Ahead of Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 coming out soon, we’re going to learn what happened to Michael Burnham during her year alone in the 32nd century,
before the arrival of the USS Discovery and crew! Strap in, It’s warp time!
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack, and let’s get into it!
From what we know from Star Trek: Discovery season 3,
Burnham spent the year of 3188 being a courier before the arrival of the USS Discovery a year later, but a lot of things can happen in a year so what truly happened?
Una McCormack’s latest book “Wonderlands” details everything that went down during that year,
and it is packed with fascinating adventures. In this video we will talk about what exactly Burnham was up to during that year,
In this video we will talk about what exactly Burnham was up to during that year, In this video we will talk about what exactly Burnham was up to during that year, and how it impacts the rest of Discovery Season 3.
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Warning, spoilers on board for the book “Wonderlands”, you have been warned! Let’s warp in!
We find out that the name of Aditya Sahil’s starbase is that of “Devaloka”, with Deva loka being a plane of existence similar to heaven in Indian Religions.
As of Episode 1 of Season 3 of Discovery, Aitya Sahil, who had been serving on Starbase Devaloka all his life,
was commissioned by Michael Burnham upon her arrival as Communications Officer.
As a token of appreciation, Mr. Sahil gave Burnham a holo journal of his grandmother Priya Tagore, who served as a Federation Council member from before “The Burn”.
Starbase Devaloka also has more people onboard than just Mr. Sahil, and has about 20 people living there.
One such character is called “Jeramiah” who is an old courier who has a deep hatred for the Federation, due to his planet being left for itself after the Temporal Wars.
Jeremiah lives in a place on the station called “The Back 40” where he helps to keep the station still running, and helps Burnham to fix her tricorder which will eventually help her find out where and when the USS Discovery is going to arrive.
Book encourages Burnham to get a ship of her own, so they go and visit a ship graveyard known as the “Necropolis”.
It is called this, due to the holographic systems on ships being broken and turning on when people board the shipwrecks, giving the impression of ghosts still inhabiting the destroyed ships.
Burnham and Book board an Eden Class starship, a Starfleet ship known as the USS Maryam Mizakhani, named after a notable female mathematician who was the first woman to win the mathematician Fields Medal.
This ship was constructed at the “New Utopia Planitia Shipyards”, so at least we know that after the events of Star Trek: Picard, the Utopia Planitia Shipyards are eventually reborn.
The Ship Burnham finds for herself is called a Nirvana class Flyer, which are known as very reliable robust 1 person ships.
Burnham and Book fix up one and Burnham calls it the “Alice”, continuing Burnhams love of Alice in Wonderland from the book she was gifted by her Adopted mother Amanda Greyson.
In a system a couple of weeks' journey from Divaloka lies Starbase 906, also known as Starbase Vanguard.
This was a Federation Starbase, which had a starfleet crew station on it even after the burn up to the year 3186, 2 years before the arrival of Burnham in this future.
This Federation starbase was home to researchers, who were coming up with an alternative method of transportation due to the Galaxy's dwindling supply of dilithium, similar to the Ni’Var project SB-19.
Vanguard's alternative was called “Project Rabbithole” where they constructed the Transwarp tunnels which were used in Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery.
This project was not deemed viable before the Burn, due to the extreme stresses that the tunnels had on ships who entered them, which resulted in the numerous pieces of ship debris found in the tunnels.
During Season 3 we saw one of the mercentiles which operates in this new future. At some mercentiles you will see Starfleet Reenactors,
who dress up in slightly incorrect Starfleet uniforms and play pretend, looking for old relics they can add to their collections.
Burnham offers herself off as an expert on the federation, and makes a tidy profit selling off Federation trinkets she has recovered, which she uses to buy the Black Box of the USS Yelchin.
This is one of the black boxes we see in the show, with this scene also being shown in season 3 of her collecting it off from a mercantile exchange.
The USS Yelchin is named after Anton Yelchin, the actor who played Chekov in the Kelvin movies, who unfortunately passed away in 2016.
Ikasu, a self-sustaining planet, is visited by Book and Burnham as they recover a call from the planet by a mother who used a Starfleet Subspace Relay that was left in the system.
This world has looked inward since the Burn and have isolated themselves and made it taboo to not only send transmissions, but even to study about the outside and look at the stars with a simple telescope.
As we saw with Season 3 of Discovery, the brand new technology which we have seen in this 32nd century,
personal holoprojectors which scan the environment and disguise you as the life forms it detects,
probably a new way to investigate pre-warp civilisations invented by Starfleet, an upgrade to the cloaking suits seen in Star Trek: Insurrection.
Burnham and Book help to get a mother and daughter off the planet, and bring them to Sanctuary IV to help them start a new life away from their outsider fearing world.
They also take the Starfleet Subspace Relay, which helps Burnham recover the message from Admiral Senna Tal from Earth.
The next situation that Burnham finds herself in is on a Generation ship, where the elders of the ship despise the Federation, due to the Federation leaving their homeworld to civil war after the Temporal Wars.
The young on the Generation ship were told that the Federation never existed, so that they could forget the trauma that was caused by the Federation.
However the young find out, and there is a generational split on this ship, which Burnham manages to resolve the conflict before it devolved into civil war.
In season 3 we hear mention of “The Incident at Donatu VII” from Book, and we see this play out in this book.
Donatu VII is actually a hidden world in which the couriers use to settle down and have their own families.
This world is under attack from the White Palm, and Burnham convinces the Couriers to band together to defend their home.
Burnham goes to Starbase Vanguard and she is offered a blackbox of the Gav’nor, a Cardassian ship,
if she is willing to help the forces of Vanguard Station assume control of Starbase Devaloka.
However before she realises it, Vanguard is actually run by the White Palm.
They run the local systems really well, and see themselves as a new Federation, but their methods in which they do it are very much unlike starfleet. Book saves Burnham, and they manage to steal the blackbox as well as logs from Starbase Vanguard.
With the two black boxes now, Burnham realises that there is a difference in the timestamps related to “The Burn ''.
This rarity of blackboxes from the time of the burn, really helps to tie some of the plot points of season 3.
Looking through the logs that were stolen from Starbase Vanguard and the last log was recorded in 3186, which was 2 years before Burnham arrived,
so there was a Starfleet presence in the area in which Burnham found herself in only a couple of years before she appeared.
It is good to see more factions of Starfleet still being able to operate so long after the Burn, and should offer some interesting stories in the future as the Federation is reborn and starting to reach out again.
White Palm Raiders come to attack Divaloka, but are fended off by a collective force of couriers and other allies that Burnham has made in the last year, from members of the Generation ship to the Ikasians they helped..
his was a great way to tie together the book and all its varying plot points in an extremely satisfying way.
Burnham and Book decide to take the fight to the White Palm, and assault Starbase Vanguard.
However before they can even open fire, they are called to beam onto the station, and it turns out that Burnhams Cardassian Courier friend Iliana Pa'Dan has already organised a coup against the White Palm,
which was successful due to the fact a lot of white palm raiders were off station to take Divaloka.
On their return to Divaloka Burnham finally gets a reply from Terralysium, the world which was saved by Gabriel Burnham in Season 2 of Star Trek: discovery.
As we found out in season 3, Gabriel Burnham didn’t return to Terralysium when she went back to the future, but actually went back to Essof IV.
News from terralysium was the last hope that Burnham was holding on to, and now that it was not the news she expected, she is finally accepting that she may have to stay in this future without the discovery, and should let go of the past and try to make a future for herself.
And finally we get the scene from Season 3 where Burnham and Book are on the Nautilus exercising using a Suus Mahna program which Book made for Burnham. They finally get the answer via the USS Discovery…
And those are the events of Burnhams year alone in the future. Very action packed with lots of things happening. Once again as always, do share your thoughts with us via the comment section below, because if you’re talking Star Trek, then we want to hear about it!
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
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For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!