Can't believe you didn't give an up to that split second decision Rayner had where he could have understandably lashed out at the Breen and ordered them jumped into the black hole, but didn't he held back and stuck to his starfleet principles. Great moment for him.
I can't believe how deep people will dig to find ups for this show. "Didn't commit murder when he could have." Let's just start giving all the episodes infinite ups, given that they're always inside giant death machines.
@@TheHumbleWordsmith It's more than that (and I honestly believe murder is sometimes treated too casually, in all eras of Trek), but rather that Rayner's arc went from vengeance and racism to mercy and duty over the course of the season, with this being the payoff, is what makes it important. And my biggest complaint about Discovery as a whole is that it doesn't really do character development well if you're not Burnham, Tilly, or Stametz (even Saru and Culber don't get that, as prominent as they are). So for Rayner to get it was satisfying to me. To me he was done well.
Actually it was pretty cringe coming from a character that cries victim all of the time, even though his species nearly hunted another to extinction ☠️.
The revelation that the Progenitors did not develop the tech that Starfleet and the Breen were clashing over reminded me of the film "Contact" based on the Carl Sagan novel of the same name. At the end of the transit network, Ellie Arroway is conversing with an emmisary (for lack of a better word) and finds that his people didn't develop the network but that it was built by those who were "long gone."
Hot take: Moll and L'ok added very little to this season and could have been eliminated early on or entirely with just the Breen being the main antagonists.
Very reasonable take. If L'ok was resurrected, became the new Primarch , and then opened up a Breen alliance with Federation then the story arc would of had a payoff.
@@wood9670 I think Sean's probably right that they were planning on developing this arc a bit further in Season 6 and beyond. It was probably going towards that point but they got sidelined by the cancellation and had to wrap it up in the way we received instead.
Yes and no... Because giving your antagonist a face and a somewhat relateble motivation is important in itself. There was a part of me, that cheered for Moll to succed and revive L'ok, while I never would have cheered for that faceless alien empire to succed. That added to the tension. But yes, Moll suffered a severe case of "The enemy dumbs down, so she won't defeat us" in the end, which was a down.
L'ok should've been ressurected or brought back as a baby for her to raise or Moll gets pregnant with help of the tech... wtf did they end up doing with the tech anyway? did i fall asleep and miss something?
So, a star ship is transported thousands of light years against its will, together with an opposing smaller starship whose crew are compatible with that of the bigger star ship. They now have to travel thousands of light years home, though the unknown. Seems kinda VOYAGER: THE BREEN
But remember, it’s a location that the NCC-1701 could just doink off to in the first season of TOS, and one very close to a planet (Delta Vega) that must be only about 500,000 miles from Vulcan (since it looked about the size of Earth’s moon from the surface according to JJ, the man who thinks space is the size of a Costco parking lot, where you can see a distant solar system get blasted by lasers from the side in real-time.)
I think this is an instance where you need to let go of your dislike of the AR wall. Maybe it was noticeable, I guess, but it also very much fit what was being shown here. To me, this was an interesting visualization that we haven’t really seen before even in AR wall effects.I liked it.
I say the pink planet is actually Nibiru, the same planet we see in the opening sequence to Star Trek Into Darkness in the Kelvin timeline. And I absolutely LOVE the payoff for Kovich.
Yes! I wondered if perhaps I misheard and Saru was addressing Vance as "Admiral" then Vance jumped right to greeting "Madam President" and just didn't address Saru verbally. Glad I'm not crazy.
I'm not sure if Moll was poorly written or cast or what. The actress is decent enough, but its been a literal season long troupe of "I'm going to make bad decisions just to spite you all!" And this episode summed it up perfectly with the triangles. It was written as if the character was supposed to be a pre-teen/teen hellbent on saving their parent no matter the cost instead of an adult professional courier just in love.
Im thinking a little from column A and a little from column B. She seems like a pretty mid acting talent but what they wrote for her when you mentally parse it down to words on a page is just not good.
She apparently can't stand still either, always this swaying of her body... It's extremely annoying to watch. I really do not want to think the actor is bad, like, "highschool theatre first time on the stage can not stand still bad" but rather the writing is terrible, like everything else in this series, but I don't know. It find everything in this series to be a complete fkn joke, terrible writing and a story I now when it is over, can not even recall. LMAO The series is so bad I cant even remember what happened to the characters! I recall EXACTLY what happened to every single character in every single star trek series before, with this, I REALLY don't give a sh*t, I feel nothing for the characters.. Want to know a secret, I have not even watched the last episode, and after reading the comments, I am not even sure I will... Might actually be better to just make up an ending in my head instead...
@@ViroVV Yeah it really comes down to the writers somehow wanting to write a story line for a sympathetic character but at the same time making her an unlikeable character and apparently that does not work at all.
Moll and L'ok could have been completely absent from this season and very little would have changed. They should have just made the Breen the antagonists and developed them a bit more so they weren't Snidely Whiplash evil.
@@marcusjohansson668 You want to know a secret? Outside of Stammets in season 1 with the spore drive sections, you can skip over Stammets, Culber, Gray and Adira sections completely and honestly not miss anything important. I havent tried it with others yet but I think Booker would probably fall into this category too. Add that to the already forgotten bridge crew and you realize this was really just a SMG vanity project punching WAY above its weight.
We should do the retro ups and downs chronologically and watch an episode of a certain trek show each week together and then do ups and downs as if they aired that week. It's a great way to keep it going while we are in between shows, and there is a LOT of legacy trek to cover. Thank you so much for giving me a way to enjoy the episode twice. Love the ups and downs so much.
I would love this, but I wonder if they don't do it this way because it takes a lot of time and resources to make Ups and Downs and they aren't going to get the same kind of engagement (and thus monetary incentive) as when you do it for a recently aired episode that is getting lots of traffic that week.
@@QuintusAntonious This may be a concern, but I think it's safe to say, those of us who are truly invested in the ups and downs, would be willing to watch it with a toned down production like the one that was done on sisko day. Just an ups and downs live stream would be great and who knows, maybe it will be super popular and can keep this production value. All in all I think it's worth a shot, if it doesn't work out it can always stop :)
There is another angle of the "progenitor's tech" being sent beyond the event horizon and into the black hole... it emerges on the other side and it is back in time where it is found by the progenitors to discover and we go full circle. Great to see Cronenberg on this show and very nice he is revealed as Daniels!
This actually pissed me off. The baseball should have been passed down through the Sisko family. Daniels either stole it, or there were no Siskos to pass it down to and it was just abandoned.
Moll has not acted "rationally" since Lok decided to kill himself to let her escape (come to think of it, neither of them has been precisely rational this entire season).
Honestly... I dont see that she was ever truly acting rationally the whole season. She went to being a nuke of daddy issues to a warp core full of assorted red flags of every possible shape. From the word go she started off as pointlessly confrontational and stuck with that up until the last 20 minutes where she gives up barely batting an eye.
I don't understand the point of her story. I thought we were just pretending that resurrecting La'ck was a serious idea, and that she wasn't just an idiot.
Finally over.... The Ending didn't really made sense to me, i mean it's nice they thrown the Short in there, but....why? Why would the Discovery be reverted back? Why not stay in it's 32/33nd configuration?
I'm pretty sure they left her to be the next clue for the next lot of people to re discover the precursors tech, she knows where it is and how to get it out of the black hole and she has the intelligence to see if the next lot are worthy of it. And given her time to evolve she would develop the meaning of life
The shuttle in the closing scenes screamed Orville to me. Also: what ship did Burnam’s son take over? Enterprise?! Missed seeing the future Enterprise for three whole seasons.
That Mustafar joke. Oh man. Could you imagine those two falling thru a portal onto mustafar during the fight between anakin an obi. Right as he's about to jump at him they fall into their world, hitting the edge of anakin's platform he just falls right in. Just full on face tanks all that magma. Then jus an awkward silence as they all stare at one another till Obi says "Hello there!"
If you want to just go full on Discovery level corny might as well have Spock appear to say: “The force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. My (step)sister has it. Yes it’s YOU Michael” 🙄
Giving Moll a down for "not acting like an intelligent person' when she knock Burnham out and doing her own thing is not fair. Her and L'aks actions the entirety of the season was not based on intelligence but on emotion. Especially this close to possibly getting him back. And acting on love will always throw logic to the wayside.
I mean... she was literally given the right answer. And if they weren't acting like intelligent people all season, that's really calling the Disco crew morons, given how they kept getting outsmarted.
But even love has a sense of self preservation, which Mol completely lacked the entire season. Lak was no where near as bad, but Let the man who has not chased a red flag before throw the first stone.
The character must act reasonably to the reality that they see. And that is what you have to show us. Moll acts unreasonably given what she sees. She's driven by plot and not character. And it's all for contrived drama.. So she doesn't trust Burnham, And then she does and then she doesn't. And they fight and then they are together and then they fight again and then they are together again for no reason. Except plot.
@@achimwokeschtla7582 I think Moll and L'ak actually *are* over-emotional teenagers. Or at least early 20s. We don't know how old L'ak is, but he is certainly treated like a child-king-in-waiting by his crew, and the Primarch is treated like a regent. That tells me he's a teenager or near-teen with an underdeveloped brain just like Moll. The real question is how come they managed to be in the chase for the progenitor's tech for so long before they had to go get a sponsor to help them out. Yes they had early access to the diary of secrets and that gave them a little bit of a leg-up... but it wasn't much of one. In my opinion the writers should have given them a huge advantage, and had Discovery desperately trying to keep up with them without having enough information to be able to do so, but managing to make things work anyway because of their intelligence, moral fortitude (which mattered because of who set up the clues), and a bit of sheer dumb luck. Instead it felt like Discovery managed to figure out clues with all the technology and resources of Starfleet and the Federation behind them, and yet were barely managing to keep up with two particularly stupid teenagers with zero resources and no plan to speak of. That rubbed me the wrong way.
I wonder if the "flashback" at Disco's bridge, in which everybody was acting as if they were saying their goodbyes, were in fact some kind of impromptu farewell party for the cast.
@@Lordoftheapes79 To be clear, I was not suggesting that the scene replacedthe wrap party, but that it was an impromptu onw, a wrap party 2.0, so to speak
@@sergioaccioly5219I don't think you understand the word "impromptu". No, it was not a spur of the moment thing. This was filmed after they got the cancellation notice. Everyone was called back to film it.
@@Lordoftheapes79Notice that Cruz was added in later. They used a body double for Culber on the bridge and superimposed him later. He was filming a Netflix movie and missed being there for the epilogue.
Ever since the time bug episode, something has bothered me about this season, and even more now that its all resolved. In that episode, they saw a possible future where the Breen got their hands on the Progenitor tech. Now that we've seen all the hoops required to get the clues, I have to ask... Could Mol/Lok or the Breen have solved thr puzzles? Could they have survived the mind scape? Could they have tracked down the planet with the weather machines? Given infinite resources and time, possibly... But the episode gives a time frame of "a couple weeks." I was hoping the resolution would require more collaboration between species, much like it did in "The Chase."
An off shoot series with Mol as leader of the Breen would have been a good idea to explore. Would they remain a threat or become an friend to a newly reconstituted Star Fleet.
A moment of sentimentality is one thing, 20 or so minutes of plotless sentimentality is trying the viewers' patience. Brevity is the soul of much more than wit.
Maybe it’s a stretch, but did anyone else notice that the chess set in the office of Kovich/Daniels looked a little bit like the UPN logo from early Enterprise days?
Excellentbluff - his species is one of predators, ha! I’m surprised the breen fell for that one - never heard off kelpians?- but he acted the crap out of that scene.
@@BobSperber It wasn't a bluff. Remember the Ba'ul? The Kelpiens were the dominant species on their shared homeworld, Kaminar, and the Ba'ul were their prey who they nearly drove to extinction. The Ba'ul were technologically superior and defeated the Kelpiens, forcing them into a role reversal that lasted for centuries. Saru and the Kelpiens survived the vahar'ai phase in season 2 and evolved to reclaim their lost predator heritage.
The Pink planet, for me, was the opening scene of Into Darkness. The place where Kirk and McCoy run through the red forest. Burmans' retirement home looks like it too.
Didn’t it feel like that Breen soldier that was familiar/friendly with Moll after Lok died was going to go somewhere. It just felt like it was odd how he was with Moll and he was going to end up being someone to her.
I'm pretty sure he was killed last episode right as Moll jumped into the portal. But yes, I agree. They had an awful lot of significant glances and conversations. It was a Chekhov's Gun that misfired.
Considering Daniels involvement, there might be an existing Enterprise tied to a secret time fleet... Or Daniels still considers himself as part of Archer's crew.
Kovich's 21st century notepad makes sense now. He seems like an avid collector of antiques. I was so thrilled he said he was Daniels. Knew from day one of his appearance that there was waaay more to him than they ever led on. Also it makes so much sense. The infinity room, the same place he used to take Archer for chats just with a different wallpaper. The whole idea of Disco jumping into the future and having Daniels fingers a part of it, just yeah... it worked.
@@OhNoTheFace I think it's a matter of time, the burn will be fixed and the version of the universe with the burn will remain as the discovery timeline
Conversely, they may have removed the Spore drive technology from Discovery and did the same thing that they did to the Breen ships but to the now downgraded Discovery.
@@nelsonhunter-valls3206 weeeeeelll the ship very clearly jumped itself the saucer spooled up and everything, they also established that they weren't working on spore drive technology anymore at the beginning of this season and the breen ship could only be jumped because the 2 halves of Discovery where quantumly entangled and the breen ship was caught in the middle of the... Displacement??? Also the ship was designed around the drive so removing it would not be possible without deleting half the ship. Interesting idea creating a spore drive catapult but... Not what happened.
@@zomfragger and it could only jump a few light years that way before navigating became impossible. You are right it was indeed safer to use a pilot because without a pilot it might as well have been blind jumping they wouldn't have ever gotten where they needed to go. In fact I believe Discovery nearly jumped directly into a star because of this.
Did you notice Starfleet H'Q' had 3 HQ style stations? It reminded me of the Q Continuum 3 headed snake, that the Q actually is. Even the style of the structures with the organic spiral shape has the feel. Could this be a sneaky hint of who the Q actually is? Could they be from the future federation? After all, time is not a constraint. It would also fit with a civilization studying it's own origins. There's also Kovich (Daniels), who seems he could be far older than he appears in the show. Could he be an early member of the Q? Then their is the quote "Infinite diversity in infinite combinations." ;-)
When the Progenitor said, this was here when we got here, is a line that was used in 'Contact', when the Jodie Foster character spoke to an image of her father, played by David Morse once she was on the alien designed space craft. Here as well, it was determined that we were not yet ready to understand how to properly utilize the advanced technology for purposes other than war.
@@JSLEnterprises Daniels does everything to keep the federation existing. The federation likely builds the device and sends it to back to the progenitors. The black holes would have existed billions of years ago, so they would be a good anchor for the device that protects it for billions of years and powers it.
Whoa. Just got around to finally watching the series. Really surprised at the comments. This season and this episode were completely brilliant. Nothing is perfect but this is about as perfect of a season as they could have done. I, for one, am very sad to see this show cancelled. I am hoping that in the future, this portal is found again and the lobby is used as a springboard for further exploration. For me Discovery was a win (with a few caveats).
Stranding zora in the middle of space for a thousand years and defitting the discovery because someone watched the episode Calypso? That made me downright mad. I was content just believing Calypso was an alternate timeline.
For god's sake, with that Spore Drive, Discovery coulda still been VERY useful for the Federation for the next 1000 years. SERIOUSLY! As much as that ending was touching, Defitting her, and then stranding her in the middle of nowhere shoulda been seen as a crimial offense. At the VERY LEAST Let Zora be able to control her systems so she isn't stuck in one place damnit, because I sure as hell don't think she can in the state she was in at the end.
I am so furious that a sentient being - who's core motivation is caring for their crew - is just abandoned for no reason just for the sake of tying up a plot hole. And I am even MORE angry that there seems to be no outrage about this. Abandoned to the loneliness of deep space, left to exist in a void to slowly grow mad? They can't establish Zora as a sentient being with feelings and then end the series with an unfathomable act of clueless cruelty. I just don't get it.
In Starfleet's defense here, they know the future and that Craft will need Zora's help. We don't know what's happened in the last 900 years, only that Craft's mission was important enough to make Zora wait for him.
I felt it was fairly apparent that Burnham would conceal or destroy the technology, highly telegraphed. But the twist that the Progenitors found it? That should have led her to want to explore (while she was still there) any evidence of where it actually originated before concealing it. Seek out new life, etc. Especially being a xenoanthropologist, way to sidestep one of the intrinsic character traits that got us to this point.
I wish that were true. That would make a far more interesting story for the progenitor to send them back to the 23rd century where she's united with Spock.
“The progenitor technology is basically the genesis device and nobody should get hold of it” Except anybody who buys one from the ferengi, you mean? LD is canon.
It’s a little bit of a bummer when there’s a reference of something I didn’t even know existed, and if I hadn’t watched this video, I wouldn’t have known about it. I suppose I need to find the short treks, and maybe this will explain things, but I also didn’t really like leaving Zora all by herself on discovery. While Burnham doesn’t know exactly what happens to Zora, it’s still feels a little bit like taking a sentient being and sending them to solitary confinement. At the very least, there could’ve been some acknowledgment of that, and some preparation to make sure that Zora would be able to mentally survive.
I am sure part of it is being pretty sure you are stabling them for good. Burnham was . . . devisive, but also the show is so far in the future and other things that we likely would not come back here regardless. SO they can get a happier ending
@@OhNoTheFace I'm not sure I've made my point. I don't mind the show having happy endings for some characters. I just think it's pretty gruesome to relegate a sentient AI to a solitary future.
A series in the Calypso era (1000 years after Discovery) would be really interesting. Supposedly the Federation becomes the villain (as hinted at in Calypso) and acquires the Progenitor tech for nefarious reasons. That would be a great premise and more intriguing than Starfleet Academy
Love your Up to Jeff Russo. His Discovery theme brought tears to my eyes when the show was new, and I always play at least the opening fanfare every show. 👩🚀
Wow. Where to start. So many thoughts. Here are the ones that I'll highlight. 1. I lost a brother once. I was lucky to get him back. - STV 2. The progen tech also reminded me of All Our Yesterdays from TOS. 3. The towers on the planet in Whistlespeak reminded me of the meteor deflector in Paradise Syndrome from TOS.
Very "Return of The King" episode with the wedding, the several endings, and the "Michael is going to cast the technology into the fire isn't she". I unironically really really love that as a series finale haha
I'm a doctor not a physicist reminds me of the voyager doctor. He started a lot of sentences that way. And all the arguments over what to do with the progenitor tech was a microcosm of why it needed to go. Love your videos, I watch them and then log on to these videos.
Mol turned on the Breen so quickly because she doesn't actually care anything for the Breen, only L'ak. She is selfish driven and thinks only of herself and her own wants and desires. She is driven to a singular purpose. Her turning on anyone is to be expected, and so when she knocked out Michael and recklessly tried to activate the technology, this was not a surprise at all.
I really love the AR room, as you call it. Like I've literally never noticed it, and the shiny floors you keep mentioning as a dead give away seem so naturally Star Trek in every permutation of Star Trek that they actually add significantly to my enjoyment of whatever the situation is. And frankly I didn't even know episode 10 was in the AR room. I assumed it was green screen, but I much prefer the coloring that the AR room seems to give characters. It feels so much more natural than green screen does. So seriously, until we have actual holodecks IRL, considering your ability to, well, down Kwejian out of existence (ok, that was a joke, but...), I'm starting to worry that your continued mention of it is going to make them use it less, and frankly a lot of the scenes that are apparently in the AR room are actually some of the most immersive and memorable scenes for me. Plus, pointing out in Episode 1 that the desert scene was also done in the AR room didn't even make sense to me because I couldn't figure out how they could possibly have inserted the characters into the environment like that, and no shiny floors. Also, I binge watch this channel. You guys are amazing. Keep it up.
I believe that when we leave a place a part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in these halls, when it is quiet and just listen. After a while you will hear the echoes of all of our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying. -G'kar B5 Andreas Katsulas
I have to say, that ending uniform is an absolutely beautiful uniform in my opinion, really loved it. Though one thing I'm sad about, is how we didn't really get to see the difference of the pathway drive, I was hoping to get it's own new jump design as it makes it way to the been, I think there was some difference but I am not really sure, it just didn't seem like much of a change
This means Calypso takes place in the 42nd century, as zorra/ discovery had been waiting in space for 1000 years so that's a millenia from the end of disco in the 32nd century
I was ok with Michael being offered the progenitor tech. It certainly did feel like she earned it during the season. Also, the resolution here reminded me a lot of the beautiful ending to the old TNG adventure game "A Final Unity" if you make the correct choice and let the Unity Device go instead of abusing its power. You then get Picard's final log entry: "I can't help but wonder, if the the Federation will some day be able to create another Unity Device, will we also have the wisdom to use it well?"
I don't think I appreciated that with all the obsession around reanimating the dead, it was never mentioned that the most famous time this was accomplished (The Search for Spock) was using a Genesis device, the continued existence of which we've been teased with in Lower Decks and Picard, and which certainly should have been at least recorded, if not a unit in storage, at Starfleet HQ.
Even in that case, they would have lost the MIND of Spock if Spock hadn't tucked it into McCoy's brain first. So no, the Genesis device would not have brought back Lak, only his body, just as the progenitor device would have.
Trek Culture is by far the best of all the Star Trek analysis channels on TH-cam with the absolute best presenters. The lively and insightful commentary and “ups and downs” bring a depth to each and every episode. Kudos to all.
Here is one that you missed: Tahal, the name of the Breen, is also the name of the star whom the Stone Age inhabitants worship in the Voyager episode, "Blink of an Eye".
Missed an up for the McCoy callout. "I'm a doctor not a physicist" (yes you mentioned it in the observations but it deserved an up) and I am sorry but everything after the beach is a down. Absolutely to long and drawn out. Could have done all the reunion at either the wedding or have them all when departing space dock. Just far too slowly paced.
I thought the pink planet was a nod to the one in "Star Trek: Into Darkness" but maybe I'm forgetting details. 28:20 I kept waiting to hear a second heartbeat in the sickbay scene personally.
Pink Planet....looks quite similar to that 'forest' in 12 Monkeys (TV series) - and many actors where 'harvested' by recent Star Trek episodes from it.
For the series as whole, the biggest positive for me were the characters. The biggest negative were ironically also the characters, or rather how they've gone mostly unchallenged. It often played out like "Hey, you did this minor thing and it's great and you're great and everything's wonderful." Forced wholesomeness might be a way to describe it, which occasionally really ripped into the believability of whatever played out. I get that the crew isn't a bunch of hard-asses. But normal human beings don't need, nor want, nor give constant affirmation. We have a limited supply of empathy, all of us. Conflict characters could have had, or should have had just never played out or is resolved in unnatural ways. Reyner could've been a counter to much of this forced wholesomeness, instead he just accepted everything instantly once challenged. An abridged version of dialogues involving Renyer: "Argh, I don't like this." "Well, you have to like it." "Damnit, alright." I liked the potential the characters had, I just didn't like that it was left on the table and never used.
Yeah. Tilly comes up with the idea of igniting gas to destroy the enemy ships that has been done loafs of times and is obvious. But she's a genius. Raynor suggests using the spore drive to transport the Breen ship away and that's nothing.
I kinda agree. It gets pretty Millennial at times. Im talking occupy wallstreet "I hear your voice and it has meaning but I have the talking stick now Deborahhh and you will hear my truth" Reyner was the whipping boy of the season, which makes it all the more aggravating cause he just rolls over and takes it after being "Grumpy" for a half second.
Forced wholesomeness sums the entire series up, really. I'm surprised they never renamed the ship the USS Inclusion. Only half the cast was ever utilised. Detmer, Owosekun and Bryce (aside from the time travel episode) were only brought back for the additional scene filmed at the end, with no dialogue, just sickly smiles and hugging all round in what appeared to be a Lost finale-style dream sequence. As is the case with Discovery as a series, it's all about Burnham and whichever main cast member she needs to hog screentime with. Other Trek series have been guilty of not allowing main characters to develop, but can anyone remember the name Lt. Owosekun without having to Google the character's name? Can anyone remember a single episode that focused on Lt. Bryce? Characters that were essentially sacrificed to pander to Book, Adira and the trans Trill whose name I can't remember. Am I the only one who cringed with the lazy reveal that Kovich was Agent Daniels, which actually makes as little sense as the lazy easter eggs in the glass cases behind his desk? Am I the only one who tried to get invested in this season-long quest for the Progenitor's technology only for it to be flung into a black hole once they finally got it? Don't get me wrong, I know this season was never intended to be the final season, but I've tried my best to give Discovery a chance and it left me as dissatisfied as the very first episode. My only consolation is the wonderful gift that is Strange New Worlds, the series that Discovery should have been but never was. I'm certain that the new Academy series will bring back the Discovery characters for more smiles, hugs and inspirational monologues.
I do wonder if Culber should have been the one to safeguard the Progenitor tech like that was his purpose he was looking for or the one to bring Lak back or understand it. Dunno. Satisfactory finale though.
18:54 Seán, Dr. Culber decided that his faith that knowing all the answers wasn't necessary. That faith was enough. I thought it was beautiful and perfect for the character of Hugh. Not to mention, Wilson Cruz is just spectacular in the role.
The main room seems like the trek to the Wizard of OZ's castle! 😉 The twist of the Progenetor's tech NOT being theirs! That leaves that for a future trek series or show to continue that plot thread! 😁 I think this will have some connections to the Star Trek: Academy when it comes out!
Giving the fact they went into the season not expecting this to be their last season, it wrapped up better than some other shows have in the past. I like how they had Carter and Agent Daniels.
Thats not the world root on the table, thats just the box. Book had said he planted it on a previous episode, and as the shuttle flies over the river we see a very impressive tree with the roots draped over a cliff side. The camera hangs on it for a few seconds, thats because it is the world tree all grown up.
This episode did not work for me. Nor did the whole season, really. As soon as they mentioned the progenitors, I was excited. So much potential. What we got was a paint by numbers fetch quest. And an ending so predictable that i nearly fell asleep. Followed by an entirely unnecessary epilogue that leaves open pointless new questions, mixed with way, way too much mellow drama. And They Lived Happily Ever After. The whole "someone built it before" line tossed in made me go "oh, it's Mass Effect." It totally did not work for me. The progenitor lobby was right out of central casting for Ancient Alien Super Machine. The absurd puzzle control was B-movie worthy. Culber's arc ending wasn't actually an ending. Even for just this part of the arc. Like, you thought of a number. How nice. Since when does a Crossfield class have a separable saucer? Where did that come from? ... And Daniel's? Really? Where did that come from? How? What about the temporal accords? That was nonsense, sorry. It was just one trope after another, right out of every fantasy show. Barely even sci-fi. It didn't work for me. I haven't liked the ending of any Discovery season except 4, really. Though remind me to never play poker against Saru. Doug Jones kicked ass in that scene.
How do you know a Crossfield couldn’t do a saucer separation, especially after the 32nd century refit? The Daniels reveal wasn’t part of the finale reshoots. He likely would have played a greater role in season 6. Showrunner Michelle Paradise has said that it would have been about the events leading up to Calypso and Zora’s mission to save Craft, likely not a random nobody as everyone thought he was. Imagine what Daniels reaction would be if he found evidence that the V’Draysh were ultimately behind the Suliban and the Xindi attacks during Archer’s era. Wouldn’t he want payback? Like having a ship positioned for a thousand years at the exact coordinates to intercept Craft’s malfunctioning escape pod. That’s not a violation of the Temporal Accords because no time travel was involved. Saving his life and turning a nobody into the somebody he or his descendants would have become had he lived. Maybe an Alcor IV victory over the V’Draysh causes that alliance to collapse and results in the restoration of its predecessor the Federation.
Can't believe you didn't give an up to that split second decision Rayner had where he could have understandably lashed out at the Breen and ordered them jumped into the black hole, but didn't he held back and stuck to his starfleet principles. Great moment for him.
For real. "That's more than they gave my family" seals it.
He might have acted differently had that been Primarch Tahal’s dreadnought.
I can't believe how deep people will dig to find ups for this show. "Didn't commit murder when he could have." Let's just start giving all the episodes infinite ups, given that they're always inside giant death machines.
@@TheHumbleWordsmith It's more than that (and I honestly believe murder is sometimes treated too casually, in all eras of Trek), but rather that Rayner's arc went from vengeance and racism to mercy and duty over the course of the season, with this being the payoff, is what makes it important.
And my biggest complaint about Discovery as a whole is that it doesn't really do character development well if you're not Burnham, Tilly, or Stametz (even Saru and Culber don't get that, as prominent as they are). So for Rayner to get it was satisfying to me. To me he was done well.
Angry Saru was both incredibly terrifying and incredibly amazing!
Yes, so true! Doug Jones gave a stellar performance.
And all that acting through his prosthetics. Top actor and makeup team.
Don't you mean action Saru 😅
Actually it was pretty cringe coming from a character that cries victim all of the time, even though his species nearly hunted another to extinction ☠️.
@@scottishadonis shush yer gums
The flamethrowers come from the same department that provided the rocks whenever a panel explodes.
The fire extinguishers wont be installed till tuesday.
@@ViroVV good one. Harkens back to Star Trek: Generations.
The revelation that the Progenitors did not develop the tech that Starfleet and the Breen were clashing over reminded me of the film "Contact" based on the Carl Sagan novel of the same name. At the end of the transit network, Ellie Arroway is conversing with an emmisary (for lack of a better word) and finds that his people didn't develop the network but that it was built by those who were "long gone."
"Agent Daniels, of the USS Enterprise"
My jaw hit the floor! Never saw it coming....
Hot take: Moll and L'ok added very little to this season and could have been eliminated early on or entirely with just the Breen being the main antagonists.
Very reasonable take. If L'ok was resurrected, became the new Primarch , and then opened up a Breen alliance with Federation then the story arc would of had a payoff.
@@wood9670 I think Sean's probably right that they were planning on developing this arc a bit further in Season 6 and beyond. It was probably going towards that point but they got sidelined by the cancellation and had to wrap it up in the way we received instead.
Yes and no... Because giving your antagonist a face and a somewhat relateble motivation is important in itself.
There was a part of me, that cheered for Moll to succed and revive L'ok, while I never would have cheered for that faceless alien empire to succed. That added to the tension.
But yes, Moll suffered a severe case of "The enemy dumbs down, so she won't defeat us" in the end, which was a down.
L'ok should've been ressurected or brought back as a baby for her to raise or Moll gets pregnant with help of the tech... wtf did they end up doing with the tech anyway? did i fall asleep and miss something?
Yeeeeeaaaaa, kinda agree.
Idk if they changed the design of the shuttle in the end, but it stuck out to me as being a little Orville-esque . Maybe it’s just me
No it wasn't just you as I had the exact same thought
Well, there was a few Stargate's Ori vessels in the lineup of Disco's last voyage out of drydock
I thought the same thing. it was the "strap" over the back.
No i thought the exact same thing! It’s probably a reference to it.
100%, i couldn't help but say it out loud at the time
One thing you missed: Leto was named for Book's nephew, who died when Kwejian was destroyed
good catch
So, a star ship is transported thousands of light years against its will, together with an opposing smaller starship whose crew are compatible with that of the bigger star ship. They now have to travel thousands of light years home, though the unknown.
Seems kinda VOYAGER: THE BREEN
Ah pretending war criminals are people
But remember, it’s a location that the NCC-1701 could just doink off to in the first season of TOS, and one very close to a planet (Delta Vega) that must be only about 500,000 miles from Vulcan (since it looked about the size of Earth’s moon from the surface according to JJ, the man who thinks space is the size of a Costco parking lot, where you can see a distant solar system get blasted by lasers from the side in real-time.)
Vance called Saru "Admiral" at his wedding, so action Saru earned a promotion
He convinced an entire Breen fleet to turn around without firing a shot. He deserved that promotion.
I thought it was a mistake
I think this is an instance where you need to let go of your dislike of the AR wall. Maybe it was noticeable, I guess, but it also very much fit what was being shown here. To me, this was an interesting visualization that we haven’t really seen before even in AR wall effects.I liked it.
I say the pink planet is actually Nibiru, the same planet we see in the opening sequence to Star Trek Into Darkness in the Kelvin timeline. And I absolutely LOVE the payoff for Kovich.
I thought that too.
That’s what popped into me head when I saw that
Same here
I agree! I feel like the music cue at that point even pulls from the Into Darkness theme.
I immediately thought the same thing!
We never got that drink with Reno pay off
Reno and Rayner will have to show up in at least one episode as guest instructors at Starfleet Academy.
At least we have her Community Mixology Certification
I totally missed that reference.
I'm still hoping that we learn Reno is the new Commadore of the Starfleet Museum.
I think a lot of stuff like that can be explained with "Well, if we got a Season 6 or more...."
Anyone else notice that the federation shuttles look a lot like the Orville's shuttles look
Yes. Now they need the orville writers for better story lines.
haha yep glad I wasn't the only one who thought that
I miss Nilsson. Also, did anyone notice Admiral Vance addressing Saru as Admiral instead of Ambassador in the wedding scene?
Yes! I wondered if perhaps I misheard and Saru was addressing Vance as "Admiral" then Vance jumped right to greeting "Madam President" and just didn't address Saru verbally. Glad I'm not crazy.
@@QuintusAntonious I replayed it more times than sane to confirm. It just looks like bad ADR added in post production.
I'm not sure if Moll was poorly written or cast or what. The actress is decent enough, but its been a literal season long troupe of "I'm going to make bad decisions just to spite you all!" And this episode summed it up perfectly with the triangles. It was written as if the character was supposed to be a pre-teen/teen hellbent on saving their parent no matter the cost instead of an adult professional courier just in love.
Im thinking a little from column A and a little from column B. She seems like a pretty mid acting talent but what they wrote for her when you mentally parse it down to words on a page is just not good.
She apparently can't stand still either, always this swaying of her body... It's extremely annoying to watch.
I really do not want to think the actor is bad, like, "highschool theatre first time on the stage can not stand still bad" but rather the writing is terrible, like everything else in this series, but I don't know.
It find everything in this series to be a complete fkn joke, terrible writing and a story I now when it is over, can not even recall. LMAO
The series is so bad I cant even remember what happened to the characters! I recall EXACTLY what happened to every single character in every single star trek series before, with this, I REALLY don't give a sh*t, I feel nothing for the characters..
Want to know a secret, I have not even watched the last episode, and after reading the comments, I am not even sure I will... Might actually be better to just make up an ending in my head instead...
@@ViroVV Yeah it really comes down to the writers somehow wanting to write a story line for a sympathetic character but at the same time making her an unlikeable character and apparently that does not work at all.
Moll and L'ok could have been completely absent from this season and very little would have changed. They should have just made the Breen the antagonists and developed them a bit more so they weren't Snidely Whiplash evil.
@@marcusjohansson668 You want to know a secret? Outside of Stammets in season 1 with the spore drive sections, you can skip over Stammets, Culber, Gray and Adira sections completely and honestly not miss anything important. I havent tried it with others yet but I think Booker would probably fall into this category too.
Add that to the already forgotten bridge crew and you realize this was really just a SMG vanity project punching WAY above its weight.
We should do the retro ups and downs chronologically and watch an episode of a certain trek show each week together and then do ups and downs as if they aired that week. It's a great way to keep it going while we are in between shows, and there is a LOT of legacy trek to cover.
Thank you so much for giving me a way to enjoy the episode twice. Love the ups and downs so much.
I would love this, but I wonder if they don't do it this way because it takes a lot of time and resources to make Ups and Downs and they aren't going to get the same kind of engagement (and thus monetary incentive) as when you do it for a recently aired episode that is getting lots of traffic that week.
@@QuintusAntonious This may be a concern, but I think it's safe to say, those of us who are truly invested in the ups and downs, would be willing to watch it with a toned down production like the one that was done on sisko day. Just an ups and downs live stream would be great and who knows, maybe it will be super popular and can keep this production value.
All in all I think it's worth a shot, if it doesn't work out it can always stop :)
There is another angle of the "progenitor's tech" being sent beyond the event horizon and into the black hole... it emerges on the other side and it is back in time where it is found by the progenitors to discover and we go full circle. Great to see Cronenberg on this show and very nice he is revealed as Daniels!
The Agent Daniels really got me.
I was expecting him to be a Lanthanite.
I was holding out it was Sisko. They lingered on the baseball too long.
i nearly jumped outta my chair at that reveal
That was really cool! That answers so many questions! A bit of a mystery regarding Discovery.
This actually pissed me off. The baseball should have been passed down through the Sisko family. Daniels either stole it, or there were no Siskos to pass it down to and it was just abandoned.
I have much appreciated your content over these past years. Paramount/CBS should be a sponsor of the channel.
Michael’s vulcan meditation was also her hand set up in a triangle was also a reflection of the solution of the negative space solution
The Saru negotiation was the best part of the episode! Rayner and company on the bridge was nice too
Moll has not acted "rationally" since Lok decided to kill himself to let her escape (come to think of it, neither of them has been precisely rational this entire season).
Honestly... I dont see that she was ever truly acting rationally the whole season. She went to being a nuke of daddy issues to a warp core full of assorted red flags of every possible shape. From the word go she started off as pointlessly confrontational and stuck with that up until the last 20 minutes where she gives up barely batting an eye.
Thank you!
Moll has done nothing but make bad choices since her introduction. If anything, this is in character.
I don't understand the point of her story. I thought we were just pretending that resurrecting La'ck was a serious idea, and that she wasn't just an idiot.
Finally over....
The Ending didn't really made sense to me, i mean it's nice they thrown the Short in there, but....why? Why would the Discovery be reverted back? Why not stay in it's 32/33nd configuration?
I feel almost sad for Zora. Because we know just how long she/the ship will have to wait. I guess Daniels really wanted to correct the timeline.
Yeah, I felt sad for Zora. But I guess this wait is better then ,if she would have had, if the they failed their mission.
I'm pretty sure they left her to be the next clue for the next lot of people to re discover the precursors tech, she knows where it is and how to get it out of the black hole and she has the intelligence to see if the next lot are worthy of it. And given her time to evolve she would develop the meaning of life
Now the only problem I have is why would 1000 years after this there still be humans that call the federation “V‘draysh”
And why did they put Discovery (the ship) back to its 23rd century self tech wise?
@@scottishadonis Red Directive, you're not supposed to know ;)
The shuttle in the closing scenes screamed Orville to me.
Also: what ship did Burnam’s son take over? Enterprise?! Missed seeing the future Enterprise for three whole seasons.
Thank God I am not the only one.
we didnt seethe bridge of any other Federation ship in the 32nd century. LOL
The sets were mostly all struck except the Discovery bridge when they filmed the epilogue. It would have cost too much for that.
That Mustafar joke. Oh man. Could you imagine those two falling thru a portal onto mustafar during the fight between anakin an obi. Right as he's about to jump at him they fall into their world, hitting the edge of anakin's platform he just falls right in. Just full on face tanks all that magma. Then jus an awkward silence as they all stare at one another till Obi says "Hello there!"
I think the force would have alerted them…
If you want to just go full on Discovery level corny might as well have Spock appear to say: “The force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. My (step)sister has it. Yes it’s YOU Michael” 🙄
I was waiting for Burnham to shout "It's Over Moll - I have the high ground!"
Giving Moll a down for "not acting like an intelligent person' when she knock Burnham out and doing her own thing is not fair. Her and L'aks actions the entirety of the season was not based on intelligence but on emotion. Especially this close to possibly getting him back. And acting on love will always throw logic to the wayside.
I mean... she was literally given the right answer. And if they weren't acting like intelligent people all season, that's really calling the Disco crew morons, given how they kept getting outsmarted.
But even love has a sense of self preservation, which Mol completely lacked the entire season. Lak was no where near as bad, but Let the man who has not chased a red flag before throw the first stone.
They all act like overemotional teenagers
The character must act reasonably to the reality that they see. And that is what you have to show us. Moll acts unreasonably given what she sees. She's driven by plot and not character. And it's all for contrived drama..
So she doesn't trust Burnham, And then she does and then she doesn't. And they fight and then they are together and then they fight again and then they are together again for no reason. Except plot.
@@achimwokeschtla7582 I think Moll and L'ak actually *are* over-emotional teenagers. Or at least early 20s. We don't know how old L'ak is, but he is certainly treated like a child-king-in-waiting by his crew, and the Primarch is treated like a regent. That tells me he's a teenager or near-teen with an underdeveloped brain just like Moll.
The real question is how come they managed to be in the chase for the progenitor's tech for so long before they had to go get a sponsor to help them out. Yes they had early access to the diary of secrets and that gave them a little bit of a leg-up... but it wasn't much of one.
In my opinion the writers should have given them a huge advantage, and had Discovery desperately trying to keep up with them without having enough information to be able to do so, but managing to make things work anyway because of their intelligence, moral fortitude (which mattered because of who set up the clues), and a bit of sheer dumb luck. Instead it felt like Discovery managed to figure out clues with all the technology and resources of Starfleet and the Federation behind them, and yet were barely managing to keep up with two particularly stupid teenagers with zero resources and no plan to speak of. That rubbed me the wrong way.
I wonder if the "flashback" at Disco's bridge, in which everybody was acting as if they were saying their goodbyes, were in fact some kind of impromptu farewell party for the cast.
My thought as well.
No. Wilson Cruz was there. He missed the actual wrap party due to a scheduling conflict.
@@Lordoftheapes79 To be clear, I was not suggesting that the scene replacedthe wrap party, but that it was an impromptu onw, a wrap party 2.0, so to speak
@@sergioaccioly5219I don't think you understand the word "impromptu". No, it was not a spur of the moment thing. This was filmed after they got the cancellation notice. Everyone was called back to film it.
@@Lordoftheapes79Notice that Cruz was added in later. They used a body double for Culber on the bridge and superimposed him later. He was filming a Netflix movie and missed being there for the epilogue.
Ever since the time bug episode, something has bothered me about this season, and even more now that its all resolved. In that episode, they saw a possible future where the Breen got their hands on the Progenitor tech. Now that we've seen all the hoops required to get the clues, I have to ask... Could Mol/Lok or the Breen have solved thr puzzles? Could they have survived the mind scape? Could they have tracked down the planet with the weather machines?
Given infinite resources and time, possibly... But the episode gives a time frame of "a couple weeks."
I was hoping the resolution would require more collaboration between species, much like it did in "The Chase."
And thanks, Seán, for taking us with you throughout the DISCOVERY Seasons. Thumbs up!
An off shoot series with Mol as leader of the Breen would have been a good idea to explore. Would they remain a threat or become an friend to a newly reconstituted Star Fleet.
Galorndon Core. THANK YOU! That was the exact first thing that I thought of. I feel... validated.
I've seen great series finales and I've seen awful series finales. But this was by far the blandest.
Of all the finales to ever end a series, this was one of them
A moment of sentimentality is one thing, 20 or so minutes of plotless sentimentality is trying the viewers' patience. Brevity is the soul of much more than wit.
Maybe it’s a stretch, but did anyone else notice that the chess set in the office of Kovich/Daniels looked a little bit like the UPN logo from early Enterprise days?
I'm convinced that the progenitors tech was built by the time lords
....and their agent, Daniels has fulfilled his mission to prevent the Breen from having the tech.
Time Lords are beings from upper dimensions. Ruby and The Doctor will go to Star Trek Universe some day. 😀
@metfar The Doctor and Amy already di in the IDW crossover between Doctor Who and TNG, Assimilation²
Saru was awesome.
Excellentbluff - his species is one of predators, ha! I’m surprised the breen fell for that one - never heard off kelpians?- but he acted the crap out of that scene.
He remains the dilithium MVP of the series.
@@BobSperber It wasn't a bluff. Remember the Ba'ul? The Kelpiens were the dominant species on their shared homeworld, Kaminar, and the Ba'ul were their prey who they nearly drove to extinction. The Ba'ul were technologically superior and defeated the Kelpiens, forcing them into a role reversal that lasted for centuries. Saru and the Kelpiens survived the vahar'ai phase in season 2 and evolved to reclaim their lost predator heritage.
The Pink planet, for me, was the opening scene of Into Darkness. The place where Kirk and McCoy run through the red forest. Burmans' retirement home looks like it too.
Burnhams home is definetely on sanctuary 4 given the tree there
Didn’t it feel like that Breen soldier that was familiar/friendly with Moll after Lok died was going to go somewhere. It just felt like it was odd how he was with Moll and he was going to end up being someone to her.
If you relisten to the first time he spoke I'd have bet a pay cheque it was Book
Yeah, that was such a tease. Yet another dangling thread.
I'm pretty sure he was killed last episode right as Moll jumped into the portal. But yes, I agree. They had an awful lot of significant glances and conversations. It was a Chekhov's Gun that misfired.
Season 5 was great, I would have liked to have seen more like that
I wish they upgraded the ISS Enterprise to a new USS Enterprise for this era.
I expect that for Starfleet Academy.
Yeah as a training ship
Considering Daniels involvement, there might be an existing Enterprise tied to a secret time fleet...
Or Daniels still considers himself as part of Archer's crew.
Kovich's 21st century notepad makes sense now. He seems like an avid collector of antiques. I was so thrilled he said he was Daniels. Knew from day one of his appearance that there was waaay more to him than they ever led on. Also it makes so much sense. The infinity room, the same place he used to take Archer for chats just with a different wallpaper. The whole idea of Disco jumping into the future and having Daniels fingers a part of it, just yeah... it worked.
I audibly went, "Oh, f**k you," in the best-meaning way when the Daniels thing dropped. That was a great touch.
why is this crowd of time travelers okay with the "burn" event, fixing little things but not a galactic apocalypse
Show tries to ignore that mistake
@@OhNoTheFace I think it's a matter of time, the burn will be fixed and the version of the universe with the burn will remain as the discovery timeline
Interesting to note its inferred Discovery at the very end jumps without Stammets so they finally got past the pilot issue.
The show implied. You inferred.
Conversely, they may have removed the Spore drive technology from Discovery and did the same thing that they did to the Breen ships but to the now downgraded Discovery.
Discovery didn't use a pilot at first but found it was safer to do so.
@@nelsonhunter-valls3206 weeeeeelll the ship very clearly jumped itself the saucer spooled up and everything, they also established that they weren't working on spore drive technology anymore at the beginning of this season and the breen ship could only be jumped because the 2 halves of Discovery where quantumly entangled and the breen ship was caught in the middle of the... Displacement??? Also the ship was designed around the drive so removing it would not be possible without deleting half the ship.
Interesting idea creating a spore drive catapult but... Not what happened.
@@zomfragger and it could only jump a few light years that way before navigating became impossible. You are right it was indeed safer to use a pilot because without a pilot it might as well have been blind jumping they wouldn't have ever gotten where they needed to go. In fact I believe Discovery nearly jumped directly into a star because of this.
Did you notice Starfleet H'Q' had 3 HQ style stations? It reminded me of the Q Continuum 3 headed snake, that the Q actually is. Even the style of the structures with the organic spiral shape has the feel. Could this be a sneaky hint of who the Q actually is? Could they be from the future federation? After all, time is not a constraint. It would also fit with a civilization studying it's own origins. There's also Kovich (Daniels), who seems he could be far older than he appears in the show. Could he be an early member of the Q? Then their is the quote "Infinite diversity in infinite combinations." ;-)
The down for T'Rina's hair! 🤣🤣🤣 I'm dying! So funny!
When the Progenitor said, this was here when we got here, is a line that was used in 'Contact', when the Jodie Foster character spoke to an image of her father, played by David Morse once she was on the alien designed space craft. Here as well, it was determined that we were not yet ready to understand how to properly utilize the advanced technology for purposes other than war.
Hey all you missed something,
The meaning of the flowers: Mums meaning rebirth, joy, friendship etc.
One down I think was missed for the whole season we needed more Grudge.
The way I thought Burnham was going to become the new caretaker of the progenitors technology.
But it's not the progenitor's technology. We are to the Progenitors as the progenitors are to that technology.
@@JSLEnterprises Daniels does everything to keep the federation existing. The federation likely builds the device and sends it to back to the progenitors. The black holes would have existed billions of years ago, so they would be a good anchor for the device that protects it for billions of years and powers it.
Whoa. Just got around to finally watching the series. Really surprised at the comments. This season and this episode were completely brilliant. Nothing is perfect but this is about as perfect of a season as they could have done. I, for one, am very sad to see this show cancelled. I am hoping that in the future, this portal is found again and the lobby is used as a springboard for further exploration. For me Discovery was a win (with a few caveats).
Stranding zora in the middle of space for a thousand years and defitting the discovery because someone watched the episode Calypso? That made me downright mad. I was content just believing Calypso was an alternate timeline.
For god's sake, with that Spore Drive, Discovery coulda still been VERY useful for the Federation for the next 1000 years. SERIOUSLY!
As much as that ending was touching, Defitting her, and then stranding her in the middle of nowhere shoulda been seen as a crimial offense.
At the VERY LEAST Let Zora be able to control her systems so she isn't stuck in one place damnit, because I sure as hell don't think she can in the state she was in at the end.
Yeah it's extra criminal if you consider Zora is apparently sentient. It's like a 1000 year prison sentence.
I am so furious that a sentient being - who's core motivation is caring for their crew - is just abandoned for no reason just for the sake of tying up a plot hole. And I am even MORE angry that there seems to be no outrage about this. Abandoned to the loneliness of deep space, left to exist in a void to slowly grow mad? They can't establish Zora as a sentient being with feelings and then end the series with an unfathomable act of clueless cruelty. I just don't get it.
Zora as a character was horribly misused. She was treated like a computer, not as a member of the crew, the entire season.
In Starfleet's defense here, they know the future and that Craft will need Zora's help. We don't know what's happened in the last 900 years, only that Craft's mission was important enough to make Zora wait for him.
I felt it was fairly apparent that Burnham would conceal or destroy the technology, highly telegraphed. But the twist that the Progenitors found it? That should have led her to want to explore (while she was still there) any evidence of where it actually originated before concealing it. Seek out new life, etc. Especially being a xenoanthropologist, way to sidestep one of the intrinsic character traits that got us to this point.
These writers really showed their love for Enterprise. To give us an entire series to take the weight of all the fan complaints...
Lmao this genuinely made me laugh out loud
Apparently we have so much IDIC we don't need any more.
The rounded nacelles on “shuttle 49” strike me as a reference to The Orville, which, as we all know, is absolutely honorary Star Trek.
Sean: “The Discovery pulls a Riker maneuver..”
Me: “But where did a chair big enough for the Discovery to sit in come from?”
Jeeze this was a roller coaster!
Agent Daniels! Love the new uniforms! And holy fudge THEY CLOSED THE HANGAR DOORS!
Ultimately Michael in the portal is Dorothy at Emerald City at the end of her journey being told by Glinda she could choose to go home at any time.
I wish that were true. That would make a far more interesting story for the progenitor to send them back to the 23rd century where she's united with Spock.
“The progenitor technology is basically the genesis device and nobody should get hold of it”
Except anybody who buys one from the ferengi, you mean? LD is canon.
Don't be silly - the writers of Disco don't watch (or know or care about) star trek. How are they supposed to know what is going on in LD.
It’s a little bit of a bummer when there’s a reference of something I didn’t even know existed, and if I hadn’t watched this video, I wouldn’t have known about it. I suppose I need to find the short treks, and maybe this will explain things, but I also didn’t really like leaving Zora all by herself on discovery.
While Burnham doesn’t know exactly what happens to Zora, it’s still feels a little bit like taking a sentient being and sending them to solitary confinement. At the very least, there could’ve been some acknowledgment of that, and some preparation to make sure that Zora would be able to mentally survive.
I am sure part of it is being pretty sure you are stabling them for good. Burnham was . . . devisive, but also the show is so far in the future and other things that we likely would not come back here regardless. SO they can get a happier ending
@@OhNoTheFace I'm not sure I've made my point.
I don't mind the show having happy endings for some characters. I just think it's pretty gruesome to relegate a sentient AI to a solitary future.
A series in the Calypso era (1000 years after Discovery) would be really interesting. Supposedly the Federation becomes the villain (as hinted at in Calypso) and acquires the Progenitor tech for nefarious reasons. That would be a great premise and more intriguing than Starfleet Academy
Love your Up to Jeff Russo. His Discovery theme brought tears to my eyes when the show was new, and I always play at least the opening fanfare every show. 👩🚀
Wow. Where to start. So many thoughts. Here are the ones that I'll highlight.
1. I lost a brother once. I was lucky to get him back. - STV
2. The progen tech also reminded me of All Our Yesterdays from TOS.
3. The towers on the planet in Whistlespeak reminded me of the meteor deflector in Paradise Syndrome from TOS.
This felt like the end of Lord of the Rings in that it kept going on and on, not that it's a bad thing, there was just like 10 different endings.
Very "Return of The King" episode with the wedding, the several endings, and the "Michael is going to cast the technology into the fire isn't she". I unironically really really love that as a series finale haha
Probably to take care of the ten different times in the past the show should have been canceled on the spot.
I wont lie i got some tears forming in my eyes during the last section of the episode.. it felt like a really good farewell
can we talk about how gorgeous SMG and David looked in their old makeup? They realy sold it
I had presumed they just used age progression tech for that. If it was just makeup it looked kinda weak.
Having just critised the lack of Ruby aging in the latest episode of Doctor Who I agree that both, espeically SMG, were really aged well
I'm a doctor not a physicist reminds me of the voyager doctor. He started a lot of sentences that way. And all the arguments over what to do with the progenitor tech was a microcosm of why it needed to go. Love your videos, I watch them and then log on to these videos.
I agree. All that arguing was a microcosm of why the series needed to be canceled.
Mol turned on the Breen so quickly because she doesn't actually care anything for the Breen, only L'ak. She is selfish driven and thinks only of herself and her own wants and desires. She is driven to a singular purpose. Her turning on anyone is to be expected, and so when she knocked out Michael and recklessly tried to activate the technology, this was not a surprise at all.
Great review of the finale Sean, & love the shirt!
The flame throwers on the bridge take me all the way out every time.
100% They're just so dumb.
Sparks, yes. Jets of flame, no.
It's a crazy choice. Rammstein gig everytime they run into trouble. Really awful stuff
Are flamethrowers better or worse than consoles full of rocks kept under high pressure?
I really love the AR room, as you call it. Like I've literally never noticed it, and the shiny floors you keep mentioning as a dead give away seem so naturally Star Trek in every permutation of Star Trek that they actually add significantly to my enjoyment of whatever the situation is. And frankly I didn't even know episode 10 was in the AR room. I assumed it was green screen, but I much prefer the coloring that the AR room seems to give characters. It feels so much more natural than green screen does. So seriously, until we have actual holodecks IRL, considering your ability to, well, down Kwejian out of existence (ok, that was a joke, but...), I'm starting to worry that your continued mention of it is going to make them use it less, and frankly a lot of the scenes that are apparently in the AR room are actually some of the most immersive and memorable scenes for me. Plus, pointing out in Episode 1 that the desert scene was also done in the AR room didn't even make sense to me because I couldn't figure out how they could possibly have inserted the characters into the environment like that, and no shiny floors. Also, I binge watch this channel. You guys are amazing. Keep it up.
I believe that when we leave a place a part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in these halls, when it is quiet and just listen. After a while you will hear the echoes of all of our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying.
-G'kar B5
Andreas Katsulas
That's why the Observers from Fringe can just put something on a pane of glass and play back exactly what happened in the room.
Right in the feels with this quote.
I have to say, that ending uniform is an absolutely beautiful uniform in my opinion, really loved it.
Though one thing I'm sad about, is how we didn't really get to see the difference of the pathway drive, I was hoping to get it's own new jump design as it makes it way to the been, I think there was some difference but I am not really sure, it just didn't seem like much of a change
I thank every actor on Star Trek Discovery for great five years.
Actually almost seven years since the series premiered in 2017.
@@ronhubbardjr2624
Discovery had 5 seasons. Google it.
Too bad they all didn’t get a satisfying ending to their characters. In the end it was really only the Burnham show.
@@s.hagens5389was always the Burnam show. So many missed opportunities.
This means Calypso takes place in the 42nd century, as zorra/ discovery had been waiting in space for 1000 years so that's a millenia from the end of disco in the 32nd century
I was ok with Michael being offered the progenitor tech. It certainly did feel like she earned it during the season.
Also, the resolution here reminded me a lot of the beautiful ending to the old TNG adventure game "A Final Unity" if you make the correct choice and let the Unity Device go instead of abusing its power. You then get Picard's final log entry: "I can't help but wonder, if the the Federation will some day be able to create another Unity Device, will we also have the wisdom to use it well?"
I thought the planet with the pink trees was Nibiru, just earlier in the season than when kirk visited in the kelvin timeline.
I don't think I appreciated that with all the obsession around reanimating the dead, it was never mentioned that the most famous time this was accomplished (The Search for Spock) was using a Genesis device, the continued existence of which we've been teased with in Lower Decks and Picard, and which certainly should have been at least recorded, if not a unit in storage, at Starfleet HQ.
Even in that case, they would have lost the MIND of Spock if Spock hadn't tucked it into McCoy's brain first. So no, the Genesis device would not have brought back Lak, only his body, just as the progenitor device would have.
@@Jimorian ah, that's true!
@@Jimorian Always keep an off-site backup of your important data!
I'd been trying to figure out who Kovitch really was forever! I love it!
Trek Culture is by far the best of all the Star Trek analysis channels on TH-cam with the absolute best presenters. The lively and insightful commentary and “ups and downs” bring a depth to each and every episode. Kudos to all.
Here is one that you missed:
Tahal, the name of the Breen, is also the name of the star whom the Stone Age inhabitants worship in the Voyager episode, "Blink of an Eye".
My first thought when I saw Burnham's uniform at the end was the Holoship Enlightenment from Red Dwarf 🤣
Missed an up for the McCoy callout. "I'm a doctor not a physicist" (yes you mentioned it in the observations but it deserved an up) and I am sorry but everything after the beach is a down. Absolutely to long and drawn out. Could have done all the reunion at either the wedding or have them all when departing space dock. Just far too slowly paced.
You passed the fact that Saru is an Admiral now
I just noticed that the pilot's name is Jemison -- last name of the first Black woman in space who guest starred on TNG.
I started watching this a week after a close family death in 2017, binged all of Star Trek as a result. I owe this show a lot of joy
likewise
Same here. This show helped me with my bereavement. Feel really sad it’s come to an end.
Oof, of all the garbage to end up trauma bonding with.
@@mikekelly775 to each his own, no? Discovery was my entree to the rest of the franchise, so I'm grateful for it for that.
I thought the pink planet was a nod to the one in "Star Trek: Into Darkness" but maybe I'm forgetting details.
28:20 I kept waiting to hear a second heartbeat in the sickbay scene personally.
"♪♪ Give me that tech, boys: To free my soul, it's gonna get tossed in that old black hole and we'll drift awaaaay.....♪♪"
Pink Planet....looks quite similar to that 'forest' in 12 Monkeys (TV series) - and many actors where 'harvested' by recent Star Trek episodes from it.
For the series as whole, the biggest positive for me were the characters.
The biggest negative were ironically also the characters, or rather how they've gone mostly unchallenged.
It often played out like "Hey, you did this minor thing and it's great and you're great and everything's wonderful."
Forced wholesomeness might be a way to describe it, which occasionally really ripped into the believability of whatever played out.
I get that the crew isn't a bunch of hard-asses.
But normal human beings don't need, nor want, nor give constant affirmation. We have a limited supply of empathy, all of us.
Conflict characters could have had, or should have had just never played out or is resolved in unnatural ways.
Reyner could've been a counter to much of this forced wholesomeness, instead he just accepted everything instantly once challenged.
An abridged version of dialogues involving Renyer:
"Argh, I don't like this."
"Well, you have to like it."
"Damnit, alright."
I liked the potential the characters had, I just didn't like that it was left on the table and never used.
Yeah. Tilly comes up with the idea of igniting gas to destroy the enemy ships that has been done loafs of times and is obvious. But she's a genius.
Raynor suggests using the spore drive to transport the Breen ship away and that's nothing.
I kinda agree. It gets pretty Millennial at times. Im talking occupy wallstreet "I hear your voice and it has meaning but I have the talking stick now Deborahhh and you will hear my truth"
Reyner was the whipping boy of the season, which makes it all the more aggravating cause he just rolls over and takes it after being "Grumpy" for a half second.
Forced wholesomeness sums the entire series up, really. I'm surprised they never renamed the ship the USS Inclusion.
Only half the cast was ever utilised. Detmer, Owosekun and Bryce (aside from the time travel episode) were only brought back for the additional scene filmed at the end, with no dialogue, just sickly smiles and hugging all round in what appeared to be a Lost finale-style dream sequence.
As is the case with Discovery as a series, it's all about Burnham and whichever main cast member she needs to hog screentime with. Other Trek series have been guilty of not allowing main characters to develop, but can anyone remember the name Lt. Owosekun without having to Google the character's name? Can anyone remember a single episode that focused on Lt. Bryce? Characters that were essentially sacrificed to pander to Book, Adira and the trans Trill whose name I can't remember. Am I the only one who cringed with the lazy reveal that Kovich was Agent Daniels, which actually makes as little sense as the lazy easter eggs in the glass cases behind his desk? Am I the only one who tried to get invested in this season-long quest for the Progenitor's technology only for it to be flung into a black hole once they finally got it?
Don't get me wrong, I know this season was never intended to be the final season, but I've tried my best to give Discovery a chance and it left me as dissatisfied as the very first episode. My only consolation is the wonderful gift that is Strange New Worlds, the series that Discovery should have been but never was.
I'm certain that the new Academy series will bring back the Discovery characters for more smiles, hugs and inspirational monologues.
@@chriswhite82 Exactly. I agree with every single word you wrote.
@@chriswhite82 I agree with everything you said. 100% correct sir.
I do wonder if Culber should have been the one to safeguard the Progenitor tech like that was his purpose he was looking for or the one to bring Lak back or understand it. Dunno.
Satisfactory finale though.
18:54 Seán, Dr. Culber decided that his faith that knowing all the answers wasn't necessary. That faith was enough. I thought it was beautiful and perfect for the character of Hugh. Not to mention, Wilson Cruz is just spectacular in the role.
Might even be his faith.......of the heart
The main room seems like the trek to the Wizard of OZ's castle! 😉
The twist of the Progenetor's tech NOT being theirs! That leaves that for a future trek series or show to continue that plot thread! 😁
I think this will have some connections to the Star Trek: Academy when it comes out!
Giving the fact they went into the season not expecting this to be their last season, it wrapped up better than some other shows have in the past. I like how they had Carter and Agent Daniels.
What shows are you comparing it to that didn't end as well? The Star Wars Christmas Special?
@@TheHumbleWordsmith GoT, Seinfeld, Lost, Sopranos. Stuff like this.
Thats not the world root on the table, thats just the box. Book had said he planted it on a previous episode, and as the shuttle flies over the river we see a very impressive tree with the roots draped over a cliff side. The camera hangs on it for a few seconds, thats because it is the world tree all grown up.
This episode did not work for me. Nor did the whole season, really. As soon as they mentioned the progenitors, I was excited. So much potential.
What we got was a paint by numbers fetch quest. And an ending so predictable that i nearly fell asleep. Followed by an entirely unnecessary epilogue that leaves open pointless new questions, mixed with way, way too much mellow drama. And They Lived Happily Ever After.
The whole "someone built it before" line tossed in made me go "oh, it's Mass Effect." It totally did not work for me. The progenitor lobby was right out of central casting for Ancient Alien Super Machine. The absurd puzzle control was B-movie worthy.
Culber's arc ending wasn't actually an ending. Even for just this part of the arc. Like, you thought of a number. How nice.
Since when does a Crossfield class have a separable saucer? Where did that come from?
... And Daniel's? Really? Where did that come from? How? What about the temporal accords? That was nonsense, sorry.
It was just one trope after another, right out of every fantasy show. Barely even sci-fi. It didn't work for me. I haven't liked the ending of any Discovery season except 4, really.
Though remind me to never play poker against Saru. Doug Jones kicked ass in that scene.
How do you know a Crossfield couldn’t do a saucer separation, especially after the 32nd century refit? The Daniels reveal wasn’t part of the finale reshoots. He likely would have played a greater role in season 6. Showrunner Michelle Paradise has said that it would have been about the events leading up to Calypso and Zora’s mission to save Craft, likely not a random nobody as everyone thought he was. Imagine what Daniels reaction would be if he found evidence that the V’Draysh were ultimately behind the Suliban and the Xindi attacks during Archer’s era. Wouldn’t he want payback? Like having a ship positioned for a thousand years at the exact coordinates to intercept Craft’s malfunctioning escape pod. That’s not a violation of the Temporal Accords because no time travel was involved. Saving his life and turning a nobody into the somebody he or his descendants would have become had he lived. Maybe an Alcor IV victory over the V’Draysh causes that alliance to collapse and results in the restoration of its predecessor the Federation.
Maul l just used the Breen to try get Lock. She was visibly uncomfortable with the Breen prior to this. I saw it coming a mile off.
THANKS for this, Culture!!! Really enjoy having a "home" on the Web or Trek and Who!!!!
Dr. Mae Jamison, real-life astronaut, appeared on ST:TNG.