A figure familiar to Lorca and Lt. Tyler from the Klingon prison ship attacks the Discovery, intending to deliver the ship to their former captors.
When Commander Michael Burnham's actions start a war between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, she is court-martialed, stripped of rank, and reassigned to the USS Discovery. This secretive and experimental spaceship has a unique means of propulsion called the "Spore Drive". After an adventure in the Mirror Universe, Discovery helps end the Klingon war. In the second season they investigate seven mysterious signals and a strange figure known as the "Red Angel", and fight off a rogue artificial intelligence. This conflict ends with the Discovery traveling to the 32nd century, more than 900 years into their future.
The USS Discovery finds the Federation fragmented in the future, and investigates the cause of a cataclysmic event known as the "Burn" in the third season. Burnham is promoted to captain of Discovery at the end of the season, and in the fourth season the crew helps rebuild the Federation while facing a space anomaly created by unknown aliens that causes destruction across the galaxy. In the fifth season, the Discovery goes on a galactic adventure to find a mysterious ancient power that other dangerous groups are also searching for.