Star Trek: Discovery finally revealed the unusual explanation behind the Burn, but the controversial decision was originally inspired by an Ursula Le Guin short story. Ever since Discovery’s crew became stranded in the 32nd century, their lives have been rocked by the consequences of the Burn, which caused dilithium to go inert and detonate active warp cores. Although it happened more than a century before Discovery’s arrival, the Federation of the future was still reeling from the effects, limited in resources and ability to travel across long distances of space.
The Discovery crew finally stumbled upon the cause of the Burn in the last few episodes of season 3. The reason for the Burn was a stranded Kelpian child, Su’Kal, lost in an inaccessible nebula when the Kelpian research vessel Khi’eth crashed on a planet made of dilithium. Dr. Issa, one of the scientists, was pregnant at the time, and the environment altered the child in utero to give him a connection to dilithium. While the rest of the crew died off from radiation poisoning, he was left behind for a century with only a holoprogram for company. Because of his connection to dilithium, he caused the Burn out of the trauma of watching his mother die and being left truly alone, the emotional disturbance rippling out into the galaxy and affecting all dilithium.
Discovery’s season 3 finale brought that story to a close, but some fans considered the Burn hinging upon a lost child to be a strange narrative choice. According to showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise, the idea was based on a well-known short story by science fiction legend Ursula K. Le Guin called “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” Kurtzman and Paradise discussed this short story in early conversations while developing their idea for the Burn.
The short story is not a direct comparison to Discovery’s explanation of the Burn, as Le Guin’s work was only one source of inspiration. However, the story of Su’Kal does draw upon its images and themes to weave the emotional weight behind the Burn. Discovery adapted “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” to bring up relevant ideas about the connection that will continue to affect Discovery’s crew as they enter season 4.
Le Guin’s Short Story Explained
Ursula Le Guin was an award-winning speculative fiction author, most known for novels such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is one of her most famous short stories, centering on a utopian city during a summer festival. The description of this utopia is deliberately vague, allowing the reader to conjure up their own idea of what a perfectly happy city looks like.
After describing a whole city full of prosperous and happy people, the reader finds out the price. In a windowless room somewhere in the city, a child is kept in complete neglect, and everyone in Omelas knows. The child’s absolute misery is the price for the prosperity of the utopia, and their beautiful city would wither if even a kind word was spoken to the child.
How The Story Inspired The Burn’s Explanation
Omelas may not seem to fit with the explanation for Discovery’s Burn, but Kurtzman and Paradise took pieces of this story to apply to their vision of the future. Kurtzman stated “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” was behind the idea that the Burn and its consequences started with a child. They thought that this answer would be something fans were not expecting, but would make sense in retrospect with clues like the lullaby heard throughout the galaxy.
To fit this theme, Discovery drew upon the image of the isolated child in misery from the short story. Like the child at the center of Omelas, Su’Kal had been neglected for most of his life while still remembering that there was a life and a world before his isolation. The Discovery crew brought the first kindness from the outside world he had ever known, finally freeing him from the circumstances that created the Burn. Instead of finding some way to reset the timeline in usual Star Trek fashion, the future still have to live with the Burn, though freeing Su’Kal both allowed him to connect to his homeworld and brought the Federation a new supply of dilithium without the worry of another Burn.
The distinct difference from the Le Guin story is that instead of thriving off the child’s misery, the utopia of the Federation was brought down by it. The Federation failed to rescue the Khi’eth, as the only vessel that answered the century-long distress call never arrived or communicated again, presumably destroyed entering the nebula. The Federation was too large and sprawling to account for a single science vessel and thus ended up ignoring the distress call and stranding Su’Kal for decades. It was ignoring a child’s misery that brought an end to the utopia until the child was saved.
Other Inspirations For The Story Of The Burn
Le Guin’s short story was combined with a number of other sources to create this unique plot. The holodeck component of the Star Trek episode was intended to be Su’Kal’s own version of The Matrix. It was a dream world created by someone else, leaving Su’Kal mostly unaware of the outside world. However, once he was able to face reality, it was a dream world he controlled.
Su’Kal was also meant to exemplify the season’s theme of connection and disconnection. Paradise stated that the Burn beginning as a moment of disconnection between a mother and child as Dr. Issa died was the most emotional symbol of disconnection they could create. That moment, in turn, led to the disconnection of the Federation and all of the characters born into the post-Burn world. Paradise felt that theme would be resonant with viewers because of the “profound disconnect in our society and more globally,” but was surprised when it became even more relevant when the season aired during the COVID-19 pandemic. Star Trek: Discovery’s explanation for the Burn may still be controversial, but it was built on a foundation of genre-defining science fiction and poignant commentary.