Star Trek: Discovery
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50 free Star Trek: Discovery trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Star Trek: Discovery brought the franchise back to television after a twelve-year gap, and it did so by breaking habits. Its lead is not a captain when the story starts, its first season plays out as one long war story, and midway through its run the whole ship leaps centuries ahead into an unknown future. This quiz follows that journey from the opening battle with the Klingons to the final treasure hunt. Expect questions on Michael Burnham and the crew around her, the actors behind the uniforms and the alien makeup, the villains and returning faces from older Trek, and the people and places that put the show on screen. It is written for viewers of every stripe. Plenty of questions can be worked out by anyone who watched a season or two, while the later ones are there for fans who know their Klingon houses from their time crystals.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Star Trek: Discovery's Michael Burnham grew up on Vulcan as the adopted sister of which classic character?
Spock
Spock never mentions a sister in earlier Star Trek stories, a gap the second season explains: his own crew is ordered never to speak of USS Discovery again.
Q 02Saru's actor in Star Trek: Discovery based the alien's walk on which profession, thanks to his hoof-shaped boots?
A supermodel
A supermodel was the inspiration for Saru's walk, because the boots that gave him hooved feet forced the actor onto the balls of his feet. His prosthetics first took more than three hours to apply each day.
Q 03Star Trek: Discovery's Ripper, the creature that first steers the ship's jumps, is a giant version of which tiny animal?
Tardigrade
Tardigrade travel also landed the show in court: a game developer claimed his unreleased game had used the idea first, but a judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2019.
Q 04Which actress went from playing Sasha on The Walking Dead to leading Star Trek: Discovery as Michael Burnham?
Sonequa Martin-Green
Sonequa Martin-Green was cast in December 2016, but the news stayed unofficial until her Walking Dead character had made her final regular appearance the following April.
Q 05Captain Gabriel Lorca of Star Trek: Discovery turns out to be an impostor who crossed over from where?
The Mirror Universe
The Mirror Universe is ruled by the ruthless, human-led Terran Empire, and Lorca had been steering events all season to get back there and seize its throne.
Q 06Which Oscar-winning star of Everything Everywhere All at Once played Star Trek: Discovery's Captain Georgiou?
Michelle Yeoh
Michelle Yeoh kept her own Malaysian accent as Georgiou, then returned as the captain's ruthless double, the emperor of the Terran Empire.
Q 07Star Trek: Discovery's starship is named after a NASA shuttle and a spacecraft from which classic film?
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey features the spacecraft Discovery One, and the writers paired that nod with NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery and the plain sense of discovery itself.
Q 08Cleveland Booker's huge pet cat in Star Trek: Discovery, played by two Maine Coons, goes by which name?
Grudge
Grudge is shared by two feline actors named Leeu and Durban, each about 40 inches long and weighing 18 pounds.
Q 09Star Trek: Discovery's engineer Paul Stamets is named after a real scientist who is an expert in which field?
Mycology
Mycology, the study of fungi, is the real Paul Stamets's field. The show's co-creator introduced him to the writers after getting interested in his research.
Q 10Which American voting rights activist appeared in Star Trek: Discovery as the President of United Earth?
Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams appears in Coming Home, the fourth-season finale, in which Earth decides to rejoin the Federation it had left behind.
Q 11For which crime is Michael Burnham sentenced to life in prison at the start of Star Trek: Discovery?
Mutiny
Mutiny was the charge after she tried to fire first on the Klingons against her captain's wishes, believing a show of strength would prevent a war.
Q 12Which experimental propulsion system lets the starship in Star Trek: Discovery jump instantly across the galaxy?
Spore drive
Spore drive jumps need a living navigator: the ship's engineer alters his own DNA to take over the job from the creature Ripper, which is then set free.
Q 13Which Enterprise captain, played by Anson Mount, takes temporary command in Star Trek: Discovery's second season?
Christopher Pike
Q 21Which original-series con man, played by Rainn Wilson, traps the crew of Star Trek: Discovery in a time loop?
Harry Mudd
Harry Mudd smuggles himself aboard inside an endangered space creature, then keeps resetting time until he can seize the ship and sell it to the Klingons.
Q 22Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, Star Trek: Discovery's married officers, had earlier worked together on which musical?
Rent
Rent brought the two actors together long before they played Stamets and his husband, the first openly gay couple in a Star Trek series.
Q 23Which stand-up comedian plays the deadpan engineer Reno in Star Trek: Discovery, a part written for her by a friend?
Tig Notaro
Christopher Pike was written as the opposite of the previous captain: by the book, and confident enough to apologise when he is wrong.
Q 14Which spin-off series followed the Enterprise crew introduced in Star Trek: Discovery's second season?
Strange New Worlds
Strange New Worlds was ordered after fans called for the second season's Enterprise captain, first officer and science officer to get a show of their own.
Q 15Which cadet, Michael Burnham's roommate in Star Trek: Discovery, later leaves the ship to teach at Starfleet Academy?
Sylvia Tilly
Sylvia Tilly was named after a showrunner's two-year-old niece, and the producers called the character the soul of the show.
Q 16Saru of Star Trek: Discovery, who senses approaching danger through his threat ganglia, belongs to which alien race?
Kelpien
Kelpien biology was invented for the show: hunted as prey on their home planet, they evolved the ability to sense danger coming. Saru is the first of them to join Starfleet.
Q 17Which creature actor, the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water, plays Saru in Star Trek: Discovery?
Doug Jones
Doug Jones had already worn heavy makeup as Abe Sapien in Hellboy and as the Faun and the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth.
Q 18Star Trek: Discovery was filmed in which Canadian city, on soundstages that include the largest in North America?
Toronto
Toronto was the base, and nearby Ontario locations filled in for alien planets, from a disused prison to a steel plant. The first two seasons alone created more than 4,000 local jobs.
Q 19Star Trek: Discovery was the first series developed for which streaming service, later rebranded as Paramount+?
CBS All Access
CBS All Access kept the US streaming rights even though Showtime, Netflix and Amazon all offered a lot of money for them, and the premiere brought the service record sign-ups.
Q 20Which Vulcan ambassador, played in Star Trek: Discovery by James Frain, is Michael Burnham's adoptive father?
Sarek
Sarek shares a telepathic link with her, and in one episode she uses it to find him after an assassination attempt by a Vulcan logic extremist.
Tig Notaro got to rename the character, swapping Denise for Jett in honour of the singer Joan Jett, and filmed scenes from several episodes at once to fit around her stand-up dates.
Q 24Which British actor, known as the wizard Lucius Malfoy on film, played Captain Gabriel Lorca in Star Trek: Discovery?
Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs gave Lorca a slight Southern US accent rather than his own English one, so that he would not seem a pale shadow of Patrick Stewart.
Q 25The Burn, which shattered the Federation in Star Trek: Discovery's future, destroyed most of which substance?
Dilithium
Dilithium is what lets starships travel at warp speed, so when most of it exploded at once the fleet was wrecked and the galaxy's planets were cut off from one another.
Q 26Which secretive organisation recruits Georgiou in Star Trek: Discovery and later gave its name to her spin-off film?
Section 31
Section 31 also built the time-travel suit at the heart of the second season, during a temporal arms race with the Klingons twenty years earlier.
Q 27Which doctor in Star Trek: Discovery is killed by Ash Tyler, then brought back to life in the second season?
Hugh Culber
Hugh Culber returns because his husband was linked to the mycelial network at the moment he died, which let the network recreate him.
Q 28Seven mysterious signals in Star Trek: Discovery's second season are tied to which time-travelling figure?
The Red Angel
The Red Angel turns out to be a suit rather than a being: inside is Michael Burnham's mother, who made hundreds of attempts to change a deadly future.
Q 29Michael Burnham is first officer of which starship, commanded by Philippa Georgiou, when Star Trek: Discovery begins?
USS Shenzhou
USS Shenzhou is left a wreck by the opening battle with the Klingons, and its captain is killed trying to take their leader prisoner.
Q 30Which island country provided the alien landscapes for the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery's third season?
Iceland
Iceland supplied a volcano, a waterfall, a lake and the Blue Lagoon in just six days of location filming.