By James Fletcher
Actors Doug Jones (Saru) and Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber) reminisce about their roles in the sadly departed Star Trek: Discovery, one of the most fascinating of all the properties in the much-loved Star Trek universe.
Celebrating 58 years since its first regular episode, “The Man Trap”, debuted on September 8, 1966, Star Trek has proven a stalwart of popular culture, often chasing its own tail through a dark forest of controversies, corporate interference, and social upheaval, with the original series proactively courting scandalous subject matter such as racism, gender identity, equality, fascism and what many consider the first primetime interracial kiss on broadcast television. In fact, while today’s musky toxic fanboys lament the reality of basic social constructs in popular entertainment, Star Trek, under the guidance of Gene Roddenberry and such iconic writers as DC Fontana, Gene L. Coon and Harlan Ellison – with an assist from Desilu Studios head Lucille Ball – was, and always has been, a bastion of so-called Woke storytelling.
And with the franchise going through something of a renaissance, embracing the shared universe format under the leadership of Alex Kurtzman, the forerunner of New Trek, Star Trek: Discovery recently wrapped its swansong season, bringing closure not just to the show’s era-spanning journey, but bowing out on its own terms with cast and crew delivering a heartfelt, fun adventure that remains authentic to the vision established by Season One showrunner and co-creator Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, American Gods) and Kurtzman.
Arguably one of the more ambitious series in the beloved franchise, Star Trek: Discovery was a deliberate departure from The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager temperament, abandoning the adventure-of-the-week format for a methodical serial story arc, often with harder science-fiction themes that forced its key players to evolve, adapt, and at times succumb to narrative over spectacle. The result was an epic character-driven saga built on dramatic exposition, allowing for emotionally grounded stories, nurtured by Star Trek’s hopeful philosophy, and played out against a dynamic blend of action, visual effects and stunning world building.
Exploring themes of identity, class-structure and equality from an enlightened “Trek” perspective, Star Trek: Discovery tore up some traditional Trek mythology, deftly playing with the canonisation of its predecessors, often to a mixed reception. Initially set before the Original Series timeline, Star Trek: Discovery introduced a new crew that felt disjointed and rebellious, further exasperated by the show’s main character, Michael Burnham (played wonderfully by The Walking Dead alum Sonequa Martin-Green), a low-ranking disgraced crewman forced into a redemptive story arc she doesn’t want. Fleshing out the cast in the first season were a number of respected names that included the likes of Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter), Anthony Rapp (Dazed And Confused) and Doug Jones (The Shape Of Water), whose alien persona of Saru touched on a number of disruptive themes, and who quickly became a fan favourite, boasting one of the show’s most fascinating and organic character arcs.
“The writers were very good at knowing us as actors and knowing our personality quirks, our strengths and our weaknesses, and helping put those into our characters,” Doug Jones explained when asked by FilmInk about his first impressions of Saru. “So, when Saru first came to me, written on the page, he was a very gentlemanly, postured, very refined character who speaks 94 languages; he is super intelligent. I’m like, ‘I don’t need any refinement on this. You guys are doing great for me.’”
From there, Doug Jones went even deeper into the character. “I’ve spent more time with Saru and seen more layers peeled back for that character than anything I’ve ever played before,” the actor says. “We’ve had five seasons to explore him and the layers that lie beneath…his backstory, his emotional makeup and his professional journey, upward mobility, all of that. We’ve had so much time to do all of that, an I’ve been living a dual life these past five seasons. There’s Doug Jones, but there’s also Saru, who I’ve lived in many months out of the year. But it’s been very helpful for me as a person playing Saru all these years, because of that journey he’s been on. He started out as the only Kelpien ever to be on a Starship, to ever to go through Starfleet Academy and make his way as an officer, while always living in fear. He was a prey species on his planet, and was put down and put in place by a predator species. He’d gotten out from under that, but he was still living in fear. So going from that all the way to season five where he is past the fear, and living in confidence, and having courage, was amazing. He liberated the rest of his planet, and found love for the first time, and worked his way up professionally. Now he’s an ambassador with the Federation. From his lowly beginnings to now being a diplomat and having married and finding love…that’s a real journey. I can pat myself on the back and say, ‘Whew, we made it, Saru…we made it!’”
For those familiar with Star Trek: Discovery lore, the show, by design, saw several cast members come and go, often serving the story through cause-and-effect narrative tricks. It was a writer’s room approach that allowed more than a few surprises over the five-season run, and which thankfully, in the case of casting Wilson Cruz (13 Reasons Why, My So Called Life), was able to elevate a guest spot into a regular cast member. Cruz initially showed up as the partner of Anthony Rapp’s science officer Paul Stamets, creating the first openly gay couple in Star Trek. The onscreen dynamic was heavily inspired by the Latino actor’s personal experiences as a gay man, and was embraced, in true Star Trek form, by the writers.
“I started as a recurring character,” explains Wilson Cruz with a thoughtful affection for his character of Dr. Hugh Culber. “I was Paul’s husband. It had a very supporting role feel to it. So when I did finally get to see a script, the first thing I noticed was that it was very different from many other Star Trek shows we’d ever seen, which had always been focused on the bridge and the people on the bridge. This was more about Michael Burnham and these people becoming the leaders that they would eventually become. I found that really fascinating because we’ve never been able to see these people challenged into these roles that they eventually take on. And that became very clear in terms of Culber, because we didn’t really know anything about him until after he was killed. Right?! That’s when we really started to delve into who this person was. And that was exciting for me because I got to kind of create this person along with the writers and the creators, and I was excited to go on that journey. For me, the metaphor behind Culber was my friends who were living with HIV and AIDS in the nineties and who knew they were going to die. And then the drugs came out that were going to keep them alive, and they finally saw that, ‘Oh, this life that I was leading doesn’t work for me anymore. I want to do other things. I want to take advantage of this second lease on life.’ And that was the metaphor that I was playing with. I was very fortunate to be working with writers who were collaborative, who wanted to hear from their actors, who made it easy and comfortable for me to reach out if I had an idea. And a lot of that came into play once they had decided that they were bringing Culber back as a series regular and that this character was going to develop in a certain way.”
Star Trek: Discovery – The Final Season is available now on Digital, click here to watch on Apple TV.
