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Star Trek Discovery, Finale Review: And the point of that was…?
“The only reason to do a new ‘Trek’ television show is if you have something really new to say.” — Alex Kurtzman, September 2017
Star Trek Discovery is an odd bird.
It’s a show with a singular main character, but routinely jumps between various narrative points of view. It’s a show about a redemption arc, but goes off on multiple irrelevant tangents that distract the audience. It’s a show that raises interesting questions about identity and morality, only to hand-wave them away in cartoonish “good vs. evil” dodges. It’s a show about a massive war where Earth itself is under direct threat, but a war largely hidden away from the audience, existing only in exposition. In short, the show has no idea what it’s doing. We can chalk this up to behind the scenes turmoil or forgive it away by noting the [irrelevant] Star Trek “tradition” of weak first seasons. But the fact remains: Star Trek Discovery, as executed, is a giant mess of a show with no sense of itself.
The set-up to the finale was that Discovery was being sent to Qo’nos to map the surface for an impending full-scale Hail Mary attack. The Klingon fleet is heading toward Earth, and Starfleet desperately puts Emperor Georgiou in charge of the operation hoping to exploit her savagery. All of this is explicitly established for the…
