Star Trek: Discovery Final Season Review!
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- Опубліковано 4 чер 2024
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#startrek #videoessay #startrekdiscovery #startrekpicard - Розваги
They could have at least included a picture of Riker to continue the tradition of him showing up in every other Star Trek show.
Hahaha, you are right. There should have been a photo of him in the wall of tchotchkes.
Or at the very least, his trombone.
I was disturbed by how Zora gets treated at the end. We had a whole episode establishing Zora as a person. Then, in this finale, Starfleet simply maroons her in the middle of nowhere. Zora didn't volunteer for it, Zora wasn't informed of the mission and asked if she would agree. She didn't know of it until Michael showed up and told her after asking Michael. I doubt anyone else would have been treated that way for mission that will involve being alone for centuries.
I thought the exact same thing when I watched it.
Thanks! Zora was first established as a sentient and very intelligent artificial life form, wich had a complicated origin story just to be tossed away because "red directive shenanigans" in order to align with the short from 2018. That was cheap, that wasn't good at all.
What makes this even worse in my opinion is that the scene came at the end of an episode - heck, a full season! - carrying the message that the diversity of life in the universe is amazing and we should respect it.
Yeah, it disrespects her and for such a pointless reason too. It was clearly originally going to be that the people could time-jump but the ship couldn't, hence the few mentions of "v'draysh" in that pidgin language. Once that was changed... why bother? Now it means there's something _else_ Super Important enough in another ~950 years? What for?
That was incredibly weird to me too! I guess the assumption is that she could turn herself off and the time would pass in an instant, but she wasn't even informed beforehand.
Michael Burnham was written without hobbies and that's why she doesn't feel complete. Every captain had a hobby: Picard > Horseback Riding/Archaeology, Sisko > Baseball/Cooking, Kirk> Mountain Climbing/Camping, Archer > Waterpolo/hiking, Janeway > Coffee/Holodeck adventures, Pike > Cooking/Horseback Riding. In fact a lot of these DISCO characters don't have hobbies. We never see them enjoying something other than their jobs.
i mean trauma affects a lot of things growing up, so sorta disagree, but I see your point
I kind of agree here. Even Pike has something
@@alexandria-paul I think they scratched upon that issue in the library episode. Michael was too obsessed with not falling because of her trauma. Maybe they would have built upon that personal resolution in season 06 and see her take an extended shore leave with Book.
You say hobby, I say "personality."
Well that is one point. I think the main factor for me is that the writers just kept changing their mind who she actually is. She ended up being a wildly different person from season to season. At least in the first half of the show. They kinda tried to force that into a growing-to-become-captain arc in the last season, but that didn't really work IMHO. She was just too much all over the place, it is just really hard to pin down which version of herself she actually is.
"Book-alike" is indeed an all-tome pun.
Get out and don't come back.
Came here to comment on this joke!
I'm partial to Library Book
A real page-turner
@@andylalor225😊😊😊uúttț t😊 guy I out pop up and and you i in iíiiiuuuj ity😢😢😢😅
Sisko's actual baseball is filthy, not fresh out of the box, but I guess as my daughter said, "We used all our money on confusing transitions, so now we can't afford dirt."
After 900 years the technology probably exists to remove filth and restore the leather and stitching to prime condition.
Plot twist for the fist Disco movie: Daniels isn't actually an obsessive collector of -fan-service-items- historical artifacts. He didn't really want to violate the temporal prime directive to get them in pristine condition - he instead just replicated them. He thought it gives him more gravitas and mystery to display them. Also he liked the self-ironic commentary that Geordi's visor represents: a collector item of a character who was himself a collector of such items so much so, that he literally became a museum curator.
Also if that's Sisko's baseball, shouldn't it have the autographs of the DS9 characters? "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" ended with Sisko tossing his newly autographed ball in the air.
@@janicielle in later episodes the desk baseball is shown blank, and I don't think Sisko'd wipe-off the team's signatures. So I think the signatures are on the game ball, which wasn't his desk ball. That said if Daniels cleaned the desk ball that'd be like de-oxidising a historic penny.
I cannot for the life of me guess why Kovich would have Sisko's ball and Geordi's old visor. The filthy bottle of Picard wine (wine has a lifespan and no vintner is that sloppy)... whatevs.
It's annoying how much of Star Trek now feel like storylines fit for a 2 hour film get drawn out to 8 hour series instead, because this story likely would feel a lot less tiring if it was condensed more. If you don't want to make a story fit for a full TV series, then... don't, y'know?
When they revealed in the first episode this season that the Red Directive was about something that belonged to a Romulan from 800 years ago we understood it would be another "bringing back an old plot thread" season, but part of us hoped they would bring in something more recent that didn't get followed through on fully rather than just mine the pre-milennium stories for stuff. We hoped maybe they were going to try and do something more with the extra--dimensional synthetic beings from the first season of Picard that ended up just introduced and thrown aside, but nah, let's tie it to TNG because everyone loves TNG which means we need to endlessly poke at that instead of working with new things or less over-exploited portions of the franchise...
We also feel the "everything doesn't need to have an answer" and the Progenitors not being the inventors of the life giving tech clashes hard with the notion of "we need to keep poking at this old episode from 30 years ago." Because that episode was fine as it was, just leave it be instead of making a sequel to it.
Overall we felt the season was... fine.
It was so perfunctory. Like the show itself was just punching a clock. And it telegraphed that so hard with the "5 clues" bit.
@@kaitlyn__L Amen! "This is something so powerful that no one person can ever be allowed to control it's virtually UNLIMITED powers!!! By the way, here's our "color-by numbers" set of side quests that will allow anyone to get ahold of it." That's bullshirt!
That's an unfortunate by-product of streaming these days. I am tired of these two-hour movies stretched out and that are all mostly mystery box driven.
I think the thing Discovery really needed & never got was stories where the stakes were less than the fate of the entire Federation. Season 1 is the lowest stakes they have & from there, it's always the fate of all sentient life. Lower stakes stories give the characters room to grow & fail.
Season 2 to 5 are all McMuffin chases
Yes! I was so tired of the “fate of the galaxy” storyline this season. I felt characters like Tilly were so under-utilized after Season 3. I still believe Seasons 2-3 were the best of Discovery. But Season 5 was fine.
Agreed. This show always seemed to be a high-octane chase to stop the bad guys and save the galaxy. Barely any stops to breathe or smell the roses, ever. It really was a 2-3 hour story spread over a whole season. The Orville managed to blend both those types of storytelling and we got both epic conflicts AND characters we got to know and care about.
I think the Calypso tie-in at the end was completely unnecessary and actually immoral from an in-universe perspective. In the Short Trek it was explained as 'there was an accident' as to why Zora was left alone. Now it is a willful order to effectively solitary confinement.
I loved "Calypso." My headcanon had been that it was something like a dream crossed with self-insert fanfic on Zora's part. I didn't think it needed an explanation. But it's far from the most egregious plot decision made in the history of _Trek._
Hell, the "Calypso" scenario be a future connected to the time-hopping events, resulting from the steps taken to destroy of the time bug.
@@GSBarlev Calypso was the most interesting thing Discovery ever did. What a waste that that kind of creativity was completely gone everywhere else in the series.
@@BlownMacTruck
It gave me hope for the show.
Ah well!
I always thought that Calypso was meant to take place while Discovery was in that static warp bubble, so the tie-in at the end was really confusing and unnecessary to me
Kovich saying USS Enterprise and not NX-01 was a missed fact check.
Star Trek: Picard established that the NX-01 was refit and re-designated as the USS Enterprise (confirmed by one of the writers) though I think its a kind of "blink and you miss it" reference. Also its possible that Daniels could have been based from the 29th century USS Enterprise (or he just wanted to remain vague)
"Discovery deserved better" sums up the entire show pretty well. Combined with how bad Picard turned out, I think DIS S5 is the final proof that the current crop of creators need to avoid the big, season-long plots because they're hopelessly unable to make them compelling or even slightly interesting.
There were definitely a lot of unfair criticisms of DIS, but I feel like those ended up being used as a shield to resist absolutely any suggestions to improve the show. The under-utilisation of the bridge crew across the ENTIRE series was utterly criminal - especially with how well they prove themselves when given a few minutes of spotlight!
"Season 5 has no great episodes." --Well, at least the series was consistent.
You are totally right about the underutilization and underdevelopment of the bridge crew. They rarely show the comraderie of the crew, instead they tell us that they are this family.
It's an endemic problem across the entire series.
I think the actors did a fine job with the material, but the problem for me was the material. It never fully cohesed. I noticed that almost every episode had a fight scene in it, that could uave been cut for more character work.
The pacing of most episodes is cut up by action or a task, and then a scene of lets talk about how we feel about the task. They should hold the reflection on the action to after the resolution of the plot of the episodes. That eay characters can have meaningful conversations about what things mean without interrupting the pacing of the episodes.
I agree with you that things just happen in the show, and it seems like it is reconciled in the writers room, but i always felt like i was missing something when it hit the screen.
It's a limitation of streaming-era TV. If _DS9_ only had 70 episodes, we never would have gotten Rom and Leeta's romantic arc; Jake and Nog's shenanigans and adventures in entrepreneurship; or even a quarter of the Many Faces of Jeffrey Coombs.
To this day I still don't even remember the names of any of the bridge-crew side characters besides Tilly. They were just... there. No real effort was put into consistently and regularly developing most of them as believable and relatable people -- they were never more than just character set-dressings, like Pokemon cards or something. They literally could have had a different actor in each of their roles every week and I would not have even noticed.
With the main characters, I thought they did a great job with Book -- I've loved his character since they introduced him, because right off the bat I got to see who he is... and I just liked him, as a person. And Saru was an even more excellent character, with some exquisite backstory and character growth throughout the series, some powerful and emotional storytelling. Burnham was a bit too OTT as a character, but I liked her, she had some real passion for the Federation and what it stood for -- and I found that very contagious and admirable. Characters like Stamets and Culber, and even an infrequent side character like Reno, were a little less developed, but I at least got to see who they were and had a fair idea of how they would act and think.
But the bridge crew... they're just generic placeholders, like "that blonde girl" or something equally vague and generic. I have no idea who they are. I'm told they're important, I'm told they're great people, I'm told they're good at what they do... but I may as well just be reading the 3-line bio on one of those Pokemon cards before I bury it in my deck and never see it again.
@@GSBarlev
Very true.
It's a loss.
its sad because now that it's the end we'll never know. even ensign mayweather on star trek enterprise had some background to him but here it's completely final
"We need to find a thing that will lead us to the next clue so we can find the next thing that we can fit together with the other things we've found so that we can find the path that will lead us to the library where we will learn about how to find the data that will lead us to the technology that we will end up not choosing to use or study and instead send into a sun."
You totally don't get it. If someone other than Michael Burnham found it first, that would be bad.
Taxidermy carcass of Porthos?
Does that mean he finally rematerialized from Scotty's transporter mishap?
That would have had to be Porthos XXIII. Though I wouldn't put it past Archer to pull a Javier Milei and just raise clone after clone of the same beagle.
Maybe he beamed back inside out, hence the need for taxidermy? It’s happened before….
Ahhh, but Kovitch/Daniels knew that time travel and dimension hopping would eventually dissolve Porthos! So no display!
I'm old school and 10 episodes is not a season, I remember 39 episode series.
What Trek show had 39 episodes in a season? 8 to 10 episodes is the norm now for a streaming series.
@@thoomolong
I really liked those 20+ episode seasons.
(In Disco we could have got to know the bridge crew better.).
But they were a chore for cast and crew.
I think early seasons had 12 - 14 episodes which I think was a good compromise.
29? No, not that many. 26 or 27, though, in TOS. 22-24 in TNG.
I mean, 39 episodes a season ended in the mid-60s. The Original Series didn’t even have over 30 episodes a season. 22-26 episodes per season became the norm by the late 60s/early 70s and stayed that way until the streaming era. 10 episodes is definitely a season, but I do think shows like Star Trek do better with 13-15 episodes per season. It’s why Discovery did better in Seasons 1-4. Season 5 could have ended better with 3 more episodes.
These people barely had enough material for 10 episodes. I realize its for budgetary reasons, but there's no way Disco writers would've been capable of 20+ episode seasons. Not with serialized storytelling, anyway.
challenging lotr for the amount of endings!
@@richardvinsen2385
The answer is Annie Lennox.
Which is a pretty good ending to anything though it took a long time to get there.
I remember regretting how much soda I drank while the endings played out
So, If I was god, this is how we would have handled Calypso. Rather than make Michael the one to get all the progenitor knowledge, they should have had Zora get the knowledge. And then like Zora makes a person out of the replicator so we can meet her VA. Then they can hit us with "the sphere knowledge and the progenitor data are the same file format, suggesting a common origin. I was able to use discovery and the sphere data to upload my personality to my voice actress and shes going to get to go be a person. I will stay out in space and safeguard the secret to life itself" and end with a scene like the end of season 2 where the crew claims the ship was destroyed in the process of getting the knowledge and that the only thing that survived is the new Human Zora. Then we could end on like Zora using the holos to watch back reruns of TNG before we get the alert on screen that an unidentified escape pod has entered the sensor range.
This is really good.
They really needed to do something with their Mcguffin other than yeet it into a black hole.
Except Zora is firmly established as a ciscraft. As in, she was assigned spacecraft at birth and is happy with that assignation. Having her create a human version of herself would be like forcibly mis-(idk what the term that should go here is, the spacecraft version of what they still do to intersex kids) someone.
I never really "got" the whole Zora thing. Wasn't she composed of something like all the data of the universe since the beginning of time or something? Didn't one of the tech heads say it would take generations to sift through the massive trove of information? Then she's just a sentient computer AI. I really thought they'd develop this idea into something or other, but nope this was, "How Discovery got a sensitive sounding voice."
This would have been better than the Burnham Messiah angle.
Personally I waited all season long for Stamets or Reno to say "Don't we already have this technology? I think it's called the Genesis Device..."
You gotta think that after a thousand years the Genesis tech would already give them basically the same power as the Progenitors.
Also, what's with Star Trek not being able to give us any good villains? Remember Gul Dukat? Kai Winn? Sela, the Durass Sisters, The Borg Queen, Seska or Sub Commander Tomalok? Ever since Discovery started no Trek show has had a really good villain. Even The Changeling from Picard Season 3 was pretty one note.
I wish we got more Tomalok in TNG.
The Changeling was awesome, actually.
"Why can't Kovich... just be Kovich?" THANK you!
But wait, there's more! Kovich is Daniels...but they're both Wesley Crusher!
I imagine they had intended to do something with that reveal in the sixth season they thought they were getting. It may not have made the reveal worthwhile, but I think it probably would’ve seemed at least better than it did.
@@whatthefish2082 They should've just dropped it, and if they had to, explore it further in some later series. What a boring reveal that was also really terrible fan service that no one cared about.
I felt exactly the same way, mate!
@@windgraceproject oh no, oh no, that's it isn't it, fuvck
isnt warping away while making the enemy thinking they destroyed the ship, the riker maneuver?
Nope, the Riker manoeuvre is the one where you deliberately ignite the explosive space gas. There may be some in-between steps like collecting the gas and then expelling it in a convenient spot but that feels like semantics.
The Riker maneuver is when he throws his leg up over the back of a chair and sits in it like a madman
No, "warping away while making the enemy think they destroyed the ship" was RIker maneuver from "Peak Performance"... shoot torpedoes at the ship while hitting your improvised "warp jump" (using antimatter from Wesley's latest failed science experiment (got an F in that lab... but an A in his Acting Ensign crew eval)) to jump away ... and make it look like they destroyed the ship. ;-)
So, want you to consider something.
We loved the characterization of the members of the crew of the Enterprise in TNG and the denizens of Deep Space Nine. But when did those characters really start to shine? After their first seasons and sometimes after their second seasons. Each of those seasons had, what, 26 episodes each? OK, TNG had 22 in the second season, I think the writer's strike had something to do with it.
How many episodes did Disco get each season? It varied, but it wasn't 26. Over the course of five seasons, there were just 65 episodes, just enough time to have launched it into the third season of an old school, 90s Trek season. I think with that sort of timing, we should have just been getting into the secondary character episodes and getting to know these other folks. The lack of stories about Rhys and Owosekun and all these other folks are partially the fault of those shorter, effects-driven episodes.
Agreed.
Of course it would have helped if there hadn't been so many guest actors and additions to the cast.
@@alanpennie We spent the whole last season getting to know a new first officer just for the show to end as soon as he's been established
Every time they said "clue" I thought of the South Park episode with the Hardy Boys. That ones probably on me though.
You’re not alone, they kept saying it and I just kept laughing at it.
@@seanwhelan6960
*Everyone's out to find the next big clue that's gonna lead them to the valueless Mcguffin*.
Oh I feel a cool over there.
I admit I was a fan of the novels version of the truth about the Breen - that they’re multiple species, and believe in internal equality between them, but unlike the Federation believe in achieving that equality through total erasure of difference rather than the embrace and celebration of those differences. As long as their individual background is concealed, all Breen are Breen. One could do interesting thematic social commentary with that playing off the Federation.
Huh, interesting. I've been waiting to dive into the Star Trek books until I was caught up on all the movies and shows, but I'm curious to check that out now.
18:24 I actually really liked the moment with book and the world root. Was a nice quick touching moment of character.
So, is Neil Breen now the God-Emperor of the Breen?
He does love those broken laptops.
I am so glad, SO GLAD, that Leto Burnham-Booker (or whatever his name is) wasn't announced to be the captain of yet another starship Enterprise.
Yeah, that tacked on Calypso ending was stupid. They HAD to resolve the hanging Calypso plotline, and did it in the dumbest way possible. Just fly to some out of the way nebula and wait a few thousand years for some guy to show up. The entire crew, which Zora has feeling for, will be long dead by then but, hey, sure sucks to be you. No way in hell any thinking, sentient being would agree to do something like that, computer or not.
The Daniels reveal felt a lot like the "My name is . . . Khan!" from Into Darkness. Kinds like.. okay? No need for it to be there.
With Book getting the world root cuttings in the library, I thought for sure there would be a tie in with the progenitor tech. Maybe somehow it would have been used to recreate Book’s planet or something along that line.
Exactly what I thought! Can’t recreate his particular people, but they could recreate the planet!
15:46 we needed more Jet Reno in the whole series. One of the best characters. Her and Raynor were the best parts of the season. And Trina the Vulcan from Vulcanus
@@richardvinsen2385
"- Aren't they able to find a cure for baldness in the future?
- In the futures, they don't care about it."
Remember that? BTW, I love my curvy Tilly.
@@richardvinsen2385yep, that’s body shaming for sure. You can keep it.
Agreed. I loved Jet Reno and wanted more of her. She was supposed to get a drink, dammit!
And I still think Saru is the best captain of the series, and should have remained Captain even in a background role. I had no problem with Michael as main protagonist, but why does the main protagonist have to be a starship captain?
It's not at all relevant to the story, but I was so sad to see that for the Lagrange point (there are actually 5 Lagrange points, labelled L1, L2, L3, L4, L5), they chose to use L1, which is both the least interesting and *unstable* (only L4 and L5 are stable, L1-L3 are unstable). It is possible the progenitor tech storage chamber has some automated stabilizing mechanism (this is technology we already have), but if it's not going to be L4, L5, what's the point of even bringing up that it's a Lagrange point.
How did you determine it was L1? Just by looking at the maps and visuals? Or did it come up in dialog?
@@GSBarlev Each of the five Lagrange position has a specific name -- L1 is the position directly between two bodies. With the Earth and Moon as an example, L1 is between the two, L2 is on the far side of the Moon, L3 is on the opposite side of Earth from the Moon, L4 is 60 degrees in front of the Moon on its orbital path, and L5 is 60 degrees behind the Moon on its orbital path.
"Hiding" their portal in a scientific most intresting spots, two black holes in an equilibrium, every space faring civilisation would send at least probes to it was dumb to beginn with. And hey, L1 is exactly the point everybody would look at when they try to find out while the two holes are stable for that long. I was missing the blinking neon sign with Hidden Treasure written on it though
@@olencone4005 I'm aware of the differences between the Lagrange points-I'm asking why OC states that artifact was at L1. I don't recall anything that would have ruled out it being at L4/L5.
You said science words!
If the crew of Discovery and the Federation never undertook the Red Directive and looked for the Progenitor Tech, it would have never been found - making the season pointless. No one else could have found it. That kinda proves your point that the story isn't worth anything.
The Kovich/Daniels thing is such a great example of just how bad this fan service can be. It makes the world so much smaller. Daniels was a great character. Kovich was a great character. That was two great characters. But now they're the same person, so they're only one character. After that scene, there's literally one less character in Star Trek than there used to be
Aside from anything else, aside from the fact that it destroys the mystery, aside from it being a bad fit and coming out of nowhere, there's the simple fact that it just makes the Star Trek universe smaller. Literally less variety, less variation. Fewer characters. That's the opposite of good world building
Also, it suggests he's retained the means to observe the future. AKA the Federation never followed the terms of the Temporal Accords.
Which makes them kind of immoral realpolitiks again, AKA exactly the thing the de-balkanisation throughline (in seasons 4&5) was about committing to avoiding.
The Breen and Klingons look squishy in discovery.
As far as Burnham's characterization, her confession in "Labyrinths" was exactly in line with how she's been characterized over the years. It was not at all the introduction to the character (to me) that it was for you.
Her arc (shown, not told):
Losing her parents, being adopted by Sarek, becoming estranged from Spock, and Sarek choosing Spock over Burnham for the Vulcan Science Academy, caused her to internalize her emotions to the point where she coldly assesses the confrontation with the Klingons and insists upon a Vulcan hello. Her grief and guilt at the outcome of those events, which resulted in the death of her mentor Phillipa Georgiou (someone who had managed a gradual thawing of Burnham's personality as she groomed her for the captaincy), caused her to refuse to defend herself at her own court martial.
Though she tries to get the Discovery crew to listen to her, and is relatively successful in "Choose Your Pain," she's not really successful until she begins to allow herself to be vulnerable, as she is with Stamets in "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad." This is an evolution of the character in which both she begins to ease up and the crew begins to take her more seriously. At this point, she begins her first serious romantic relationship, with Ash Tyler. She also rescues Emperor Georgiou from the Mirror Universe, complicating the array of parental figures in her life.
By the end of season one, she learns that cultural context alone is not an excuse for the Vulcan hello doctrine, so she uses her knowledge of Klingon culture to negotiate a peace in a way that would be satisfactory to the Klingons, without compromising UFP principles.
Season two is largely about Burnham coming to terms with her actions that estranged her from Spock, in which she attempted to drive him away for his own good, and forgiving herself, and accepting forgiveness from Amanda and Spock. Though Amanda's influence was powerful in childhood, it wasn't enough to counteract Burnham's retreat inward, described above. Burnham also meets her birth mother, Dr. Gabrielle Burnham, and sees a lot of her own martyrdom complex in her mother. They're mirrors for each other, and call each other out on hard truths, a major turning point of which I'll address below. Once Burnham and Spock reconcile, she sets Spock on the path for meeting and bonding with Kirk and McCoy.
During Burnham's year as a courier, her activities enable her more maverick tendencies, which makes her return to Starfleet rather rocky. Her partner as a courier becomes her partner through thick and thin, Book. At this point in season three, she steals off on a mission without Captain Saru's permission, under some influence by Mirror Georgiou. This causes a demotion from first officer. On top of that, Burnham loses the second major trial in the series at Ni'Var, in part because of the aforementioned hard truths her mother tells her, in "Unification III." This episode, more than any other, is a major turning point for Michael Burnham, as it starts her on a course away from opaque maverick martyrdom toward transparent and deliberate planning.
Seasons four and five show Burnham applying what she's learned by being more transparent through her actions as captain. She sees herself in others (Book after the loss of Kweijian, Rayner after his hearing following the actions on Q'mau).
So, in "Labyrinths," when she guesses that the answer is her ambition as captain, and making her career her identity, it's no surprise that she's only scratching the surface, there. It makes perfect sense that her real motivation throughout the evolution of her character, since childhood, is the desire to make sure those that she loves are okay. It ties in to her early days as a martyr, as well as the more holistic and thoughtful nature of the way in which she helps in the later seasons.
It's far from an introduction to the character, and the above are not simply things that happened. They changed how she looks at the world and how she acts in response to the world.
No other Star Trek character, captain or otherwise, has had an evolution play out this thoroughly onscreen, and I include those in my favorite Trek of all, Deep Space Nine.
You have some excellent points. I still want some more personality to her (interests, hobbies, anything other than work), as some have mentioned here. But the way you lay it out, it makes a certain sense for her to be that single-minded.
I love the juxtaposition between Steve’s work and some of the other channels like Trek Culture. I like both to be clear, but both have different views on what is/isn’t a good episode or component of one.
Take the reveal of Daniel’s as an example. Their view is it was very cool and a highlight for them. Steve’s view is it is unnecessary and fan boyish.
I admit I do geek out on those in much the same way a wrestler would get a cheap pop by saying my town name. I do however totally get where Steve comes from and would like to see blatant call outs less often.
Steve and Trek Culture are polar opposites when it comes to fan service. Personally, I lean toward's Steve's feelings on it.
Out of curiosity, how did you feel about the show runners finally unmasking the Breen? For me, it was like a punch in the gut. One of the reasons I liked the Breen so much was because of the "what's behind those masks" mystery. Pretty much everything about them was mysterious, and they just gracelessly ripped open the floodgates of it. They could have slowly revealed parts of their culture, hierarchy, and appearance, instead of just ripping their helmets off and going "Look! Booger man!" I dunno. It just wasn't a satisfying reveal. It's like they rushed to answer one of the most mysterious questions in the Trekverse, and it had no nuance to it.
That's kind of how I felt to. Not knowing what they look like and never hearing them speak English was one of their coolest aspects in DS9, at least to me.
Although, the fact that they dislike taking a more solid form implies some common ground between them and the changelings, adding more depth to their alliance during the Dominion War.
I actually thought they explained Calypso in the future scene in Face the Strange. When Burnham and Raynor first appear in the bridge Zora asks if she’s dreaming again. At that point I thought that Calypso was just Zora succumbing to a kind of madness brought on by her isolation. I know that they had to scramble to find a series ending, but the instrumentality of just sending Discovery to hang out for 1000 years because “Kovich said so” struck me as a very odd and particular kind of fan service.
One further thought - an issue with the plot arc this season is it put adult characters into a kid's plot arc - something more befitting the crew of Prodigy.
So many of the issues with this plot wouldn't be a problem if stuck into a middle-grade format. The one-dimensional nature of Moll as an antagonist (Before La'k died, they began to remind me of Team Rocket). Primarch Ruhn being a cartoon villain worthy of Power Rangers. The antagonists collectively never killing a single person. The clue trail feeling artificial like an RPG, with some of the "puzzles" so laughably simple a child could figure them out.
All of this is paired with some mature characterization by established adult characters, but it's fundamentally adults bumbling through a kid's story, which is part of why the result is underwhelming.
I think this is a fair criticism.
I understand why they went with a treasure - hunt plot (it allows them to combine a season arc with more self - contained episodes) but it is a bit childish.
Lak and Moll killed a few Breen
They missed a great opportunity here with Book. If people believed the Progenitor tech could revive the dead, he could have been motivated to bring back Kweijan. That would have given us clear stakes and a reason to actually care about getting the tech. And then the reveal that it couldn't would have more emotional weight.
I had this thought as well, and then again when he got the world root. But-credit where due-they resisted going down that *extremely lazy* and overtrodden path and gave the world root a quietly understated-and yet incredibly beautiful and poignant-purpose.
@@GSBarlev
Fair.
We should give them credit when they wrap up a story in an appropriate way.
Yeah I expected for multiple episodes that Book would bring it up. And then in the end, when he gets his hand on the tech, he decides against using the tech for it, because something something bad side effects, book has to make the hard choice to give his hopes up for the greater good or something.
Well, I think they could have brought back Kweijan, just not any of the specific people in it. New life, new people, new sea monsters, yes. But not SPECIFIC people, like Book’s family. I was a bit surprised that they didn’t bring back the world, though, or at least talk about it.
“Exposition ain’t characterization” AMEN TO THAT.
I understand the approach of analyzing a work on its own, but I really do think that a lot of the "poor" decisions made in S05 really need to be evaluated in the larger context:
- Michelle Paradise said Emily Coutts and Oyin Oladejo had other projects
- Moll and L'ak's half-baked storyline was going to carry into S06
- Motivating the "Calypso" tie-in was, evidently, to be the _main focus_ of S06
That said, I agree with you on a lot of points, and you put into words what didn't sit right with me in the resolution to "Labyrinth."
Ultimately, I'm happy that _Discovery_ gave Book and Burnham the happy ending that was (canonically) denied Ben and Kassidy Sisko, and I, for one, will greatly miss this show, which, while far from perfect, resonated strongly with me (except for S2.5-Lord, save me from another "rogue AI" plot) and that I was always excited for each episode to drop.
As someone still upset at the ending of Voyager having the credits roll as soon as the ship got home, I actually appreciated how dragged out the finale of Discovery was. Yes, it was pointless, but it gave time to process the final end to the series.
If nothing else, you can say that it’s the best final episode of a Trek show that got cancelled.
Until Prodigy Season 2 comes out next month!
In the most parasocial way possible, when I saw the Kovich reveal I immediately thought, “oh look, a shelf full of ‘member berries! @Steveshives is gonna blow a gasket…” And then they ended on the Calypso bit and I just shook my head in disgust. I have some head cannon, but really. Why the F. The Matrix architect scene vibes.
I don't hate a lot of things in life but Discovery is in that very category alongside Picard.
I never saw Calypso. I just assumed it was some sort of convoluted time loop thing so that Discovery could find the Zora AI in the first place, because I had totally forgotten the Zora story line.
I found the series as a whole so touchy-feely to the point it might as well have been called Star Trek: Self-Discovery. There were too many times where the characters would inexplicably pause in the midst of a crisis to discuss feelings. And the endings of seasons four and five could be summed up as "Yes, we saved the Federation/galaxy, but what's more important is what we learned about ourselves.
Burnham and Rayner saw a possible future where the Breen get the Progenitor technology. At any point in the treasure hunt they could have just destroyed the clue fragments that they collected.
Too many crises were solved by:
1. there's nothing we can do
2. wait, there may be something we can do
3. (techno-babble)
4. five minutes later - voila
And it is always the first suggestion.
Knowing all of the races with mega-dreadnaught ships, in 800 years why did Star Fleet never build at least one of their own?
Why do star bases look like those spiral spinny things I used to have hanging in my tree to catch the wind?
And what group of Star Fleet engineers decided it was a good idea to install flame throwers beneath the deck of the bridge?
If they wanted to put in a call-back they could have subtly mentioned how The Library was originally established as Memory Alpha from TOS. At least that would have made sense withgout feeling forced in like the artifacts on the bookshelf.
If the sphere data (now Zora) was so dangerous to the galaxy they had to take it 800 years into the future, why was it so ineffective in that future?
My biggest complaint, however, is that they waited until season five to give us Commander Rayner (the wonderful Canadian actor, Callum Keith Rennie). We just got to know him and now he is gone. Plus many other fine Canadians like Shawn Doyle and David Cronenberg.
One final comment I've been dying to rag on and that is the idea to give different races (all descended from Progenitor DNA) having random bumps, knobs, ridges, weird ear shapes, etc. Different traits develop due to environmental pressures and random mutations. If a mutation offers a survival advantage then it becomes dominant. But there is no advantage to Rayner's weird ear shapes (bumps, ridges, knobs, etc.). Larger ears perhaps, but not those weird flare, tail-fin things. Or Bajoran nose wrinkles, or whatever.
Star Trek is honestly really bad when it comes to evolution for some reason in general.
@@andtalathagreed. The lizard-people episodes in both TNG and Voyager. *shudder*
Your review of Discovery reminds me of my favorite saying about nu-Trek: We only need *one* Lower Decks.
But we do need it, dammit! I am salty that they cancelled it.
After 5 seasons, I still don’t know the bridge crew’s names. I try to self-reflect, like, am I being too critical? I try to compare it to TNG or DS9 after binging 5 seasons of Discovery, thinking how ridiculous it would be if I was like, “who is the android?” or “what’s the Klingon’s name?”… “oh oh, that’s the transporter guy, why is he on the space station now, what’s his deal again?”
I thought the Calypso Short Trek was the alternate future where the Breen won from a few episodes earlier. Would've been perfect headcannon for me (with the exception of the "- A" added to the saucer section.
That should've been it. Oops, after 1000 years some space junk smudged the A off.
It's my opinion that a lot of the problems of "Discovery" stem from having to cram in a serialized story arc into such a short season.
The best loved Star Trek series, TNG and DS9, had over twice as many episodes per season, and only DS9 has anything like a serialized plot which only developed in the last half of the show. And even in the midst of the Dominion war plot the longer seasons allowed for a few episodes to break the tension and include character focused exploration of the crew and their lives. The same was true of "Enterprise" during the Xindi season.
With only ten episodes "Discovery" required the plot of the season to invade every minute of every scene. So any personal moments and crew character interaction had to be shoehorned into scenes and locations that first served the plot of the moment rather have any breathing room to make them their own. I think it's also part of the reason they talk so weird. They don't have the time for subtext or to build a rapport naturally. They have to just come out and say everything directly so that they can get to the next scene. (well, that and I'm not sure the writers know how real people talk)
Also, you've now committed to a plot that the audience may never buy into, and if they don't like it then they don't like the season.
I don't hate Disco. It's ok. My main issues with Disco have always been that we never get to know the rest of the bridge crew, and because of scheduling conflicts, even the few we began to get to know then disappeared, and we never get satisfying explanations why.
My other issue is that the seasons were short, spaced to far apart, and pacing was off every single season. They had multiple episodes that really should have been short scenes, but were stretched to be full episodes. To that end, episodes that were worth watching were so crammed full that they felt chaotic and rushed and therefore disappointing.
Disco rates at about a 4 out of 10 for me. Tons of potential never quite reached.
My other complaint about the show is that Burnham never seems to learn her lesson. Even as a captain of enterprise, she is shown to disobey orders. She has to accomplish nearly every task herself, rather than relying on her crew.
@@dtorrini
TNG was a long time ago...
I didn't realize they put the ship back to being original.
Ha I was JUST thinking of the taxidermy carcass of Porthos when you said it.
Same here!
“Whistlespeak” was the highlight of the season. It resonated with me on so many levels and Ravah and Tilly’s interactions were just wonderful
Calypso reference made so much worse after showing how lonely the ship was after the breen war.
The Chase was a season 6 episode, if my memory is accurate.
Steve, you absolutely echo my sentiments on this show. It wasn't bad enough to stop watching and laid out just enough tidbits that you could believe an improvement was near but in the end, nothing but disappointment. I think you are being very generous in believing there was anything but fairly superficial growth in any of the characters except Saru. If growth did occur, it lurched along due a plot need. I hope in your full series analysis you take a deep look at Burnham. While I am completely aware this was a Burnham centric show, the writers, in my opinion, made her into a sort of Messiah character where she knew everything, and knew what needed to be done to move the arc along. I too found Burnham's growth or for that matter, her moments of weakness fairly unconvincing because of the power the writers gave her overall. I must wonder if this series would have been better if you stripped all that is Star Trek lore from the show and just make it a space show about a crew looking to save the galaxy from a different set of threats, but we know Hollywood doesn't take those risks.
35:52 even though the Culber story kinda floundered, it was nice to see that character actually get some development for once. And to see the actor get a chance to actually act was nice.
I agree.
He got something to do this season, which made him unusual.
I was afraid they might kill him again because he was taking some of the limelight from Michael.
Lol
I find it interesting to say you will rewatch discovery in the years to come, and I don’t mean it as saying that discovery was bad, I enjoyed watching it, but for me, it has no rewatch value whatsoever. Simply because they work towards a season long mystery, the episodes on themselves offer no value when you already know what the outcome will be.
I tried it before to rewatch the previous season before the next one comes out, but I simply couldn’t get invested in it. I don’t kmow if that’s just me though, I can rewatch tng, ds9, voy or ent for the tenth time, and I mostly find some value in it.
On Adira, they forgot the Tal symbiote and the fact that one of the hosts used to be an Admiral... unless they came up with a reason why they wouldn't use their symbiote's experiences that I just forgot.
Agreed. I really felt that they missed out on a little of opportunities with Adira and the symbiont.
I honestly enjoyed this season. I think the treasure hunt plot enabled them to write more stand-alone-ish plots and that really worked for me.
But the weakest point of the season for me were Moll and L'ak. I actually liked them at first, they seemed interesting and fun. But then they just were stale. There was no growth, no change, and when L'ak died, Moll just seemed to have no personality left to her at all. I had hoped (and thought it would actually happen like that) that Moll and L'ak would learn to trust other people and that they would cooperate with the Disco crew in the end and get the Progenitors' tech to work together. But in the end they were just a talking obstacle.
It may not have been the show that I personally expected or wanted but I'll be forever greatful to Disco for bringing Star Trek back.
The main problem was, again, the non-sensical and illogical plot. The scientists made all the clues so only a good and chosen one can find the technology, but at the same time the Breen and the smugglers can find it too. That makes the whole idea of the scavenger hunt illogical. The clues are presented in a way that its astronomicly unlikely that those didn't get destroyed over the centuries. All for solving the riddle two drunk Nausican could solve without thinking. I always felt like it was an insult on my intellect. One example, and every episode is full of such flaws, is in the last one. Moll shoots the Breen, even though they accepted her as their leader and shared the goal to resurrect La'ak, so...WHY? Then Michael convince Moll to cooperate, she agrees, then Michael attacks Moll and the fist fight starts until Michael suggest to stopp as it better to cooperate, convincing Moll AGAIN. Such things were constantly driving me nuts, was it even written by a human or by an AI? Then, they even got the goal of the progenitors wrong, they haven't created diversity but pushed evolution so everybody look like them, humanoid. The other goal was, that they don't get forgotten and Michael throws the portal into the black hole and everything became classified by the federation because...who knows why, but that was absolutly ok for Michael. And they talked always about the technology could be used as a weapon. The weapon was...possibility to create a clone army, the same the founders already did with the Jem Hadar in the 24th century. The list goes on and on, the overall arc is illogical, how is it even possible that someone liked this trainwreck? I also tried to somehow like Michael, my problem was that all her decisions were either selfish or catastrophicly dumb (plot armor made it to turn it into a good outcome) and her arrogant and insulting behavior to all other characters plus being a superhero instead of a good captain leading her crew.
"the taxidermy carcass of Porthos" 😂😭😭
The progenitor technology to create life isn't even anything new to Starfleet. They have that tech at home. Its called Genesis.
The red angel was pretty damn good when they finally got around to revealing the details.
Making Book the librarian was a slightly lame joke, but I appreciate any attempt at humour from this show.
I appreciated the librarian-in-chief making the joke!
tbh I mostly liked it. You are right about the Zora and Kovich thing though, I didn't think that was necessary.
I really liked this season, but as with all seasons of Discovery it’s endlessly frustrating. It’s always 90% of the way to great.
As for the season mystery, that’s just what this show did. I’ve accepted it.
And I do give them a lot of leeway for having to turn it into a season finale unexpectedly.
I’ve always been a big fan of Discovery despite its flaws. I’ll miss this show and I am thankful for it reinvigorating the entire franchise.
Discovery is a 5 season-long sequel to Enterprise.
There is some merit to that perspective. Wish they’d done it better though!
A minute watching this on my phone. my partner screamed from the other room "put it on the TV"!"
Steve goes on the big screen!
We are excited to see you agree with our thoughts, but especially your jokes
Your delivery is great in this too.
The fun part of the mirror universe is regulars getting to be wacky. It was disappointing 😅
Still not the end is so accurate 😂
Lost it at "are they cubscouts"
I'm pretty much in agreement with you. The villains were just not very compelling. I just never found the Breen to be all that interesting. I pretty much knew that no one was going to get the Progenitor tech, so it wound up meaning nothing.
I actually liked the Calypso tie-in at the end. It gives the feeling that something important is going to happen in the 43rd Century as a result of the Craft/Zora meeting. What could it be? I think leaving a mystery is always a great way to end a story.
"That sounds important, but it winds up not mattering at all." You just summed up Kurtzman's and Paradise's writing philosophy. // The characters I'll miss in Disco include Lorca, Saru, Detmer (we came soooo close to getting a story with her PTSD) and the DOT-7s.
In retrospect the first two seasons of Discovery in the 23rd century was fine. I don't think the setting change did much to enhance the overall experience. And if anything made the fan service bits feel even more awkward. It has been a thousand years and we still need to talk about Kirk and Spock every other episode? Can you imagine a show set in modern-day Scotland throwing in random references to William Wallace on a weekly basis?
Honestly, I was happy that they jumped to the future because it meant it would limit screwing up established canon with abominations like their take in Section 31.
I liked this season alot more than you clearly, but thats fine. I think the review is generally good.
Anybody see Moll and Mikey slugging it out on the fire plane and think, "Yes, let us crib from the Sisko/Dukat final brawl" or is it just that fire fights are neato like Obi Wan and Anakin on Malastare (Ooh that sounds a bit Tamarian!)?
I'm so glad to hear your thoughts. Especially since UA-cam randomly decided not to put this video in my subscriptions feed. I'm glad I found it another way.
You described very well what the main issue with Discovery's writing is. Things just happen to move the plot forward, whatever it might be and in the end it doesn't matter anyway because more meaningless things an characters keep being presented just because.
Most of the series of ST did have a premise easy to get, for an example TOS was about exploring the wild wild outer space, Voyager going home while still doing what Starfleet does, etc. You get the point.
The problem I always had with Discovery was that the series didn't had a clear sense of purpose and it didn't got any better when the ship was tossed to the future just to keep doing more random stuff without a clear purpose other than "saving the universe when no one else can" wich doesn't justify at all. Just as if starfleet was a bunch of oblivious and incompetent people receiving the aid of the almighty Discovery's crew.
What a letdown of a series, and I don't say that slightly because I really wanted to have faith in the show, I swallowed all the goofyness and the bad writing just for nothing.
Excellent review, Steve. Having the benefit of hindsight and looking back now, it always felt to me like the writers were always somewhat more interested in coming up with big grand high-stakes high-concept story arcs rather than focusing on the individual character arcs within. It always felt more situational than personal, and consequently, a bit sterile as a result. It feels like they spend all this time developing the plot and the big mystery, and then with a few days to go before shooting, someone asks "hey how does this affect the characters?" and the writers' forehead creases with confusion as they respond; "what?"
Acutally taking a TNG episode plot that was never realized, to me, was the best thing about this whole show, that and the Soongian Android that was, of course, killed off immediately.
This might have been an okay sci fi series but they slapped the name 'star trek' on it and created a misnomer.
I guess I am such a super fan of TOS, TNG, DS9 that I hold it so close to my heart and feel this show and the first two seasons of Picard were extremely disappointing. But as I get older, I see the whole world changing everything is cheaper, all about money, faster, less depth.. it is the way of the world so in turn, the way of the ST franchise.
At the same time, I try to flow with the positive changes and hope for a better world.. so I am less critical about the new shows than I might be if I were a negative person.
They talked about finding "the next clue" so much i groaned every time because it was clumsily saying outloud that evern the writers didn't care. They thought of so little to fill the season that they had to just chase a bunch of mini macguffins before they could go to the main MacGuffin. They couldn't even come up with a more clever way to pad one hours worth of plot into 10 episodes.
And then at the very end they get the MacGuffin and the clues didn't hold any special meaning. And the progenitors Tech didn't even belong to the progenitor is it belong to I, don't know, God or something. So without a satisfying resolution to the main plot they just launched it into a black hole so that nobody can ever speak to it again. I spent the whole season running around to only end up exactly back where they were.
It's kind of made all the funnier when it seems like they thought that a sixth season was just a given.
Why don't people like "New Trek" ?
The combined resources of THE UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS couldn't locate, outsmart, or ultimately stop 2 low level smugglers.
This is star trek now
Am I the only one who thinks "The Chase" was one of the best TNG episodes?
I would have expanded it into a two-parter.
Thank you Steve. I only watched the first three episodes in season 1, so I really appreciate your summaries.
They could have had the final scene with Michael, Book, and son involved the rededication of Discovery as a restored 23rd century museum piece by Starfleet, giving a thematic tie to their past while focusing on the family, and NODDING to the state Craft will one day find Discovery in, without the nonsense that Starfleet sent Discovery out specifically for Craft to find.
Yes and how did they even know who Craft was/would turn up in 1000 years or why he was so important to rescue (assuming Daniels/Kovich knew... so tell us!)
Thanks for an honest review. Checked out half way through S3. Nice to know I didn't miss out on anything, doesn't sound like my thing.
I'm happy others can enjoy this show though.
Mirror is one of my favorite from a series production perspective as it follows in the trek tradition of using another series existing sets to save money
Steve Shives, ... head writer for upcoming Trek series. I think there's potential 👍. 😂. Thanks for sharing your thoughts as always my friend! 🖖😎🤘🇨🇦🕊️
A friend point out that saying “we can’t be trusted with this technology” is in opposition to Star Trek’s signature optimism - where the foundational ethos of Roddenberry was that yes, humans CAN be trusted to ultimately do the right thing.
Discovery characters have always been its highlights. Discovery plots always its downside.
The best thing about Discovery, ultimately, was giving us SNW as a spinoff.
You could greatly improve that Kovich = Daniels scene by making him a different time agent specializing in TNG era, then the easter eggs do mean something to him. If they wanted the Enterprise link they could have him reference Daniels as a fellow time agent
'The taxidermied carcass of Porthos' omg, thank you Steve, nice one, that made my day!
On a more serious note, a small peeve at the final episode. Giving Tilly plot armour before Academy has even started is a pretty bad move. Half the crew of SNW have it already, they didn't have to toss a freebie one at a brand new show with almost all new characters.
i thought it was probably the most even season of the show and i didnt mind the season arch. Season 1 i think took more risks and some of those were terrific and it had more to say, but I thought this season was largely pretty good.
Steve nailed everything that I felt and thought as I watched it. I would add is that there were some great character interactions... But then there were some that just felt out of place and forced and just felt jarring to the story pacing. Like confessing feelings on the enemy ship you snuck on. Like. Why there and why then?? Why not BEFORE sneaking into an enemy ship? Wouldn't that make more sense? Like Steve, I have no issues with discovery being emotionally... But sometimes when they get emotionally focused, it just is executed poorly or bizarrely. Like Michael confessing having fears and insecurities... Just seems out of nowhere. 5 seasons of writing and no suggestions or hints that she had them. Then. Boom huge emotional dump out of left field about her fears and insecurities about not being good enough. Like. Wut.
Funny thing for me is having not seen calypso
The ending utterly mystified me
Was anyone else left thinking for a solid minute that Michael Burnham died at the end when they decided to rip off "Titanic" for her reminiscing scene, apparently without understanding the implication of said scene?
I wonder how Discovery would be if it has been a cable TV show instead of a streaming series. It would be good to see the characters interact when not facing the destruction of the universe (or at least the Federation)
I'm pretty much in total agreement with this review with two small exceptions. First, I don't really have a problem - in concept - with the bridge crew being underdeveloped. We've gotten used to the idea of Star Trek shows being ensemble shows, but I think Discovery was structured more like TOS where everyone other than Kirk, Spock and McCoy were day players. (The TOS bridge crew actors were usually billed after that episode's guest stars.) It's only decades of fandom and extended universe material (and, to an extent, the TOS movies) that elevated Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, even Scott into major characters. Second, while my head agrees that the tie-in to "Calypso" felt bolted on (particularly after the preceding 17 Return of the King style endings), my heart loves "Calypso" soooo much (it stands second to only "A Quality of Mercy" as the best Trek of the Kurtzman era) that I really didn't care. Apparently the link to "Calypso" would have formed the spine of the sixth season, which I think would have excited me. On the other hand, given Discovery's consistent failure to execute what could have been interesting premises, I probably would have been disappointed. So the relatively short and sweet link back to Zora and the retcon that "Calypso" actually took place in the 40th (or so) century felt satisfying to me.