As with any Star Trek series, episode or movie, Discovery is packed full of easter eggs, those
little tidbits designed to keep eagle eyed viewers glued to the screen, keeping die hard canon fans happy but a waste on the casual observer.
Some are more obvious than others. We know there are Klingons, humans and Vulcans, not really easter eggs, but the subtle details of these and other races hark back to established but sometimes little known facts and eye candy.
Below I have listed these easter eggs from the first two episodes of Discovery, so obviously – spoilers ahead.
First up,
Props
Props are probably the most abundant of easter eggs that can be found in any Star Trek live action series, usually in the form of weapons, computers, vehicles etc.
The phasers seen in Discovery, as well as the communicators appear more closely related to those seen in the TOS episode “The Cage” than those seen in the regular 3 seasons of The Original Series.
Klingon Bat’leths are also seen and mentioned by name, so these three items remain consistent with what we have boldly seen before.
In the Ready Room of the USS Shenzhou we see a couple of other props that have not been seen before but reference some pretty cool stuff.
There is for example, a series of books lined up along a shelf and some of the titles may be familiar to Trekkies. These titles include “Metamorphosis”, “Amok Time”, “All Our Yesterday’s” and “City On The Edge Of Forever”
All these book titles represent titles of TOS episodes – very cool indeed.
As with most incarnations of Star Trek, an anomoly is always present, in the case a bottle of Chateau Picard. While the bottle itself isn’t an issue (the Picard family have been wine makers for hundreds of years so there is no issue here), it’s the vintage that beggars belief…2267!! Discovery’s opening episode is set in 2256. (The bottle cannot actually be seen in the two opening episodes but it’s existence has been seen by the guys at Trek Core who had a tour of the set)
Maybe a time travel story is in the pipeline to establish where this bottle came from – probably not!
Starships
During the battle sequence, a number of Federation Starships turn up for the fight, a couple of them may seem familiar, not in look but in name.
The USS Yeager is one of the ships destroyed at The Battle Of The Binary Stars. A ship of the same name took part in the battle of sector 001 in Star Trek: First Contact. This USS Yeager was a Sabre-class starship and had a registry number of 61947.
Interestingly, there is another USS Yeager, this time with a registry of NCC-65674, a Yeager-type starship which was often stationed around Deep Space Nine.
The USS Shran is another ship from The Battle Of The Binary Stars, this is a reference to the Andorian Shran from Star Trek: Enterprise.
Another reference to the past is the USS T’Plana-Hath, named after the first Vulcan ship to make first contact with humans on Earth.
The opening plot
Starship investigates a Federation outpost damaged by an unknown assailant, attacked by a cloaked vessel. Sound familiar? This is how the story unfolds on another Star Trek production, TOS’s “Balance of Terror”. In that case, the aggressors were the Romulans. Another cool link here is Mark Lenard, who played the Romulan Commander in said episode also played Spock father Sarek. Sarek is a recurring character in Discovery.
Races
There isn’t much for this category just yet, obviously Humans populate the starships with a sprinkling of Vulcan interference and a passing mention of Tellarites and “filthy” Andorians, the main race here is the Klingons.
I’m not going to go into their appearance here, but there are a few things to take note of.
Specifically the Klingon houses. It’s established early on that the Klingon race is fractured into 24 distinct houses that sit on a council, although the empire as we know it is not unified. There are two houses of interest:
The house of Mo’Kal is interesting as it was the house that Captain Janeway belonged in the Voyager episode “The Killing Game”
The house of D’Ghor was mentioned in the DS9 episode “The House Of Quark” where Quark kills a Klingon named Kozak, who is the brother of D’Ghor.
Another little interesting piece of eye candy is that Klingons, once again, have pink blood. The pink blood was first seen (and never again) in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. This was to distinguish it from the blood of Colonel West, a Human posing as a Klingon.
Other Mentions
The biggest by far is that of Sarek. Sarek as you know is the father of Spock and Sybok, but in this era, he is step-father of the human Michael Burnham, training her in Vulcan ways for nearly 10 years. Why Sarek is as yet unknown, it could easily have been another character so why Sarek. I have to believe that at some point in the future of the show Sarek’s other children may make an appearance. Remember that at this point in time Spock is already serving on board the USS Enterprise
so a meeting of ships and characters is a strong possibility.
The Vulcan Learning Centre is also seen as the place that Burnham is undergoing her training, the same location that young Spock went to in Star Trek (2009). It looks remarkably similar too. The centre was first seen, albeit in a very basic form (a computer in a hut) in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where an adult Spock is undergoing retraining of his mind after the events of his death and rebirth. Indeed, the word Katra was also mentioned when Sarek and Burnham linked minds, this time however, over the vast distance of space.
The Prime Directive, or General Order 1 is also mentioned, the ultimate Federation rule of non interference of other races and cultures. This is the principle directive seen in all Star Trek series and was part of Enterprise’s mission, although Archer didn’t care much for it.
Number One, again first mentioned in “The Cage” and played by Gene Roddenberry’s then girlfriend and future wife Majel Barrett. The character was dropped with the second pilot episode, but returned again with Commander William Riker in TNG.
Harry Mudd – although hasn’t been seen yet, appeared in the series trailers for Discovery, so I guess he’ll turn up soon. Mudd was first seen in the TOS episode “Mudds Women” and again in “I,Mudd”.
That’s all I have for now, if you know of any other, please drop me a message and I’ll look into it.
Happy Trekking!