Mary: So here we are: the series finale of Star Trek: Diversity… errr… Star Trek: Discovery. I gotta say, it played out exactly the way I thought it would. Lots of big speeches and even bigger feelings. Slow, misty-eyed scenes with “sweeping” music and backgrounds. And so many false endings, it makes Return of the King look downright abrupt.
Victor: Oh, did you say something? I’m still on Hour 17 of the epilogue.
I know I said that the episode in the mind labyrinth was peak Discovery, but no. This was peak peak peak Discovery. After this, there can be no more Discovery.
Mary: Indeed. Disco out-Disco’d itself
Let’s start with the portal. We were treated to the most pointless fight ever between Moll and Michael, where of course Michael talks Moll into playing nice because “trust me.”
Victor: That was so stupid.
Mary: PEAK. DISCO. So, SO Disco.
Victor: Michael starts the fight and then says, “It doesn’t have to go this way! We can work together!” YOU STARTED THE FIGHT, MICHAEL! YOU SWEPT THE LEG!
Mary: Right??? I had to go back and rewatch when she started going on about how “let’s not fight.” Didn’t you start the fight, Michael?? Moll had already agreed to go with you!
Victor: And I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but it wasn’t “Progenitor workshop.” Which was kind of a cool idea, but, in true Disco fashion, didn’t really get explored.
Mary: Oh I was definitely expecting some kind of Progenitor workshop. Or speech. Or judgement council or something.
Victor: I was expecting a speech, for sure. And we got one!
Mary: When Moll started arranging the triangles, I kept wanting to yell, “THE PENITENT MAN WOULD KNEEL BEFORE GOD!” I mean, it was a LITERAL PUZZLE. Everything has been leading up to… a triangle??
Victor: Yeah, I figured that puzzle out in about two seconds. Ooh, the space between! What could that mean? It’s like something you’d do at Cracker Barrel, for goodness sake!
Mary: Except Disco didn’t have the guts to kill Moll. “Oops wrong passcode. You’ll be fine, though.”
Victor: Disco didn’t have the guts to kill anyone. Not Moll, not Book, not Culber, not Saru. Not even Rayner, who seemed to be added to the cast just so he could do a heroic sacrifice!
Mary: Okay, but I would have been so mad if they’d killed off Rayner. We already lost Shaw! Do not take another curmudgeon from us!!!
Victor: True. But what if his dying words were, “I now see, our diversity is our strength!”
Like, I’m the first guy to go off on the chuds complaining about how “Star Trek got all WOKE,” but jeez, dial it down a notch Discovery.
Mary: How anticlimactic was Moll’s resolution, though?
Victor: Such a nothingburger!
Mary: After all that fuss, she just rolls over and accepts L’ak’s death
Victor: “Well, we can make a genetic clone, but it won’t have his memory or experiences.”
“Oh well. Let’s go then!”
The Moll who just risked her life multiple times to take over the Breen to revive L’ak would have ABSOLUTELY taken a genetic clone.
Mary: Or been in denial about it. Or refused to accept the truth.
Victor: Or made Stamets beam the buffer L’ak into the new L’ak and try and merge them.
Mary: Michael just shakes her head, and Moll is like, “okay, fine”
Victor: And the whole Breen thing just fizzled out as well. Who will take the throne? Dunno, writers don’t care. Saru out-diplomacied Talal, and the other dreadnought got magically teleported across the galaxy, and thus ended the plot we were told repeatedly was the greatest threat to the Federation EVAH.
Mary: I mean, all season we were like, “The writers care more about the characters’ feelings than the plot,” and this episode confirmed it. They dropped the whole-ass plot to spend 20 minutes on feelings.
Saru and Rayner were pretty awesome, though!
Victor: Yes, the whole crew got their moments to shine, but Saru was great.
Mary: Hooray for Action Saru!
Victor: Action Saru’s Last Ride. “Look in my eyes. Do you detect a hint of falsehood?”
Mary: I also love how Rayner was like, “Can we jump something not Discovery?” And the engineers were like, “NO!! Well… hmmmmm…”
Victor: They really speed-ran Scotty’s engineering motto. “Tell them it will take twice as long so you look like a miracle worker when you finish in half the time.”
Mary: Hah! Indeed. I gotta say, I was disappointed by the action sequences. It was all very generic.
Victor: And how dumb was the resolution of Culber’s arc?
Mary: Oh. My. God.
Victor: “I have had a spiritual awakening. I need to be on this shuttle! And it’s so I can give you a tractor beam frequency modulation!” Come. On.
Mary: Not even being possessed by Progenitors or anything.
Victor: Like, what the hell?
Mary: All that smiling and mysterious hinting… to come up with a frequency.
Victor: How much time did they spend on that? You’d think at least he’d have had a moment with Stamets and Adira, but no. Just punch in a code
Mary: Do you think the writers just stopped caring? They’re getting canceled anyway, so why bother?
Victor: It certainly felt like we were being trolled by them, especially in the back half of the season.
Mary: Right?? So much build-up for NOTHING.
Victor: I heard that once they got canceled, they had to do rewrites to make the show end properly, and I can see that.
What did you think of the Progenitor meeting Michael?
Mary: Yawn. Generic platitudes about diversity. And Michael gets… pedestal’d. Like, “You figured out the clues, so you are worthy of EVERYTHING.”
Victor: And even Michael can’t buy that. So they take the Progenitor tech, the thing they have spent all year chasing, the thing Starfleet has ordered them to get…
AND THEY YEET IT INTO A BLACK HOLE!!!!
This was the point of the season, and you just go, “Nope! We are already super diverse, and people can’t be trusted with it.”
Mary: Yeah… meanwhile I wondered all season why the scientists of old didn’t just destroy it in the first place? And the answer seems to be, “So we could have a treasure hunt.”
Victor: This show… argh! So much potential, so much WTF-ery.
Mary: Right?? Well, at least it was pretty. The portal landscape was pretty cool looking, and so was Michael’s house.
Victor: Yeah, they used up the effects budget on purple trees and CGI deer things.
Mary: Who needs plot when you have feelings and CGI animals?
Victor: Oh, we should talk about the endless endings. The Neverending Dis-cooooo!
Mary: Goodness. So, we got the lovely wedding you predicted.
Victor: Yes, Saru looked very sharp.
Mary: And I thought that was the end, with Michael and Book walking into the sunset.
Victor: Yep, that was the natural end point.
Mary: Then I literally texted you to say, “MY GOD how are there still 20 min left in this episode?”
Victor: I texted you last night when I watched, “It has more endings than The Lord of the Rings.” And that was at the end of the wedding and before the 15 MINUTE flash forward.
Mary: They even outdid the glow-y happy laughing reunion! I half expected Michael to say “GAAAANDAAAALF!”
Last Crusade with the Return of the King ending = Disco this season.
Victor: Am I happy that Book and Michael are living together on red-leaf planet? Sure! Did we need a 15-minute tacked-on ending? No. Especially when the whole point was to tie it in to a web short made in 2018? Which I had no idea existed until I read about it online!
Mary: There was a web short?? Is that what leaving Disco on the edge of the galaxy was about?
Victor: Apparently, it came out between Season One and Season Two. It’s called Calypso, and it’s about an adrift space traveler that finds Discovery. Which I had zero clue existed until I read about it on io9 today!
Mary: Oh, and here I was thinking it would tie into Academy or something… WELLP.
Victor: Oh, no! That wouldn’t be Disco enough.
Mary: At least Enterprise fans get a last-minute Easter egg?
Victor: All six of you. I was clueless as to who Agent Daniels was until I looked him up. So great job, Disco.
Mary: Yeah, I had to look him up, too. Been a while since I watched Enterprise.
So overall… this season was PEAK DISCO, for better or worse
Victor: I think Kovich, aka Agent Daniels, put it very well. As he told Michael, I have never met anyone more capable or more frustrating than you.
Mary: Seems to apply to Disco.
Victor: Yes, David Cronenberg speaks for me. This show could be so good and soooo frustrating.
Mary: Agree.
Victor: So many cool ideas! So many cool characters! And so many just discarded and not fully realized.
Mary: Felt like the whole script was missing a good editor. It felt like a first draft…
Victor: I’d give the episode and the season 3/5 stars.
Mary: You’re more generous than me for once. I was gonna give this episode 2/5. 3/5 for the season.
Victor: Hey, I like a good wedding!
The series as a whole gets a 3.5/5. It gets credit for being the first new Trek show in over a decade. It walked so Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks could run.
Mary: Fair enough. At a certain point, it really should have found its footing but… alas.
Victor: But… alas is a pretty apt epitaph for the good ship Discovery.
Thank, everyone, for tuning in to our recaps! Chatting with Mary was generally more entertaining than the antics of the Discovery crew. See you next time!
Episode rating: 2.5 / 5 stars
Season rating: 3 / 5 stars
Series rating: 3.5 / 5 stars
