Since I’m almost finished with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, tonight felt like the perfect time to post about my favorite character from the show that came before it, Star Trek: Discovery.
I knew exactly who I wanted to feature. I even started typing her name in the title — then I changed my mind. Not because I didn’t want to write about her. I did. Promise. But someone else kept whispering that she should be the one instead. Smarter. Stronger. More interesting than anyone else on the show. She also insisted on being given the deference and respect her status as a former Emperor of the Terran Empire allows.
Honestly, it’s probably for the best. Even though Discovery isn’t my favorite — that honor still belongs to Star Trek: Enterprise — it has a lot of characters I really enjoyed. Given that, I think April might be the month I focus entirely on my favorite members of the Discovery crew.
So, before she decides to take me out, may I present Philippa Georgiou: Starfleet captain, Terran Emperor, Section 31 agent, time traveler, and one of the most complicated characters I’ve come across in science fiction — or any genre, for that matter.
When viewers first meet her, she’s the wise, compassionate captain of the USS Shenzhou. We don’t get nearly enough time with her before she’s killed by the Klingons.
The second meeting doesn’t go as well.
This time, she’s the despotic Emperor of the Terran Empire in a mirror universe defined by cruelty and violence — a world where a daughter might kill her mother for not being bloodthirsty enough. When she’s pulled into our reality, that’s when things really get interesting.
She is not a nice person. She’s arrogant, vain, selfish, and lethal, with the empathy of the devil himself. She’s probably responsible for more deaths than any other main character in Star Trek. And yet, I can’t help but love her.
As the series progresses, those edges soften — just slightly. She begins to experience doubt and uncertainty, maybe for the first time in her life. There are flashes of regret. Moments — brief, almost imperceptible — where something like compassion slips through. And if anyone notices, the sharp tongue comes right back out to put them in their place.
Philippa is all of those things. But she’s also someone capable of loving one person so fiercely that she allows herself to change just enough not to lose them. It may be selfish, but it’s also nuanced — and, in its own way, self-sacrificing.
And the fact that Michelle Yeoh was never nominated for an Emmy for this role is a travesty.
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