Star Trek Discovery: Finale
Jun. 22nd, 2024 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenA number of personal crises meant I didn't get a chance to finish up Discovery until recently. Was it worth the wait?
Generally, yes. I think we got a satisfying run of episodes, and while it's a shame this is the end of the series – there's a lot of ideas thrown out here that I'd love to have seen expanded on in another season – it's still a fine ending for a show that I never thought I'd enjoy as much as I have during its very shaky first season.
Talking about a few points: I really enjoyed the arc around Commander Rayner and the Breen. This feels like Strange New World's Gorn arc handled properly – Rayner has a dark history with the Breen and has a tendency to see them as simply monsters, and Burnham acknowledges that he has good reason to believe that. But at the same time, while she takes his advice, she also remains aware that his attitude is biased by his history and while his insight is useful, it remains important to see the Breen as a culture of individuals, not as an implacable force of evil.
The Breen in general got to be a bit more interesting than they ever were in DS9; there's still a fair bit of mystery around them, but they have their own customs, traditions and factions, and it was fun watching Moll manipulate them as part of her desperate efforts to stay alive and save L'ak. It felt genuinely tragic that all her plans came to naught, and I wish we'd gotten a continuation of her story.
The Eternal Gallery is a really fun addition to the Star Trek universe, and something I hope other series make use of – an ancient archive of knowledge and culture that maintains strict neutrality is fun, and makes the galaxy a little less Federation-centric; there are open-minded societies and organisations that don't want to align themselves with the Federation and manage to retain their independence. I was a little disappointed, though, when I learned that the archivist we saw wasn't meant to be a thirty-second century Klingon, but rather an Efrosian.
As for the finale itself – well, it had the issues of being rewritten into a series finale at the last moment, but generally it worked. It felt like a bit of a cop-out to have Burnham choose to cast aside the Progenitor's technology. If this is the last we see of the Discovery future era, why not give the Federation the power to rebuild and restore worlds like Kwejan? It's not that much more powerful than the terraforming technology the Federation already had in earlier series. And the final puzzle felt like a pretty arbitrary barrier; the other puzzles were interesting tests of character and values, while this felt like something out of a video game – and not even a particularly challenging one.
Still, as I said, for the most part, I was satisfied, and it felt like enough time was given to the denouement that it didn't feel rushed. I do wonder how much was filmed after it was confirmed this would be the final season – I'll be very disappointed if it turns out that the reveal of Kovich's true identity was intended to set up a Temporal War plot if there'd been a sixth season. As it is, it's a fun nod to continuity, and there's been plenty of hints that Kovich was tied to the temporal wars in some way in previous seasons.
I also greatly appreciated that Saru and T'Rina's wedding costumes both incorporate what look like some Romulan aesthetic choices alongside the Vulcan!
I'm less a fan of the attempt to tie in the events of “Calypso” - as I said back in “Face the Strange”, “Calypso” was clearly more of a rough draft of the season three setup than something the show was ever really building towards, and I'd have been quite happy to leave it as an out-of-continuity 'what-if' rather than trying to force it into the show's narrative. It felt very awkward, an exercise in dotting the Is of continuity rather than a genuine storytelling decision. And leaving Zora stranded in deep space for centuries for no real reason doesn't paint the Federation, Starfleet or Burnham in a particularly good light.
But other than that, it was a delightful ending with, as I said, my only complaint being that it's all over now. Discovery will never be my favourite series – not even my favourite new series* - but it felt like the show that really was always trying to test the limits, to do new and exciting things, and always working to improve itself. It'll always have a place in my heart, and my respect for what it tried to do, even if it sometimes struggled to quite pull it off.
*Prodigy all the way, baby!
Generally, yes. I think we got a satisfying run of episodes, and while it's a shame this is the end of the series – there's a lot of ideas thrown out here that I'd love to have seen expanded on in another season – it's still a fine ending for a show that I never thought I'd enjoy as much as I have during its very shaky first season.
Talking about a few points: I really enjoyed the arc around Commander Rayner and the Breen. This feels like Strange New World's Gorn arc handled properly – Rayner has a dark history with the Breen and has a tendency to see them as simply monsters, and Burnham acknowledges that he has good reason to believe that. But at the same time, while she takes his advice, she also remains aware that his attitude is biased by his history and while his insight is useful, it remains important to see the Breen as a culture of individuals, not as an implacable force of evil.
The Breen in general got to be a bit more interesting than they ever were in DS9; there's still a fair bit of mystery around them, but they have their own customs, traditions and factions, and it was fun watching Moll manipulate them as part of her desperate efforts to stay alive and save L'ak. It felt genuinely tragic that all her plans came to naught, and I wish we'd gotten a continuation of her story.
The Eternal Gallery is a really fun addition to the Star Trek universe, and something I hope other series make use of – an ancient archive of knowledge and culture that maintains strict neutrality is fun, and makes the galaxy a little less Federation-centric; there are open-minded societies and organisations that don't want to align themselves with the Federation and manage to retain their independence. I was a little disappointed, though, when I learned that the archivist we saw wasn't meant to be a thirty-second century Klingon, but rather an Efrosian.
As for the finale itself – well, it had the issues of being rewritten into a series finale at the last moment, but generally it worked. It felt like a bit of a cop-out to have Burnham choose to cast aside the Progenitor's technology. If this is the last we see of the Discovery future era, why not give the Federation the power to rebuild and restore worlds like Kwejan? It's not that much more powerful than the terraforming technology the Federation already had in earlier series. And the final puzzle felt like a pretty arbitrary barrier; the other puzzles were interesting tests of character and values, while this felt like something out of a video game – and not even a particularly challenging one.
Still, as I said, for the most part, I was satisfied, and it felt like enough time was given to the denouement that it didn't feel rushed. I do wonder how much was filmed after it was confirmed this would be the final season – I'll be very disappointed if it turns out that the reveal of Kovich's true identity was intended to set up a Temporal War plot if there'd been a sixth season. As it is, it's a fun nod to continuity, and there's been plenty of hints that Kovich was tied to the temporal wars in some way in previous seasons.
I also greatly appreciated that Saru and T'Rina's wedding costumes both incorporate what look like some Romulan aesthetic choices alongside the Vulcan!
I'm less a fan of the attempt to tie in the events of “Calypso” - as I said back in “Face the Strange”, “Calypso” was clearly more of a rough draft of the season three setup than something the show was ever really building towards, and I'd have been quite happy to leave it as an out-of-continuity 'what-if' rather than trying to force it into the show's narrative. It felt very awkward, an exercise in dotting the Is of continuity rather than a genuine storytelling decision. And leaving Zora stranded in deep space for centuries for no real reason doesn't paint the Federation, Starfleet or Burnham in a particularly good light.
But other than that, it was a delightful ending with, as I said, my only complaint being that it's all over now. Discovery will never be my favourite series – not even my favourite new series* - but it felt like the show that really was always trying to test the limits, to do new and exciting things, and always working to improve itself. It'll always have a place in my heart, and my respect for what it tried to do, even if it sometimes struggled to quite pull it off.
*Prodigy all the way, baby!