Context Is for Kings
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 1 October 2017
- ON
- CBS All Access
- STARDATE
- None given
- DIRECTED BY
- Akiva Goldsman
WRITTEN BYTeleplay by Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts & Craig Sweeny; story by Bryan Fuller & Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts
Six months into the Klingon war, prisoner Michael Burnham is unexpectedly brought aboard the USS Discovery, where Captain Gabriel Lorca is running a secret project he refuses to explain.
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS
Six months after the Battle at the Binary Stars, Burnham is being moved between prisons when her shuttle gets into trouble and is rescued by the USS Discovery. Captain Gabriel Lorca puts her to work for his science team, alongside the abrasive astromycologist Paul Stamets and her eager new roommate, Cadet Sylvia Tilly. Saru, now Discovery's first officer, is wary of his former colleague. When Discovery's sister ship, the USS Glenn, goes silent, Burnham joins a boarding party and finds the crew horribly twisted and dead, along with Klingon bodies and a huge, aggressive creature still roaming the corridors. Burnham helps the team escape. Lorca then reveals Discovery's real purpose: an experimental drive that travels along a vast fungal network across space. He offers Burnham a place in the war effort, and she accepts. Unknown to her, Lorca has had the creature from the Glenn brought aboard.
- 01The writers regarded this as the show's equivalent of a pilot episode, after the two-part prologue.
- 02Burnham's fellow prisoners are named Stone, Cold and Psycho, a joke on “stone-cold psycho”.
- 03Saru offering Burnham blueberries is a tribute to Bryan Fuller, who used to offer blueberries to people around the Star Trek offices.