Star Trek: 10 Controversies Behind Discovery’s Troubled Early Seasons

In addition to featuring a Klingon-heavy storyline, Star Trek: Discovery's first season introduced the concept of the spore drive, mycelial network, and a species of macroscopic space tardigrades to the Star Trek Universe.

Dubbed "Ripper" in the episode "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry", the bear-sized tardigrade was initially created by Bryan Fuller as a regular member of Discovery's crew. According to an October 16, 2017 report by Indiewire, several scripts were completed featuring the tardigrade as a cast member named Ephraim. Ultimately the character was cut for budgetary reasons, with the tardigrade reduced to a non-speaking role in three episodes of Discovery and the Short Trek, "Ephraim and Dot".

Despite this reduced presence on screen, Discovery's tardigrade came under fire in early 2018 when Anas Abdin alleged in Manhattan federal court that Ripper's storyline was plagiarized from his in-development video game "Tardigrades". According to Bloomberg Law, Abdin's video game concept featured a space-faring tardigrade which interacted with a botanist, similar to Discovery's astromycologist, Lieutenant Paul Stamets:

It features a space-station botanist who travels through space after being absorbed into a giant tardigrade, based on the real-life microscopic creature that can endure extreme heat, cold, pressure, and radiation.

Despite the proliferation of this allegation online as proof of Star Trek: Discovery having plagiarized its storyline, both the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found against Abdin in the case. According to the appeals court ruling:

Abdin’s space-traveling tardigrade is an unprotectable idea because it is a generalized expression of a scientific fact—namely, the known ability of a tardigrade to survive in space... By permitting Abdin to exclusively own the idea of a space-traveling tardigrade, this Court would improperly withdraw that idea from the public domain and stifle creativity naturally flowing from the scientific fact that tardigrades can survive the vacuum of space.

The court also found that Abdin's concept only superficially resembled Discovery's tardigrade storyline and that the "Tardigrades" video game was far less developed than the three episodes that aired on CBS All Access and Netflix, finding the "general and undeveloped similarities" between the two works "most significant" in their ruling in favor of CBS and Netflix

A bit tongue-in-cheek, the court went on to cite a familiar source in its decision:

See Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek: The Return of the Archons, Star Trek: The Original Series (1967) (“Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity.”).”