And now for the final season of Star Trek Discovery. I have a whole mess of notes to make sense of, and a lot of them are more just, about the series in general. So let’s see where we boldly go on this one.
Actually, it turns out it’s not that much. I kind of had a hard time caring enough to finish this series and season and the whole series has felt a bit downhill for a while.
After feeling a bit more like Star Trek for the last few seasons, Discovery seems like its fully embraces its Not Trekiness. It feels a lot more like Star Wars for some reason (again). They even picked up that Sith girl from Ahsoka. Ok, not really, they just told ok her hair and style.
They also pulled Tilly back, though she doesn’t really feel like she does a lot this season. The cast on this show has been so weird all around, and I wonder if it’s something behind the scenes happening or what. The Bridge Crew is almost entirely new people, and the few remaining old characters, Tilly and Saru mostly, feel like they have been shoved off to the back burner the way the old Bridge Crew were.
Owosekun and Detmer get their leave “explained” and “acknowledged” but neither even appears in the episode where it happens.
We do get a new First Officer, again, and Adira is more interesting again, without Grey, except the writers completely forgot they were a Trill. It really has not come up at all since Season 3, and it amounted to, knowing where the Federation is, and suddenly knowing how to play the cello. I mean, why don’t we get to see that more? It’s little things like, “Let’s show this character playing cello” that make Star Trek interesting. This whole series really is just ‘The Michael Burnham Show.” Adira being an Ensign is fine, they are inexperienced in Starfleet. Adira being and acting like a know nothing after having many lifetimes of memories, is a whole new annoyance.
Just to wrap up the Adira thing, they did go back to Grey again, on Trill. And they broke up. It kind of felt like their story was going there, as I mentioned in the Season 4 write-up. I am surprised they didn’t just do it back then, but I guess they didn’t have time with the Burnham show going on.
As for the new First Officer, he is a disgraced captain, whom Burnham decides will be her new bestie. The whole setup is honestly kind of weird, they meet up on Not Tatooine and ride together on some Not Speeder Bikes and then he gets in trouble for screwing up and letting the bad guys get away. It’s kind of forgivable because he is probably the most interesting character in the season. It’s kind of a shame that the rest of the old regulars all seem to have been dumped with not a lot of characterization while this guy swoops in and gets to be interesting.
Back to the core plot.
It’s another MacGuffin Hunt chase. And it’s very literal this time. Find a thing, solve a puzzle, find the next thing, repeat.
In general, I actually really really really hate this specific plot device in everything, not just here. Indiana Jones, for example, uses it. My main problems are, traps and puzzles which survived hundreds of thousands of years undisturbed. I could go with it for 1 or 2 parts of these puzzle chains, but half a dozen?
Plus, anyone could stumble upon the middle section of a puzzle chain, or even the end, but generally speaking, only the last step actually matters.
The puzzle chain leads to quite a bit more surface level action, which is part of why this all feels more like Star Trek again.
They did do a little nod back to the Mirror Universe, though it really leans into the whole “how did this all survive hundreds of years? At least they are consistent with the Mirror Universe references. No mirror people, but they find the abandoned Mirror Universe Enterprise and pull it through the wormhole. It’s basically an excuse to reuse the Strange New Worlds sets.
Also the Federation is going to be really confused when Burnham shows up with yet another 23rd century star ship in nearly perfect condition.
They also found logs that implied the Mirror Universe Terrans from the ISS Enterprise managed to escape to the Prime Universe. Which feels odd because Georgiou had an ENTIRE plot around having to leave, due to some universe sync issues.
The puzzle chain is following through the path of these Romulan Scientists in search of Progenitors Technology. The Progenitors were in an episode of TNG where the crew, along with some others, discovered this species called The Progenitors, whom had essentially created all life in the universe. It was partly used as an explanation as to why all the aliens look “more or less like humans.”
There is also a nod towards Deep Space Nine with the Breen being the main antagonists.
I kind of wish they had brought back and explained what happened with the Klingons. Even just maybe putting one of the puzzle steps on a Klingon planet would have been nice. Actually, a fun idea may have been to revisit the Time Crystal planet, and basically, because time is wonky there, they have to kill time and wait for the clue to be deposited first.
Now I am just making up fan fiction.
The Breen plotline is just, kind of weak. Some sort of Breen Prince or something falls in love with a human girl, who just happens to have connections to Book. The Breen Prince kills some Breen and now they are hunting him down as a traitor, so the Breen dude wants the Progenitor tech to trade for his life.
But then he dies, and the Breen just sort of, decide to follow his human girlfriend. I think maybe she was his wife by that point.
Anyway, Burnham managed to solve the puzzle of course and gets the opportunity to turn down becoming a literal God level Mary Sue.
But not before we get the most ridiculous Spore Drive moment in all of the series. Oh the Spore Drive. The magic mushrooms that can always save the day. The Breen have this massive ship, and the Discovery needs to stop it, and apparently, despite never coming up once before, the ship can suddenly separate off the saucer section. And they do this sort of, Spore Drive Magic, using the two halves, to transport the giant ship away. It’s neat to watch, I guess, but it kind of breaks an already broken magic plot device in an annoying way.
Speaking of random out of the blue never mentioned plot device. Saru is doing some side plot stuff involving the Breen, and he needs to get somewhere fast, and the Federation suddenly has this thing called the Pathway Drive. It’s never explained or anything, but it’s basically just “The writers hate that Warp Travel is slow”, much like the Spore Drive.
Another thing that I mostly just want to gripe about, the Progenitor puzzle “make the shape out of the one between the many” really, REALLY felt like it was trying to hard to echo “The Needs of the Many” line.
Also, why don’t shuttles get cute names anymore. It’s just “Disco #5”
