Table of Contents

Preface
Sherryl Vint  
Introduction
Sabrina Mittermeier & Mareike Spychala

‘Boldly Going Where No Series Has Gone Before?’ – Discovery’s Role Within The Franchise and Its Discontents

Looking in the Mirror: The Negotiation of Franchise Identity in Star Trek: Discovery
Andrea Whiteacre
A Star Trek About Being Star Trek: History, Liberalism and Discovery’s Cold War Roots  
Torsten Kathke
The Conscience of the King – Or: Is There In Truth No Sex and Violence?  
John Andreas Fuchs
These Are the Voyages?: The Post-Jubilee Trek Legacy on the Discovery, the Orville, and the Callister  Michael G. Robinson

‘Just as repetition reinforces repetition, change begets change’ – Modes of Storytelling in Canon and Fanon

From Series to Seriality: Star Trek’s Mirror Universe in the Post-Network Era  
Ina Batzke
‘Lorca, I’m Really Gonna Miss Killing You’– The Fictional Space Created by Time Loop Narratives
Sarah Böhlau
Discovery and the Form of Victorian Periodicals  
Will Tattersdill
To Boldly Discuss: Socio-Political Discourses in Star Trek: Discovery Fanfiction  
Kerstin-Anja Münderlein

‘Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations?’ – Negotiating Otherness in Star Trek: Discovery

Afrofuturism, Imperialism, and Intersectionality

Interview on Normalizing Black Women as Heroes  
Diana Mafe
The Cotton-Gin Effect: An Afrofuturist Reading of Star Trek: Discovery  
Whit Frazier Peterson
The American Hello: U.S. Representations of Diplomacy in Star Trek: Discovery
Henrik Schillinger & Arne Sönnichsen
‘Into A Mirror Darkly’: Border Crossing and Imperial(ist) Feminism in Star Trek: Discovery  
Judith Rauscher

Interrogating Gender 

Star Trek Discovers Women: Gender, Race, Science, and Michael Burnham  
Amy C. Chambers
Not Your Daddy’s Star Trek: Exploring Female Characters in Star Trek: Discovery  
Mareike Spychala
‘We Choose Our Own Pain. Mine Makes Me Remember’ – Gabriel Lorca, Ash Tyler and the Question of Masculinity  
Sabrina Mittermeier & Jennifer Volkmer

Queering Star Trek 

‘Never hide who you are’: Queer Representation and Actorvism in Star Trek: Discovery  
Sabrina Mittermeier & Mareike Spychala
‘I never met a female Michael before’: Star Trek: Discovery between Trans Potentiality and Cis Anxiety 
Si Sophie Pages Whybrew
Veins and Muscles of the Universe: Posthumanism and Connectivity in Star Trek: Discovery
Lisa Meinecke

About the Author

Sabrina Mittermeier is a lecturer and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Augsburg. Mareike Spychala is a lecturer and research assistant in American Studies at the University of Bamberg.

Reviews

‘From the philosophy of time travel and alternate dimensions to the fraught politics of representation in contemporary film and television, Fighting for the Future sets scholarly coordinates for the series that has redefined Star Trek for the twenty-first century.’
Gerry Canavan, Marquette University

'This volume is a solid addition to the literature of Star Trek. As Discovery continues to chart its course alongside the other CBS productions... Scholars will reach for this book as the first collection of analyses of the new era, which had meaningfully differentiated itself from previous entries in the franchise.'
Cait Coker, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

'The editors achieve a remarkable feat in this collection by providing a comprehensive look at a series still in development. … Mittermeier and Spychala end their text confident that the series has left the past in the past, while holding on to the franchise’s belief in a positive future.'
Justice Hagan, Science Fiction Film and Television

'Fighting for the Future is an interesting and engaging collection of essays that examines Star Trek: Discovery as a piece of media in and of itself, as well as a piece of a much larger cultural legacy. Like other essay collections of its type, it draws on scholars from diverse disciplines who put their own spin and flavor on their scholarship.'
Jessica Seymour, Ancillary Review of Books

'Fighting for the Future: Essays on Star Trek: Discovery is full of interesting, engaging, well-argued, and well-written chapters, and it should be considered an effective work of scholarship from which the fields of media, English, and American studies should get considerable worth.'
Graham Minenor-Matheson, Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research