Star Trek: Discovery’s future tech is now indistinguishable from magic – and that’s a problem

Star Trek Discovery
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)

Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery season 4 follow.

Without futuristic technology, there would be no Star Trek. Sure, the innovative stories and famous Kirk/Spock/McCoy axis had something to do with the show’s early popularity. But, if the Enterprise didn’t have transporters, warp drive and subspace communication, its original five-year mission would have floundered before it had even left Spacedock.

Back then, boundary-stretching tech was a narrative-driven and practical necessity. 1960s network TV budgets wouldn't allow a spaceship to land on a new planet every week. Meanwhile, forcing viewers to watch the crew on decades-long voyages between worlds – waiting years for Starfleet to respond to their enquiries – would have been commercial suicide. But beaming up and hitting warp factor five soon became integral to the franchise’s DNA, and the ground-breaking tech would later be joined by the holodecks and LCARS displays seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

When Star Trek: Discovery travelled to the 32nd century at the start of season 3, however, the tech content went up to another level. Beyond exploring even stranger new worlds and seeking out newer life and civilizations, Michael Burnham, Saru and the rest of the crew suddenly found themselves in a universe where programmable matter, portable transporters, and phasers that materialize in the palm of your hand are taken for granted.

None of that’s a problem in itself, of course – the morphing starships and floating computer displays look amazing, while expecting nothing to have changed in the 900 years between Discovery’s original time zone and the 32nd century would be as ridiculous as suggesting that our present looks the same as Richard the Lionheart’s.

But, when technology can do anything, anytime you want it to, it has a tendency to suck the drama out of a story more quickly than a malfunctioning airlock.

A kind of magic

Captain Burnham on the deck of the USS Discovery.

Burnham and the crew didn't take long to adapt to the sophisticated technology of the 32nd century. (Image credit: CBS)

2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But this is the plane of existence on which Star Trek: Discovery now resides; its tech so sophisticated and ubiquitous that the crew’s gadgets are essentially spells, charms and incantations wrapped up in sci-fi clothing. When Commander Stamets casually uses his personal transporter to travel from Engineering to the Bridge in a blink of an eye, he might as well be apparating out of a fireplace with Harry Potter and the Weasleys – he doesn’t even need to say a magic word to do it.

Ironically, the show’s writers seemed to acknowledge the pitfalls of pushing the technological envelope too far when they first transported the show to the 32nd century. The future Federation that the Discovery crew first encountered was a shadow its former self, the so-called Burn having rendered all warp travel impossible. With that minor inconvenience now resolved, however, travel between worlds is back on the agenda and there are seemingly no limits to what Starfleet can do.

While many fantasy writers are wise enough to understand that sorcery has the potential to overpower a story without rules to restrict its use, there’s little evidence Star Trek: Discovery is applying similar restraint with the technological witchcraft at its fingertips. 

The tech is also used in a frustratingly inconsistent manner. In season 4 episode ‘Anomaly’, for example, Stamets accompanies Cleveland Booker on a dangerous mission to gather information on a vast, mysterious entity – except he doesn’t, because he’s actually back on Discovery, neural-linked to a holographic version of himself. 

This poses a huge question for the future of the show: if it’s possible for a member of the crew to work from home, projecting themselves into an avatar that responds to its surroundings in real-time, why would anybody ever leave the ship on a risky away mission? 

And why did Captain Burnham, just a week earlier, abandon her place on the bridge to fly into a debris field when her virtual self could have done it instead? Okay, we wouldn’t have seen her undeniably cool spacesuit materialize from the ether with the elegant ease of Iron Man’s nanotech outfit, but you can’t help feeling the use (or non-use) of the tech is based on the whims of the writers’ room rather than the needs of the story. 

In fact, they effectively have to contrive a situation to remove that technological safety net – when the only thing a crew has to worry about is a planet-gobbling mass of dark matter, Star Trek is entering perilous territory.

Tech's appeal

Data in Star Trek Picard

Even The Next Generation’s resident android Data looks retro next to Discovery’s tech-magic. (Image credit: CBS)

The show is now so futuristic that it’s in danger of losing any connection to the real world. While Star Trek has always stretched the laws of physics, often by necessity –curse you, Einstein, with your troublesome relativity and your E=mc2 – there’s traditionally been some effort to explain away the made-up science in almost-plausible terms

In Discovery, however, tech-magic is so integral to the fabric of the show that it seems to exist almost for its own sake. Indeed, when Burnham creates a forcefield around herself to make a private call in ‘Anomaly’ – a rip-off of Get Smart’s intentionally ridiculous Cone of Silence – you can’t help wonder why she didn’t just take it in the next room. Is walking no longer the done thing in the 32nd century?

Discovery forgets that technology that works shouldn’t be more than set-dressing; a tool to establish a sense of time and place, but never the story in itself. It’s worth remembering that most of sci-fi’s best tales about future tech delight in telling us what happens when it goes wrong – it’s pretty much the entire reason for Black Mirror’s existence.

The show’s expanding toolkit of programmable matter, morphing starships and holographic stand-ins is in danger of being to Trek what the Sonic Screwdriver too often is to Doctor Who – a magic wand that can do whatever the writer needs to resolve a tricky plotline.

There are countless examples of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager crews pulling some piece of technobabble from thin air to solve a problem – or inventing some miraculous piece of tech to save the day – but there’s usually at least a hint of scientific reasoning to help it make sense. If Discovery continues to use its tech-magic without restriction, the lines between sci-fi and fantasy will start to blur.

So maybe it’s time for the writers’ room to pin that famous Arthur C. Clarke quote to the office wall, because Star Trek is better off leaving the magic to Star Wars.

New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 4 stream on Paramount Plus in the US on Thursdays. The show airs on Pluto TV in the UK.

TOPICS
Richard Edwards

Richard is a freelance journalist specialising in movies and TV, primarily of the sci-fi and fantasy variety. An early encounter with a certain galaxy far, far away started a lifelong love affair with outer space, and these days Richard's happiest geeking out about Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel and other long-running pop culture franchises. In a previous life he was editor of legendary sci-fi and fantasy magazine SFX, where he got to interview many of the biggest names in the business – though he'll always have a soft spot for Jeff Goldblum who (somewhat bizarrely) thought Richard's name was Winter.

Read more
Michelle Yeoh looks at Sven Ruygrok in Star Trek: Section 31
Star Trek: Section 31 star reveals 'there was so much more' that was left out of the new Paramount Plus movie
Three people stand inside a spaceship wearing suits
Prime Video could be removing my favorite sci-fi show this week – here’s why The Expanse is more than just Game of Thrones in space
Netflix
Netflix tried to fix 80s sitcom A Different World with AI but it gave us a different nightmare
Imperial droid holds Cassian Andor up against a wall.
Andor is the best Star Wars TV show on Disney+ and leaves Rebels, Clone Wars and Skeleton Crew eating space dust
Millie Bobby Brown's Michelle armed with a paint gun while standing next to some robots in Netflix's The Electric State movie
The Electric State could have been a great Netflix sci-fi movie, but it's just more evidence that it's Marvel or bust for the Russo brothers
AI-generated image of an android standing in front of a circuit board background with a giant padlock in the middle
We’re locked inside a creative bubble, will AI burst it or throw away the key?
Latest in Entertainment
Some of the Avengers standing in a room without their costumes on in Marvel's Avengers: Endgame movie
'It's a new beginning': Avengers 5 and 6 directors tease what Marvel fans can expect from Doomsday and Secret Wars' plot – and how they will set up the MCU's future
Trinity Rodman #2 of the Washington Spirit crosses the ball during a game between Bay FC and Washington Spirit at Audi Field on November 10, 2024 in Washington, DC.
National Women's Soccer League 2025: How to watch NWSL games live from anywhere
Irish boxer TJ Doheny receives an undercard bout, ahead of the WBO super welterweight world title fight in March, 2023
Ball vs Doheny live stream: how to watch the boxing from anywhere now, full undercard, start time, weigh-in results
Bruno Guimaraes of Newcastle United during the Carabao Cup Semi Final Second Leg match in February 2025
Liverpool vs Newcastle live stream: how to watch Carabao Cup final 2025 online, team news
The Russo brothers posing for a photograph and Herman carrying a Volkswagen camper van in The Electric State
'We're optimists': AI enthusiasts Joe and Anthony Russo defend its use in movies and TV shows, but admit there are 'very real dangers' around its application
Lando Norris driving around a bend during practice for the 2025 Australian Grand Prix
Australian Grand Prix 2025: How to watch this season’s first F1 race online from anywhere
Latest in News
Panos Panay and Alexa Plus
Amazon's Panos Panay teases future Alexa+ devices from speakers to possible wearables
Metroid Prime 4
I reckon the Nintendo Switch 2 could launch with Metroid Prime 4 – here’s why
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6
New rumors predict a foldable iPhone will launch next year – and cost almost twice as much as the iPhone 16 Pro Max
Pebble smartwatch countdown
Pebble confirms its smartwatch announcement is just hours away
Logo of YouTube Shorts
Is YouTube auto-playing Shorts when you open the app? Well, you’re not alone - here’s how to fix it
Google DeepMind panel discussion
“More sovereignty and protection” - Google goes all-in on UK AI with data residency, upskilling projects, and startup investments