Star Trek Discovery Season 5 (Spoilers)

[Crazedwraith]

I'm wondering if the Dreadnought is huge because it's low tech? Like full of massive powerful but space inefficient fusion generators instead of compact dilithium warp cores or something. That said it is proven powerful in the latest episode. (Otoh Disco had been battered by the badlands before the Dreadnought opened up on it)

I did like the latest episode as whole but Burnham consistently giving Breen clues is a bit grating. The test of the episode doesn't feel like anything we haven't seen before to be honest but reasonably well done.

Seeing Moll in the different context subverting the Primach's power from within was pretty cool though.

[NecronLord]

It's also a through-deck carrier, so presumably there's a lot of hanger space as well as the main flight deck.

[bilateralrope]

I'm wondering if the Dreadnought is huge because it's low tech? Like full of massive powerful but space inefficient fusion generators instead of compact dilithium warp cores or something. That said it is proven powerful in the latest episode. (Otoh Disco had been battered by the badlands before the Dreadnought opened up on it)

Lower tech would explain it. Everyone else spent the 800 years since the Dominion War improving their technology and packing more firepower into the same volume, while Breen tech developed slower and they had to build larger ships to keep up with everyone else.

[Alferd Packer]

Also let's not forget The Burn, which rendered most dilithium powered warp drives superfluous at best. Maybe lacking reliable dilithium sources, they resorted to less powerful, but simple to manufacture, fusion-powered warp ships.

[The Sisko]

I'd like to chime in that I kind of loathe this entire season. Moll and Lok are really not interesting characters. What is sad to me though, is that the writers have finally figured out how to write Burnham to be an interesting character, kind of strengthening people who said she should have started out in charge and we should have gotten to know her past over time, instead of how it was presented. The relationships are really juvenile, and I think they picked one of the least interesting TNG episodes to spin-off into an entire season of Star Trek. Why not a whole season about Wesley's Planet of Nanomachines? Or the sword of Kahless? Or literally anything else? No, the Progenitors. Fine, maybe we'll get some cool tech stuff - nope, just more badass insert characters that are desperately begging the viewer for a spin-off.

Why does every shot need to rotate around the room? Why are we still doing JJ Abrams lens flare in the darkest environments on a modern show? Why are all the ship designs so ridiculous and stupid? The show itself is so loaded with baggage that whenever a character mentions something the from the past the others are like "What the fuck" and the main characters look at the audience and go "Hey yeah remember how Stamets has Tardigrade DNA? And the ship runs on Mushrooms?! LOL!"

[Crazedwraith]

Huh. I've not really noticed spinning or Lens flair. Yeah, I agree Moll and L'ak really aren't interesting given the focus on them but otherwise it all seems fine to me. I don't think they are really priming anyone for a spin-off. That Burnham's character has changed is actual character development and formed by her history. It would have the same impact if we hadn't seen here in previous seasons.

--

The penultimate episode of the season and it... moved along fine. They are casting a lot of hints at killing Saru though and I really hope they are not following through on that in the very last episode. The characters were all fine, I felt like the ending was a foregone conclusion as soon as the portal came into play.

A lot of it really depends, as always on how well the finale episode manages the landing.

[The Sisko]

Huh. I've not really noticed spinning or Lens flair.

Man, it's absolutely incessant to me. Maybe this is just a modern TV thing and I'm an old man yelling at the sky.

Yeah, I agree Moll and L'ak really aren't interesting given the focus on them but otherwise it all seems fine to me.

It's pretty by-the-numbers, and that's why I loathe it: there's so little to talk about, good or bad. Their choices are never outrageous or crazy or daring or stupid like they have been. This is the safest a Star Trek show has played it since Enterprise went off the air. Given the current tail-spin of the franchise... yeesh.

I don't think they are really priming anyone for a spin-off.

These characters remind me of Raffi and space ninja man, who the writers wanted the audience to like so badly and we just didn't. If they're not angling for a spin-off then, I don't know, Poochie and Co should have died in the writer's room? Maybe the problem is, again, modern TV, that this show must be a formulaic weekly by-the-numbers CSI-style action adventure with cool effects and hot villains-of-the-season. Remember when they used to be explorers?

That Burnham's character has changed is actual character development and formed by her history.
It would have the same impact if we hadn't seen here in previous seasons.

This is interesting because while I agree it's a clear example of growth and the character finally arriving where she belonged, that's sort of my point. They made her the most unlikeable person in the universe and then spent 5 years redeeming her, when it would have been far more palatable to most people to watch a character they like grow from the person they were into the person they know. Both are a form of depicting character growth, except only one forces us to take the side of a mutineer who's estranged from Spock.


--

The penultimate episode of the season and it... moved along fine. They are casting a lot of hints at killing Saru though and I really hope they are not following through on that in the very last episode. The characters were all fine, I felt like the ending was a foregone conclusion as soon as the portal came into play.

A lot of it really depends, as always on how well the finale episode manages the landing.
[/quote]

[Crazedwraith]

-snip-

So having seen the finale. I must admit there was definitely some shaky cam and rotating shots that threw me out of the episode a bit. And also there was definite hints of Moll being set up for a spin-off or at least having another plot line in the Season 6 they didn't get. Since Kovich expresses an interest in here.

----
full thoughts for Disco Ep5s10 season and series finale.

Dammit Discovery! I'm afraid this is rather long on complaints.

I don't know if I consciously noted this in the previous reviews but the result we get here is pretty much inevitable both from the antecedents of Indiana Jones style moves and the needs of the franchise. The tech isn't use to transform society in ways we can't imagine because we need to be able to imagine the society for disco s6 or other 32nd century shows.

So they go through the whole season to get the power, and just immediately discard it. I mean you can go for it's a more about the journey than the destination.

Then there's the final action sequence, they use the spore drive to transport the breen dreadnought away by doing a saucer separation to put in the field of the spore drive effect. Except... the only part we see is the end of this happening from a distance. nothing about the actual saucer seperating or who's flying the other bit of it or anything.

So it was nearly 90 minutes long. a good chunk longer than a regular epiosde but a lot of it is disco's smaltzy season ending stuff. There's an obvious cut where the season was supposed to end and they tacked on a coda for the whole series. A much older Admiral Burnham seeing Discovery for one last time. The vessel is restore to it's original configuration and sent off to wait for... classified reasons we aren't told and really the only reason is not to break continuity with the Short Trek episode Calypso. Which is admirable but not given any thought of why it happens in-universe. Likewise Kovich being Daniels is pure fanservice and not ever very good fanservice at that. (also he's associated with Enterprise but introduces himself as of the USS Enterprise and the Nx-01 didn't have that prefix)

Minor complaint for all the fanservice we get no return of Detmer or Owo that I noticed.

For all these complaints, I don't dislike Discovery but I do get a sense of playing it safe and wasted potential. This season I've seen people of the opinion that the Breen were way more interesting than the main progenitor plot for example. There's amazing potential in the 32nd century but it's never quite tapped the depths of it.

Here's to Discovery. To me, underrated and fair from perfect. But still I got the sense it was always trying and I respect that.

[bilateralrope]

Remember that Michael was raised in the TOS Federation, which was very opposed to genetic engineering. All the 'progenitor' tech offered was a way to perform genetic engineering on a massive scale. I'm not surprised that she decided to throw it into one of the black holes.

But that episode had some stupid parts:
- The idea that the progenitor tech could revive the dead seems to have come from the scientists speculating, with none of them even thinking to ask the progenitor hologram if they were correct.
- Moll turning on the Breen that had been sent into the object ahead of her.
- The object wasn't created by the progenitors. They found it, with no clue who made it. A last minute mystery that the writers had no intention of solving is rather annoying.
- The dreadnought not doing anything to Discovery after it seperated to pull the spore drive trick.
- The whole scene with Kovich. First Michael declares that she knows he's using a fake name somehow. Then Kovich says he's really Daniels, a name Michael wouldn't have heard of, which is enough to satisfy her. Also I've got questions about how Daniels survived that long if time travel really is banned in the 32nd Federation.
- Then we get a glance of a visor like Geordi used and a baseball. Both in suspiciously pristine condition if they really belonged to Geordi/Sisko. Oh and both wouldn't have any meaning to Michael.

The vessel is restore to it's original configuration and sent off to wait for... classified reasons we aren't told and really the only reason is not to break continuity with the Short Trek episode Calypso. Which is admirable but not given any thought of why it happens in-universe.

Discovery has two things that make it stand out from other Starfleet vessels. Zora and the spore drive. Zora makes the ship good for waiting somewhere if needed and the spore drive becomes useless once Stamets moves off Discovery. So it makes sense why Discovery was picked to wait, though it is annoying that Stamets was clearly aboard it and not even mentioned for that code.


Oh and one final disappointment is that nobody even mentioned species that weren't created by the progenitors. Even with all the DS9 references and the knowledge that the progenitors only created humanoid life.

[Crazedwraith]

- The idea that the progenitor tech could revive the dead seems to have come from the scientists speculating, with none of them even thinking to ask the progenitor hologram if they were correct.

As far as I recall without rewatching back episodes the 'can ressurect the dead' thing was always Moll grasping at straws to get L'ak back? Not something the scientists in the know ever said was possible.

[Alferd Packer]

- The object wasn't created by the progenitors. They found it, with no clue who made it. A last minute mystery that the writers had no intention of solving is rather annoying.

It's funny, of the many, many problems I had with this finale, this part actually didn't bother me. I felt it was included to remove the perception of the Progenitors as the ultimate authority. Yes, they are unfathomably old. Yes, they mastered the power of creation. But they weren't the first. There were things they didn't, and perhaps, couldn't know.

Perhaps it was also meant to speak to a cyclical nature of life in the early galaxy: a single species arose, flourished, diminished, and died. The Progenitors decided to break that cycle by seeding life across multiple worlds. The object builders didn't--or maybe they couldn't. After all, the galaxy was a very different place 4+ billion years ago, maybe there weren't that many suitable worlds to seed life on until the Progenitors came to prominence.

In any case, Disco's finally done, and after having watched all of it, I can say with confidence that if we never return to the 32nd century, I'll be completely fine with that. I have no great urge to see what becomes of these characters...except for Jett Reno. She was great. This season, like the rest of the series, had a few good episodes, but more than anything, I'm just glad it's done.

[bilateralrope]

- The object wasn't created by the progenitors. They found it, with no clue who made it. A last minute mystery that the writers had no intention of solving is rather annoying.

It's funny, of the many, many problems I had with this finale, this part actually didn't bother me. I felt it was included to remove the perception of the Progenitors as the ultimate authority. Yes, they are unfathomably old. Yes, they mastered the power of creation. But they weren't the first. There were things they didn't, and perhaps, couldn't know.

Perhaps it was also meant to speak to a cyclical nature of life in the early galaxy: a single species arose, flourished, diminished, and died. The Progenitors decided to break that cycle by seeding life across multiple worlds. The object builders didn't--or maybe they couldn't. After all, the galaxy was a very different place 4+ billion years ago, maybe there weren't that many suitable worlds to seed life on until the Progenitors came to prominence.

I've got two problems with that idea.

The first is that the Progenitors only seeded humanoid life. Species like the Horta, the 10-C and the Founders were not created by them. Then there are all the godlike beings.

The second is that seeding the galaxy with humanoid life didn't need that object. It just required sufficient technology to uplift local species (something the Dominion did with the Vorta), time and the few other inhabitants of the galaxy staying out of the way.

So the writers made the whole season about a mcguffin that the Progenitors never needed, didn't build, while the writers refused to elaborate on where it came from. I tend to get annoyed about writers who introduce mysteries that they refuse to answer.

[NecronLord]

Ultimately while we didn't get cosmogenic answers, they did prevent the breen from obtaining a machine with seemingly gateways to every world and perhaps even a genesis-device capabilitiy, that's not nothing.