Star Trek: Discovery’s Jason Isaacs is kind of rare as far as Trek actors go in that he’s an actual fan of the franchise (his fellow castmember Anthony Rapp also has some Trekker street cred, as anyone who follows him on Twitter can attest to). And for Isaacs, who plays the Discovery’s Captain Gabriel Lorca, that doesn’t just mean that he knows the ins and outs of James T. Kirk’s Enterprise, or that he can namedrop episode titles. No, he also understands that, at its best, Gene Roddenberry’s creation has to be meaningful to audiences in a way that reflects what is important in the real world of the here and now.
I spoke to Isaacs recently during a break from shooting Discovery in Toronto, and we dug in on this notion of making Star Trek count for something beyond just entertainment, as well as how Lorca is a wartime captain, what the character thinks of the Klingons, why it’s O.K. to have conflict among Starfleet members, and more. Read on for highlights from our chat…
Setting Discovery 10 years before Captain Kirk’s era, during a time of war between the Federation and the Klingons, will be a key aspect of raising the stakes for Lorca and his crew. And while Isaacs says that we can expect a textured take from the show on the Klingon perspective and why they feel they must fight, Captain Lorca has a pretty narrow view of the enemy.
“War being the most heightened, high-stakes situation we’ve ever come across, the question is often asked, what do you do with your enemy?” says Isaacs. “How much can you empathize with your enemy? How much do you need to kill them, because they’re trying to kill you? Lorca’s relatively simple on that front. He’s a very good wartime leader. You can’t spend too much time… you have to dehumanize them, or else you’ll let them kill you.”
Interestingly, he sees this era -- and its Starfleeters -- as perhaps being made of tougher stuff than what would follow in most subsequent Trek shows. That’s not a knock; just the reality of living through a war.
“The Federation mandate, as we discover in The Original Series, is much more peaceful, and they might have been steamrolled,” he says. “But luckily, this is pre-them. I’m in charge, and I take no prisoners. So I have a relatively clear-cut view of [the Klingons]. The story, on the other hand, delves deeply into what the Klingons are thinking and feeling, and their different culture. And that’s one of the ways this iteration differentiates itself from previous ones. That everybody has a point of view, and our real world and our Star Trek world is a complicated place. No easy choices.”
So while science and exploration will be part of Discovery’s mission, we’re a far ways off from Captain Picard sipping tea while he talks things out, or even the state of affairs by the time of Kirk’s era.
“The Federation, the mission to boldly go and explore the universe and new species, has to… when there are people firing at you, you have to fire back,” says Isaacs. “And so they need to be able to do all these things. He’s seen a lot of action, but then, so have many people in our story. We’re 10 years before the Federation has finally synthesized its mission and is able to roam peacefully around the universe, and there’s a lot of conflict.”
While the makers of Discovery have been pretty tightlipped about story details prior to the show’s debut, we have gotten a sense that Lorca may have a bit of a dark side. During my tour of the show’s sets, showrunner Aaron Harberts revealed that the captain has a brig-like area of the ship that’s called “Lorca’s Menagerie”… though we don’t know who or what he keeps in that spot. But surely, a mysterious, wartime captain will bring some level of internal conflict to the ship and its crew, which is something that Roddenberry shied away from the further he got into Star Trek (this concept really kicked in by the time of Next Generation). Isaacs doesn’t quite buy that that’s how things went on TOS anyway.
“Well, I don’t think that’s true,” he says. “It may have been a mandate to try and avoid -- make that not be the center of the plot. I think that’s true. But obviously they disagree with each other or else they’d all be saying the same thing, and the lines would be interchangeable, which they weren’t ever. But it’s definitely not true of our show.”
The actor thinks that part of the reason that Discovery is able to delve into more interpersonal conflict with its Starfleet characters isn’t just because it’s set in an earlier time, but also because the show is more serialized than any Trek before it.
“It’s one big, long novel-like story that, with many twists and turns, unfolds over 15 episodes,” he explains. “We go deeper into character, and we go deeper into the relationships. We’ve changed a lot. And conflicts that come up, some of which resolve, some of which aren’t, and intimacies that develop -- that’s where all great drama comes from. All shows are family shows, all good shows. You know, the crew is a family, just like any other show you can think of on television is a family show. So this is about how people are with each other. And what you want to do is put them in situations of enormous crisis, because then you really measure up. You see people are the best and worst versions of themselves in crisis, and there’s no bigger crisis than war.”
Isaacs, who calls himself a “dyed in the wool Trekkie for The Original Series,” rightly points out that Kirk and Spock ran into plenty of trouble during their time too.
“Their mission might have been to go peacefully, but they didn’t always get received peacefully,” he says. “And so this is not about interhuman wars. This is about interspecies wars, interplanetary wars.”
Commander Michael Burnham (played by Sonequa Martin-Green) is the main character of Discovery, and we know that at some point she becomes the first officer -- Number One -- to Captain Lorca. Beyond that, however, Isaacs is reluctant to reveal too much about his relationship with his Number One…
“It’s true to say that she’s a remarkable person,” he says. “She’s physically incredibly capable, but she’s also very smart -- raised as a Vulcan. But it’s not just about her background; it’s about who she is. She has an instinctive capacity, I think, for leadership that has not been recognized. And I, in many ways, kind of pluck her up and… mentor is the wrong word. But I’m her captain and I look to her. I have an interest in her that is curious at first [for the] viewer. And then they’ll see where that goes… But she’s very enigmatic, and she is someone you want to watch.”
“The reason to tell a story is to be entertained,” says the actor. “The prime directive, from an entertainment point of view -- not a Federation point of view -- is to entertain and engage. But beyond that, the initial version of Star Trek was born out of very troubled and tumultuous times, and Gene Roddenberry’s desire not only to make a successful TV show, but to hold out a vision of hope for the future. Well, these are very complicated and difficult times, and our characters are put in very difficult situations morally -- hopefully that aren’t simplistic.”
Isaacs hopes that, despite the dark era Discovery portrays in the history of Star Trek, the show still can provide a version of the future for humankind to look forward to.
“I’m happy that the story that I’m part of holds out a beacon of hope for the future,” he says. “In a time when it’s very hard to have any hope, to see any optimism, we want to put up a story at least that says -- in our fictional version of the world -- everybody works together and it works out fine, and difficulties are not easy to iron out but they’re overcome. Because it’s easy to get bleak right now.”
Star Trek: Discovery debuts on September 24 on CBS, CBS All Access and Netflix in most international territories.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
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