To the Beginning and the End

The current Star TrekOriginally conceived as "Wagon Train in Space", Star Trek was released during the height of the Hollywood Western film and TV boom. While the concept CBS originally asked for had a western vibe, it was the smart, intellectual stories set in a future utopia of science and exploration that proved vital to the series' long impact on popular culture. era can be divided into two kinds of shows. On the one side we have the classic-style, episodic televisions, as exemplified by Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. These shows don’t tend to dabble in serialized storytelling, with, at most, having little hints at something more going on behind the scenes without it becoming a distraction from the day-to-day world of the shows. And then, on the other side, we have shows that are dedicated to serialized storytelling. While they may have occasional one-off episodes (a time loop story here, a death race on a planet’s face there) all episodes are in service to the overarching story. These are shows like Picard and the just recently wrapped Discovery.

It is notable that the two shows of this modern era that fans love are the shows that don’t delve deeply into serialized storytelling, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. The other two, Picard and Discovery don’t have the same kind of following. They were mildly liked as best, hated at worst. It’s not specifically because the storylines were heavily serialized, although that was generally not how Star Trek was done over the course of its first 40 years. It’s more because the overall writing for these shows was just bad. Bad character development, but storyline structure, constant leaps of logic to get the characters where they need to be. It felt less like Star Trek and more like the writers were playing with action figures on the schoolyard, constructing elaborate hero fantasies on the fly.

At its best, Discovery could shake off the bounds of the serialized storytelling and get focused on the characters for a few episodes, letting us just enjoy the moment and appreciate what we had. This final season, Discovery’s fifth, gave us the show both at its best and its worst, creating an uneven, and uninvesting, viewing experience that failed to live up to the shows potential. But then, failing to live up to its potential has always been what Discovery did best. The show never really knew what it should do or where it should go, swinging wildly from season to season before, now, mercifully exiting before it’s allowed to do more damage.

This final season of the show finds Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) once again leading her crew aboard the U.S.S. Discovery on a mission to save the whole of the universe and prevent the destruction of the Federation. If that sounds familiar that’s because Burnham having to stop a great threat that could destroy all of the Federation has been the main storyline of every season of this show so far. The universe apparently cannot hope to exist without Burnham as she’s, somehow, the great heroic focal point for everything, ever.

Look, this is nothing against Sonequa Martin-Green. She’s a great actress and I think her performance as Burnham is quite good. She does everything she can to sell the shit out of this poorly written character. The issue is that Burnham, as written, is perfect. The series has no notes for her. She can do no wrong, and even when she does (such as causing a mutiny that sets off the series of events of the first season) she’s eventually proven right and rewarded for it. At no point does the show try to reflect inwards or give her a problem she’d ever struggle with, and that holds true for the final season. This is not a show about the crew of the Discovery; this is the Michael Burnham show, once again with some other players on the sidelines.

The case in question is a map that Michael and her crew discover that could lead to tech created by the Progenitors. This ancient race of beings is thought to have created all life in the universe, and if their tech fell into the wrong hands, it could unmake all life instead. Once Michael realizes this, it becomes her mission to follow the clues and collect the pieces that a former crew of scientists 800 years earlier put together. They wanted to test anyone that came looking for the tech to ensure that what the Progenitors created fell into the right hands.

Working against the crew of the Discovery are Moll (Eve Harlow) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis), two bounty hunters looking to get the tech and profit from it. The bounty hunters always seem to be one step ahead, getting to the clues before Michael and her crew, but with a little insight and a lot of luck, the crew of the Discovery might just solve this mystery first. And they’ll need to because Michael and her new first officer, Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie), have seen a vision of the future, one where the warlike species, the Breen, get the tech and destroy everything. It’s a fight for the future and only Michael can save us all.

This fifth season actually shows all of Discovery’s best and worst impulses perfectly. The initial three episodes of the season give us an absolute rush through the story, delivering a ton of bombast and exposition as all the pieces for the serial storyline are set up. The heroes, the villains, the plot, the expectations. It’s a formula, and Discovery has done this again and again, but repetition hasn’t made it good, just worn out. When you have a threat to the universe every season, the same set up for a mad dash, the same “we must do this at all costs!” emphasis, it gets to a point where it feels tired and old.

From there we settle into a long stretch of episodes where the crew (read: Michael and someone else) search on a different planet, looking for the next clue while also solving some other story in the process. Each of these stories is supposed to teach the crew (read: Michael) something important about the Progenitors and themselves so that, when the time comes that they find the tech they are ready to wield it. These are better episodes this season because the focus is more on the individual stories and not on the overarching tale. It feels more like Star Trek and less like the madcap adventures of a single heroine.

And then finally we get into the last stretch of episodes, where the main storyline comes together. The clues are assembled, the villains steal the clues (because of course they do), but thanks to Michael, everything is still solved and the Discovery is able to get where it needs to go right in time. Tech is found, the die is cast, and clearly Michael will save the day because she’s the big damn hero and nothing is ever in doubt when she’s around. Whatever twists and turns the show throws at the crew (read: Michael) won’t stop them (her) from saving the day once more.

The issue with Discovery, especially this final season, is that it perfectly showcases its very worst impulse: it has a flawless heroine at its center. Previous shows were ensembles, with everyone doing their part and all contributing to solving a problem. That’s never what happens here. Yes, there is an ensemble, and yes their characters nominally seem to solve problems, but it’s always Michael at the center of everything. If we put it in the context of other shows from the franchise, Michael isn’t just the captain in charge of a crew, she’s Kirk and Spock and McCoy (or Picard and Riker and Data, or Sisko and Kira and Dax, et al) all rolled into one. She can lead, but she can also think through every problem, emote with every other character, understand every situation, and right every wrong. She doesn’t need her crew to solve anything because she can always handle it herself if need be. Everyone else on the show is there just to support her.

This is made most clear by the fact that no one other than Michael has a real arc on the show. The doctor, Hugh (Wilson Cruz), suddenly finds a spiritual side to himself this season, and he questions what the meaning of everything is and why it matters. By the end of the season does he get his answers? No, because the show doesn’t actually care about him. Tilly (Mary Wiseman) returns for a span of episodes this season, with her arc nominally being deciding if she wants to continue teaching at the academy or not, but it’s a decision that has no weight when she’s given no real time to think about it in the series (and we know she’s already signed on for the upcoming Starfleet Academy show). And then… well, who else is on this series? A bunch of random side actors who don’t really have any personality and provide one function before whatever arc they could have had just doesn’t go anywhere.

Hell, even the new character added to the season is utterly pointless. Rayner is meant to be a gruff and rude counterpoint to Michael’s soft and caring captaining. He literally says as much, explaining to us something that could have just been shown. Tilly is there to try and craft him into a good commander for the crew, and this happens by her telling him, twice, to be nice. And then suddenly he is. He doesn’t have an evolution, he doesn’t have an arc. He just suddenly goes from grit in the machine of Discovery to someone the crew all loves. And then he just vanishes because the only character that really matters is Michael.

It’s telling that in the final scenes of the show no one is given any real closure other than Michael. The show focuses on her, gives her an arc, gives her the scenes that matter, without ever letting her earn them. And it does this at the expense of everyone else on the show. I don’t hate that the captain of the show is the lead and has key arcs all about her. Picard and Kirk, Sisko and Janeway all had arcs about themselves as well. They worked with their crews, they problem solved, they were essential members on their ships. But at no point did it ever feel like the shows they were on were disinterested in anyone other than the captains. They were shoes about crews; Discovery isn’t.

Deep down I think I would have loved Discovery if it could have cared, even for a second, about anyone that wasn’t named Michael Burnham. She could be a fantastic character if she ever showed that she needed everyone else around her to get her job down. But what this fifth season of the series illustrates is that, deep down, the series only ever needed one character. The series could have just been Michael, on her own, doing quests and solving problems, without any crew around her and it would have felt exactly the same. It could have been Star Trek: Burnham and we would have ended up in exactly the same place in the end: one headstrong leader doing everything herself and always getting proved right.

That doesn’t make for an exciting experience and it certainly doesn’t make for an engaging show. Captains need people to bounce off of, people to add different layers to the story, influence decisions, create complexities. Other characters add variety and help to spice up shows, giving new takes on ideas. Discovery only ever had one idea and it beat it into the ground, over and over, until the audience was bored. For all of its grand stories and universe ending threats, Discovery got less and less interesting as the series went on. This fifth season is the overlong fizzling out of the series that, at one point, could have been the franchise’s most interesting.

What happened to the show about a lower decks criminal forced to work for Starfleet and find her redemption one mission at a time? It gave up on that conceit early on so that its lead heroine could be perfect and do no wrong. One version of this show could have been truly amazing. That wasn’t the version of Discovery that we got.