- 3-11 - Su'Kal
- 3-12 - There is a Tide…
- 3-13 - That Hope is You, Part 2
I wrote the first draft of these reviews mere moments after watching the episodes for the first time so you get to see me being authentically unaware of where the story's going to go. You'll also get to see BIG SPOILERS.
Note: I rate episodes on a 1-9 scale, with 5 being several steps above 'terrible', but still not ideal.
| Star Trek: Discovery | ||||||||||||||
| 3-11 | Su'Kal |
5 | ||||||||||||
Discovery finally heads to the source of the Burn and discovers a field of radiation, a planet of dilithium, and a Kelpian living in a collapsing holographic simulation. Burnham, Saru and Culber beam over and find they've been disguised as different alien races by the simulation, with Saru looking human! While they gather information on the planet, the first officer is left to command Discovery. Unfortunately the ship's first officer is Ensign Tilly and it's not long before the ship's hijacked by Osyraa. I'm torn on this episode. On the one hand it looks amazing, with the best holodeck imagery we've ever seen in Star Trek
(and a fantastic looking kelp monster), we get to see Captain Tilly in
action, and it finally reveals what caused the Burn! On the other hand, I
lost interest in the holodeck side of the story once we learned what
was going on (which happened about five minutes after they got there),
the rest of the story was kind of nothing really, and the answer to what
caused the Burn is a mutant child was born with the power to destroy all dilithium. I'd say that's pretty weird even for Discovery... but I suppose it's no weirder than a mushroom dimension that can destroy all life everywhere.
On the plus side, they've discovered a planet made of dilithium, which is exactly the kind of thing you need in a dilithium shortage. I don't know how long an entire planet made of the stuff will last the Federation, but at worst it's a really good short-term solution. Assuming they can get anything in there to mine it. Of course they'll have to survive Osyraa's impending attack on Starfleet HQ first, because it turns out that Tilly's first time in command went about as bad as it could've possibly gone. She did well in the viewscreen test, not cracking under pressure from a mean green woman psychoanalysing her, but ultimately she got her ship captured and left her friends trapped in a radioactive nebula minutes away from death. It happens to the best of captains, both Archer and Picard lost their ship to Ferengi, and Lorca lost his ship to Harry Mudd about 60 times in a row, but it's hilarious that it happened to Tilly on her first day. Also did Starfleet not teach the crew how to lock people out of their new computer? Things were no less weird on the crashed Kelpian ship, with the holodeck giving the away team the appearance of being a different species. This was explained as it making them look like they're part of the program, but that doesn't hold up to 10 seconds of thought. Why turn Burnham from a human to a Trill, and Culber from a human to a Bajoran, only to make Saru look like he's human. I figured it must have been written in to justify getting Saru out of the makeup, but then that was never paid off. Maybe it's going to become relevant in a later episode? Maybe it was just so they could put it in the trailer and get people to watch? Hey, maybe it's so Gray can get a holographic body next time! There's no way these writers can resist engineering a situation where a character's in love with a holographic projection of the memory of their dead lover who is being generated by the co-processor in their gut. It was nice seeing Doug Jones playing Saru out of makeup though, and funny to watch the other Kelpian do the same arm sway he does. They originally thought of getting Jones to play both Saru and Su'Kal, but he knew that would be a ton of work, so they ultimately brought in a 70 year old clown instead and that was the right choice. Bill Irwin nails the role of a man who's lived a century alone in a collapsing virtual universe. Overall, I don't think I was keen on this one. It was slow at first, with all the scenes about Gray coming back, Stamets being worried about Culber etc. then it was slow in the middle as they tried to get through to the orphaned Kelpian, and then it ended on a cliffhanger with nothing resolved. In fact, this might be my least favourite episode of the whole series. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION |
||||||||||||||
| 3-12 | There is a Tide… |
5 | ||||||||||||
Osyraa takes Discovery inside the Federation HQ's cloaking shield to negotiate with Admiral Vance for peace. Meanwhile Burnham does her Die Hard thing to free Stamets while the bridge crew escape and discover that Zora has uploaded herself into the maintenance bots. Burnham fires Stamets into space against his will, Vance turns down Osyraa's offer, and Osyraa returns to the ship and executes Ryn for not obeying her. There is absolutely no Saru, Culber or Adira. There are two kinds of episodes that have a title which ends in an ellipsis: episodes like All Good Things... and You are Cordially Invited..., and episodes like Let He Who is Without Sin... and These are the Voyages... They're either great... or legendarily terrible. Though the ellipsis was a late addition in this case, as this used to be called The Good of the People.
'Die Hard on a spaceship' stories can be great as well, like Next Gen's Starship Down, DS9's The Siege... I even like Voyager's Macrocosm, so for most of this episode I struggling to figure out exactly why I didn't like this one. It's definitely got an interesting premise, with Osyraa hijacking Discovery and holding hostages as part of a scheme to negotiate a union with the Federation, though it's slightly spoiled by the way that it's an insane way for a major power to negotiate peace! There's been a question mark over the Federation and Vance's true nature this season, as we couldn't know if they'd really stuck to their morality or not, and that added some tension to his negotiation with Osyraa. It was really presented like he might do the wrong thing and join her union before Burnham had the chance to free the hostages. Turns out though that Starfleet might be at its most diminished and desperate right now, but that also means the people there are the hardcore that never gave in and lost the faith, even when their own homeworlds chose to abandon the Federation.  Meanwhile the Discovery side of the episode was split between Burnham sneaking around doing her John McClane thing, the bridge crew breaking out, and Stamets discussing family with Kenneth Mitchell (playing his fourth character in the series so far). That might have been a bit much, as it means Burnham doesn't actually get to do a lot, besides continually screwing up, getting a knife in the leg and flushing someone into space by starting a fire (Discovery's fire suppression system is lethal). She did get that scene with Stamets I suppose, where his brain falls out and he decides they need to jump the ship back to the nebula. For once someone else on the crew was going rogue and acting emotional, and Burnham found she didn't like it one bit. The other scene with Stamets begging her not to fire him out into space didn't really land with me though, because she's clearly right and he's clearly not thinking straight. They're not going to rescue anyone while Osyraa controls the ship.  On the plus side it was nice to see Osyraa get a subordinate finally, so the leader of the Chain wasn't personally doing everything herself. But it's bloody weird that it's that random courier we met at the start of the season... on the other side of the galaxy. He's a decent enough villain, but his presence on Osyraa's crew raised questions that never got answered. Overall, this story gets a 'meh' out of ten from me. It had all the ingredients to be one of my favourite episodes (aside from comedy, it's pretty low on that) but I just couldn't give a damn about any of it. I think I'm actually more down on it because it was something I could've loved, as it's not really a terrible episode. But it is a close runner up for my least favourite episode of Discovery. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION |
||||||||||||||
| 3-13 | That Hope is You, Part 2 |
7 | ||||||||||||
Osyraa escapes with Discovery, but two separate groups of crewmembers attempt to retake the ship. Unfortunately most of them are on the decks without oxygen and the best Tilly's team can manage is to blow one of the warp nacelles off. And the nacelles usually float nearby anyway so that doesn't actually change much. Burnham has a lot more luck, as she rescues Book and takes a daring ride through the cavernous turbolift chamber that Alex Kurtzman believes is inside every Starfleet ship. She beats Osyraa in a fight, blows up the Viridian, and rescues the others before they die of radiation poisoning... but Stamets still hasn't forgiven her for blasting him into space last episode. The episode ends with Saru suddenly returning to Kaminar, leaving the captain's chair free for Captain Burnham! Hey we've finally found the other half to That Hope is You, Part 1!
I was getting worried we might have to wait until season 4 for it. It's
rare for a series to split up a two parter like this, though I do remember the X-Files revival doing it, with My Struggle I, II, III and IV split over two seasons. X-Files never mixed up the naming convention and put a 'part 2' title in the same season with a 'Unification III' though, that's pretty damn weird.
Bringing back the title without bringing back the guy left alone on his space station would've been very cruel so I'm glad he came back at the end to do nothing. Just like Reno came back to do nothing. And the DOT-23s basically did nothing. Stamets had nothing to do either, but it's even worse for him as he came back to learn that he's not special anymore and everyone with Book's power can navigate during spore jumps. No wonder he's still scowling at Burnham. Anyway, this episode, and in fact the entire season, is all about connection. I know this because Burnham told me at the end. In the Saru plot we see him slowly trying to connect with a Kelpian who has been isolated for a hundred years, and in the Discovery plot we see lots of energy bolts and fists connect with a lot of people in black helmets. I think the Saru plot worked better for me this time than it did in Su'Kal, because even though it took a long long time to get somewhere entirely obvious, it at least managed to get there in the end. It really built up the mystery of Su'Kal's trauma and the kelp monster, but the only surprising thing about this story was that there was absolutely nothing surprising about it, with the reveals being 'we're on a ship that crashed on a planet', 'Su'Kal caused the Burn out of grief that his mother died' and 'Saru is actually a Kelpian'. Basically nothing we didn't already know. In the end it was just about a guy trying to help a traumatised man move on, and the actors pulled it off I thought. It really benefited from the fact that Burnham was elsewhere, so Culber couldn't tell her to talk to Su'Kal instead.  The Burnham plot was 100% maximum Burnham all the time as she single-handedly managed to retake the ship by withstanding emotional torture and then killing a lot of people in elaborate action scenes. Which is good, because that's where the character thrives. For a while it seemed like the other characters were going to play a part in saving the day, with Aurelio kind of starting to turn against Osyraa, the bridge crew going on a suicide mission, Owo being the one to carry out the mission due to her extreme breath-holding skills, and Zora (fake)-sacrificing herself to save Owo... but really that was all irrelevant. I mean the nacelle sabotage got them pulled inside the Viridian and gave them an opportunity to blow it up, but that was really just a bonus, and not what they intended to achieve at all. I can't believe that detachable nacelles were actually an important plot point by the end though! Now we can get rid of them because they look kind of dumb. Also maybe they should arm the ship with quantum torpedoes or something so it can blow things up without ejecting its warp core as a bomb. Plus they need to get the warp core ejection tunnel fixed so the core doesn't bounce around the walls on the way out. I found I was able to give half a damn about Burnham's plot this time, unlike last episode, but there was one problem that really kicked me out of the story for a while: the inside of Discovery has gotten even bigger! They've taken out the turbolift theme park and replaced it with miles of cyber-cityscape for the turbolifts to fly over! We know exactly how big Discovery is, as we can see into the bridge window and they always leave the shuttlebay door open: it's 50 meters at its tallest point. By my scruffy calculations that turbolift chamber was at least 200 meters tall - big enough to fit Discovery inside it. This does not make sense. However, there is an episode of Enterprise where they discover a ship from the future that's bigger on the inside. They've never shown or mentioned this technology in Discovery but it is possible they've used it to make the ship far more massive than it used to be... for the purpose of making turbolift rides longer I guess? Anyway that's basically what was going through my head all the way through that expensive flying turbolift action sequence; I was too busy trying to mentally justify it to actually enjoy any of it. By the way, what a damn waste of an actor Zareh turned out to be. And Osyraa just reverted back to being a one-note villain. It's such a shame really what happened to her in the end, as if she'd stayed on Discovery and joined the crew she could've been redeemed in a season and a half.  You might think that a season all about a galaxy crippled by the depletion of a non-renewable resource might end with them switching to a new technology based on a clean, renewable energy source. But no they just found a new deposit! Only Discovery gets to have the spore drive apparently, even though we're in the distant future and you'd expect everyone to be teleporting around anyway. I'm hoping they'll eventually explain why that is. Fortunately the Federation's at least giving the dilithium out to everyone (or the people they like at least) and the ending shows Discovery heading off on a new mission... as a courier. It almost feels like we've reached the end of the series. Or the end of the pilot at least. Overall I think I'd rate the episode as being 'enjoyable enough'. I'm kind of confused that all the Sphere Data did after their big appearance at the end of the last ep was pull Owo to safety, I'm a little disappointed that David Cronenberg wasn't revealed to be the Federation president, and I'm very disappointed that it didn't end with Will Riker swooping in to save the day for the third season finale in a row, but it mostly worked for me. And it's nice when they get to throw lots and lots of money at the screen. • IMPORTANT OBSERVATION |
||||||||||||||
It looks like Ensign Tilly got a division change in post-production, as there's something off about the shading of her stripe. Also the V on the neck of the new uniforms is coloured to match the division, with operations and command both getting gold, while science gets blue and medical gets white. Tilly's got a gold V but a blue stripe.
CONCLUSION
It's funny looking back at this image now that I've seen the whole season. It doesn't really match what we got.
I really wasn't keen on Discovery becoming Star Trek: Andromeda, with a band of heroes on an ancient ship trying to put the pieces of a fallen Federation back together, mostly because I've always hated the idea of trashing the Federation just to add a bit of drama to a spin-off. I've spent years watching people work their asses off to hold it together and keep it from turning evil. Plus it would suck for the punchline to decades of space exploration to be 'and then all that research was lost and rendered meaningless by a galactic dark age'. Star Trek is unusual for science fiction series in that it's not just about a utopia, it's about a utopia that thinks it can do better. The crews are always running into aliens saying 'come back in 300 years when you've grown up a bit', and there's always the assumption that humanity is heading for something greater if they can just hold the course.
This isn't the first time that someone's tried to make this premise happen. After Enterprise ended, Bryan Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, and Robert Meyer Burnett came up with a plan to make a series called Star Trek: Federation, set in the dark future of 3000 after a catastrophe that split the Federation, with Vulcan leaving to reunify with the Romulans. There was also an idea for a cartoon called Star Trek: Final Frontier, set in the dark future of the 2460s after a catastrophe that that split the Federation, with Vulcan leaving to reunify with the Romulans (this pitch also had the idea of warp travel becoming harder due to Omega particle detonations). I've had reason to be dreading this concept for a while now.
Oh plus the Short Treks episode Calypso showed us a glimpse of a future where the Federation had become the V'Draysh and apparently weren't the friendliest people in space, so I had that on my mind as well.
On the other hand, around season 3-4 is where a Star Trek spin-off typically gets a new showrunner, figures itself out, and really hits its stride. Not the Original Series, that really went off the rails in season 3, but the later series started putting out episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise, Improbable Cause, Scorpion and Twilight. Burnham even grew the braids this season, as a stylish alternative to growing the beard.
So I felt that Discovery season three could've gone two ways: either it was going to really come into its own once it was free of the Original Series time period and didn't have to fit into a history that had already been
written, or it was going to jump into a future I couldn't stand and kind of spoil the rest of Star Trek
for me while it was there. But then season three actually hit a curve
ball and did something I didn't see coming: it got me interested in its
future setting and then kind of bored me with its stories.
I actually like the idea of the 32nd century Federation being cut off and isolated, but people still having hope that it can restored. Not a dark age, just a lonely one. Plus I was so relieved to find out that the Federation didn't collapse on its own. It wasn't our fault, we're not doomed to fall back into being terrible people, it was something that happened to us! I was paranoid about Admiral Vance turning out to be a bad guy for most of the season, but even he didn't let me down. In fact he didn't even order the crew to plant a bomb inside the Klingon homeworld or work with Section 31, so really he's a big step up from 23rd century admirals.
Unfortunately the season was so focused on its mysteries and its characters' personal problems that it wasn't able to really take the time to explore its new setting. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it didn't drag out its answers to things like Detmer's mysterious condition, Georgiou's mysterious condition, and the music everyone knows, but they kept setting up interesting situations and then fast-forwarding through them.
The
premise of a scrappy underdog crew on a hopelessly-outclassed antique
starship jumping between worlds trying to find what remains of the
legendary Federation was worth more than the two episodes they spent on
it. The season did next to nothing with the idea of a crew out
of time exploring a world that's unrecognisable to them. Instead the ship
got a full refit and was given a new job to teleport around the galaxy dealing with
problems... but they never did that either! In fact the crew went and got it
captured without firing a shot... at anything, in any episode. Book's
ship did far more than Discovery herself got to do this season.
I really wanted to learn more about how the alien races we know are doing in this future, whether the Federation made it to the Delta Quadrant yet etc. and we did get some of that. They actually gave us a resolution to the Unification arc started in Next Gen, and that's amazing. But the season was far more focused on individuals and emotions than worlds and world building. It was keen to establish how Osyraa was a threat, but we barely learned anything about the Emerald Chain as an organisation until one episode before it collapsed! Even the Burn was due to one person and we got two episodes all about Saru trying to make a connection with him. Well, that and epic action scenes.
Plus the series still has a nasty habit of sacrificing sense for the sake of something spectacular or emotional, which tended to backfire for me because it took me out of the action. The worst example being the giant hollow turbolift chamber inside of Discovery that's big enough to contain Discovery.
Burnham was leaping from turbolift to turbolift in a scene that may have cost more than Doctor Who's
last two seasons combined, and all I could think about while watching it was 'Is the ship
big enough for this? Why have all this empty space in the first place?
Could Tilly use a phaser on overload to breach a turbolift door and let
some of this air into her tiny section of the ship?' The thing about taking
viewers on a ride is that you have to get them securely fastened in
before the ride starts or else they'll fall out.
You should never take a viewer's suspension of disbelief for granted, even with science fiction, because when the illusion collapses you've lost them. Avengers: Infinity War has cosmic gems, magic portals, a talking raccoon with guns, a man who turns into a giant green rage monster, and the actual Norse god of thunder, and it works because the earlier movies put the work in and earned every one of them. Star Trek spin-offs can have godlike aliens, parallel universes, faster than light travel etc. for free... all of that's been established already, but if you're going to introduce unjustified dimensional transcendentalism you can't do it during the action-packed climax.
Season three was a bit less of a batshit crazy roller-coaster than last year though and it holds together a lot better overall. Unfortunately it was also less compelling for me. I was kind of hoping that Discovery wasn't going to be all sentimentality and shoot outs this season, that maybe now they've calmed down a bit they'd replace the insanity with a bit of that 90s Trek depth and maturity, but it just seemed kind of shallow a lot of the time. I love that it's heart is in the right place when it comes to treating people with respect and not committing atrocities, and I'm not going to complain about empathy saving the day at the end (in Saru's plot at least), but I could do with a bit more substance. It does at least make the case that the biggest threats to society are isolated people abandoned on their own and heartless tyrants selling the needy substandard salvation, and until we reconnect with the former and shut down the latter we'll never get our utopia.
I've noticed a few people saying that this season was the strongest so far, but looking at the scores they've shared it seems like most would actually put it in third place. Personally I think I'd have to agree that it's the worst season, but not by much. It's still got amazing visuals, even despite the VFX work being done from home. In fact Sonequa Martin-Green was pregnant during filming so they had to fix that in post! Plus we got some fantastic location shots this year as they actually went to some planets. And even at its worst it's never really bad television. It definitely doesn't have anything on the level of 'torment Troi' episode from Next Gen or a Ferengi farce from DS9. But it didn't hit the highs that the first seasons did. Those first two years had a knack, on occasion, for getting me 100% on board with something absolutely insane, but I had a harder time getting excited about anything this year.
My top three season 3 episodes:
Bottom three season 3 episodes:
Su'Kal was a beautiful episode but they had to really pad it out so that the three-parter wasn't resolved in one story, and There is a Tide... just didn't work with me at all for some reason. None of the episodes this season were really bad though.
Next time on Star Trek: Discovery:
What do I want from season 4? Well when I was watching season 3 and coming up with the rough draft of this article in my head, I was planning to write 'I want Burnham to be the captain, to try to fix the problem of this being an ensemble show with one special character who gets to do everything.' But then they actually went and made her captain in the finale so I guess now what I want is for them to pull it off properly. I want them to combine Star Trek: Burnham and Star Trek: USS Discovery into a more coherent series, where the lead character is the centre of the action not the centre of the universe.
I also want Starfleet to move back to a planet next season so I can actually see their ships in good lighting conditions, and so Vance can get out of his sterile environment, see his family, and eat a real apple.
I guess I'm also still waiting for Burnham and Tilly to have a damn away mission together, so that would be nice. More fun on more planets please.
I really wasn't keen on Discovery becoming Star Trek: Andromeda, with a band of heroes on an ancient ship trying to put the pieces of a fallen Federation back together, mostly because I've always hated the idea of trashing the Federation just to add a bit of drama to a spin-off. I've spent years watching people work their asses off to hold it together and keep it from turning evil. Plus it would suck for the punchline to decades of space exploration to be 'and then all that research was lost and rendered meaningless by a galactic dark age'. Star Trek is unusual for science fiction series in that it's not just about a utopia, it's about a utopia that thinks it can do better. The crews are always running into aliens saying 'come back in 300 years when you've grown up a bit', and there's always the assumption that humanity is heading for something greater if they can just hold the course.
This isn't the first time that someone's tried to make this premise happen. After Enterprise ended, Bryan Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, and Robert Meyer Burnett came up with a plan to make a series called Star Trek: Federation, set in the dark future of 3000 after a catastrophe that split the Federation, with Vulcan leaving to reunify with the Romulans. There was also an idea for a cartoon called Star Trek: Final Frontier, set in the dark future of the 2460s after a catastrophe that that split the Federation, with Vulcan leaving to reunify with the Romulans (this pitch also had the idea of warp travel becoming harder due to Omega particle detonations). I've had reason to be dreading this concept for a while now.
Oh plus the Short Treks episode Calypso showed us a glimpse of a future where the Federation had become the V'Draysh and apparently weren't the friendliest people in space, so I had that on my mind as well.
On the other hand, around season 3-4 is where a Star Trek spin-off typically gets a new showrunner, figures itself out, and really hits its stride. Not the Original Series, that really went off the rails in season 3, but the later series started putting out episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise, Improbable Cause, Scorpion and Twilight. Burnham even grew the braids this season, as a stylish alternative to growing the beard.
I actually like the idea of the 32nd century Federation being cut off and isolated, but people still having hope that it can restored. Not a dark age, just a lonely one. Plus I was so relieved to find out that the Federation didn't collapse on its own. It wasn't our fault, we're not doomed to fall back into being terrible people, it was something that happened to us! I was paranoid about Admiral Vance turning out to be a bad guy for most of the season, but even he didn't let me down. In fact he didn't even order the crew to plant a bomb inside the Klingon homeworld or work with Section 31, so really he's a big step up from 23rd century admirals.
Unfortunately the season was so focused on its mysteries and its characters' personal problems that it wasn't able to really take the time to explore its new setting. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it didn't drag out its answers to things like Detmer's mysterious condition, Georgiou's mysterious condition, and the music everyone knows, but they kept setting up interesting situations and then fast-forwarding through them.
I really wanted to learn more about how the alien races we know are doing in this future, whether the Federation made it to the Delta Quadrant yet etc. and we did get some of that. They actually gave us a resolution to the Unification arc started in Next Gen, and that's amazing. But the season was far more focused on individuals and emotions than worlds and world building. It was keen to establish how Osyraa was a threat, but we barely learned anything about the Emerald Chain as an organisation until one episode before it collapsed! Even the Burn was due to one person and we got two episodes all about Saru trying to make a connection with him. Well, that and epic action scenes.
Plus the series still has a nasty habit of sacrificing sense for the sake of something spectacular or emotional, which tended to backfire for me because it took me out of the action. The worst example being the giant hollow turbolift chamber inside of Discovery that's big enough to contain Discovery.
You should never take a viewer's suspension of disbelief for granted, even with science fiction, because when the illusion collapses you've lost them. Avengers: Infinity War has cosmic gems, magic portals, a talking raccoon with guns, a man who turns into a giant green rage monster, and the actual Norse god of thunder, and it works because the earlier movies put the work in and earned every one of them. Star Trek spin-offs can have godlike aliens, parallel universes, faster than light travel etc. for free... all of that's been established already, but if you're going to introduce unjustified dimensional transcendentalism you can't do it during the action-packed climax.
Season three was a bit less of a batshit crazy roller-coaster than last year though and it holds together a lot better overall. Unfortunately it was also less compelling for me. I was kind of hoping that Discovery wasn't going to be all sentimentality and shoot outs this season, that maybe now they've calmed down a bit they'd replace the insanity with a bit of that 90s Trek depth and maturity, but it just seemed kind of shallow a lot of the time. I love that it's heart is in the right place when it comes to treating people with respect and not committing atrocities, and I'm not going to complain about empathy saving the day at the end (in Saru's plot at least), but I could do with a bit more substance. It does at least make the case that the biggest threats to society are isolated people abandoned on their own and heartless tyrants selling the needy substandard salvation, and until we reconnect with the former and shut down the latter we'll never get our utopia.
I've noticed a few people saying that this season was the strongest so far, but looking at the scores they've shared it seems like most would actually put it in third place. Personally I think I'd have to agree that it's the worst season, but not by much. It's still got amazing visuals, even despite the VFX work being done from home. In fact Sonequa Martin-Green was pregnant during filming so they had to fix that in post! Plus we got some fantastic location shots this year as they actually went to some planets. And even at its worst it's never really bad television. It definitely doesn't have anything on the level of 'torment Troi' episode from Next Gen or a Ferengi farce from DS9. But it didn't hit the highs that the first seasons did. Those first two years had a knack, on occasion, for getting me 100% on board with something absolutely insane, but I had a harder time getting excited about anything this year.
My top three season 3 episodes:
- That Hope is You, Part 1 (7)
- Far From Home (7)
- People of Earth (7)
Bottom three season 3 episodes:
- Die Trying (6)
- Su'Kal (5)
- There is a Tide... (5)
Su'Kal was a beautiful episode but they had to really pad it out so that the three-parter wasn't resolved in one story, and There is a Tide... just didn't work with me at all for some reason. None of the episodes this season were really bad though.
Next time on Star Trek: Discovery:
What do I want from season 4? Well when I was watching season 3 and coming up with the rough draft of this article in my head, I was planning to write 'I want Burnham to be the captain, to try to fix the problem of this being an ensemble show with one special character who gets to do everything.' But then they actually went and made her captain in the finale so I guess now what I want is for them to pull it off properly. I want them to combine Star Trek: Burnham and Star Trek: USS Discovery into a more coherent series, where the lead character is the centre of the action not the centre of the universe.
I also want Starfleet to move back to a planet next season so I can actually see their ships in good lighting conditions, and so Vance can get out of his sterile environment, see his family, and eat a real apple.
I guess I'm also still waiting for Burnham and Tilly to have a damn away mission together, so that would be nice. More fun on more planets please.
COMING THIS AUGUST
If you want to leave a comment about Star Trek: Discovery, the box down there should be up to the task. And if you feel like writing even more afterwards, you could drop by the Sci-Fi Adventures Discord.
Yeah, not only did they kick Tilly in the teeth by handing Discovery over to Burnham, they also chucked her off the command training scheme in post-production!
ReplyDeleteI think this has been my least favourite series of Discovery so far, because like you I don't feel that they really engaged with anything that they introduced. Instead we spent an episode and half in the mirror universe -- again? -- and then three episodes resolving a holodeck plot.
Osryaa never really came together as the big antagonist either. We kept hearing how awful and scary she was, but then she was just sort of normal. Then just before the end of the series they attempted to beef up the diplomatic side of the character, perhaps with a suggestion that she's not entirely in the wrong, but that didn't really go anywhere either. It was all very fuzzy, indistinct, and undeveloped.
I did find her wandering accent fascinating though.
I'm also not thrilled with Burnham being made captain because one of the key things they said they were trying to do was break away from the captain-as-protagonist thing, but I suppose on the other hand she runs around acting like the captain anyway, so she may as well get the actual job.
Even so, it's a bit naff having her be told off every other episode for breaking the rules and being too independent and then in the last two minutes reward her for it. They could have built up to it more naturally by exploring how the Federation can't survive by following the old ways, and they need more rogues and mavericks. Which again, they seemed to be vaguely gesturing at sometimes, but never quite getting there.
(Then again, I think Voyager would have been more interesting if it had explored the dynamics of a mixed crew, rather than immediately sticking the Maquis into Starfleet uniforms and having them be part of the chain of command.)
All that said, I did like the series, just not as much as the first two. The best bits were the character moments. Georgiou was great, as always, and I like how they've brought Adira in. Burnham was good too, although better when she was being goofy than when she was being A Big Damned Hero Again. I liked Han Solo, I mean Cleveland Book too, and I'm both surprised and pleased that he wasn't killed off to give Burnham something to scream about.
The obvious direction for series four is to explore this new post-Burn setting, and I hope they do that, but I fear there will be more faffing about and underdeveloped ideas. Fingers crossed I'm wrong!
Yeah, this and Voyager both had a problem of having more potential than they knew what to do with, which is always going to lead to disappointment. At least they've passed on the 'lower-ranked protagonist' baton to Lower Decks to run with.
DeleteAlso Book sticking around was a big surprise for me. I thought he was going to be the Lorca/Pike of the season, there to drive the season arc and then disappear, but nope he's returning for a season season. I guess he's the new Kasidy Yates.
(I realised that I had completely forgotten to watch the series until you posted these, so I've just rattled through the whole lot in two days while recovering from some sort of flu-like thing, so if my thoughts are nonsense, that's why.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not a doctor, but I'm not sure it's wise to binge watch Discovery while suffering flu symptoms. Hope you're better now though.
DeleteI did think I was having some sort of fever dream when David Cronenberg turned up.
Delete