Star Trek only does stunt casting occasionally, and their track record is sometimes good (Dr. Mae Jemison in TNG’s “Second Chances”), sometimes bad (Melvin Belli in the original series’ “And the Children Shall Lead”), and sometimes indifferent (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Voyager’s “Tsunkatse”).
This week, they did it again with the great Stacey Abrams—the politician and voting rights advocate, and avowed Star Trek fan—making an appearance as the president of United Earth. It makes for a nifty coda to a strong, if flawed, season finale.
There’s a lot to like about this episode, starting with the triumphant return of Mary Wiseman as Tilly, alongside two of her cadets from “All is Possible,” Harral and Gorev. They’re assisting Vance with the evacuation of Earth, being done with Starfleet Headquarters, which is mobile, and a whole bunch of ships. They get as many people offworld as they can before the DMA renders the planet uninhabitable.
It’s great to see Tilly again, and she gets to kick butt and make good suggestions, and help save the day. There’s a great scene with her and Vance drinking Risian whiskey (ironically, a gift from Tarka) and talking about life where Tilly expresses happiness with where her life has taken her. She’s come a long way from the motormouthed cadet of season one and it’s great seeing her relaxed and confident.
That scene happens when everyone else has abandoned the mobile HQ and the two of them are staying on board to provide covering fire on the debris that’s pelting Earth, which they don’t expect to survive. Except they do.
One of Star Trek’s most annoying (to me, anyhow) tropes is characters going on a suicide mission and then not dying. No fewer than six people volunteer to die in this episode—Vance, Tilly, Ndoye, Book, Detmer, and Tarka—and only one of them actually does die, and it’s the asshole nobody likes anyhow. The only one of these that’s acceptable to me is Detmer because while she volunteers, Ndoye bigfoots her, wanting to make up for her helping Tarka and Book last week by volunteering to take a shuttle to act as a missile to damage Book’s ship enough to stop them.
But Ndoye survives the attack, as do Book and Tarka, though we are led to believe that they both die shortly thereafter. Tarka really does die, after finally being willing to admit to himself that Oros is probably dead, and Book seems to die in mid-transport as Book’s ship goes boom.
However, Book was saved by Species 10C, who didn’t know what the transporter was, and intercepted it, putting it in stasis. They bring Book back during the best part of the episode, the second attempt at communication between 10C and our heroes.
Buy the Book
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
After Discovery stops Tarka from going through with his crazy-ass plan, 10C is willing to talk again. The entire diplomatic team (with the exception of the never-named Ferengi who has been strangely absent this and last week) and the entire bridge crew, as well as Dr. Pollard (but not Reno, who disappears from the action after she beams back from Book’s ship) all meet 10C, who are giant fiery beings who seem to be a collective. Not, we are quickly told, like the Borg, but they don’t have a sense of individuality either. It takes some doing to explain to 10C about individuality, about why Burnham is sad, about how the DMA is affecting the galaxy. I love that Burnham invites the whole crew, as it reminds me of one of my favorite lines from the first regular episode of the original series, “The Corbomite Maneuver,” when Kirk says to Bailey, “The face of the unknown—I think I owe you a look at it.” This is what Starfleet is all about, and Burnham doesn’t keep that sense of wonder to herself and the contact team.
That scene—like the similar scene in “Species Ten-C” last week—is magnificent, Star Trek at its finest. Saru provides the translations, with an algorithm provided by Stamets, Adira, and Zora, and while Burnham gets the lion’s share of the speechifying, it’s not just her. Rillak is the initial spokesperson for the Federation, and in the end it’s the newly resurrected Book—the one person there most harmed by the DMA—who very eloquently explains to 10C (who never do get a proper species name) why what they’re doing is so horrible.
This is very much David Ajala’s episode. He’s still hurting so very much from Kwejian’s destruction, but he has finally, belatedly, come to realize that more violence is not the solution, talking is. And he also rejects Tarka’s offer to come with him to the alternate universe, even though Tarka thinks he’s sweetening the deal by saying that Kwejian’s probably intact in that universe. Backed by Reno, who has an epic rant about how they may look the same and act the same and laugh the same and cut their sandwiches diagonally the same, they’re not the same, Book then is able to finally get through to Tarka that Oros is gone and that he has to accept the loss instead of trying to twist the universe to his will for a reunion that will probably never happen.
While Book’s come to Jesus speech is pretty good, that Tarka actually gets together with Jesus is less convincing. Shawn Doyle is very good at Tarka’s assholiness; not so much at his having a sad catharsis. I wish the episode had spent more time showing us Tarka’s process to realization, but Doyle’s poor showing on what we do see may mean we’re better off with the abbreviated version.
In the end, though, the day is saved the way the best Star Trek always saves the day: with compassion, with understanding, with talking. The appeals by Rillak, Burnham, and Book all get through to 10C, who genuinely did not realize that any higher life forms were being harmed by their dredge. They are apologetic and recall the DMA, saving Earth and Ni’Var (and also Vance and Tilly), and also are willing to clean up the mess made by their subspace rifts.
The best part of this is that, while the immediate threat is neutralized, it’s only really the beginning of the conversation between 10C and the Federation.
And while Book doesn’t die, he doesn’t get off without consequences—he is sentenced to community service, working on the reconstruction efforts on worlds harmed by the DMA. This is the perfect sentence for him, as it allows him to do some good, and the right thing to do when you’re going for justice rather than punishment.
In the end, we get the Abrams cameo as the President of United Earth, which is now eager to rejoin the Federation. (In a voiceover, Burnham mentions that Tellar never left the Federation, and Andor was in negotiations to rejoin. Earth only just joins in this episode, and Ni’Var didn’t join until “All is Possible,” which means that throughout the Burn, Tellar was the only founding Federation world still in the Federation. That’s kinda cool, actually…) We end on a note of hope, with the Federation continuing to be rebuilt and with more new worlds to seek out.
The episode is beautifully filmed by one of the show’s best directors (and one of its executive producers), Olatunde Osunsanmi. 10C is a gloriously alien species, and the look into their world is superb. The effects crew does a great job showing the Starfleet HQ zipping through space.
And the acting is superb, as always. In particular, I like the rapport that has developed between Sonequa Martin-Green and Chelah Horsdal as Burnham and Rillak. There’ve been a few too many times that it’s tilted in favor of Burnham these last few episodes, but in this particular episode, they’re a great team, playing off each other, supporting each other, and working very well together. I particularly like their conversation in the ready room, a deliberate mirror to the one at the top of the season in “Kobayashi Maru,” which they reference.
Tig Notaro also has some great bits in the early part of the episode, though she’s, as I said, strangely absent from the latter portion. But Reno’s conversations with Book and her rant at Tarka are great moments for the character. Saru and T’Rina also move forward in their relationship, which is a joy to see mainly because Doug Jones and Tara Rosling are so incredibly adorable together—seriously, if you put a match between the two of them, it would light by itself—and watching them be all polite and thoughtful and circumspect is tremendous fun to watch.
And, it should be noted, that one of the ways in which the day is saved is by Book remembering that he jiggered the force fields on the ship to allow for a cat door for Grudge. Knew Grudge would save the day in some form or other. She is a queen, after all…
The finale is not perfect. Everything wraps up a little too smoothly, and with too little by way of permanent consequences. For all that Ajala is brilliant in his plea to 10C, to seemingly kill him and then bring him back is the worst kind of emotional manipulation. While I appreciated that T’Rina decided to try a mind-meld to communicate with 10C, that particular action didn’t really contribute all that much to the solution, and the scene where Discovery tries to break out of the orb by overloading the spore drive went on about a minute too long.
Still, it was very much the right way to end a Star Trek season: with peaceful contact resulting in stronger relations and lives being saved.
Keith R.A. DeCandido will do an overview of the fourth season next week.
I do think this is the strongest season finale of Discovery to date. Unlike the finales for Season 1 and 2, there are no major plot holes here (though a few minor ones – like how did Michael know about Oros?). Unlike Season 3, it doesn’t have a weird tonal shift into mindless action schlock. I appreciated the season had a coherent character arc for Michael it held to all the way through. I appreciated the confidence to actually end the suspense of the episode halfway through, allowing for a long denouement. I certainly appreciated seeing Tilly again. There was so much here to like.
Though, as you said, the lack of consequences here is inexcusable. I don’t need a body count mind you. But in addition to all the people who offered themselves up as sacrifices only to survive, there were many other cases. I was not happy with Book getting off on community service, because it implies that he’s available for next season if need be, meaning ultimately Michael sacrificed absolutely nothing. And you completely failed to mention the throwaway idea from Stamets that the spore drive would be destroyed, leaving them stranded decades away from home. I thought this would be cool – the arc next season could be a truncated Voyager – but then 10-C lets them off the hook by giving them a wormhole back again. We get a super-saccharine ending, where everyone gets to go on a vacation (save Book) and everything is fine. Hell, we can’t even say for sure Tarka died – maybe he went to his weird heaven place (the show never sold me that Oros’s dimension was anything other than a religious belief). It’s like the writers were worried that we would be traumatized if anything genuinely bad happened to any of the characters. But good character arcs require choices with consequences, and there were absolutely none here for anyone except Tarka, who had the expected fall as the antagonist of the season.
Karl: My response to the notion that it would take decades to get home was the opposite of yours. I figured they might salvage Book’s ship’s spore drive, or something, but the notion of them spending next season pulling a Voyager filled me with nothing but dread. I prefer the ending we got.
Having said that, I would rather they hadn’t created the artificial suspense in the first place…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The Queen saved the day. Mixed season. Better but still mixed finale for me. But queen did save the day.
Next season: let’s take it down a few notches in terms of big threat. How about no big threat. Change of pace. :)
I have very mixed feelings about the FX designers on this show. Their work on Species 10-C was gorgeous; this season has done a terrific job showing us truly alien vistas. But then they go and do something totally idiotic like having the debris pelting Earth magically start going backwards when the DMA goes away. GRAVITY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!!!! It’s not as bad as the infinite turbolift roller-coaster TARDIS hammerspace last season, but it’s still really annoying.
Of course, none of the physics here makes any sense. Where did all this debris come from? Tilly said something about the gravity waves from the DMA pushing it toward Earth, but Earth is pelted by asteroidal and meteoroidal debris on a daily basis and nearly all of it burns up in the atmosphere or hits the nearly 99 percent of the planet surface (counting water) that isn’t permanently inhabited by humans.
Also, while I checked Star Charts and confirmed that, yes, okay, there is a sweet spot where you could insert the DMA between Sol and 40 Eridani that wouldn’t gobble up Tellar or Andoria in the process, it’s still a coincidence beyond all reason that it just happened to land there by chance. (And Epsilon Eridani and Sirius are probably toast.)
Aside from the absurd implausibility of the threat, this was a solid finale and a lovely resolution to the 10-C story. Their lack of a sense of individuals explains why they didn’t recognize the harm they were causing, since they probably saw life in the galaxy as a collective thing. And it created an obstacle for getting them to understand how Book and Tarka were different from the others.
Book being saved was utterly predictable and corny, but I don’t really mind it; we’ve had too many series leads’ love interests written out through death over the years. I’m not a fan of the idea of death as closure for a character’s arc; often it just cuts off an arc without bringing it to any kind of real resolution. So I’m glad Book got the chance to reconcile with 10-C (and convince them they need to hold themselves accountable) and resolve his grief.
Interesting that they blew up the spore drive. Hopefully they just decided to get rid of it once and for all. It was always a silly idea, and it’s just too convenient for the characters to have it.
I don’t share Keith’s high opinion of Osunsanmi’s directing. He relies too much on shakycam and cheesy explosions. As soon as I saw his name in the director’s credit, I knew we’d be seeing those ridiculous flame pots going off on the walls again, and there they were, along with the spark throwers from the ceiling.
One small detail I appreciated, was the final shot of the episode; the long pull-back from the HQ shuttlebay to the view of Earth. Instead of the typical top-down view of North and South America you might expect from an American, Hollywood-based production, it was a “sideways” shot of Africa. Very nice touch.
Considering how absurdly loyal Tellar is to the Federation, it never gets the love it deserves. We’ve seen great Andorians (Shan!!) but not Tellarites.
Incidentally, I didn’t recognize Stacey Abrams until I saw her name in the credits. But throughout the president’s scene, I kept thinking, “Are we supposed to recognize her? She does look familiar…”
I’m somewhere between Keith and Chris. The ending was beautiful and VERY Star Trek in that we connected our way out of near doom, which is how we solved the problem with the Borg, the Dominion, V’Ger, the Klingons, and a host of other times. It was also very Start Trek in that most everyone comes through unscathed. Titan gets wrecked, but everyone there had been evacuated, no one knows anyone who took a hit on Earth or N’Var, Book dies but doesn’t, Andoye goes on a suicide mission and survives, Tilly and Vance do a desperate rearguard action and survive, and as CLB pointed out and the Dread Pirate Roberts, I mean Book, is available next season (not that I’m trying to get rid of David Ajala since he’s been wonderful). For a season that started killing off an entire world, it got a bit gun shy at the end and wrapped up with a bow on top for everything.
Meanwhile, the effects crew worked overtime this week, creating a beautiful world/species but also falling back on some tired tropes on board the ship, namely the fireball projectors on the bridge and the glorious return of the exploding console. We did see the destruction of the spore drive, though I expect that will be up and running for next season- first it is something that makes our ship unique and second it addresses the plot hole of “why is our ship going to this, certainly there has to be someone closer to the galaxy ending problem every single time?!?”
As far as DISCO season finales go, this is the strongest they’ve done yet (season 2 follows and then the sharp drop off to season 3 and 1) but it just missed completely sticking the landing for me.
@8/MikeKelm: “We did see the destruction of the spore drive, though I expect that will be up and running for next season- first it is something that makes our ship unique and second it addresses the plot hole of “why is our ship going to this, certainly there has to be someone closer to the galaxy ending problem every single time?!?””
Part of why I hope they abandon the spore drive is that I hope they decide to move past the need to build a season arc around a huge threat that only Discovery can respond to.
Yes. I’d like that too, Christopher. Though it does leave the door open to revisit world from Voyager or something.
MICHAEL: I’m sad because one of the two people who died was very important to me.
10-C: Oh gosh, I sure hope it was *this* one…
Reno presumably went to get a sandwich or something, but it does feel kind of odd that we don’t see her at all in the final montage. It also feels odd that we never hear anything more from Gray, not even a brief montage shot of Adira calling him up, or even mentioning “I have to call Gray and let him know I’m okay.” Did the two of them break up or something?
While I found the finale satisfying overall, I do feel like the first contact and negotiation with the 10-C were resolved very easily, and most of the conflict just came from trying to stop Tarka. I would have appreciated less zooming around after Tarka, and more figuring out how to express concepts like “honor” and “important” and “beautiful” using math and pheromones, or struggling to convey the concept of death to a species that apparently has no individuality.
The Stacey Abrams appearance was really cool, but I have to admit that it took me more than a few seconds to realize who it was, simply because it was the last face that I expected to see. At first, my brain wanted to tell me that it was Jo Martin who played The Fugitive Doctor on Doctor Who. It didn’t dawn on me who it really was until her “let’s get to work” line.
@11/kurozukin: “MICHAEL: I’m sad because one of the two people who died was very important to me.
10-C: Oh gosh, I sure hope it was *this* one…”
They intercepted Book’s transporter beam. Tarka didn’t beam out, so they didn’t have his pattern.
Adira and Gray are still together, but I guess the actor wasn’t available for the finale. It would’ve been nice to have him back along with the others, but he’s back on Trill, so it would’ve been hard to justify. Though maybe they could’ve put in a scene of Stamets, Culber, and Adira visiting Gray on Trill in the final montage.
So, Mister Cranky Pants here. Community service? Seriously? Community service? Who knows how many are dead because of that credulous mope. And what is his punishment for this? He gets to give the big speech. Barf. Worst episode ever. I watched it again but this time I stopped when Book “died”. Much much better. I’d give that abridged version a 7.
@14 What sort of penal system would you expect in the Federation?
Mind you, the American system is one of the most punitive and senseless in the world of the present (some say barbarous); under a Roddenberry-esque philosophy, what should people expect?
@14/fully: So, what do you want, an eye for an eye? Sentencing him to helping people as recompense for the harm he caused seems far more rational and constructive than just punishing him in some hurtful way. Federation justice has always been portrayed as focusing on rehabilitation and service, so there’s no reason this should be surprising.
So, actually, there should really be mostly Tellarites in Starfleet in this century. Too much makeup work, though.
I don’t mind a sappy ending — that’s Discovery‘s signature tone. It was a good season.
Was it just last season that we had the magic red time travel suit and the galactic plot coupon search that made no sense whatsoever? The good part of that season was the preview of the Pike, Spock, and Number One Show. I’m glad this show has begun to get consistently good.
Twenty years sounds a little more punitive and a lot less rehabilitation.
KIRK: No, you’re not. There’s something I want to show you. You know what the penalty is for transporting an animal proven harmful to human life?
JONES: Captain, one little tribble isn’t harmful. Captain, you wouldn’t do a thing like that to me, now would you? Would you?
SPOCK: The penalty is twenty years in a rehabilitation colony.
@16 “So, what do you want, an eye for an eye?”
Yes. I think I said that actually. I would rather he had stayed dead.
Short of that, I’d like consequences beyond a field trip where he can get all touchy-feely with the victims’ families and make himself feel better about committing what amounts to, if not legally then morally, felony mass murder. Of course I’m making an assumption there that in all that mess of flying rocks, they were probably a fair number of casualties, although the script is so spineless there is not even a mention of a single definitive casualty, much less the portrayal of one. Everyone, even the rogue General, comes back alive. As far as we know, Tarka is still out there somewhere in an alternate universe living it up. The death toll racked up by the captain’s boy toy is the thing of which we shall not speak, because we need him back for next season without all the baggage.
So yes, let’s bring on an Old Testament reckoning for Book, shall we? Something more than having tearful reunions with his girlfriend. How about a kick in the groin for each one of the lives lost or put at risk because he knew better than everyone else, except that he didn’t.
loved reading your reviews all season, as always. my go-to for star trek reviews. even tho, amusingly or ironically, we do disagree quite a lot haha
overall i thought this was a great season, if uneven as you pointed out. i really think it flourished in the second half, and the fact that tilly was absent was probably not a coincidence. i hope they find a better use for the character, perhaps on a spin-off about the academy. i’ve heard maybe that’s the case? but discovery is crowded enough already
i agree that nobody dying except tarka was a bit absurd. i too figured they would use book’s spore drive to get home, but once his ship was destroyed too, i was so excited for a voyager season on disco, and crestfallen was they were sent home moments later. just absolutely crestfallen.
but yeah, good stuff, and thanks for all the write-ups!
I have great respect for Stacey Abrams but it was impossible for me not to see her instead of the character and the stunt-casting just created far too great of a disconnect.
However, I’m with Keith in the lack of fatalities — not because of any inherent desire to see characters killed, even in such dire straits, but due to so! many! nigh-impossible escapes. And yes, Christopher, major WTF at the debris reversing course. The ease or at least speed with which tremendously complicated language was getting translated despite wildly divergent contexts by Zora Magic at the end was also hard to swallow.
I had some confusion over just how Tarka’s plan was thwarted; Ndoye’s kamikaze mission to Book’s ship, apparently, but then Tarka and/or Book probably should’ve been able to stop Tarka’s device by destroying the ship themselves or maybe even just physically destroying some of the infrastructure from within.
When the 10C did their big onscreen reveal, did anyone else pitch their voice as low as possible and say, “SHEPARD?” Don’t get me wrong, they look amazing, but it’s hard to ignore the similarity to the Reapers.
Weird side note, but for next season I hope they go to a brighter blue for the sciences uniforms. I love the 32nd-century look overall — maybe my third-favorite Starfleet uniform after the First Contact set and TNG seasons 3-7 — but next to the vivid red and yellow uniforms, the darker blue of the sciences seems way too muted, especially since the main people wearing them (Stamets and Adira) are usually in the engineering/spore-drive room, which also has a lot of dark blue in the background.
@18/rm: “So, actually, there should really be mostly Tellarites in Starfleet in this century.”
Tellar was the only founding world that remained, but the Federation had hundreds of other members, many of which were presumably human colonies.
Besides, just because a world is in the Federation doesn’t mean it contributes personnel to Starfleet. Despite the way it sometimes looks and the way people sometimes think of it, Starfleet would be just one small part of the Federation, and there are many other ways to contribute. In the European Space Agency, for instance, only some European Union nations provide personnel or technology while others only provide funding.
In my Enterprise: Rise of the Federation novels, I portrayed the early Federation Starfleet as a loose amalgam of the individual founders’ space fleets, sort of like the ESA, with each fleet having its own specialty (with the assumption that they’d have blended into a unified fleet by the 23rd century). Earth Starfleet focused on exploration, the Andorian Guard on defense, Vulcan on research, etc. Tellar was basically the merchant marine, focusing on cargo transport and support for other ships.
“Was it just last season that we had the magic red time travel suit and the galactic plot coupon search that made no sense whatsoever?”
No, two seasons ago.
@20/fully: “Yes. I think I said that actually. I would rather he had stayed dead.”
I just don’t see how that would’ve been constructive in the long run. A living person working for his atonement can do more good in the universe than a bunch of disintegrated atoms. It’s not about Book himself and what you feel about him; it’s about what he can do for others. There are many people in the galaxy who’ve been displaced or bereaved by the effects of the DMA. They need help, and Book would be strongly motivated and able to help them, because he’s been through the same thing and because of his long experience doing that same kind of work. They are better off if he’s helping them than if he’s dead, and that’s what really matters.
@22/Arben: I don’t know how I’d have felt if I’d recognized Abrams from the start, but my impression in retrospect is that she did a decent acting job, which is more than can be said of some celebrity cameos.
rafjiordan: Thanks so much!
fullyfunctional: An eye for an eye isn’t Trek. Being kicked repeatedly in the groin isn’t Trek. That’s never been what this oeuvre has been about. In addition, it’s not really justice, it’s vengeance, which is utterly counterproductive. Also, I reject the notion that having to reconstruct homes and cities that were devastated by your own stupidity constitutes “being touchy-feely.” This is a genuine penance and one that actually does some good.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
As Jonathan Frakes’s (probably) second-most famous character once said, “Revenge is a sucker’s game.”
This is an extraordinary line, as powerful as poetry:
Book gives Michael a farewell from Kwejiani hunters, “we’ve parted a hundred times; may we rejoin to part a hundred more.”
I wonder if the scriptwriter wrote it out of their own heads, whether it was based on a similar line from another language or culture.
@20
“Touchy-feely field trip” is pretty much Star Trek in a nutshell. It’s the military if it were run by nerds, hippies, and think-piece writers. Not sure why some are surprised when this happens; with some exceptions, it’s roughly always followed this humanist ethos.
@29/DannyBoy: “with some exceptions, it’s roughly always followed this humanist ethos.”
Look at Harry Mudd. “Mudd’s Women” established that he’d been sentenced to rehabilitation for his past crimes, “effectiveness disputed.” Then Discovery retconned him from a charming, basically harmless rogue to a psychopathically casual mass murderer. So retroactively, that means that even the worst murderers get rehab — and despite what Spock said, it must’ve been pretty effective rehab to turn him from the ruthless monster he was in DSC season 1 to the comical scoundrel he was in TOS.
@26. KRAD: Being kicked repeatedly in the groin isn’t Trek.
Five bucks says the next Lower Decks has an eminently GIF-able scene of Mariner repeatedly kicking Boimler in the groin (which doesn’t exactly refute your point).
@26– Klingons are Trek. Qapla, and the hell with Book.
Definitely my favorite finale of the series so far, and my favorite season since the first one. I feel like the show really dipped in quality during season 2 and didn’t recover properly until now. Hopefully they will go out on an even stronger note in their final season.
Always loved Discovery’s characters. But this season (and others) never really fully clicked for me. It was painfully obvious 5 episodes ago that 10-C was going to say sorry and stop the DMA. This story just didn’t deserve a season long arc.
I’m hoping S5 brings back completely stand alone episodes and eschews the big bad galaxy threat.
I agree with the people who say that this was by far the best season finale that Discovery has done. I would say, further, that it comes at the end of what is by far the season that Discovery has done. I was even okay with the fact that they managed to talk Species 10C into abandoning a major aspect of their culture with just one conversation (decision making is probably a lot easier when you don’t have any individuals in your species).
It just has two major problems:
1) It was completely overshadowed by last week’s episode, which, in my opinion, was one of the best Star Trek episodes ever made.
2) Chickening out of killing-off characters / Book’s “Disney Death”. Not that I wanted Book to die, mind you; I’m a great fan of David Ajala. But if they weren’t going to kill him, then they shouldn’t have pretended that they would.
I didn’t have the same problem a lot of others had regarding the pacing of the season’s back half. The only episode I’d argue was a bit out of place and unnecessary was the casino one (and I still loved the bit with Owusekun kicking ass). But overall, I had no problem with the leisure pacing for once. It was a refreshing change not only from last season, but especially from season 2’s frenetic all over the map pacing. Each episode was distinctive in some shape and form. Plus, watching it once a week felt natural. I’d argue this set of episodes would play worse on a binge-watch. And it’s not as if Trek never took its time getting to a place before over multiple episodes. It took Enterprise several weeks to get to Azati Prime, as we’ll see in the rewatch.
As for the finale itself, I adored it. Probably the best season-ender for Discovery so far. It hit all the right notes. 10C was a visual delight. It serviced all of the characters well. It gave both Burnham and Book heartwrenching speeches. And it brought back Tilly and the two very promising cadets! Saru and T’Rina! Reno’s own speech about loss and moving on! Too many great moments to keep track of.
This episode overall was one of the finest displays of selfless action and self-sacrifice (I dare say, possibly as good as Spock’s own ‘needs of the many’ choice in ST2). Seeing Tilly and Vance staying behind to keep the evac ships safe was such a moment. Burnham’s choice to blow up the spore drive, stranding them for good – outside the known galaxy – for the sake of everyone else was another.
I also didn’t have a problem with Ndoye being rescued at the last second, because the show earned that moment. Easily the most complex and conflicted character, even more so than Book. You see the regret in her face over helping cause the leak, and that she had no ill will towards the 10C, acting only for the safety of her people. I was already emotional over her choice to sacrifice even before the actual crash.
Even Book’s ‘resurrection’, as tacked on as it was (I was as sure as Burnham he had perished during the blast), was still redeemed by that speech to the 10C. It allowed him to shed his pain and come full circle.
In all, the best finale. I can only wonder where they’ll take the story in season 5. There was an interview with Osunsanmi that implied it might try a more episodic approach next season. I wouldn’t be opposed, but if they can maintain things interesting in the serialized approach, I won’t mind much. I truly think they nailed a good balance this season.
@4/Christopher: Agree about the gravity issue when the DMA was turned off. The asteroids reversing course looked corny as hell. And given we’ve seen at least one asteroid collide with a continent, I thought for sure we’d see at least some indication of catastrophic damage and loss of life, even a verbal reference.
But regarding Osunsanmi’s directing choices, maybe it’s just me, but it feels he’s simply trying to replicate what Meyer did on Wrath of Khan with the camera shaking, plus the sparks and explosions. And it’s not as if he’s the only one who did that. I’d argue that was pretty much what directors like Allan Kroeker and James L. Conway were going for during the Rick Berman DS9/VOY/ENT era, albeit on a much tighter budget and schedule.
Book talks 10-C into abandoning their mining operations because it leaves toxic residue behind. So what happens next? 10-C starts cleaning up the contaminated sites. If they can do that, why do they have to stop mining? Makes no sense.
I sure hope that whatever destroyed the environment on 10-C’s hme planet doesn’t show up again. Starfleet just left them sitting out there unprotected and alone.
How can the Earth President make a decision to rejoin the Federation without asking the citizens of Earth? The rejoining just came way too fast for a planet that had turned xenophobic for so long. But, it was the season finale so they had to ram it through. The cameo was excellent though.
Was not surprised that it wasn’t Burnham that stopped Tarka and Book. He’s her blind spot and takes precidence over other matters.
Too much false drama as many have noted above.
Admittedly, I would also say that the entire season-long story arc could have been satisfactorily told in about three or four episodes.
Cool, and expected. I mean, if everyone else is leaving then the Tellarites are definitely staying. That’s just the way they are, contrarians to the core.
@22/Arben – agreed about Book or Tarka disabling the ship. Thought that was what Book was going to do after he sent Reno off and having her convey his last message to Michael. But in a way that he would not survive. Sort of like Spock in the engine room?
Was looking forward to a Voyager trip. Oh well.
Maybe instead of punishment, they should put Book in a rehab facility first? The community service sentencing seemed a bit weak. Maybe, they should have pulled his driver’s license for life too or something. But do I want to be rehab by someone who just helped assembled a very illegal weapon and steal a secret drive? The guys an empath but is he train for rehabbing other people? Is he alright now? There are plenty of ex-cons that turn over a leaf and help other people, but I think most of they did that after prison/rehab.
Looking forward to season 5 and Lower Decks.
@34/M: “This story just didn’t deserve a season long arc.”
As I think I said in the previous review thread, I liked the way it was approached in the first half-season, as just a background threat that catalyzed a series of standalone stories. Not so much an arc as a shared context. The problem was that they turned it into a single arc mid-season and took longer than they needed to. They should’ve done more standalones, let the DMA continue to loom in the background while they focused on other stuff, and not started the “race with Tarka” arc until a few episodes later.
Not a bad finalé, but the lack of consequences became a little too much to bear by the end of it. Nobody dies except Tarka, who had to really, everyone else survives their “suicide missions”, Federation HQ stays intact, Earth only gets slightly impacted by large chunks of rock (and nobody we know or care about dies),and Discovery gets wormholed back to Sector 001 by the 10-C, avoiding a decades-long warp trip back from the edge of the galaxy a la Voyager. (Though Kirk’s Enterprise seemed to manage the journey fairly speedily… but I think we’re meant to ignore that now.)
Like earlier comments, I’m not saying that I needed a “body count” or anything like that. I think that any of the above miraculous survivals happening in isolation would have been fine. It’s just… all of them happening, all at once, that feels a little too easy for our heroes.
Lots to like about the episode, though. Federation HQ being mobile (and modular!) was a treat. The conversations with the 10-C were heartfelt and effective, even if they stretched the language barrier a bit – I’m sure that between them our crew used at least four different contextual definitions of the word “one”. Reno’s scenes were great, showing Tig Notaro can do more than quirky snark – although I wish she didn’t pull this Batman-style disappearing act whenever she’s out of frame. And a welcome return for Tilly, sharing scenes with Oded Fehr’s Admiral Vance, who’s gotten some much needed character development this season too. Tilly refusing to let the Admiral go down with his ship by himself is exactly in-character for her, but I just wish we’d seen more of her relationship with the cadets. A B-plot in one of the episodes showing how she’s adjusting to life at the Academy while Discovery was off to the Galactic Barrier would have fit in nicely and helped some of the pacing problems in the back half of the season.
@43/CNash: “(Though Kirk’s Enterprise seemed to manage the journey fairly speedily… but I think we’re meant to ignore that now.)”
Kirk’s E only had to get back from the edge of the galaxy nearest the Federation. But the galaxy is a very large place, and we don’t know how far this particular part of its “edge” was from Federation space. By analogy, how far is it from Washington, DC to “the edge of the United States?” Well, that depends on whether it’s the edge of Maryland, the edge of Florida, or the edge of California.
Book’s ship being destroyed was telegraphed as well as Tarka dying. For the sake of Discovery being Discovery, they had to destroy the updated spore drive and the person who could create it.
I was cool with the Wormhole ending, to me that was the first sign of 10-C understanding making amends. That said, I have a VERY hard time with a traumatized species just deciding to drop their defenses based on an impassioned speech over a hastily constructed language algorithm (I will grant its possible they can sense emotions).
Lack of consequences. tho – Book gets community service for what generally would be considered treason and attempted genocide (or at least accessory to) as well as theft of classified material, etc. General Ndoye is still a general after sabotaging Discovery and aiding and abetting. And as noted above, if 10-C can do cleanup, then A> are they not generating more wormholes, and B> why could they not mine interstellar space and then clean it up afterwords?. – Yeah, no.
@45/Jeff L: “For the sake of Discovery being Discovery, they had to destroy the updated spore drive and the person who could create it.”
But they destroyed Discovery‘s spore drive even earlier in the episode. Okay, they could rebuild it, maybe, but I get the sense that the reason the writers did that was because they wanted to get rid of the drive and its frequent use as a story crutch.
“And as noted above, if 10-C can do cleanup, then A> are they not generating more wormholes, and B> why could they not mine interstellar space and then clean it up afterwords?”
Just because it’s possible to clean up toxic waste dumps or oil spills doesn’t mean it’s okay to keep creating new ones. Fixing damage is usually a lot harder and slower than causing damage, so it’s a losing battle if the damage is still ongoing.
@@@@@ 43 – “Federation HQ being mobile (and modular!) was a treat.”
I thought that was one of the sillier aspects. Thew new HQ was built at a time that warp travel was rare due to the scarcity of dilithium. So what do they do? Build a base that is not only warp capable by itself but is made up of warp capable modules.
If it were up to me, I’d have ditched or compressed the Tarka subplot. 10-C is a big enough unknown that the last three or four episodes should have been just finding out about them and trying to communicate. Having Tarka and Book almost get caught and then escape again made the Discovery crew look either incompetent or holding back because Burnham’s boyfriend was involved.
And Book’s advice to Tarka about giving up on Oros was totally wrong. Book saw his planet destroyed. He knows his people are gone. Tarka isn’t sure about Oros. So the solution is to give up all hope? Really? Just give up with no proof one way or the other? But, in the end it doesn’t matter because Tarka is so devastated by what Book is saying that he decides to commit cuicide instead of carrying on his search for Oros. It’s OK though because Tarka was the only disposable character.
And for everyone agreeing with Book getting community service, what punishment would you feel was appropriate for Bin Laden? Now scale that up to planetary or multi planetary scale. Bin Laden killed 3,000 people. Tarka and book could have led to the deaths of tens of billions. Sure, don’t put Book on a chain gang or lock him up for life in solitary but Cyrano Jones was facing 25 years for transporting “dangerous” animals.
Burnham went to prison for her mutiny. DS9’s Eddington went to prison as well, didn’t he? They had good reasons for their actions, too.
Book is directly responsible for the DMA getting supercharged, which lead to untold (show was vague) casualties. But Book has plot armor and the show was determined to have a happy ending.
@48 – or the Federation’s justice system has moved on from what it was in the 22nd or even 24th century. Prisons might only be used to house dangerous criminals, rather than ones with little to no chance of reoffending and a genuine desire to make amends, like Book.
@49/CNash: The 32nd century is a time when everyone has personal transporters they can use to zap anywhere in an instant. Maybe the 32nd-century equivalent of prison is implanting people with transporter blockers, so that they lose the freedom of movement other people enjoy. Think of Larry Niven’s teleportation stories. If the whole societal infrastructure is designed with the assumption that people can beam anywhere they want, it would make it quite difficult to get around without that capability.
@@@@@ 49 – Building a banned weapon of mass destruction isn’t dangerous? And how do you know that Book isn’t likely to reoffend? Oh right, the Burnham effect. Nothing bad will happen to Michael Burnham that isn’t rectified almost immediately.
@@@@@ 50 – So you can only murder or rob your immediate neighbours as opposed to someone beyond walking distance? Good to know.
Sure, community service for any number of crimes but possessing WMDs and everything that goes along with it sounds unrealistic. Perhaps a few years in a rehab colony, getting counselling and such followed by a few years doing community service would be more realistic.
Any why is General Ndoye still in uniform? She’s a co-conspirator with Tarka and Book. She sabotaged Discovery and bypassed restricted systems. Everything worked out for the best so no harm, no foul?
@50, Christopher – it’s a neat idea but feels to me like the equivalent of punishing someone for murder by taking away their driving license. Without wanting to get into a discussion about the purpose of prisons, I would have imagined that dangerous criminals would still need to be segregated from the wider population of any society, transporter capable or not. But who knows, perhaps in the 32nd century violent crime is dealt with by “fixing” this behaviour on a biological level, like Iko in Voyager‘s “Repentance”.
This is off the top of my head, so I don’t have specific names. There was the episode earlier this season where Starfleet went after a Romulan who killed an officer.
Do you think they were itching to put her into community service?
One thing Discovery hasn’t done yet is show us what has become of the Borg in the future. The Borg are supposed to represent the idea of technology going out of control and being used to harm life. I also always saw the Borg as an avatar for religious fundamentalists; they do not tolerate dissent, they do not value differences or independent thinking, and they want to incorporate everyone into their fold.
It would be nice to see them re-emerge in the final season with the Federation far more technologically advanced than in previous meetings with the Borg. How would they react?