sarek and step-sister of Spock, but neither of them mention her in the series and movies that take place after Discovery. She's not there at Spock's funeral nor his resurrection ritual, nor is she around when Sarek gets ill and dies. Of course it's possible she might've died before the events TOS and TNG, but you'd still think Sarek and Spock, both of whom are quite interested in the differences between humans and Vulcans, would've at least mentioned this very Vulcan-like human who was a part of their family?
  • Spock's funeral took place on a starship right after his death, and his resurrection ritual was a quickly-arranged situation so it's easy to assume (if she's still alive) that she simply couldn't get there in time. Spock and Sarek never mentioned his half-brother either, before or after the events of Star Trek V. And Sarek dies in 2368, 112 years after the Battle of the Binary Stars and 141 years after Burnham's birth.
• If it is a third timeline, here's a likely cause of it: the Kelvin-timeline Federation made sure that Romulus would be saved, preventing Nero's crusade. Then, someone went back in time to before the Narada would have arrived, with information about how to save Romulus. Thus, Vulcan isn't destroyed either. The result is a timeline that is closer to the prime timeline, but with some influence from Kelvin; that sounds like this show to me.

The villain will return

They have been making a huge deal about how the mycelial network connects all life in all universes, and we even see a version of Dr. Culber in the network, despite him being dead. Then Lorca is killed by dropping him into a huge concentration of mycelial energy. We watch his body disintegrate, but that just means we don't have a body. Lorca will be back, either having never actually died at all, or as some sort of evil entity that is tied to the network.

• A crystalline entity, if you will?

Arc Welding with the mycelial network

The ancient humanoids from "The Chase" either created or took advantage of the mycelial network to spread their DNA program and create humanoids across the galaxy.

Either Mirror Stamets or Mirror Culber, or both, are completely straight.

Which means that Mirror Stamets and Mirror Culber never became a couple, which may partly explain Mirror Culber's complete absence in the Mirror Universe story arc.

• Jossed, in a way. Mirror Georgiou says they were pan.

Season 2

General, Season 2

The crew of the Enterprise will get some screentime

Spock and Burnham reunion, anyone? It's the Enterprise from Pike's days in the chair, so no Kirk or a couple of others, but at least Spock, right?

• Confirmed, at least for Pike and Number One. And one of the driving points of the season is a search for Spock, meaning he will probably encounter the crew of the Discovery.
• Confirmed: Spock is a major character for the last half of the season, and the final two-part episode features both Discovery and Enterprise fighting together.

The ship will encounter the USS Farragut and a young Lieutenant James T. Kirk

Perhaps in response to a distress signal resulting from an attack by a mysterious creature that just killed 200 members of the crew.

• Jossed.

The Chief Medical Officer of Discovery will be ...

According to Word of God, we (the viewers) have never met the CMO of Discovery. Any guesses?

• Doctor Leonard H. McCoy, prior to his service aboard the Enterprise.
• Doctor Mark Piper, who preceded McCoy as the CMO of Enterprise.
• Somebody else who we've never met, due to the general Shrug of God so far.
• Doctor Culber, who is confirmed to be returning to the cast in the second season, presumably Back from the Dead. If it's not his Mirror Universe duplicate, he would probably be up for a promotion much like his shipmates for his efforts in the Klingon War.
• Who the CMO is exactly is not confirmed, although it seems to be Dr. Pollard.

The new Captain of Discovery will be ...

Since it's apparently not going to be Saru getting the promotion:

• Robert T. April, since Christopher Pike now commands the Enterprise.
• Robert Wesley, eventually a commodore in "The Ultimate Computer".
• Matthew Decker, who goes on to command the Constellation in "The Doomsday Machine".
• Kelvar Garth (of Izar), a few years before he goes nuts.
• They were gonna go to Vulcan to pick up the new captain, so maybe it's T'Pol?
  • She’d be 180-ish by now. By comparison: Tivok was just over 100 when Voyager began, and very much in his prime. Make of that what you will.
  • Actually, she'd be only 168. And since we know that Sarek was around 200 years old when he started showing signs of old age, and that even then he was still in decent physical condition and probably would've still lived for years if he hadn't succumbed to Bendii Syndrome, it's perfectly possibly for the 168-year old T'Pol to be a healthy middle-aged Vulcan.
• Or someone new entirely?
  • Captain Saru!
    • I'd like that, but Saru calls himself "Acting" Captain while en route to pick up their new Captain, meaning Saru is still a commander and the first officer.
• Some rumours pre-release connected Discovery to Majel Barrett's "Number One" from the TOS pilot "The Cage". Maybe she transfers after whatever mishap is plaguing the Enterprise?
  • From promotional material, Number One appears to be left in command of the Enterprise while Pike temporarily takes over the Discovery.
• All Jossed, at least for the time being. Captain Christopher Pike takes temporary command of the Discovery for the second season, although whoever becomes the permanent new commanding officer after he leaves is still up in the air.

Who’ll play the Enterprise crew?

I’m guessing new people to the Abrams cast. Meaning three Spocks and *four* Pikes!

• Confirmed, in a sense. Anson Mount is playing Pike, Rebecca Romijn is playing Number One, and Ethan Peck is playing Spock.

Discovery will encounter the Tamarians

Canonically, the Children of Tama were first encountered by Starfleet 100 years before they were seen in Darmok. Discovery is just a few years away. Assuming that number is an approximation, it could happen any time. (Though since first contact was described as uneventful and unproductive, it would probably be at most a Call-Forward rather than a whole episode.)

• Jossed.

The Enterprise's distress call is going to be related to the accident that left Christopher Pike in a life support chair.

Can't. Pike's injury happens not long before the episode "The Menagerie", in 2266 or 2267, so a decade later. The cause of his injuries was stated as being an accident on a training ship.

• Except that it took place after he'd been promoted to Fleet Captain and Kirk had been put in command; and it took place on a J-Class starship, not the Enterprise.
• Jossed. From the previews, Pike called for and takes temporary command of the Discovery to investigate the emergence of seven red signals across the galaxy, along with Spock's disappearance.
  • And yet bizarrely Confirmed, in a tangential way. On Boreth in "Through the Valley of Shadows", Pike gets to witness his eventual fate through a time crystal, and has to make a choice between suffering that outcome (if he takes the crystal with him) and allowing the end of all sentient life (if he leaves it there). Not surprisingly, he chooses the former.

At one point a character will say "There is an old Vulcan proverb: only Trump could go to North Korea"

And another character will answer something to the effect of "I already heard this proverb, but phrased slightly differently".

• Jossed.

Q will turn up.

Because it'd be awesome. (Please, imagine Stamets interacting with Q. Better yet, Burnham interacting with Q.)

• Besides the spore drive and the Mirror Universe, do we really need another element that requires a retcon to explain why no one is aware of it later in the timeline?
  • He could just make everyone present forget the experience somehow, as he is omnipotent. But then that would put the episode into the category of "fun but pointless".
  • Maybe a different member of the Q Continuum, or something similar to Trelane.
• And then there Pike's rephrasing of Clarke's Third Law, about how a sufficiently advanced alien life may be indistinguishable from God. Sounds like it could apply to the Q. (Q himself even tried to convince Picard of exactly this at the begin of "Tapestry"!)
• Jossed.

The "Red Angel" will turn out to be a manifestation of V'Ger

I mean, what other galactic consciousness is known for reaching out to Spock? The seven red "signals" might be a sign that its journey home to meet the Creator is beginning, and Spock is fascinated by and drawn to it. (Bear in mind that the icon of V'Ger that he attempts to mind-meld with on his spacewalk resembles an intense red light as well.) The film might then become the culmination of Spock unraveling this life-long mystery once and for all fifteen years later.

• Jossed. The signals are meant to draw Discovery to locations where they can help people, and the Red Angel appears to be a female humanoid wearing a set of Power Armour from the future. Spock confirms she's human, and we later see she is Burnham's mother Gabrielle, then Burnham herself in a second suit.

The Discovery that Craft visited in "Calypso" was taking The Slow Path

In "Calypso", the reason for Discovery's long abandonment is never revealed, but Zora (the ship's now-sentient computer) does state that there was an order given to maintain position before the crew left the ship. Perhaps something occurred where the crew were transported forward in time but could not move the ship with them, so they left Discovery in place to be ready upon their return, and Craft simply arrived and left In Medias Res. Furthermore, perhaps the disappearance of Discovery into the future is what cements the spore drive's impression with Starfleet as being dangerously unreliable and barred from further use, as canonically the conventional warp drive remains the dominant means of travel in-universe for centuries to come.

• Alternately, Zora is evolved from the Sphere data that Control hadn't taken, and she had been ordered to hold station out in BFE Nowhere to avoid being captured by Control, which has usurped the Federation's leadership, leading to the current war. The story takes place at about the same time period that Doctor Burnham ended up anchored in, so it's possible that Control is about to get what it wants.
• Jossed.

The "Ba'ul" from "The Brightest Star" will become the Ba'ku

It has been mentioned that the short episode "The Brightest Star" is a prelude to Saru's eventual return visit to Kaminar at some point during the second season — which means that, somehow, the situation as it exists will most likely change or be disrupted somehow.
The similarity in name between the unseen Ba'ul of the episode and the later Ba'ku just seems oddly striking. What if, at some point, the spacefaring species is made to have a moment of Heel Realization and My God, What Have I Done? for their actions toward the Kelpien people, and then depart the planet to forsake their technology as atonement? Remember that the Son'a broke off from the Ba'ku during the 23rd century while protesting the rejection of their technology. The timeframe certainly fits within reason.

• Jossed, the Ba'ul are truly alien, being more along the lines of Humanoid Abominations rather than a human-looking species.

The signals are coming from locations that some entity wants Starfleet/Spock/Discovery/whoever to investigate, and time travel is involved

The first signal investigated was in a location from where someone would be likely to discover the crashed USS Hiawatha and the survivors. However, to do that, whatever sent the signal would need to know when a ship would show up so it would arrive just as the asteroid is there. They'll find that the other signals are also coming from locations where Discovery shows up to carry out some task where someone needs help or some emergency has to be dealt with. All of them will require that foreknowledge is involved, meaning someone can look or travel through time.

• As of the second episode, more evidence. Another burst takes them to a planet where they arrive at just the right time to prevent a planetary level extinction event; had they arrived sooner, they likely would have carried out the mission on the surface and returned home and wouldn't have seen the radioactive ring material break toward the planet. If they'd arrived a few hours later, they'd have been too late.
• Confirmed. It's a subject of discussion between Pike and Tyler in episode 6, and as of episode 7, they still don't know the motive for the Red Angel doing it. After Saru confirms that the Red Angel is using highly advanced technology in episode 6, everyone agrees with the conclusion that whoever it is, they're using technology from the future.
  • However, as of "Perpetual Infinity", it is revealed that the Red Angel knows nothing about the Red Bursts.
• Again, Confirmed. Gabrielle Burnham (the original Rd Angel who saved Terralysium and young Michael on Vulcan) didn't do it, but Michael Burnham, wearing a duplicate suit, was responsible for the bursts in order to set up a Stable Time Loop to assemble the pieces necessary to defeat Control.

The "Red Angel" is an Iconian

This is admittedly on the wilder side of WMG, but Star Trek Online depicts Iconians as humanoid-shaped energy beings who are occasionally red, and the Iconian gateway technology is a way to explain how it got the humans to Terralysium. Plus, it being called an angel contrasts nicely with the Iconians being called "Demons of Air and Darkness".

• Jossed. The Red Angel isn't an energy being but is wearing Power Armour using highly advanced future technology. Spock confirms whoever it is is human, and they turn out to be Burnham's mother Gabrielle, and Burnham herself later.

Ash Tyler is related to Tyler the navigator from the cage

They both have the same last name and served in Starfleet around the same time, it's possible they're brothers or cousins

Lieutenant Connolly in "Brother" is the Prime Universe counterpart of Olson from the Kelvin Universe.

Maybe the different last name can be explained by his parents having divorced in one of the timelines. Both Connolly and Olson are serving during the 2250s on the Enterprise under Captain Pike. And both die during highly dangerous non-planet bound away missions due to their own overconfidence.

• Seems more a Mythology Gag than anything else, as they don't even look all that similar and have completely different accents.

Voq is not The Albino from DS9's "Blood Oath" — his and L'Rell's son is

The child is confirmed to be an albino Klingon, just like Voq was. Now, Voq himself was deconstructed and turned into the copy of Ash Tyler, but the child is free to grow up and will probably live for a century or more as Klingons tend to do in the Trek universe (when not slain in battle). Furthermore, the child is supposed to remain ignorant of his parentage, so he will probably get the story that his parents were slain at the hands of the House of Kor and their allies. Seems like it would be a sound (to him) rationale to start a blood-feud against the descendants of Kor and probably Kang and Koloth as well.

• Even if the child learns the truth, he'd still have a reason to start a blood-feud with the House of Kor; their actions were responsible for his parents having to fake his death and send him away, getting his father accused as a traitor, and due to political reasons never paid a price for it; in fact, having the man who was really guilty get lauded as a heroic martyr. That would be enough to tick anyone off.
• Appears Jossed as of "Through the Valley of Shadows", as L'Rell and Voq's son undergoes Rapid Aging around the time crystals and takes the name Tenavik. He's still relatively young, though, and has a lot of lifespan ahead of him (assuming the time crystals don't rush him through it any longer).

The identity of the Red Angel are the Preservers

In the Paradise Syndrome the Native American tribe, which is a mixture of Navajo, Mohican and Delaware cultures, were brought on the planet Amerind by the Preservers. Spock managed to translate the musical language on the Obelisk which states the Preservers rescue humanoid races in danger of extinction and place them on other planets. McCoy states this explains why many worlds they encounter are similar. Meaning Earth-like with Humans. The ancestors of the Humans on Terralysium were transported from Earth in the middle of WW3 by the Red Angel saving them. Also the plots are similar as it involves saving the transplanted Human populace from asteroids in both episodes.

• Jossed. The Red Angel who saved the Terralysians was Burnham's mother Gabrielle.

Fully mature Kelpiens are super-strong, super-aggressive predators, and used to be feared throughout the galaxy

After Saru loses his ganglia, he says he no longer feels afraid, and instead feels stronger than ever. His arc for the rest of the season will involve him continuing to become more assertive, eventually tipping over into aggression and culimating in an episode where he becomes a threat to Discovery's crew. It will then be revealed that the reason the Ba'ul cull the Kelpiens is to prevent the whole species undergoing the same process, because some time in the past they went on a galactic killing spree — the war to contain them being the one that we briefly heard about while Discovery was decoding the lore from the sphere. Discovery will find a non-fatal way to curb their killer instincts, Saru will be saved, and the species as a whole will continue to be left on one planet, because as things stand we have a reason for them not being seen in the future.

• Confirmed, at least on the basic premise. "The Sounds of Thunder" confirms that, millennia earlier, the Kelpiens were the predators and the Ba'ul were their prey. However, this conflict was solely confined to Kaminar.

There is only ONE species on Saru's Homeworld

The Ba'ul are just the Kelpiens after they lose their ganglia, which means that the older members of the species prey on the younger ones. This may have resulted in an unusual balance of nature on Saru's homeworld with the numbers of both groups being kept in check.

• Jossed, the Ba'ul are indeed distinct from the Kelpiens.

The Red Angel is future Spock from the Kelvin timeline films

Though it couldn't be Leonard Nimoy.

• The "red" aspect of the angel could easily be the result of Red Matter, which is already known to have temporal properties.
  • Unlikely, as whoever is in the Red Angel suit appears to be female. Spock also confirms the person is human.
• Jossed. The Red Angel is Burnham's mother, Gabrielle, then Burnham herself.

The Red Angel is an agent in the Temporal Cold War.

With that level of temporal interference, they're bound to be involved.

• Appears Jossed, as Dr. Gabrielle Burnham is working to avert the destruction of all sentient life, with no indications of ties to the future versions of the Federation (like Daniels), the Cabal (like Silik and "Future Guy") or anybody else.
• Jossed. The Temporal Cold War is not involved in the plot at all.

The Red Angel is not just any agent in the Temporal Cold War, they are Future Guy

A time-traveling humanoid with superior technology whose features are never seen, and whose ultimate motivation remains a mystery – sounds familiar, doesn't it? Maybe we'll finally find out who they are, and why they were involved in the TCW.

• The probe in Light and Shadows was sent 500 years into the future, to the 28th century, and altered by an unknown force, suggested to be connected to the Red Angel. The 28th century is also when Future Guy is from.
• A vote against that, as noted below, is that when Saru gets a clear view of the Red Angel, whoever is in the suit appears to be female.
• "Future Guy" is just a placeholder name for the unnamed character, we don't really know their gender. It's true that their voice sounded masculine, but it was also heavily distorted by the technology they used to project themselves from the future into the past. So "Future Guy" could still be Burnham, or whoever is inside the Red Angel suit. Perhaps the events of the 22nd century were the first phase in a larger Temporal Cold War, and at that point the Red Angel only had the technology to project her image to the past, not travel there physically, so she needed to use the Suliban as her agents. Then later on she acquired the technology to travel to past with her suit and alter it personally, so she no longer needed such agents.
• The Red Angel showed up in person in the 21st Century to rescue the people in the church and transport them to Terralysium in "New Eden", which would conflict with that idea.
• It doesn't conflict it, if the RA is manipulating the past from the future. When she was manipulating events of the 22nd century, she still had less advanced technology, and could only appear as "Future Guy". Later on she gained more advanced technology, and is time-travelling personally to the 23rd century. However, that doesn't preclude her from time-travelling to the 21st century as well.
• Jossed. The Red Angel is Burnham's mother, Gabrielle, then Burnham herself.

The Red Angel is Michael

Saru's glimpse of the Angel depicted someone with a decidedly feminine figure. The fact that the Angel keeps intervening at key points in Michael's life would indicate it is someone tied to her, leaving the most obvious candidates to be either the above-mentioned Spock or Michael, herself.

• Jossed. The Red Angel is Burnham's mother, Gabrielle.
  • And yet, Burnham's mother knows nothing about the red bursts, and as of "Such Sweet Sorrow", Michael is planning to use her mother's time suit technology to do some time travel of her own, implying that while Michael isn't the Red Angel, she just might be the one creating the Red Bursts and leading Discovery around on her mission.
• Jossed and Confirmed. It was Gabrielle who was responsible for saving young Michael and founding Terralysium, but the signals were created by Michael.

The Red Angel saved Michael from dying with her parents in the Klingon attack.

She was never supposed to live past that point and doing so changed the timeline. In fact, this may be the Red Angel's MO in general.

• Appears Jossed. Gabrielle intended to do this by jumping one hour back in time to warn everyone of the impending attack, but ultimately ended up escaping nearly a millennium into the future.

The Red Angel is Amanda Grayson

Like the probe in S 02 E 07, Amanda is pulled through to the future by a time rift or some other phenomenon, where she cobbles together a means of traveling through time under her own power and returns to the present. That's why the Red Angel appears to Michael and Spock — Amanda is trying to safeguard her children, she has faith their skills and abilities will be able to prevent a future catastrophe, and she can guide the two because she's been in the loop on the manhunt for Spock and the mystery of the red signals from the beginning.

• An argument against Amanda is that Spock mind melded with the Red Angel. Wouldn't Spock have recognized the mind of his own mother? And the same applies to it being Michael Burnham.
  • The quantum field that Spock mentioned seems to have obscured his ability to recognize any traits beyond that fact that the Angel is human.
• Jossed. The Red Angel Spock encountered as a child was Burnham's mother, Gabrielle, while the one responsible for the signals was Burnham herself.

The force trying to destroy life in the universe that the Red Angel opposes are the future version of the Borg

By the 28th century the Borg have evolved into a purely technological hivemind with not need for biological parts, so now they're assimilating technology, not organic beings. That's what they did to the Enterprise probe, and to Airiam;the red spots seen in Airiam's eyes are quite similar to the red lights the cybernetic Borg of the 24th century used to project. At some point in the future they try to exterminate all biological life in the universe so that they could dominate it, and the Red Angel is trying to alter the past to stop that from happening.

• Jossed: It's actually a future version of Section 31's threat assessment AI, Control.
• Not necessarily jossed yet. The Discovery crew believes it was Control, but we never actually see or hear from Control in "Project Daedalus", so the theory isn't 100% confirmed yet. It's perfectly possible whoever killed the Section 31 admirals and reprogrammed Airiam wanted to frame Control so that the good guys wouldn't discover the real culprit.
• "Perpetual Infinity" adds a new factor to this WMG: Control injects Leland with nanotech that assimilates him, transforming him into a cyborg under its control. Sound familiar? Maybe at some point, Control will somehow be sent back in time to the Delta Quadrant in the distant past, where it will become the Borg. (This actually bears some similarity to the Borg origin story in Star Trek: Destiny, in which the first Borg drones were time-displaced Starfleet humans converted by alien nanotech.)
• Also, note that when Control is about to assimilate Leland, it tells him that "struggle is useless", which is just another way of saying "resistance is futile".
• Jossed: Leland/Control is killed and doesn't become the Borg.

The Red Angel transported the humans to Terralysium so that they would stay hidden from her opponent(s)

Everything else the Red Angel has done has been in the 23rd century, and has been in relation with Spock, Burnham, and/or other Discovery crew members. So her travelling to the 21st century and transporting some humans to the Beta Quadrant seems like an anomaly. However, "If Memory Serves" reveals the Red Angels is trying to stop an unknown adversary from exterminating all biological life from the galaxy. So, most likely the reason she transported the humans to Terralysium was so that they would stay hidden from whoever's trying to destroy life. If the RA and her opponent(s) are from the future, they would know the history of humanity and the galaxy. And, according to that history, the people who were transported to Terralysium died in the Third World War, and by the 23rd century no humans had yet travelled to the Beta Quadrant. So the antagonists would not know about Terralysium, and it would be safe from extermination, which is the Red Angel's plan. Since she's said to be human, it seems she wants humanity to survive even if Earth and the Federation are annihilated. And the reason the Red Angel brought Discovery to Terralysium was because she didn't want the planet to be stuck in a Medieval Stasis, so she needed a catalyst for the Terralysians to embrace science. If the bad guy is indeed from 500 years in the future, once the Terralysians have accepted science, they have the potential to develop their culture and technology so that in the 28th they'll have a fighting chance against the life-destroying adversary.

• Jossed. The Red Angel — Dr. Gabrielle Burnham — simply transported the humans to Terralysium to find out if she could successfully change the timeline, not with any specific goals in mind for the community.

The Red Angel is Arnold Schwarzenegger

The Red Angel is a T-800 sent from the distant future by the human resistance to destroy Skynet before it is created. The season finale will directly lead into Terminator: Dark Fate.

• Amusing, especially since Control basically is SkyNet, but Jossed. The Red Angel is Burnham's mother. Hasta la vista, baby.

The Red Angel is Airiam

Sometime in the future Airiam is reactivated and further augmented, like the probe Discovery launched earlier that came back and attacked the Shuttle with Pike and Tyler.

• Jossed. The Red Angel is Burnham's mother, Gabrielle, and Burnham herself.

After the events of Season 2, Section 31 get shelved by Starfleet until Deep Space Nine

Okay, so the Doylist reason that Section 31 never show up again in TOS or TNG is because the concept hadn't been invented yet, but in-universe the events of Season 2 provide an explanation. Firstly all the Section 31 higher-ups are slaughtered by Control, robbing them of an effective command structure. Secondly, Starfleet would come down HARD on Section 31 for dropping the ball so badly, effectively relegating them to the Federation's equivalent of traffic duty until the Dominion War prompts their revival. It doesn't mean they wouldn't still use them, but their reduced prominence would explain why Kirk and Picard never had any dealings with them.

• Either that, or Starfleet orders Section 31 disbanded and eliminated, and they decide to permanently go deep underground for the foreseeable future to survive and continue their "mission". Something will need to enable Georgiou and Section 31 to have their own spinoff series.
• Jossed: Tyler is offered command of Section 31 in order to make it a more transparent organization. Obviously, it doesn't last.

Control is the reason why the technology in "The Original Series" appears to be more primitive

Section 31's acquisition of advanced technology has created an environment in which something like CONTROL has evolved and it may be that it has copied itself throughout Federation technology. The only solution available to the Federation is take a major backwards step and destroy all systems beyond a certain point of sophistication for a certain number of years, until they are sure that Control no longer exists.Although I doubt this is going to happen, it would be amusing at the end of season two to see the Discovery systems looking like the original series Federation ships.

• Seems to be Jossed already, with Pike's statement to Number One that the Enterprise shift to less complicated technologies like using viewscreens for their communications instead of holograms. Control's actions could cement that shift, however.
  • Jossed. This is true for the holographic comms, but when you finally see the interior of Enterprise, it's very much a merger of what the classic series looked like and what you'd expect to see if The Original Series was being made today with modern budgets and effects.

Burnham's mother didn't survive the Klingon attack

After The Reveal at the end of "The Red Angel", viewers could be led to believe that Burnham's mother quietly survived the attack caused by Leland's mistakes. But it's just as possible that she didn't, and really died then — since Sarek and other rescuers presumably would have noticed the absence of her mother's body — and the woman we see wearing the Red Angel suit in Season 2 has yet to return to her "own" time period, and is instead (from her perspective) still working for Project Daedalus. It seems this would lead to a more poignant departure down the line, as Burnham's mother would need to depart to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to maintain her "proper" place in the timeline to enable Burnham's life to proceed as we have seen it. Probably there would still be a big So Proud of You moment before she returns to her own timeline to live out what events she has left.

• Jossed. She survived via time travel.

The time crystals on Boreth show you only specifically the absolute worst or most traumatic thing that will ever happen to you in the future.

Otherwise it wouldn't have been much of a Not So Secret Test of Character for Pike had he seen his Happily Ever After with Vina instead.

• For example, Picard would have seen his assimilation by the Borg, or Kirk how he witnesses the death of Spock.

The real Big Bad of season 2 is not Control, but a sphere-enhanced Discovery

The sphere data has already proved to be powerful and adaptive, first preventing the crew from simply deleting it, and later using Discovery's defences to stop the ship from being destroyed. It could eventually become proactive in its goal of protective the sphere data, to the point of wiping out any lifeform that might wish to interfere.

• Jossed.

Pike is from the Mirror Universe

Just as he is departing Discovery, Georgiou decides to tell Pike that she's a Terran from the Mirror Universe. His reply is to ask "What Mirror Universe?" before winking and grinning at her. Either he's been a Terran all along, and this is his way of tipping his hand to Georgiou, or there's always the more mundane answer that one of the literally dozens of people around him who know what's going on with Mirror!Georgiou filled him in on the details.

• Pike knew something was off with Georgiou as soon after he met her, as he revealed to Burnham and she promised to tell him the truth later. As noted, numerous people (including Admiral Cornwell) could have updated him.

The true identity of the Red Angel

The one responsible for the red bursts and leading Discovery on their mission is Harcourt Fenton Mudd. It's part of a scheme to alter the timeline and erase his criminal record and bounty the Federation has out on his head. Plus he gets to mildly inconvenience Burnham in the process, which is to him a bonus.

• Besides, His is the only Short Trek episode not to get a Call-Back or a Call-Forward in the second season as of "Such Sweet Sorrow."
  • Amusing as that might have been, Jossed. Burnham was the one who created the bursts.

Zora from "Calypso" is the Discovery's on-board computer after evolving using the Sphere data.

Fairly self-explanatory: The Sphere data has merged with Discovery, allowing the computer to gain full sapience. Unlike Control however, Zora has access to the full scope of the Sphere's information on AI, allowing it to comprehend the consequences of its actions rather than falling prey to cold logic, gain true emotions and become ultimately benevolent. She is basically what Control would have become if it wasn't working from a partial database and spotty information received from its future self.

• Confirmed in steps in S3 and S4.

Control went crazy and tried to kill everyone after its future self used Ariam to contact its past self and tell it to go crazy and kill everyone.

Basically a Stable Time Loop.

Captain Picard knows about Burnham and Discovery and is keeping the secret.

He mind-melded with Sarek at a time when Sarek had very little mental or emotional control. It seems very possible that Sarek wouldn't have been able to hide what he knew in that state. This may or may not end up being a plot point in the upcoming Picard series.

Season 3

General, Season 3

Georgiou got off Discovery before it travelled in time.

Since the ship and crew apparently travelled 900+ years into the future, but Georgiou is slated to be in a Section 31 spinoff, it makes sense that after killing Control-Leland she somehow managed to get off the ship.

• Jossed. Georgiou accompanied Discovery into the 32nd Century.

The officer interrogating Pike, Spock, Number 1 is going to be significant.

The way only his jaw is shown makes me think a reveal is going to be dramatic - a la Blofeld from 007 prior to You Only Live Twice.

Before the Discovery actually arrives at the 32rd Century, something goes wrong and they have to do a small stopover in the post-Nemesis era (late 24th / early 25th Century)...

...thus setting up the upcoming Picard show.

• Jossed. Discovery directly arrived in the 32nd Century with no detours along the way.

At some point in season 3, probably at the end of it, possibly as a cliffhanger, the crew will have the option to, individually, return to the 23rd century

This would setup Georgious’s Section 31 involvement. While the season is in preproduction, and so the producers are unwilling to say anything about what their planning, Michelle Yeoh indicated in recent interview that she’ll be in Season 3 and then be going on to Section 31 show. Thus setting up a situation that other characters might take to return to the their original time.

• Alternatively, the Section 31 show could be set in the 32nd Century, with the organization instead using their off-the-books methods to covertly support the rebuilding of the Federation.

Zora in "Calypso" was in the forty-third century, not the thirty-third.

It looked as though Season 2 was setting up Discovery to be in place for nine hundred and fifty years, until the time Doctor Burnham was anchored to - but in the end they took Discovery straight there. My suggestion is that the crew return to their own time, but leave Discovery behind to keep the Sphere data safe, for another thousand years - to the forty-third century.

Ash Tyler will show up in the Section 31 spinoff

His status at the end of Season 2 is an obvious setup for this, and Alex Kurtzman mentioned several times that both Star Trek: Discovery and the Section 31 show will explain how the organisation moved from what it was on Discovery to what it will be in Deep Space Nine, so Georgiou will obviously have to return to a time period before Deep Space Nine for that to happen. She'll either come back to the 23rd century at the end of Season 2, or Ash will move forward in time to be re-united with her.

The crew will encounter the future copy of The Doctor established in "Living Witness"

Recall that the copy of the Doctor was already seven hundred years into the future relative to the 24th century when Voyager crossed the Delta Quadrant (the furthest "forward" that Star Trek had ever previously depicted). He was then said to have spent many years in a senior medical administrative position before leaving to trace the ship's path back to Earth. That could, conceivably, put him into the same time-frame that Discovery and her crew jumped to as of the Season 2 finale, and logically he would want to rejoin the Federation, or whatever the government had become as of that era. (Even better: Discovery co-creator Bryan Fuller wrote "Living Witness".)

The "Zora" Discovery will be the "ship" of the season.

Somehow the "Present Day" Discovery will end up being transported back to its original period without the the crew leaving them stranded. They'll either encounter Craft who will lead them or find the ship themselves in the nebula where the ship had been waiting as predetermined. (for some reason). Amongst other things, this will lead the crew to deal with a new A.I. one that is their ship just after dealing with Control

• Jossed: The crew arrives with Discovery, although Burnham is separated from them by about a year and they have to link up later.

The U.S.S. Discovery will be entirely outmatched by anything in the 32nd Century.

It’s the equivalent of taking medieval longboats against the present day Royal Navy. Options: not much space combat (unlikely because viewers love that sort of thing); a total retrofit (but how much retrofitting can a hull from a millennium ago take?); or a whole new ship (in which case can we still call it Star Trek: Discovery?)

• Zigzagged, see below.

Discovery will hold her own against 32nd-century vessels

It's already been established by preview trailers that the Federation is in a state of collapse and the galaxy appears to be much more of a lawless place. Research and technological advancement may well have fallen by the wayside over the intervening centuries, and in contrast to the "timeships" that Janeway and Voyager encountered from the future, there may well be nowhere near the same sort of leaps forward in science and technology. Even Voyager was able to stand up to the attack of a similar-era timeship in "Future's End", so Discovery may do just fine, especially with the spore-drive still in operation and presumably still not a widespread technology.

• Zigzagged. Discovery barely stands up to two quantum torpedo blasts, and while she's clearly outgunned by most 32nd-century ships, it's less extreme than one might expect. At the beginning of episode 6, she gets a major retrofit that allows her to keep up.
• Towards the end of the season, one character inspecting the Spore Drive declares that the 23rd century must have been a "Golden Age" of science, suggesting that the galaxy ended up backsliding after the Burn.

"Book" will be a relative of Craft from "Calypso"

The two actors who play the two characters look remarkably alike, plus it would be a way of tying into "Calypso" in a strong way. What if "Book" is Craft's father? Or "Book" is the son who Craft was gazing at in a family photo?

The Trill in the trailers are guardians of the symbiont pools.

The cave looks very similar to the pools seen in Deep Space Nine. We’ve seen someone, presumably but not necessarily Burnham, bathing in those pools. Perhaps some kind of telepathy (which we know Burnham has tangential abilities around) allows the symbionts to tell them what’s happened all these years?

• Partially Confirmed, the Trill individuals seen are indeed connected to the pools, but the reason for travelling there is to allow Adira Tal to connect to their symbiont's past hosts.

The character Gray being introduced this season will be a joined Trill, and not just any joined Trill...

...they're Dax.

• Jossed, it's a brand-new symbiont character named Tal.

The Burn didn't affect the Romulans, or led to their ascendance

Since the Burn involved the destruction of any ship or installation using a dilithium-regulated matter-antimatter reactor, then in a fit of cosmic irony, the Romulans will have returned to being one of the preeminent powers in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants because their ships have traditionally relied upon artificial singularities for power and/or regulation (and not dilithium).

• Picard takes place around 2400? Season 3 takes place in 3188. That is roughly a 750-800 year time difference, and a lot can happen in that amount of time. There is a very real chance we are going to find out none of the major powers we know of survived, and its all-new ones in charge for whatever reasons.
• Jossed, the Romulans didn't conquer anyone and have in fact reunited with the Vulcans.

Since the Burn, Bajor has taken the place of Earth as the center of the Federation.

Especially since People of Earth has shown Earth is no longer the capital world of the Federation. When we finally see Senna Tal in Forget Me Not their uniform resembles those of the Bajoran militia, while the new Starfleet com badges seen both on Senna and the 3rd season-opening also resemble the DS9-era Bajoran ones.

• Jossed. Starfleet Headquarters is located on a space station hidden inside a distortion field, which also houses the remaining civilian government of the United Federation of Planets. Bajor is not mentioned.

Shout-Out

• There will be a character named Dylan Hunt, "A relic lost in time, running around the universe attempting to restore the greatest civilization in history." A homage to Gene Roddenberry's Genesis II (1973) and Planet Earth (1974) and Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda (2000-2005).
• Grudge is a Flerken, or reasonable facsimile.

Reasons why the Tal symbiote accepts Adira

(These aren't mutually exclusive)

• The symbiote chose Adira, based on their relationship with Gray, their love, Adira's promise, etc.
• Changes in human and/or symbiote biology, such as a mutation to the overall genome or a unique feature to either of them.
• Adira has a trill ancestor, but the trill DNA has laid dominant until now.
• Adira being non-binary makes them more susceptible to accepting a symbiote that can have memories from female and male hosts, where as Riker was very hetero and cis, which may have contributed to his eventual incompatiblity.

Kovich, the man interrogating Georgiou at Starfleet Headquarters in the 32nd Century, is...

• A Section 31 agent, or even the head of the agency
• A descendant of someone who crossed over from the Mirror Universe
• A member of the surviving civilian government of the United Federation of Planets, possibly even the President
• A very advanced hologram, with the other two interrogation holograms used earlier in the scene being more primitive models that Georgiou is allowed to disable to lure her into a false sense of security
• Simply someone with an extreme fascination the Mirror Universe, as Kovich pointedly mentions being born on April 5 of an unspecified year (First Contact Day in the Prime Universe, and a Holy Day for the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe)
• A time traveler now marooned in the 32nd century due to the Temporal Accords. He dresses in a decidedly unusual fashion compared to anyone else around him (fake glasses and necktie, for example) and only seems to pop up when time travel is involved.

Possible reasons for Georgiou’s flashes

• Some kind of quantum interference across universes. We’ve heard that the two universes have drifted apart, so she’s losing ties to her origins.
  • Confirmed to be part of the problem, see below.
• She’s having flashbacks to the time she trusted Mirror-Burnham. Given the events of the episode these start in, could it be a parallel to Burnham’s mutiny against Captain Georgiou in the pilot?
  • Jossed
• She’s an imposter of some sort. These flashbacks remind this troper of the flashbacks Tyler/Voq had.
  • Jossed
• She's experiencing temporal sickness of some variety.
  • Confirmed: She's suffering from being both too far from her home time and her home universe.

Episode seven will feature the Romulans

The title of the episode is “Unification III”, which seems to be a Shout-Out to the TNG two-parter Unification I and Unification II which explored Spock’s attempt to reunify the Romulans and Vulcans. We saw in Picard that these attempts were unsuccessful by the time of Spock’s disappearance, but it may be that things have progressed since then. WMG: we’ll be finding out.

• Confirmed. The Romulans have rejoined the Vulcans on their homeworld, now called Ni'Var.

The ship in the Verubin Nebula is the Discovery

At some time in the series, the crew of the Discovery discover that the ship in the Verubin Nebula is the Discovery/Zora, taken back in time by Phillipa Georgiou. It had a front seat to "The Burn" and probably knows what caused it. However to avoid any paradoxes, Discovery/Zora had to remain hidden until found by the crew.

• They're going to have to explain the pre-refit appearance from "Calypso", though. Maybe a programmable-matter disguise to fool anybody from the time period who spots the ship? Or the writers just retcon it.
• Jossed, it's a Kelpien ship.

Burnham's successor as executive officer of Discovery is ...

• Burnham, back in the position she was removed from, after redeeming herself yet again following a bout of disobeying orders.
  • Jossed, she gets a Rank Up instead to become The Captain.
• Reno, as the only other known full commander on board (other than Burnham). Then again, she seems to prefer the technological work in engineering far more than command.
• Culber, who is another relatively senior officer at lieutenant-commander. He seems to have relatively good "people skills" on top of his medical expertise. And from a meta perspective, Dr. Pollard would still be available as a recurring version of The Medic.
• Stamets, also currently a lieutenant-commander like Dr. Culber. However, his specialty lies in operating the spore-drive and he is the vessel's only compatible navigator for the network (being the only one bearing tardigrade DNA), meaning his work will likely keep him in engineering and away from the bridge.
  • Most likely Jossed, given his and Burnham's deteriorated relationship by the end of season 3. Since Burnham is now The Captain, the two of them would likely not want to work so closely together, at least in the near future.
• Tilly, being made permanent after her interim appointment so far. Could be a parallel to the 2009 film, which showed similarly large and arbitrarily quick advancements in rank.
• Lieutenant Nilsson; the series seems to be frequently showing her as an "officer of the watch" in command when Saru, Burnham, et al. are off the ship.
• Lieutenant Detmer, continuing a Character Arc from overcoming her trauma from early in the season (and paralleling her Mirror Universe counterpart, who was XO of the I.S.S. Shenzhou).
• Adira Tal, drawing on their multiple lifetimes of experience from the symbiont, which included a Starfleet admiral as a past host. From a meta level, this would also be a way to further showcase the series' only non-binary character.
• All Jossed. With Burnham promoted to the captaincy of Discovery, Saru returns from his leave of absence on Kaminar, retaining his rank as captain, but as the first officer (again).

Season 4

General, Season 4

Saru will be given command of some other ship besides Discovery.

It would make little to no sense for Saru to get downgraded in rank now that Burnham commands Discovery, but the ship can only have one captain in charge. It's possible that once Saru returns from his leave of absence on Kaminar, he might get assigned to command some other vessel in Starfleet.

• Only one captain in charge, yes. But the latter TOS films had no less than three officers of Captain rank aboard.
• Given that "Kobayashi Maru", the fourth season premiere, involves a Secret Test of Character towards the potential captaincy of the Voyager-J, this seems very much a Chekhov's Gun towards Saru (or somebody) getting reassigned to command that vessel once the current season-spanning crisis Story Arc is resolved.

Saru becomes a diplomat or envoy for Starfleet and the Federation.

Related to the previous WMG, the last we saw of Saru in season 3, he was headed to Kaminar to help Su'Kal's reintegration into Kelpien society (and the Ba'ul are still around on the same planet). It's possible that Saru, rather than returning to Starfleet duty, might be assigned as the Federation ambassador to Kaminar, or conversely as Kaminar's ambassador to the Federation Council.

• Zigzagged; Saru is an envoy to Kaminar's ruling council in "Kobayashi Maru", but then he resumes his commission in Starfleet in the next episode, "Anomaly".

Stamets transfers off of Discovery.

He already nearly transferred off of the ship and out of Starfleet at the beginning of season 2. The relationship between him and Burnham was clearly damaged, possibly irreparably so, after she ejected him from the ship against his wishes near the end of season 3, and the cold reception he gave her after the defeat of the Emerald Chain shows that problem is not going to go away easily. It's entirely possible that Stamets will decide that he can no longer serve on the ship with Burnham in charge and transfer away to Starfleet Command, Starfleet's scientific corps, or civilian life. It's especially possible now that Book is aboard Discovery full-time and has been shown to be able to navigate the ship through the mycelial network, making Stamets redundant for the first time. On a meta level, the ship's resident Science Hero is probably facing long odds to stick around when stacked up against The Captain's incumbent Love Interest.

• Seems Jossed as of "Anomaly". Stamets is back to even joking about Burnham giving him the Thrown Out the Airlock treatment, indicating that he's over it. Furthermore, Book is now the Last of His Kind (or nearly so) after his homeworld Kwejian was destroyed, and his judgment is being affected as a result.

The Ferengi captain seen in the Season 4 trailer has Yridian ancestry.

Various star-faring races have had a millennium to interbreed, and there's no reason to suppose that only humans would be getting in on the action, as it were.

The constant talk of captaincies is setting up a cast Retool at the end of the fourth season.

The fourth season premiere, "Kobayashi Maru", had prominent talk of Starfleet looking to pick a new captain for the Voyager-J after her refit is complete. In the same episode, R.A. Bryce was temporarily away as a consultant on another Starfleet vessel. "Anomaly" also mentions that Saru was offered the captaincy of the U.S.S. Sojourner (possibly a Voyager sister ship) but he turned it down to return to Discovery during the ongoing anomaly crisis. All this talk seems to be a Chekhov's Gun for when the crew have resolved the season's Story Arc and characters may get a Rank Up and/or transfers for their service. With Burnham set as the series' clear primary character, it seems likely that Saru may end up getting a permanent captaincy elsewhere and taking one or multiple of the secondary characters from Discovery with him as his senior staff in a The Fellowship Has Ended moment.

"Calypso" is a dream of Zora's

Given that we've now seen about a year of Discovery in her 32nd century refit form with no pending sign of her being restored to her original 23rd century form (barring the temporary reboot of her computer in "That Hope is You, Part 2"), and Zora's personality emerging more fully this season, it seems increasingly unlikely that the scenario depicted in "Calypso" will ever come to pass. However, as a sentient being, Zora is fully capable of dreaming — this may even be how she developed some of her personality — so it makes sense that at some point, she dreamed up this scenario for entertainment or fantasy.

Discovery will be sent into the past dealing with the DMA and forced to take The Slow Path back

We know that time travel is outlawed by the 32d century, so the crew traveling back to the future on purpose is off the table. Instead they disguise the ship to appear as she did in the 23rd century and beam the organic crew into the transporter buffers while Zora minds the shop. Craft is from the Emerald Chain, hence his fighting the V'Draysh and not knowing how to use their equipment. That doesn't explain the shuttle or his inability to recognize the Starfleet or Federation branding all around the ship though.

The anomaly will somehow create an alternate timeline copy of Discovery

This is the one that appears in "Calypso".

The Kelvans have created the anomaly.

It has been revealed that the anomaly comes from outside the galaxy and it would allow the reintroduction of an old Star Trek alien. However, given my previous success rate on WMG, it is almost certain to be Jossed.

• Just to be even more crazy with this theory, the DMA isn't a weapon. The Kelvans are trying to get rid of the radiation that is building up in their own galaxy.
  • As of "All In," the leading theory in-universe now is that the DMA is not a weapon, but is in fact a piece of mining equipment, with the massive damage being caused being entirely unintentional (or beneath concern).

The Higher Synthetics created the anomaly.

Season 4 has multiple Continuity Nods to Star Trek: Picard, but the Higher Synthetics are noticeably absent from the list of alien civilizations suspected to have created the DMA, in spite of being capable of building structures the size of solar systems. Perhaps the writers are holding back on namedropping them until The Reveal? Also, like the Kelvans above, the Higher Synths are from outside the galaxy.

The Caeliar created the anomaly.

As of "All In," what we know about Unknown Species 10-C is (1) that they're capable of cloaking entire star systems and (2) that they're dredging the Milky Way for boronite (which "The Omega Directive" established as being a key ingredient in generating omega particles. Both cloaking star systems and harnessing omega molecules were achieved by the Caeliar civilization in the Star Trek: Destiny novel trilogy. Given that Season 2 already featured the Control AI and Prodigy features a Brikar, it's clear that the producers of the new series are willing to migrate concepts from the books into alpha canon.

• The Caeliar in Star Trek: Destiny trilogy were extreme pacifists. Them engaging in activity that could harm other lifeforms would be very out of character for them unless the victims of the DMA aren't really dead but were transported somewhere.

Species 10-C has actually been dredging the Milky Way for decades

It's just that word of the DMA couldn't get around until after regular warp travel was reestablished.

Season 5

General, Season 5

Agnes Jurati and her reformed Borg Collective will appear in the thirty-second century as an ally of the Federation.

She'll be 1200 years old, but what does that matter to a Borg Queen?

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