Star Trek: Discovery Set Up A Perfect New Starship Show (But It Won’t Happen)

Star Trek: Discovery season 5's penultimate episode set up the perfect pairing for a new Star Trek show that will never happen. As Discovery's fifth and final season comes to a close, Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the USS Discovery are closing in on the Progenitors' technology. After a season-long quest filled with puzzling clues and morality tests, the powerful Progenitors' treasure is finally within reach, but Moll (Eve Harlow) and the Breen continue to complicate matters. The Breen manage to beam the structure that leads to the Progenitors' tech onto their ship, forcing Captain Burnham to formulate a plan to get it back.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 9, "Lagrange Point," sees Commander Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) take command of the USS Discovery while Burnham works to secure the Progenitors' technology. Rayner chooses Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) to act as his Number One, and the two make a surprisingly great pairing. When Burnham's heist mission on the Breen ship goes sideways, she cryptically conveys her new plan to Rayner, who works to make it happen. Unfortunately, Moll decides to travel through the mysterious portal inside the Progenitor structure and Burnham has no choice but to follow her.

Star Trek: Discovery Set Up A Perfect Starship Show With Rayner & Tilly

"You can sit in the captain’s chair, you know."

As Captain Burnham and Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) are busy on the Breen ship, Commander Rayner and Tilly prove to be a pairing that could sustain their own Star Trek show. As Rayner paces around the length of Discovery's bridge, Tilly wonders why he never sits in the Captain's chair. Sylvia later brings this up with him, telling him the pacing is making everyone nervous. When he offers her a gruff reply, Tilly goes on to say that she and the entire crew have truly come to trust Rayner as a commander. Rayner responds by telling Tilly why he chose her to be his Number One saying:

It’s because you’re smart as hell, you’re a good leader, and if we were stuck in a foxhole together, I wouldn’t kill you. That is, unless you gave me more of that warm and fuzzy encouragement that I don’t need.

Lt. Tilly responds with a smile as the scene cuts back to Burnham and Book. Rayner's brusque and by-the-book approach contrasts sharply with Tilly's enthusiastic and encouraging one, and the two complement one another well. Rayner keeps Tilly on task, while the Lieutenant reminds her Commander that he and everyone else on the ship are only human (or alien, as it were). With the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series, it's highly unlikely Star Trek:Discovery will get another spin-off, but Rayner and Tilly would make a dynamic starship duo.

Why Tilly Is The Best First Officer For Captain Rayner

The surly Captain and his bubbly Number One.

Lt. Syvlia Tilly has come a long way since Star Trek: Discovery season 1, and she challenges Rayner to be a different kind of commander. Having served in Starfleet for decades, Rayner has not yet grown accustomed to this new peaceful era for th United Federation of Planets. As Captain of the USS Antares, Rayner had developed a shorthand with his crew, but he seems to have kept himself at a distance from them personally. When Rayner is demoted to Commander and joins the USS Discovery's crew, he initially struggles to adjust to their more open way of communicating.

Tilly helps Rayner get to know Discovery's crew and offers him reassurance even when he doesn't necessarily need it. The two couldn't be more different, but that makes them stronger as a Captain and Number One. Like all the best Starfleet Captains, Rayner knows the strengths of his crew members and how best to assign them. Tilly, on the other hand, knows what to say to encourage her fellow crew members to perform at their best. Together, Rayner and Tilly make up one of Star Trek: Discovery's most surprising, but also most successful, pairings.