The very final episode of Discovery. Spoilers
I thought this was, in turn, a good episode, a reasonable wrap up to the season, and a fairly poor way to bring the series to a close.
First, as a good episode – the first 50 minutes or so. There’s a good combination of action, diplomacy, and some old school Trek philosophy. Burnham and Moll are great to watch in the progenitor singularity, with an all time great fight scene and a lot of other great material between them. The visual effects are incredible. And while the Discovery-based sequences aren’t as meaningful, they are some fun action. And Action Saru in Diplomat mode was a lot of fun.
Then, as a wrap up to the season. About 10 minutes or so here, mainly with Burnham and Book resolving their relationship, a wedding, and some more Dr Kovich cryptic sayings. It’s a bit perfunctory, but it wraps things up.
In my read this is pretty clearly where things were before the decision to bring the show to an end was made. And so we have about 20 minutes of flash forward after that to wrap up everyone’s journey. Oh, and to achieve a totally unneeded bit of closure to an episode of Short Treks. I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t really achieve anything interesting. We didn’t learn anything new about any characters, and there was no new and interesting revelations about anything. Really just a not great use of screen time more than anything else.
So that brings us to an end of Discovery. Next a Season (and Series) wrap up, and a break before whatever is next comes along.
Quick hits:
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Basically a double episode from the run length. Appropriate for a finale.
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Surprised the ‘previously on’ was only this season, would have thought a final episode deserves a bit more of a ‘series summary’.
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Shades of 2001 in the transition inside the singularity (not an official name, just what I’m going to call it.
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“I can’t explain what I’m looking at” – just great communication, very helpful.
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So far this is a pretty good ‘hyper advanced aliens’ setup.
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Yikes, the Super Mario jump there ended up looking pretty goofy…
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Even a lava planet? Will I see Anakin and Obi Wan in the background?
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They are not holding back on the Discovery bridge pyrotechnics…
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Culber going off with Book is so totally bonkers, it makes zero sense.
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Seriously, what is it that is causing the enormous jets of fire on the bridge?
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Hang on, the progenitors were a billion years ago? That makes no sense – Homo sapiens emerged about 300,000 years ago. Given that other species are generally at the same level of development, they can’t be that much older. So what happened for 999 million of those years after seeding these species? A billion years ago life on Earth was just going from single cell to multi cell organisms.
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I like that Moll is not totally dead to the wonder of this. She’s just got something else that’s more important.
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Black hole power source! Called it.
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So what’s up with Culber just seems to be Jinaal loading some clues into his head? Boring.
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Gotta love Saru’s bluffing game. Would not play poker with him.
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This Progenitor lock wouldn’t even be a mid game puzzle in most computer games.
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Nice glow up on the progenitor makeup effects.
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Oh, it’s billions not a billion now. Less and less sense.
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Progenitor Progenitors. Can’t be countless times unless we don’t believe in the Big Bang. Barely makes any sense for a single generation.
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The VFX in this episode continue to be incredible.
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‘Greatest scientific discovery of our life time’ – how would you actually count that? I mean, you were born a thousand years ago…
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IDIC. Woohoo!
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Have to admit I’m glad that there wasn’t a magical L’ak lives’ moment.
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For the record – 58 minutes in would have been a perfectly acceptable place to end the episode. So we’re into Lord of the Rings epilogs now.
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Dr Kovich is a quietly great character. He adds much needed mystery to things, and the show has done a great job of avoiding the temptation to explain. Guessing that the Section 31 show might ruin it – but liked the Visor and Baseball shot.
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OK, 3 seconds after typing that we find out it’s Agent Daniels. I can live with that – stilll a lot of questions to answer.
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‘Whooo’ing at a Vulcan wedding? How gauche!
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O-o and Detmer didn’t get an invite to the wedding? Rude!
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Book and Burnham kissing and still 18 minutes on the run time? Not clear to me what on Earth could be in this.
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Good restraint on the age makeup – convincing but not plastic.
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Nice call back to episode 1 with the star fleet logo on the ground.
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Oof, clumsy linking to that one episode of Short Treks.
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OK, I was going to get very upset if we didn’t see O-o and Detmer one last time. With seconds to spare…
928 down.