And we cannot wrap this up without comment on the toddler-level puzzles this season, culminating in that glass triangle deal at the end that was from a 2nd grade math workbook.
Yes! I forgot to mention that in the review, but it was hilarious--"You have travelled far and learned much; our trail of deeply moral and complex clues have prepared you for this moment: solving a puzzle from the kid's menu at Cracker Barrel."
Actually, the laziest way to resolve the L'ak dying storyline would be to put him in an android body identical to his own and programmed to artificially decay at the same rate his organic body would have, not sure why they didn't think of that!
I also continue to insist that TOS-era transporter technology (let alone the same kind of machinery, millennia of development further on) could easily be used to reprint a dead person from the latest available backup in the pattern buffer. The fact that that's not basic Starfleet protocol for KIA crew members logically must just reflect a cultural taboo against it, which is fine as far as story logic goes.... but it should at least be on the table whenever a particular character is scrambling for a way to cheat death and bring back a loved one. Just print a new L'ak from the fax machine that's standard on literally every starship!
I always assumed that the patterns were so big that each transporter pad's buffer could only hold one at a time and deleted them once the person materialized. (I'm sure there was some plot that necessitated contradicting that at some time or other, and probably several.)
Yeah, I mean at that point it's just an R&D problem, you know? All the best minds in Starfleet / one line of technobabble could let them restore folks from backup the way rich people get to do on Altered Carbon. I don't mind accepting it as a plot constraint that the characters on Star Trek *don't* use the transporters that way, but when someone's whole goal is to restore their lost loved one, it feels bizarre for them to ignore exploring that option in favor of assumptions about alien technology or whatever.
Honestly, amidst the entire 40-minute-long reflection on connection and meaning of life (it cookies. Eat lot of cookies.), only part me found was dramatically satisfying was six-line conversation with Adira reassuring their adopted gay space dad that there are more important things than being most famous scientist in galaxy.
Along similar lines, first time all season the Burnham/Book relationship worked for me was in quiet moments they had together in cabin. There was genuine warmth, and me was surprisingly satified to see them end up in good place. And then we get another 15 minutes just to answer question about Short Trek no one was asking.
Me will say this for Discovery finale — it was most Discovery episode of Discovery that ever Discoveried. Lot of ambition, some genuinely interesting ideas, but no one put work in to make those ideas or big emotions land. Me will still have soft spot for this crazy show, but me will always pine for much better show it could have been.
This was so absurdly tiresome I don’t know what to say.
A. So the progenitors built on previous species’ advances going back billions of years?
B. The implication that the progenitors were essentially inspired by God, which is some Ron Moore level bullshit that has hounded the franchise for decades and almost ruined DS9 and definitely ruined Battlestar Galactica
C. There is no version of Star Trek other than this in which they wouldn’t have kept the progenitor tech. The whole point of Star Trek is to understand weird alien shit!
D. There is no reason why Discovery has to be abandoned other than to fulfill Chabon’s one-off bullshit plot. Does the Federation assume they’ll be at war with some random planet for a millennium? Also we have to assume that Zora is as intelligent as Data, which means she has rights. How can they command her to just drift for 1000 years?
E. Why burn off the A from the registry?
F. Middle-aged Burnham and Book were cute, I’ll give them that,
G. The hug-fest at the end would have had more impact if we knew literally anything about the secondary characters, even their names
H. The entire problem with this show is they built it entirely around one character, who was never that interesting. Star Trek has always been an ensemble show, going back to the original triumvirate (plus Scotty).
I. Of all the nu-Trek, Picard season three handled the emotional balance/action/fan service the best.
Your points about the Progenitors are spot on. I couldn't get over Michael showing up in 4 dimensional space or whatever and getting to chat with the creators (that Picard et al where awe inspired by when they discovered the Indiana Jones treasure hunt holographic voicemail) and they were just like, "Hey man, this stuff was here when I got here!" I guess it's just Progenitors all the way down.
Then you pile on the baffling decision to spend the whole season following clues that some supposedly really smart, dedicated scientists devoted their life to preserving the technology until it could be safely understood (remember the Trill that was hanging on for dear life so they could conduct some weird Crocodile Hunter interview?) and Michael follows all their clues and just decides, eh, this is cool, but I bet if it's important they can build another one. Seriously Michael? And then she goes on to live a worry-free life 'cause she'd never even once doubt that decision 'cause she lives by her convictions or whatever.
Now give me my Voyager-style series of the Breen traveling back from the Galactic barrier fueled by their need for vengeance against Discovery. They could pick up some Changelings along the way and start a real war against the solids.
Burnham has always been a sociopathic narcissist, but being told by an ancient being that this object may be the key to a cycle of universal creation dating back untold billions of years and immediately and unilaterally deciding to shoot it into a black hole is truly demented even by her standards. She may have just doomed the universe on a hunch! Not to mention that there is no telling what might happen if you take an object containing that much power and just chuck it into a black hole. She didn't let Stamets examine it! She didn't know what the consequences would be! She could have restarted the big bang or separated every atom in the universe! Who DOES something like that?
And on top of that, the writers then try to turn Stamets into the bad guy in that conversation by suddenly having Saru call out his worry about his legacy from earlier this season, which amounted to all of one line of dialogue in the premiere (which I suppose counts as a fully fleshed out arc for a supporting character by Discovery's standards). Stamets never said that this would get his name in the history books or try to take credit or push to investigate it for his own glory; he said was this was the greatest discovery in history and it deserved to be studied. And like so many times in the past, the show paints someone who is being pretty reasonable (normally and weirdly a white guy, as was pointed out in the comments back when Rayner showed up) as the bad guy for having the audacity to disagree with Burnham.
Coming back to this it strikes me that what really bothers me about Burnham destroying this technology is the implication that she thinks the Federation (or anyone else) will ever be worthy of studying, understanding, or using this technology. The scientists who followed the Progenitor breadcrumbs just wanted to keep it safe until there was peace so we could learn from it and learn about the history of apparently where all huminoid life came from. But Burnham doesnt even pause before she decides the Federation isnt ready now and will apparently never be ready. It’s a problem inherent in the “ultimate power” storyline, but at least just put it back in it’s hiding spot and say there’s still too much conflict for it to be safe to explore.
Which gets even wilder when you take into account that the Progenitor straight up tells Burnham that other life forms have been successfully and peacefully using that technology for the entire history of creation. So Burnham thinks that sentient life is at its lowest, least responsible, least trustworthy point right at that moment? Hardly the kind of sentiment I'd expect from someone who has ostensibly been a key part of rebuilding the Federation for the past three seasons, and hardly the optimistic, humanistic take on the future I've come to expect from Trek. Even DS9 at its darkest never got that negative.
Boy, that extended coda was ROUGH. I get that it was tacked on at the end but it amounted to a full episode's worth of reshoots and they still couldn't do anything with it. The coda was clearly modeled on the Lord of the Rings-style multiple tear-jerking endings bit, but failed to realize that ending worked because it gave each character a little time to shine and a little piece of closure. This one was about Burnham and only Burnham getting everything she wanted. Return of the King didn't end with Frodo becoming king, Frodo getting married, Frodo having kids, and Frodo sailing into the West. The one little feint this episode made at being about anything other than Burnham/Book was with Saru's wedding, but even then they made it more about Burnham and Book than the show's hands down best character (and had the two of them be extra gauche by having one show up late and then both leave early to take a work call).
The fact that the show ended on an extended sequence of Michael Burnham sitting alone on Discovery's bridge is simultaneously the most fitting possible and the most searing indictment of the show's storytelling priorities imaginable. I'd call that ending trolling but I don't think the writers have enough self-awareness to do so.
It kinda kills me how much they both want to desperately keep the focus on Michael, but also congratulate themselves on Disco's 'family' like it's been a solid ensemble show all along. Like hey, Michael got old with Book, Michael's got a great kid, Michael's taking Discovery out for one final mission, but also don't forget the rest of the crew, who aren't there, but whom we'll celebrate by... having an imaginary reunion in Michael's imagination? That was some Ted Lasso finale shit. And zero check-in on any other non-Book characters outside of a Tilly namecheck.
And I think it says a lot that the most killer scene of the episode belonged to Saru, who was the only character this episode I mustered up finale feelings of "wow, he's come a long way" for.
"There is no melancholy in this conclusion, no loss, no hard choices for anyone."
This is why the DS9 finale is such a masterclass; every happy ending is tinged with hurt. Its sentimental and heartbreaking in equal measure. No Trek since has come close.
S1: An attempt at a darker and edgier Star Trek. Some nice set-up that started to fall apart with the Mirror universe, and they totally blew the landing. With hindsight one of the better seasons.
S2: Discovery establishes their habit of annoying psychobabble nonsense, usually when being drawn into a black hole or somesuch. the first half of the season featured standalone episodes that revealed the weakness of the writing and what I call the "Oh Spock!"-thread. I still have no clue what all that teen angst was supposed to be about and I'm not going back to find out. In the second half, I must have blinked at the wrong time, suddenly Control is taking over the universe. That was legit cool and scary and the ending was exhilerating if unearned.
S3: With the coolest setup, Discovery does the biggest stumble. Arriving in a future where warp travel is a luxury and the Federation is a legend, a Season trying to find their way back to what was once the Federation would have been great (but hard to do when you have instant travel). Instead they find Mini-Federation fairly quickly and reverse everything that was interesting with this future by finding a new infinite supply of Dilithium that somehow ends up not being a source of future conflict. Finding out the Burn was caused by someone having sad feelings was definitely peak discovery.
S4: Perhaps the strongest story arc of any Discovery season. Unfortunately, large parts of it felt like filling, and Discovery's weaknesses were by now etched in stone: A secondary cast that we never learn anything about, People making hard choices between hurting someone's feelings and saving the galaxy, making them narcissistic pricks, a lot of poor writing in the details and lots of padding.
S5: With a story arc that was consistently bad and Discovery deeply entrenched and in love with its weaknesses, this has to be the worst season of the run.
For all the talk I heard about how Discovery gets better with each season, I far and away enjoyed S1 and S2 most of all. The first two episodes dug a hole it spent the whole series failing to dig out of and the finale plummeted off a cliff, but the time S1 spent being kinda like a Star Trek take on Fringe worked great for me (I guess that was because of Bryan Fuller's departure and Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman picking up the slack?). S2 made the best use of Burnham's connection to Spock, was a much better executed version of the "find all the clues that add up in the finale" structure than S5, and brought us Anson Mount as Pike, so it will always have value. But the time jump just jettisoned everything that worked even intermittently about the show and doubled down on Burnham as the sole lead by revolving around her and Book.
Yep. People who like the show think the time jump was so great, but what the time jump did was completely redefine Burnham's character to make her "likable" and start a relationship with Book off-screen so we didn't care about it. The specificity of being torn between two worlds went out the window and in its stead she just became some generic hero character who was always right and had a love life we weren't invested in. Bizarre.
Which could have been interesting if the show had ever addressed the difference between 23rd century Burnham and 32nd century Burnham but it didn't. And it even set up clear opportunities to do so! I'm still fuming that her library vision guide was Book and not Spock.
Around the time S2 ended up til early S3, it felt like Discovery was a divisive but worthy gamble. The time jump was promising and the Burn even more so. It's baffling that they blew it on a Kelpien who needed therapy. It's like the showrunners took "stories need emotional resonance" WAY too literally.
I didn't really know how to feel going into S4, and it maybe only overperformed expectations because S3 had set them so low. I had the tiniest bit of hope S5 would do another DMA-type mystery. But when the premise of the season became clear... oh well.
I was less critical of this show earlier in the season. I liked the Moll/L’ak villain team up. Maybe they would have been more at home in the Star Wars universe but whatever, I was intrigued. Then they killed off L’ak and I got bored. I thought at the least I was going to get zombie L’ak for a bit. But nope. Agreed on how lazy it was!!
The best part of this finale was when they somehow put the spore drive on the Breen Dreadnaught and sent it so far away it would take decades to get back. That was cool. The rest of the episode I was pretty bored, white knuckling through to satisfy my completionist ways.
I also am okay with sentimental endings and I certainly am okay with a romantic happily ever after. But they didn’t do the work to make me care!!
I will miss the cast, the expensive cinematic experience and the excellent soundscape. But they just didn’t do much with this final season. And this show just struggled throughout its run. Weighed down by convoluted storylines that kept dragging along. It’s a shame. Oh well. Them’s the breaks. Now I can get back to watching the second season of Strange New Worlds.
Yes, it was bad in the ways the review and everybody else said. But something else made me really mad.
This was the opening narration for the original series: Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before!
Yes, it's cheesy and a little bit sexist. But it defines an ethos, an ethos of exploration and never being satisfied with where we are, always convinced there is more we can know. For Michael to the shrug at the progenitor's tech and say "Eh, we've already got it figured out" is such a slap in the face to that ethos and to those of us who find it inspiring. I think I've enjoyed Disco more than most but this was a truly awful ending.
You know Zach you could have just posted the Oprah shrug emoji and saved time writing all that. /lh
I'm incredibly forgiving, but even I couldn't take it when Tilly revealed her big inspiration was... a mentorship program. Kill me now.
"All the heroes got exactly what they wanted without having to really pay for any of it, and while that may work for fan fiction, it makes for damn shoddy storytelling." To be honest, I've read plenty of fanfiction with much greater emotional depth and story complexity.
It's definitely not as good as Enterprise's finale, which was titled Terra Prime, and if you ever see anything indicating otherwise, know that it's a filthy lie and there's no episode past Terra Prime.
I kind of wish Michael had been about to head out on that last mission and then the Breen finally show up after being sent to the galactic barrier, ready for revenge.
Also, could Discovery jump a planet? Would have been nice to do that to Kwejian...
Yeesh, what a mess. Again I say: if Burnham / the Federation wanted to keep the Progenitor tech away from everyone, all they had to do was destroy one or more of those silly clues. I mean, that's the true Raiders ending, to continue your metaphor -- hide the maguffin somewhere that no one will ever be able to find it again. Problem solved.
Such a disappointment for a season finale, and even worse as an entire series sendoff. No effort whatsoever to reflect on the show's past and how far everyone's come since then. At best, Michael and Book get to reminisce about meeting each other at the start of season 3. We joke that this has always been the Michael Burnham show more than a true Trek ensemble, but even our ostensible lead is under-served here: there's none of her anxieties about leadership, or thorny relationships with the chain of command, or complicated family life, or Vulcan upbringing, or anything that defined the character early on.
Oh -- and having seen all of Enterprise, the Agent Daniels thing is just as nonsensical as it appears. It doesn't tell us anything new about either character, or even illuminate anything in the wider canon, to suggest that they're the same person. Even a reveal that Kovich was instead a Progenitor all along would have been more impactful than this. And since the franchise is almost certainly never going to follow up on the twist at all, it's the dullest sort of development possible. Which hey, is Discovery through and through.
Kovich being Daniels is lazy as hell, as if the writers were just reading Memory-Alpha and decided “hey, this might work.” Also you have David fucking Cronenberg involved, try to be more creative
I honestly didn't mind the Daniels thing because it felt like a direct response to people complaining on Reddit that he should have been able to stop the Burn. He's trying to fix it on the back end so as not to overly futz with the timeline or something. I dunno, I buy it.
Of course this show is gonna spoil Enterprise for us on its way out the door. A real jerk move.
I was cackling at the idea that Starfleet Academy does not have a mentoring program in the year 3000 whatever it is. Did basic educational principles also get destroyed in the Burn?
Burnham made all the decisions about the progenitors tech all on her own (without us even seeing her decide them) and I guess that’s that. Hope those gods aren’t pissed that you destroyed all their tech!
The Saru stuff was the highlight for me, and I did like the little coda with her and Book. This show was more fun when they were just being outlaws together after the time jump.
The MVP of this series for me was Doug Jones, and honorable mentions to Michelle Yeoh and Anson Mount. Wilson Cruz was lovely in the finale and let’s get him on a show that better serves him. Thanks for sticking this series out Zack!
You just helped me articulate in my head one of the major problems with the show since season 3! Ever since they mashed Burnham and Book together and essentially rebooted her character, the show has been trying to have its cake and eat it too with the idea of Burnham as an Indiana Jones/Nathan Drake/Han Solo rogue, while still keeping her within Starfleet. And it just doesn't work; the original conception of Burnham as an outspoken officer constantly butting heads with the chain of command was actually a far better depiction of how such a character would find Starfleet life.
Yes she really became a company man for Starfleet - even in this finale thinking Moll would just trust Starfleet because she said so. Like Girl, why are you even trusting Starfleet?
The ending feels stapled on because, well, it was. They weren't told it was a series finale until after production ended in late 2022 and had to go back and redo the ending in spring 2023.
I was surprised when I saw someone other than Jonathan Frakes credited as director because I remembered seeing a bunch of interviews with him about accidentally directing the series finale, but apparently the entire second half of the episode was done without him in reshoots. It's no surprise that the first half was far more engaging, as Frakes gets Trek better than any other director and is generally able to get the most out of whatever he's working with.
It really was one of the easiest outs the show could have taken. Despite all the reasons to believe otherwise, I hoped against hope they would do something interesting with picking up the Progenitors all these years later. And given all the Dominion War/DS9 stuff and revealing the gelatinous Breen, it seemed like there were the pieces put on the board to do something, ANYTHING interesting, but nope. It was just hyper advanced technology that predates maybe everything so maybe God did it and we'll just toss it over in that blackhole. Problem solved.
Maybe even just take advantage of the actor/makeup coincidence between the original Progenitor and the primary Dominion Changeling we saw by saying the Changelings found some Progenitor stuff and used it to conquer the Gamma Quadrant and make their genetically engineered servant species (I would have died if there was a Weyoun in the mystery box just chatting with the Progenitor). Or give some breadcrumbs to connect the Changelings to the Progenitors grand plan (i.e. the Progenitors didn't stop at humanoid life or maybe the Progenitors were the original solids that were mean to the Changelings). The Progenitors finding this tech, using it to seed the galaxy with humanoid life and having that low-key be the genesis for the Changelings eventually becoming the Founders could have been interesting.
I don't think the writers fully grasped the potential in a follow up to "The Chase". The big idea that should have been explored after that episode was how the revelation that every humanoid species in the galaxy is related would affect each culture. Would it help foster peace amongst enemies? Would one species decide that they are the Progenitor's true heirs and go on a galactic conquest? Would different factions of different planets react differently? That's the high brow sci-fi approach that has long been Trek's stock in trade, and here it gets wasted on the hunt for a bigger bomb.
And the weirdest part is, that other option is precisely in line with Discovery's ethos of highlighting and celebrating diversity and recognizing that the things which bond us are more important than the differences that divide us. The show didn't often live up to that ethos, but it was still a core part of it's casting, characterization, and storytelling from its inception. And yet, when they're presented with the opportunity to cleanly those ideals its storytelling, they literally and metaphorically tossed that opportunity into a black hole.
As to your second point, yup, that would have been an excellent use of Trek canon to deepen the current story as well as past ones. If you want to tie the Breen into it, you could even have the Breen look like Salome Jens in her Progenitor makeup underneath the helmet and have them be the actual remnants of the Progenitors that have survived all this time and have been striving to conquer the galaxy since the days of DS9 because they view themselves as the creators and rulers of sentient life. It would more than justify their inclusion in this season, it would retroactively explain why they allied with the Changelings during the Dominion War, and it would have made for a wild reveal when we saw a Breen take off their helmet instead of just being seeing a Jell-O mold on top of a costume.
I'd love to know what breaking this season was like in the writers' room. When I'm not feeling super cynical about Discovery, I have to believe some of these storytelling opportunities crossed their minds. So, like, what happened here? It's baffling in the same ways that the first seasons of Picard's plotting were.
Similarly, it's really hard to understand why they wanted to reveal so much about the Breen or why any of the TNG - VOY era references were so prominent this season. So the Breen are glowy lime Jell-O... okay, are they going to do anything with that reveal? Of course not! Picard, his face palmed.
To be fair, all of Trek for the past 30 years has wasted the concept of the cultural fallout that discovery would have caused. So no real surprise that Discovery dropped the ball as well.
Very true! Bu the fact that this season tried to pick up that ball and made such a hash of it makes me resent it even more than all the shows/series that just ignored it. For example, I tend to think worse of a movie that is one glaring flaw away from being great than a movie that is just flat out bad. To come so close and drop the ball leaves a worse taste in my mouth than just missing the mark entirely. That's what I'm feeling here.
A disappointment from start to finish. "Consistently uninspired" is spot-on. What *was* the point of any of this? If this show was supposed to be about Burnham's self-actualization, at least they could've given her a meaty journey over the series...but instead her journey seems to be: isn't it nice to have friends? Something she came to years ago now. If it was something else, I can't see it.
At its best, Trek is a show about moral conundrums. Disco is a show determined to have absolutely none. Every story is easy and obvious and clear and there's no nuance anywhere. It's not interested in science, it's not interested in hard choices, it's not even interested in long-term character journeys. It's just endless wheel-spinning as the characters tell each other how great they are.
Is this the first Trek series to have not a single essential episode? (Maybe it joins Enterprise in that...) Just shocking.
And if the point is that community is most important, ok super - I am happy to just enjoy a great cast! But to barely characterize the rest of the bridge crew over 5 years excludes the audience from all of that, so its just telling and not showing. To me that is the most baffling and alienating part of this experience.
Yep. I was legit surprised that the memory flash was the only shot of Owo and Detmer in the episode. It's like this show did everything possible *not* to make us love the supporting cast.
I'm grading on a curve. After a season about how Picard is unable to love (?!) because of repressed memories of his dead mom (ffs), getting the band back together again for a final ride through Easter egg land was delightful. It wasn't *good* a la TNG/DS9, but that's true of all the modern Trek shows, including SNW. Those currently in charge are not interested in science and don't seem capable of telling stories about moral conundrums, the franchise's bread and butter. It's all just soap opera in space. So, hey, I'll take what I can get.
I don't really care that much about easter eggs, at least not when they feel more like a clip show than blinking to the fans. Also, the way they handled the changelings was the opposite of fan service. The first 8 episodes felt like they were trying to avoied getting to the point to stretch the story for a season, then it turned out to be even worse as the first 8 episodes had nothing to do with the actual plot. But the finale had a kernel of a good plot in it.
And we cannot wrap this up without comment on the toddler-level puzzles this season, culminating in that glass triangle deal at the end that was from a 2nd grade math workbook.
Yes! I forgot to mention that in the review, but it was hilarious--"You have travelled far and learned much; our trail of deeply moral and complex clues have prepared you for this moment: solving a puzzle from the kid's menu at Cracker Barrel."
Actually, the laziest way to resolve the L'ak dying storyline would be to put him in an android body identical to his own and programmed to artificially decay at the same rate his organic body would have, not sure why they didn't think of that!
I also continue to insist that TOS-era transporter technology (let alone the same kind of machinery, millennia of development further on) could easily be used to reprint a dead person from the latest available backup in the pattern buffer. The fact that that's not basic Starfleet protocol for KIA crew members logically must just reflect a cultural taboo against it, which is fine as far as story logic goes.... but it should at least be on the table whenever a particular character is scrambling for a way to cheat death and bring back a loved one. Just print a new L'ak from the fax machine that's standard on literally every starship!
Can’t fax Jello, Joe.
I always assumed that the patterns were so big that each transporter pad's buffer could only hold one at a time and deleted them once the person materialized. (I'm sure there was some plot that necessitated contradicting that at some time or other, and probably several.)
Yeah, I mean at that point it's just an R&D problem, you know? All the best minds in Starfleet / one line of technobabble could let them restore folks from backup the way rich people get to do on Altered Carbon. I don't mind accepting it as a plot constraint that the characters on Star Trek *don't* use the transporters that way, but when someone's whole goal is to restore their lost loved one, it feels bizarre for them to ignore exploring that option in favor of assumptions about alien technology or whatever.
I mean, once we're arguing over which narrative- and universe-breaking mechanism they should've used... :)
Honestly, amidst the entire 40-minute-long reflection on connection and meaning of life (it cookies. Eat lot of cookies.), only part me found was dramatically satisfying was six-line conversation with Adira reassuring their adopted gay space dad that there are more important things than being most famous scientist in galaxy.
Along similar lines, first time all season the Burnham/Book relationship worked for me was in quiet moments they had together in cabin. There was genuine warmth, and me was surprisingly satified to see them end up in good place. And then we get another 15 minutes just to answer question about Short Trek no one was asking.
Me will say this for Discovery finale — it was most Discovery episode of Discovery that ever Discoveried. Lot of ambition, some genuinely interesting ideas, but no one put work in to make those ideas or big emotions land. Me will still have soft spot for this crazy show, but me will always pine for much better show it could have been.
This was so absurdly tiresome I don’t know what to say.
A. So the progenitors built on previous species’ advances going back billions of years?
B. The implication that the progenitors were essentially inspired by God, which is some Ron Moore level bullshit that has hounded the franchise for decades and almost ruined DS9 and definitely ruined Battlestar Galactica
C. There is no version of Star Trek other than this in which they wouldn’t have kept the progenitor tech. The whole point of Star Trek is to understand weird alien shit!
D. There is no reason why Discovery has to be abandoned other than to fulfill Chabon’s one-off bullshit plot. Does the Federation assume they’ll be at war with some random planet for a millennium? Also we have to assume that Zora is as intelligent as Data, which means she has rights. How can they command her to just drift for 1000 years?
E. Why burn off the A from the registry?
F. Middle-aged Burnham and Book were cute, I’ll give them that,
G. The hug-fest at the end would have had more impact if we knew literally anything about the secondary characters, even their names
H. The entire problem with this show is they built it entirely around one character, who was never that interesting. Star Trek has always been an ensemble show, going back to the original triumvirate (plus Scotty).
I. Of all the nu-Trek, Picard season three handled the emotional balance/action/fan service the best.
Your points about the Progenitors are spot on. I couldn't get over Michael showing up in 4 dimensional space or whatever and getting to chat with the creators (that Picard et al where awe inspired by when they discovered the Indiana Jones treasure hunt holographic voicemail) and they were just like, "Hey man, this stuff was here when I got here!" I guess it's just Progenitors all the way down.
Then you pile on the baffling decision to spend the whole season following clues that some supposedly really smart, dedicated scientists devoted their life to preserving the technology until it could be safely understood (remember the Trill that was hanging on for dear life so they could conduct some weird Crocodile Hunter interview?) and Michael follows all their clues and just decides, eh, this is cool, but I bet if it's important they can build another one. Seriously Michael? And then she goes on to live a worry-free life 'cause she'd never even once doubt that decision 'cause she lives by her convictions or whatever.
Now give me my Voyager-style series of the Breen traveling back from the Galactic barrier fueled by their need for vengeance against Discovery. They could pick up some Changelings along the way and start a real war against the solids.
Burnham has always been a sociopathic narcissist, but being told by an ancient being that this object may be the key to a cycle of universal creation dating back untold billions of years and immediately and unilaterally deciding to shoot it into a black hole is truly demented even by her standards. She may have just doomed the universe on a hunch! Not to mention that there is no telling what might happen if you take an object containing that much power and just chuck it into a black hole. She didn't let Stamets examine it! She didn't know what the consequences would be! She could have restarted the big bang or separated every atom in the universe! Who DOES something like that?
And on top of that, the writers then try to turn Stamets into the bad guy in that conversation by suddenly having Saru call out his worry about his legacy from earlier this season, which amounted to all of one line of dialogue in the premiere (which I suppose counts as a fully fleshed out arc for a supporting character by Discovery's standards). Stamets never said that this would get his name in the history books or try to take credit or push to investigate it for his own glory; he said was this was the greatest discovery in history and it deserved to be studied. And like so many times in the past, the show paints someone who is being pretty reasonable (normally and weirdly a white guy, as was pointed out in the comments back when Rayner showed up) as the bad guy for having the audacity to disagree with Burnham.
Coming back to this it strikes me that what really bothers me about Burnham destroying this technology is the implication that she thinks the Federation (or anyone else) will ever be worthy of studying, understanding, or using this technology. The scientists who followed the Progenitor breadcrumbs just wanted to keep it safe until there was peace so we could learn from it and learn about the history of apparently where all huminoid life came from. But Burnham doesnt even pause before she decides the Federation isnt ready now and will apparently never be ready. It’s a problem inherent in the “ultimate power” storyline, but at least just put it back in it’s hiding spot and say there’s still too much conflict for it to be safe to explore.
Which gets even wilder when you take into account that the Progenitor straight up tells Burnham that other life forms have been successfully and peacefully using that technology for the entire history of creation. So Burnham thinks that sentient life is at its lowest, least responsible, least trustworthy point right at that moment? Hardly the kind of sentiment I'd expect from someone who has ostensibly been a key part of rebuilding the Federation for the past three seasons, and hardly the optimistic, humanistic take on the future I've come to expect from Trek. Even DS9 at its darkest never got that negative.
Boy, that extended coda was ROUGH. I get that it was tacked on at the end but it amounted to a full episode's worth of reshoots and they still couldn't do anything with it. The coda was clearly modeled on the Lord of the Rings-style multiple tear-jerking endings bit, but failed to realize that ending worked because it gave each character a little time to shine and a little piece of closure. This one was about Burnham and only Burnham getting everything she wanted. Return of the King didn't end with Frodo becoming king, Frodo getting married, Frodo having kids, and Frodo sailing into the West. The one little feint this episode made at being about anything other than Burnham/Book was with Saru's wedding, but even then they made it more about Burnham and Book than the show's hands down best character (and had the two of them be extra gauche by having one show up late and then both leave early to take a work call).
The fact that the show ended on an extended sequence of Michael Burnham sitting alone on Discovery's bridge is simultaneously the most fitting possible and the most searing indictment of the show's storytelling priorities imaginable. I'd call that ending trolling but I don't think the writers have enough self-awareness to do so.
It kinda kills me how much they both want to desperately keep the focus on Michael, but also congratulate themselves on Disco's 'family' like it's been a solid ensemble show all along. Like hey, Michael got old with Book, Michael's got a great kid, Michael's taking Discovery out for one final mission, but also don't forget the rest of the crew, who aren't there, but whom we'll celebrate by... having an imaginary reunion in Michael's imagination? That was some Ted Lasso finale shit. And zero check-in on any other non-Book characters outside of a Tilly namecheck.
And I think it says a lot that the most killer scene of the episode belonged to Saru, who was the only character this episode I mustered up finale feelings of "wow, he's come a long way" for.
"There is no melancholy in this conclusion, no loss, no hard choices for anyone."
This is why the DS9 finale is such a masterclass; every happy ending is tinged with hurt. Its sentimental and heartbreaking in equal measure. No Trek since has come close.
To sum up Discovery then:
S1: An attempt at a darker and edgier Star Trek. Some nice set-up that started to fall apart with the Mirror universe, and they totally blew the landing. With hindsight one of the better seasons.
S2: Discovery establishes their habit of annoying psychobabble nonsense, usually when being drawn into a black hole or somesuch. the first half of the season featured standalone episodes that revealed the weakness of the writing and what I call the "Oh Spock!"-thread. I still have no clue what all that teen angst was supposed to be about and I'm not going back to find out. In the second half, I must have blinked at the wrong time, suddenly Control is taking over the universe. That was legit cool and scary and the ending was exhilerating if unearned.
S3: With the coolest setup, Discovery does the biggest stumble. Arriving in a future where warp travel is a luxury and the Federation is a legend, a Season trying to find their way back to what was once the Federation would have been great (but hard to do when you have instant travel). Instead they find Mini-Federation fairly quickly and reverse everything that was interesting with this future by finding a new infinite supply of Dilithium that somehow ends up not being a source of future conflict. Finding out the Burn was caused by someone having sad feelings was definitely peak discovery.
S4: Perhaps the strongest story arc of any Discovery season. Unfortunately, large parts of it felt like filling, and Discovery's weaknesses were by now etched in stone: A secondary cast that we never learn anything about, People making hard choices between hurting someone's feelings and saving the galaxy, making them narcissistic pricks, a lot of poor writing in the details and lots of padding.
S5: With a story arc that was consistently bad and Discovery deeply entrenched and in love with its weaknesses, this has to be the worst season of the run.
For all the talk I heard about how Discovery gets better with each season, I far and away enjoyed S1 and S2 most of all. The first two episodes dug a hole it spent the whole series failing to dig out of and the finale plummeted off a cliff, but the time S1 spent being kinda like a Star Trek take on Fringe worked great for me (I guess that was because of Bryan Fuller's departure and Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman picking up the slack?). S2 made the best use of Burnham's connection to Spock, was a much better executed version of the "find all the clues that add up in the finale" structure than S5, and brought us Anson Mount as Pike, so it will always have value. But the time jump just jettisoned everything that worked even intermittently about the show and doubled down on Burnham as the sole lead by revolving around her and Book.
Yep. People who like the show think the time jump was so great, but what the time jump did was completely redefine Burnham's character to make her "likable" and start a relationship with Book off-screen so we didn't care about it. The specificity of being torn between two worlds went out the window and in its stead she just became some generic hero character who was always right and had a love life we weren't invested in. Bizarre.
From Season 4 on, her Vulcan upbringing is surgically removed and she is ALL emotions!
Geez I absolutely, completely forgot Michael was raised Vulcan til reading this comment.
Which could have been interesting if the show had ever addressed the difference between 23rd century Burnham and 32nd century Burnham but it didn't. And it even set up clear opportunities to do so! I'm still fuming that her library vision guide was Book and not Spock.
Around the time S2 ended up til early S3, it felt like Discovery was a divisive but worthy gamble. The time jump was promising and the Burn even more so. It's baffling that they blew it on a Kelpien who needed therapy. It's like the showrunners took "stories need emotional resonance" WAY too literally.
I didn't really know how to feel going into S4, and it maybe only overperformed expectations because S3 had set them so low. I had the tiniest bit of hope S5 would do another DMA-type mystery. But when the premise of the season became clear... oh well.
I wonder how constrained the coda was by actor's availability?
I'm not sure the contortions needed to setup a short trek most people can't remember were worth it.
I was less critical of this show earlier in the season. I liked the Moll/L’ak villain team up. Maybe they would have been more at home in the Star Wars universe but whatever, I was intrigued. Then they killed off L’ak and I got bored. I thought at the least I was going to get zombie L’ak for a bit. But nope. Agreed on how lazy it was!!
The best part of this finale was when they somehow put the spore drive on the Breen Dreadnaught and sent it so far away it would take decades to get back. That was cool. The rest of the episode I was pretty bored, white knuckling through to satisfy my completionist ways.
I also am okay with sentimental endings and I certainly am okay with a romantic happily ever after. But they didn’t do the work to make me care!!
I will miss the cast, the expensive cinematic experience and the excellent soundscape. But they just didn’t do much with this final season. And this show just struggled throughout its run. Weighed down by convoluted storylines that kept dragging along. It’s a shame. Oh well. Them’s the breaks. Now I can get back to watching the second season of Strange New Worlds.
Yes, it was bad in the ways the review and everybody else said. But something else made me really mad.
This was the opening narration for the original series: Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before!
Yes, it's cheesy and a little bit sexist. But it defines an ethos, an ethos of exploration and never being satisfied with where we are, always convinced there is more we can know. For Michael to the shrug at the progenitor's tech and say "Eh, we've already got it figured out" is such a slap in the face to that ethos and to those of us who find it inspiring. I think I've enjoyed Disco more than most but this was a truly awful ending.
You know Zach you could have just posted the Oprah shrug emoji and saved time writing all that. /lh
I'm incredibly forgiving, but even I couldn't take it when Tilly revealed her big inspiration was... a mentorship program. Kill me now.
"All the heroes got exactly what they wanted without having to really pay for any of it, and while that may work for fan fiction, it makes for damn shoddy storytelling." To be honest, I've read plenty of fanfiction with much greater emotional depth and story complexity.
It's definitely not as good as Enterprise's finale, which was titled Terra Prime, and if you ever see anything indicating otherwise, know that it's a filthy lie and there's no episode past Terra Prime.
I kind of wish Michael had been about to head out on that last mission and then the Breen finally show up after being sent to the galactic barrier, ready for revenge.
Also, could Discovery jump a planet? Would have been nice to do that to Kwejian...
Yeesh, what a mess. Again I say: if Burnham / the Federation wanted to keep the Progenitor tech away from everyone, all they had to do was destroy one or more of those silly clues. I mean, that's the true Raiders ending, to continue your metaphor -- hide the maguffin somewhere that no one will ever be able to find it again. Problem solved.
Such a disappointment for a season finale, and even worse as an entire series sendoff. No effort whatsoever to reflect on the show's past and how far everyone's come since then. At best, Michael and Book get to reminisce about meeting each other at the start of season 3. We joke that this has always been the Michael Burnham show more than a true Trek ensemble, but even our ostensible lead is under-served here: there's none of her anxieties about leadership, or thorny relationships with the chain of command, or complicated family life, or Vulcan upbringing, or anything that defined the character early on.
Oh -- and having seen all of Enterprise, the Agent Daniels thing is just as nonsensical as it appears. It doesn't tell us anything new about either character, or even illuminate anything in the wider canon, to suggest that they're the same person. Even a reveal that Kovich was instead a Progenitor all along would have been more impactful than this. And since the franchise is almost certainly never going to follow up on the twist at all, it's the dullest sort of development possible. Which hey, is Discovery through and through.
Kovich being Daniels is lazy as hell, as if the writers were just reading Memory-Alpha and decided “hey, this might work.” Also you have David fucking Cronenberg involved, try to be more creative
I honestly didn't mind the Daniels thing because it felt like a direct response to people complaining on Reddit that he should have been able to stop the Burn. He's trying to fix it on the back end so as not to overly futz with the timeline or something. I dunno, I buy it.
Of course this show is gonna spoil Enterprise for us on its way out the door. A real jerk move.
I was cackling at the idea that Starfleet Academy does not have a mentoring program in the year 3000 whatever it is. Did basic educational principles also get destroyed in the Burn?
Burnham made all the decisions about the progenitors tech all on her own (without us even seeing her decide them) and I guess that’s that. Hope those gods aren’t pissed that you destroyed all their tech!
The Saru stuff was the highlight for me, and I did like the little coda with her and Book. This show was more fun when they were just being outlaws together after the time jump.
The MVP of this series for me was Doug Jones, and honorable mentions to Michelle Yeoh and Anson Mount. Wilson Cruz was lovely in the finale and let’s get him on a show that better serves him. Thanks for sticking this series out Zack!
You just helped me articulate in my head one of the major problems with the show since season 3! Ever since they mashed Burnham and Book together and essentially rebooted her character, the show has been trying to have its cake and eat it too with the idea of Burnham as an Indiana Jones/Nathan Drake/Han Solo rogue, while still keeping her within Starfleet. And it just doesn't work; the original conception of Burnham as an outspoken officer constantly butting heads with the chain of command was actually a far better depiction of how such a character would find Starfleet life.
Yes she really became a company man for Starfleet - even in this finale thinking Moll would just trust Starfleet because she said so. Like Girl, why are you even trusting Starfleet?
The ending feels stapled on because, well, it was. They weren't told it was a series finale until after production ended in late 2022 and had to go back and redo the ending in spring 2023.
I was surprised when I saw someone other than Jonathan Frakes credited as director because I remembered seeing a bunch of interviews with him about accidentally directing the series finale, but apparently the entire second half of the episode was done without him in reshoots. It's no surprise that the first half was far more engaging, as Frakes gets Trek better than any other director and is generally able to get the most out of whatever he's working with.
Ohhhh. Okay that makes sense. I might be a little more forgiving then.
Also, I called the resolution with the Progenitor's tech in the comments for the premiere, so I will take my victory lap now.
It really was one of the easiest outs the show could have taken. Despite all the reasons to believe otherwise, I hoped against hope they would do something interesting with picking up the Progenitors all these years later. And given all the Dominion War/DS9 stuff and revealing the gelatinous Breen, it seemed like there were the pieces put on the board to do something, ANYTHING interesting, but nope. It was just hyper advanced technology that predates maybe everything so maybe God did it and we'll just toss it over in that blackhole. Problem solved.
Maybe even just take advantage of the actor/makeup coincidence between the original Progenitor and the primary Dominion Changeling we saw by saying the Changelings found some Progenitor stuff and used it to conquer the Gamma Quadrant and make their genetically engineered servant species (I would have died if there was a Weyoun in the mystery box just chatting with the Progenitor). Or give some breadcrumbs to connect the Changelings to the Progenitors grand plan (i.e. the Progenitors didn't stop at humanoid life or maybe the Progenitors were the original solids that were mean to the Changelings). The Progenitors finding this tech, using it to seed the galaxy with humanoid life and having that low-key be the genesis for the Changelings eventually becoming the Founders could have been interesting.
I don't think the writers fully grasped the potential in a follow up to "The Chase". The big idea that should have been explored after that episode was how the revelation that every humanoid species in the galaxy is related would affect each culture. Would it help foster peace amongst enemies? Would one species decide that they are the Progenitor's true heirs and go on a galactic conquest? Would different factions of different planets react differently? That's the high brow sci-fi approach that has long been Trek's stock in trade, and here it gets wasted on the hunt for a bigger bomb.
And the weirdest part is, that other option is precisely in line with Discovery's ethos of highlighting and celebrating diversity and recognizing that the things which bond us are more important than the differences that divide us. The show didn't often live up to that ethos, but it was still a core part of it's casting, characterization, and storytelling from its inception. And yet, when they're presented with the opportunity to cleanly those ideals its storytelling, they literally and metaphorically tossed that opportunity into a black hole.
As to your second point, yup, that would have been an excellent use of Trek canon to deepen the current story as well as past ones. If you want to tie the Breen into it, you could even have the Breen look like Salome Jens in her Progenitor makeup underneath the helmet and have them be the actual remnants of the Progenitors that have survived all this time and have been striving to conquer the galaxy since the days of DS9 because they view themselves as the creators and rulers of sentient life. It would more than justify their inclusion in this season, it would retroactively explain why they allied with the Changelings during the Dominion War, and it would have made for a wild reveal when we saw a Breen take off their helmet instead of just being seeing a Jell-O mold on top of a costume.
I'd love to know what breaking this season was like in the writers' room. When I'm not feeling super cynical about Discovery, I have to believe some of these storytelling opportunities crossed their minds. So, like, what happened here? It's baffling in the same ways that the first seasons of Picard's plotting were.
Similarly, it's really hard to understand why they wanted to reveal so much about the Breen or why any of the TNG - VOY era references were so prominent this season. So the Breen are glowy lime Jell-O... okay, are they going to do anything with that reveal? Of course not! Picard, his face palmed.
To be fair, all of Trek for the past 30 years has wasted the concept of the cultural fallout that discovery would have caused. So no real surprise that Discovery dropped the ball as well.
Very true! Bu the fact that this season tried to pick up that ball and made such a hash of it makes me resent it even more than all the shows/series that just ignored it. For example, I tend to think worse of a movie that is one glaring flaw away from being great than a movie that is just flat out bad. To come so close and drop the ball leaves a worse taste in my mouth than just missing the mark entirely. That's what I'm feeling here.
A disappointment from start to finish. "Consistently uninspired" is spot-on. What *was* the point of any of this? If this show was supposed to be about Burnham's self-actualization, at least they could've given her a meaty journey over the series...but instead her journey seems to be: isn't it nice to have friends? Something she came to years ago now. If it was something else, I can't see it.
At its best, Trek is a show about moral conundrums. Disco is a show determined to have absolutely none. Every story is easy and obvious and clear and there's no nuance anywhere. It's not interested in science, it's not interested in hard choices, it's not even interested in long-term character journeys. It's just endless wheel-spinning as the characters tell each other how great they are.
Is this the first Trek series to have not a single essential episode? (Maybe it joins Enterprise in that...) Just shocking.
We deserve better Star Trek than *this*.
And if the point is that community is most important, ok super - I am happy to just enjoy a great cast! But to barely characterize the rest of the bridge crew over 5 years excludes the audience from all of that, so its just telling and not showing. To me that is the most baffling and alienating part of this experience.
Yep. I was legit surprised that the memory flash was the only shot of Owo and Detmer in the episode. It's like this show did everything possible *not* to make us love the supporting cast.
If there's an essential episode of Picard, I sure as hell didn't notice it.
Ha! Fair. I suppose I give them points because S3 was at least fun to watch.
I thought Picard S3 was painful to watch.
I'm grading on a curve. After a season about how Picard is unable to love (?!) because of repressed memories of his dead mom (ffs), getting the band back together again for a final ride through Easter egg land was delightful. It wasn't *good* a la TNG/DS9, but that's true of all the modern Trek shows, including SNW. Those currently in charge are not interested in science and don't seem capable of telling stories about moral conundrums, the franchise's bread and butter. It's all just soap opera in space. So, hey, I'll take what I can get.
I don't really care that much about easter eggs, at least not when they feel more like a clip show than blinking to the fans. Also, the way they handled the changelings was the opposite of fan service. The first 8 episodes felt like they were trying to avoied getting to the point to stretch the story for a season, then it turned out to be even worse as the first 8 episodes had nothing to do with the actual plot. But the finale had a kernel of a good plot in it.