Star Trek: Discovery's Mary Wiseman Reflects on Tilly's Journey

Mary Wiseman spoke to ComicBook about Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 6, "Whistlespeak."

By Jamie Lovett - May 3, 2024 04:15 pm EDT

Sylvia Tilly, played by Mary Wiseman, has been on a long character journey during Star Trek: Discovery's five seasons on Paramount+. She started in Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 as a nervous Starfleet cadet finding her place on the USS Discovery, a version of Tilly that Wiseman revisited in Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 4. Now, Tilly is a teacher at Starfleet Academy (and whether that has anything to do with the upcoming Starfleet Academy series remains uncertain), though she's split her time between the academy and Discovery's unexpected final season mission throughout Star Trek: Discovery's Season 5.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 6, "Whistlespeak," sees Tilly embarking on an away mission with Captain Burnham. Since they're visiting a pre-warp society, the mission means donning alien makeup and unfamiliar clothing to blend in with the planet's population. The episode featured some scenes that could be considered callbacks to past Tilly moments and highlighted how far Tilly has come over the years. ComicBook.com had the opportunity to speak to Wiseman about the episode and what it says about Tilly's character arc as Star Trek: Discovery nears its end.

The environment and setting in "Whistlespeak" is beautiful. Can you tell me about filming? Was this on location?

Mary Wiseman: It was actually amazing. This one, we did film on location in this beautiful national park a couple hours outside of Toronto, so all that stuff in the woods is real and we got to shoot at night. It was just absolutely gorgeous to get to be in the woods and shoot that and it feels so appropriate for the episode also, because they live in such a natural world without the hyper technology that we see on the ship. It was just gorgeous, really nice change of pace.

This episode is an away mission with the Prime Directive being a factor, which is a common enough Star Trek trope but not one that Star Trek: Discovery has relied on much. Was it also a fun change of pace to get out of the Starfleet uniforms and have a bit of alien makeup on and do that who thing?

Oh my gosh, yeah. It was super fun to just... I don't know, I think there was something about having completely different visuals that felt really beautiful and saturated and refreshing and I haven't gotten to do a lot of stuff like that, go in disguise that much. I found it really fun to finally get to do the classic Star Trek thing of doing the alien makeup, so we blend in. So that was really fun, and it just has a completely different visual feel than the rest of the season and I think that's really special.

Are there things left kind of unchecked on your Star Trek bucket list or bingo card or whatever metaphor you want to use that you would still either wish you had gotten to do or would jump at a chance to do if they were to invite you to guest star on another series or something like that?

I got to do this a little bit, but I think anytime characters are possessed by another entity or something like that I think would be something that I would find really fun. Although, I kind of got to do that a little bit in the second season, I think, with the jahSepp and May character, but I think that would probably be the most fun thing to get to be. Also, getting to play the mirror characters was very fun, but anytime your character looks like themselves but is not themselves I would love to do more of that. I think that's very exciting. You just get to make a choice and run with it and see what happens.

Watching the episode, the sequence of Tilly and Michale Burnham running the race reminded me of the first season and the scenes of Tilly and Michael running laps around the ship. Given that the episode feels like coming full circle on Tilly's story, was that a thing that you guys discussed or were aware of, or was it almost incidental Did it occur to you at all?

I don't know that we discussed it. I think I took it as just this ongoing thing of Tilly running and her having a lot of stubborn endurance to get through something and not being a quitter, but particularly getting to do it with Michael when that's kind of where we started, I think is very sweet, especially as we're kind of winding up the series. I think there's a lovely symmetry to that. Yeah.

As I said, this episode feels a bit like coming full circle with Tilly. By the end, she's giving Rava the kind of support and comfort that she herself may have needed as a nervous cadet sharing a room with Michael Burnham. Having played here through that journey, how do you feel about where she is and what that arc looks like as it's nearing the end of the show?

I think Tilly has really found where she fits in terms of being a leader and really found her own voice as a teacher, and I think that's because she has these great wells of empathy and an ability to pull people up when they're down, but also alienated. I think she has a lot of empathy for people who feel isolated from the rest of a given community as she was with Tyler and even with Burnham right at the very beginning. To get to see how that's evolved and she's learned how to take almost that maternal quality to take care of others and help guide others through difficult moments, I love that. I love that as the conclusion to her arc.

Are you at all surprised about where Tilly's arc ended up in terms of her going from cadet to teacher? Is this at all where you expected her story to go when you first came on board in Star Trek: Discovery Season 1?

No. I think if I had to guess at Season 1, I thought the series would end with her being the captain of another ship just because that's everything that she says she wants. But in a very elegant way, what you think you want when you're younger is not always what you want when you're older and you have a little more self-knowledge and have gone through more experiences and find new things that feel good. I love that it's not what I expected, that it didn't just go by automatically to the things she said she always wanted, that it took a bit of a left turn and she found something that really suits her and really speaks to her talents.

Do you think that ambition she had carries over onto to this new path? Is she going to be running the academy at some point, you think, down the line?

Who knows? I think the cool thing about Tilly's story is that she came up with a very achievement-based paradigm of how you have value as a person, what gives you value is achievement, and started to question when things got hard and her life changed in so many different ways. What about what makes me happy? Or, what makes me feel fulfilled? Or, what do I think I can actually really add value as? So, I don't know, maybe someday she'll be a principal, but I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal right now for her is each and every student and being that person that changes people's lives when they're at really critical points in their life.

I'm sure you feel this way, I definitely feel this way, I will never forget the teachers who changed my life or made me feel special or heard or told me I really had something. Those people are people who I will think about for all my days. So even though it's not like you don't get a special epaulet or a special star on your badge, she's still doing incredibly important work and I think that will lead her, how much of a difference she can make.

New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery debut weekly on Thursdays on Paramount+.

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