Star Trek: Discovery's Doug Jones Found Delight In Saru And T'Rina's Romance
"Star Trek: Discovery" has gone to some pretty wild places. The show's first two seasons were set about a decade prior to the events of the original 1966 "Star Trek" series, at a time when the Federation was about to go to war with the Klingon Empire. At that time, the U.S.S. Discovery had recently discovered that the entire galaxy was populated by a vast network of interdimensional spores(!) that aren't readable by most starship scanners. The Discovery was able to tie its engines into the network and instantaneously teleport anywhere in the galaxy. So much for trekking.
This was such an astonishing technology, even by "Star Trek" standards, that the writers of "Discovery" found themselves in a pickle. Wouldn't the ability to teleport anywhere in the galaxy cause a fundamental shift in the way "Star Trek" operates? Indeed, wouldn't any of the multiple "Star Trek" shows that followed "Discovery" at least make a passing mention of something so amazing? To cover up the existence of the U.S.S. Discovery, the ship was first shunted off to a parallel dimension for much of the Klingon War. And at the end of the second season, the Discovery was forced to flee a millennium into the future to escape a malevolent machine intelligence. Starfleet ordered all records of the Discovery be erased. The canon was handily rescued.
Of course, in the distant future, all the characters found new struggles ... and new loves. Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) fell in love with the roguish, futuristic animal lover Book (David Ajala), and the soft-spoken Kelpien Saru (Doug Jones) began developing an affection for a cautious Vulcan ambassador named T'Rina (Tara Rosling).
In a January 2023 interview with Screen Rant, Jones admitted that Saru's relationship with T'Rina was one of his favorite parts of the fourth season of "Discovery."
Saru and T'Rina are very proper
T'Rina, being Vulcan, doesn't express a lot of passion. Remember, however, that she hails from the 31st century, when Vulcans had grown assertively xenophobic, and their emotional sides began to, in a very childlike way, show themselves. Saru, also something of a shy character — his species was raised in fear by evil farmers who bred them for food — recognized the slow movement of T'Rina's emotional side and the two made a strangely perfect couple. Doug Jones was thrilled that he was allowed to play an alien in love. The actor said:
"[M]y favorite part of season 4 was probably the love interest and spark that was growing between Saru and President T'Rina. That was my favorite thing to play. Of course, I love all my scenes with Burnham. Sonequa Martin-Green and I just adore each other like brother and sister on and off camera. But having a love interest is something more unique for [me]. When I'm wearing rubber makeup, it's rare to have a love story going on."
More thrilling still was that Saru's love story came to resemble a certain kind of 19th-century English literature. This happens to be a medium that Jones adores. He said:
"That was really quite lovely, and I loved how prim and proper it was and how innocent it was. It was like the two of us were in an English frock drama, for crying out loud. And that's my favorite thing."
Jones, one might find, has appeared as creatures and aliens more often than he has appeared in adaptations of Jane Austen novels.
The most innocent thing in the world
The fourth season of "Star Trek: Discovery" involved a widespread gravitational distortion that was causing havoc across the galaxy and destroying entire planets. The show's main characters find that the distortion was unwittingly being caused by a strange alien species that they only refer to as Species 10-C. Like the aliens in "Arrival," the massive, octopus-like Species 10-C is so unusual and communicates in such an unusual fashion, that maximum effort must be made just for everyone to understand each other. It was during this crisis that Saru and T'Rina fell in love. Doug Jones told Screen Rant that the epilogue to the Species 10-C story was his particular favorite:
"When you're having a budding romance with someone who shows no emotion, it just added a whole layer of challenge and charm to it, I thought, because Saru wears his heart on his sleeve more and T'Rina not so much. By the time the season ended, my favorite scene was the two of us standing at the window after we'd been through all of the trials and turmoils of the season and Species 10-C."
Then came the payoff for the romance. Jones loved how subtle it was. He described it thus:
"We got through all that, we're standing in a window, and talking about the future in very coy terms. And then she reaches over and grabs my hand. Like, this whole thing led up to a handhold! I thought that was the most innocent, wholesome thing in the whole world. And the fans went nuts over it."
Paramount+ has announced that the fifth season of "Discovery" will be its last. Those who loved seeing the romance between Saru and T'Rina may get more of their coy flirtations. Both characters deserve that.