Star Trek: Discovery 5-10: Life, Itself (Quick Review)

Episode:

65

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Writer:

Kyle Jarrow & Michelle Paradise

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Director:

Olatunde Osunsanmi

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Air Date:

30-May-2024

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing Life, Itself - the very last episode of Star Trek: Discovery. The series that kicked the Kurtzman era of Star Trek shows has reached its end of its voyage... a bit sooner than expected. Discovery kind of got cancelled, but they were at least allowed to shoot some extra scenes to properly wrap it up, so I do have some closure to look forward to.

Life, Itself is a member of a very exclusive club, and not just because its a Star Trek series finale. If you disqualify titles starting with 'A ' or 'The ', this is only the third time that a Trek show has had three consecutive episodes that start with the same letter. That's trivia so trivial that you won't find it anywhere else!

(If you're curious, the episodes are: Eye of the Needle, Ex Post Facto and Emanations in Voyager's first season, Sleeping Dogs, Shadows of P'Jem and Shuttlepod One in Enterprise's first season, and now we've got Labyrinths, Lagrange Point and Life, Itself.)

This review is going to include SPOILERS for a bunch of Star Trek stories from across the timeline.

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RECAP

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Captain Burnham lands in the Progenitors' portal room, where she has to deal with a Breen that came in before her, plus a wounded Moll. Fortunately Moll has the sense to realise that she needs Burnham more than the Breen if she's going to figure this place out and resurrect L'ak. But when they find the final puzzle she knocks Burnham out and tries to figure it out herself, setting off the security system! Burnham solves the puzzle and gets to chat to a Progenitor, who reveals that she's proven herself worthy to inherit this technology.

Meanwhile, Saru manages to scare Breen Primarch Tahal into taking her fleet back to defend her bases, leaving Discovery with only one Breen dreadnought and its fighter craft to deal with. They ignite a gas cloud to blow up the fighters and then separate the saucer to spore jump the dreadnought to the galactic barrier.

Book and Culber rescue Burnham and Moll and they decide to drop the portal into a black hole. They already have a galaxy full of diverse (mostly humanoid) life, so they don't need it anymore.

Later, Saru and T'Rina get married. Much much later Admiral Burnham's son comes to her cabin on Sanctuary Four to give her a ride back to her old ship. It turns out that Discovery is being sent to wait in a nebula for a few years, and has been converted to its original appearance for the mission. But first, Burnham daydreams about hugging her former crew.

REVIEW

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THE WRITERS ACTUALLY SET UP CALYPSO! HOLY SHIT!

They didn't do a particularly good job of it, what I really wanted was to see the series of events that led to the crew abandoning their ship for a thousand years and what happened next, but I'm grateful we even got this much. They had apparently intended to give us a proper story in season 6, but the show's cancellation really screwed up that plan.

I did like how they used Calypso as an excuse to restore the ship to its original look for the final shot. It's just a shame that the scene is spoiled by those ugly future ships and a thousand or so copy/pasted shuttles. I really hope Starfleet Academy does a better job with its 32nd/33rd century starships because I'm not into this look.

Why were they all out here anyway? To celebrate Discovery departing for its top secret mission?

Star Trek: Short Treks 1-02 - Calypso

The trouble with making Zora's mission into a secret Starfleet operation instead of a desperate scheme to save the day, is that it means the Discovery ends with Burnham cheerfully condemning her former crewmate to a millennia of solitary confinement. She just dropped this whole thing on Zora at the last minute as well, the poor AI didn't even give a chance to say goodbye to her friends first, and we don't even know why she has to do it! The whole situation is pretty horrifying.

Though I did see a comment somewhere which points out that un-refitting the ship serves no purpose unless they're pretending that Discovery's been in the nebula since the 2260s. In Calypso, Zora says she's been there for a thousand years, but if the epilogue takes place around 3230ish, maybe she's only been there for a few decades. It's still a long time to be alone, but I like that idea better.

They mixed up the opening titles a bit for this episode, adding in bits from the other four seasons. So that's cool, I appreciate it when series get creative like that. It's unusual for a Star Trek series, as they typically only revise their opening once during their entire run, if you're lucky. Voyager fans were the least fortunate, as they got 168 episodes with the same title sequence. (Though the show had a pretty great title sequence to be fair).

Those things in the background have been there all season, though it's taken this long for the series to finally show us what they are: they're part of the portal cubes in the Progenitor tech dimension.

Season 5 has fully embraced the format of Burnham going off to do her protagonist thing while the crew of Discovery work on their own problems, and in the last episode she finally ascends to Star Trek Heaven!

This place has the technology to visit strange new worlds and create new life, in fact it's the source of all humanoid species, so I would've been disappointed if it'd just looked like a high-tech lab in a cave somewhere. There's a time and place to go crazy with the visuals and this is definitely that time.

Star Trek: Discovery 1-03: Context is for Kings

The writers had no idea that this would be their final episode, so it's pure fluke that the sequence does such a good job of bookending the spore drive demonstration from Context for Kings at the start of season 1.

That said, I'm not sure about all those portals to other planets. I mean, the scientists who last discovered the place hid its location behind a clue trail and a series of challenges to make sure only the worthy could find it... but you can reach it from all these different worlds by just walking through a portal. In fact Burnham even does it a few times during her galaxy-spanning conflict with Moll.

Olatunde Osunsanmi was the director this episode, so I'm blaming him for the ridiculous shaky and twirly camerawork during this episode. In fact, he was responsible for most of Discovery's season openers and finales, so I can blame him for inspiring the camerawork in other episodes as well!

It's especially bad in the action scenes and the fight scenes are a complete write-off. If there was any decent fight choreography there, and I kind of doubt it, it's completely hidden by the camera being all over the damn place. The music tries so hard to make this battle feel epic, but the visuals aren't playing along.

Also Burnham starts the fight and then tries to talk Moll out of fighting her, which is weird. It's even pointed out in dialogue, so it's not like the episode is unaware of what it's doing. You know what else is weird? Giant flame jets.

I'm not even talking about the ones on Discovery's bridge this time, not exclusively anyway.

I suppose it's fitting for Discovery Season 5: The Search for L'ak to end with a fist fight on an exploding planet, even if it skips the part where L'ak gets resurrected. Moll should've probably suspected that her quest was futile when they walked past a scientist's grave.

The series had me expecting a resurrection all season, as I figured we'd lose Book or maybe even Burnham, but nope. No one comes back from the dead in this episode, as the Progenitor tech doesn't even have that feature. It's like how Discovery has the technology to create milkshakes but not cows... I presume.

I guess I don't actually know if Starfleet can replicate cows in the 32nd century. I kind of hope not!

The episode also went wild with the explosions on the bridge, with chunks getting blown out of the walls and flames everywhere. I'm glad that this is one Discovery trope that hasn't really spread to the other series, as I can't take the action seriously when the pyrotechnics start off at 11 and stay there. I wasn't bored by the space battle exactly, but it didn't impress me.

And their attempt to wrap up Rayner's arc by having him mumble something about this being like the avalanche situation from Red Directive again didn't work for me either. This is the moment where he's given the same choice and chooses differently, I should be 100% aware of what he's doing and feel something when he gets it right. But the episode flew past that demonstration of character growth so fast that I barely registered that it'd happened.

Here's another example of inadvertent bookending. We're in another binary system fighting another giant super-ship belonging to another faction that wants to unite their houses and claim power. No one makes a quip about this being "The Battle of the Binary Black Holes" though and I'm pretty happy about that.

I was also grateful to see Saru again, as the episode reminded me of why he used to be one of my favourite characters. In five seasons he's gone from being a timid voice of concern, to confronting a whole Breen fleet in a tiny shuttle and scaring them off with his complete lack of doubt. The dude managed to win a staring contest against an alien whose eyes are entirely covered by a helmet.

And Nhan was there too! At least, I think she was. It's kind of hard to tell with those absolutely blinding lens flares. This is the most unfortunate redress of a bridge set since the Columbia in Star Trek: Enterprise; it's hard to even look at this screencap without squinting. Okay Gul Madred, I give in, there are 67 lights.

Yeah I know that shuttles don't have bridges, but the ones in Discovery have that awkward captain's chair in the middle, so... hang on, where's the captain's chair gone? Oh, I see what they've done, they've taken the chair out and added a console at the front so the pilots are sitting further back.

Meanwhile, Book and Culber's shuttle has no console and no light show. Maybe the lights are something to do with the Pathway drive.

Book and Culber's role in the episode is to go on a dangerous shuttle mission outside in the deadly radiation. It's very serious important radiation that needs extra technology and injections to deal with, but never gets mentioned again and doesn't matter in the slightest. If I was given the job of editing the episode to tighten the pacing, the pointless talk about radiation would be the first thing I'd lose.

This is where Culber's new-found spirituality gets a pay-off as he realises that Jinaal has left him with the knowledge of the tractor beam frequency they need to get hold of the Progenitor portal. I'm glad that the writers gave him a plausible source for the knowledge, though he still seems to consider it really spiritual and stuff. And that's the end of his season-long subplot!

It's kind of hilarious that after all the puzzles the crew have solved to get to the Progenitors' lair, there's still one more puzzle to go when they get there. It's like the whole season's been one long drawn out episode of The Crystal Maze.

Though this time it's not designed to test a person's character, it's there as a security system so only people who know the clue from the Eternal Archive can get access. And yet Moll still messes it up after Burnham tells her the answer! Man, even I got this one right and it took me about 0.5 seconds. There are a really limited number of ways to make an equilateral triangle shape using 9 equilateral triangles.

I remember when I was questioning how Moll and L'ak could possibly keep up with a crew of Starfleet's best scientists and problem solvers. At this point it seems pretty clear that they couldn't. In Face the Strange we were told that the Breen had gotten hold of the Progenitor's technology even without the pieces of key that were on Discovery, and now I'm thinking they didn't need Moll and L'ak's help either.

Anyway, Burnham used the correct solution and a Progenitor appeared to give us the least surprising reveal in all of Discovery: Burnham is God. She travelled all this way to find divinity and it's her. Or at least it could be, if she wants to take over this place. That's why all the puzzles she had to solve to get here were designed to test a single person.

This means that Burnham finally has to answer the question that's been hanging over the whole season: what do they do with the Progenitors' technology when they find it? It's a bit weird that the question hadn't already been answered by admirals and presidents a long time ago, there isn't any new information revealed here that would complicate their choice, but I understand that it's a TV show and they have to play up the drama.

What I don't get is why there's no drama! There's nothing to tempt Burnham into using it, there's nothing to make characters come into conflict over what to do, and we don't even get a briefing room debate about the positives and negatives. It can't resurrect L'ak so there's not even a temptation to do that.

All the Federation gets from the Progenitor facility in the end is Moll, which means that this whole season was all about Burnham repeatedly saving her rival from her own stupid choices.

I don't even need to mention that the Progenitors' tech was destroyed at the end, because what else was going to happen? Except for putting it at the back of a giant room full of crates in the Daystrom Institute I suppose.

This plot was very much played by the numbers and wasn't elevated by any great insight. Even the twist that the Progenitors didn't build this ancient technology is pretty familiar to me at this point from other sci-fi stories and doesn't really change much anyway. Though it does raise the question of what happened to the Pre-Progenitors. They built a machine that could seed the galaxy with sapient life, but when the Progenitors came along they found there was no one else like them.

Maybe machines wiped out all life in the previous cycles, like what happened in Discovery season 2 and almost happened again in Picard season 1. Honestly, that scenario would still be pretty familiar to me.

Discovery does earn points by putting more weight on 'we already have a galaxy teeming with life' than the ultra-clichéd 'it's too powerful to be in anyone's hands' as a reason to get rid of it... but that means we missed out on them unleashing the technology's power in a horrifying way that showed everyone why it's too dangerous! I guess we did get to see the aftermath in Face the Strange.

Anyway, while Burnham was doing her protagonist thing, Rayner had the job of pulling off some manoeuvres worthy of a series finale.

Blowing up the fighters by igniting a gas cloud is a pretty basic tactic, the Disco crew don't earn any points for that. Though it's weird to see them outright kill so many Breen after two seasons with hardly any deaths.

Saucer separating to spore jump another ship... now that is a lot more interesting. I'm not sure it makes much sense, but it's a mushroom drive, it never made any sense. I was just happy to finally get a glimpse of the ship separating. I didn't even know it could!

Teleporting the Breen to the galactic barrier is really harsh but Rayner could've easily put them into a black hole so I suppose he was showing some restraint. Especially considering that these guys were the ones that destroyed Federation HQ in the other timeline and killed them all. The season is about the search for meaning in life, and Rayner finds his meaning in screwing over the Breen.

I'm not sure they're going to end up on target without a navigator steering them across the mycelium network, but that's fine as you can't really miss the galactic barrier. It's the edge of the galaxy; just go in any direction and you'll get there eventually.

This brand new feature of the spore drive makes it even weirder that they're discontinuing the project in favour of the Pathway drive, which presumably can't teleport ships to the edge of the galaxy in a heartbeat. But hey, they had to give Stamets an arc I guess. His meaning in life was his legacy, first the spore drive and then the Progenitor tech. Now he has nothing to give to the galaxy.

Though it turns out that Stamets' arc was leading to a short scene where he's a little sad that they're blowing up the Progenitor tech until Adira cheers him up. And that's it for Stamets!

Tilly's academy arc is resolved similarly quickly, with her deciding that one-on-one mentoring is what she needs to do to help her students. Okay, that's not really a storyline though is it? It's almost there, she did talk to Adira and Rayner a couple of times during the season to help them be their best selves, plus that girl in Whistlespeak... but no.

I'm glad that the writers tried to give all the characters their own story this season, but I can't say they really succeeded.

And Book's arc led to him planting a tree. Hopefully it's going to play nice with the local ecology as Sanctuary Four seems like a nice planet.

I suppose he also managed to make a small connection with Moll, who's too injured to walk away from him this time. She's apparently going to be doing secret missions for Dr Kovich now, so I suppose the writers could've been planning to bring her back for season 6 and developing her relationship with Book further. Or maybe not.

It's hard to know what footage was shot when this was just a season finale and what was added later to add more closure. Sure there's a time jump, it doesn't mean that all the new scenes came after it. The scene with Dr Kovich in particular really feels like it was shot for a series finale.

I hadn't seriously considered the idea that he was anyone we'd already know, so when the possibility was put on the table I didn't have time to mentally come up with many candidates. I got as far as 'Data, Dax...' before he revealed that he's Daniels!

Star Trek: Enterprise 2-11 - Cold Front

This twist likely worked about as well for new fans as the Khan reveal in Star Trek Into Darkness, because:

1. The character he's talking to has no reason to know who he is.
2. Half the people watching have no idea who he is.
3. He doesn't resemble the guy he's supposed to be.

I don't hate that Kovich is Daniels though. The helpful guy from the future who was in a few episodes is now a helpful guy in the future who's been in more episodes. The reveal raises more questions than it answers, which I guess is good for a mysterious character, and it means we finally know for sure if he's some shady Section 31 operative or whatever. No, he's a heroic former time agent who we can absolutely trust. Not that he'll ever make another appearance in this show.

It's funny how you have to have watched Enterprise to get the Daniels reveal and you have to have watched Short Treks to understand the final scene of Discovery leaving dock. The writers did at least include some scenes in the finale for Discovery viewers though.

Like we get Saru and T'Rina's wedding! Well, we get to see them in their wedding outfits at least, and the costume department really put the effort in for such a brief appearance. Honestly, I think this was the ideal amount of Saru and T'Rina for me, as I appreciate their relationship more the less I see of it.

In fact, I think I was pretty satisfied with the amount of epilogue we got before the tacked on time jump to Admiral Burnham's cottage. She was back together with Book, they were about to go on another adventure, it was all good. Much more closure than Voyager's ending.

But the episode went and carried on for another 15 minutes and it was... fine, if kind of redundant for the most part. It's nice to see that Burnham and Book lived happily ever after with a family and a massive house, it's a better outcome than most Star Trek captains get.

I also liked that new uniform her son has, I wonder if that's a sneak preview of the costumes for Starfleet Academy. If not, it's a step in the right direction at least. You can actually see what his rank is! Incidentally, the way Magical Girl Burnham's clothes transformed into her admiral uniform was probably the most impressive shot in the episode for me. CGI costume changes is one trick that Discovery definitely has figured out.

I'm giving the episode bonus points for featuring a Starfleet symbol on the ground, just like at the start of episode one. Also, don't think I didn't notice she flew away in shuttle 47.

Speaking of that, the episode's doing well on the Star Trek finale checklist:

• There's a time skip (TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, Picard) - Yes.
• The main character is now an admiral (TNG, Voyager, Picard) - Yes.
• They take a shuttle ride (TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, Picard) - Yes.
• Their ship gets a makeover (TNG, Voyager, Picard, plus Enterprise retroactively) - Yes.

Okay, I'm going to stop listing things.

Star Trek: The Original Series ended its last film with everyone posing on the bridge, but Discovery ends with everyone hugging on the bridge. All of Burnham's favourite officers were there, looking just as they did. We had Bryce and Christopher, the return of Owo and Detmer, and the heroes of the Progenitor arc: Asha, Naya, Gallo and Jemison. Actually no, only the season 4 bridge crew characters were invited to the hug. I suppose that's only fair, as the season 5 bridge crew got invited to Saru's wedding in place of Owo and Detmer.

I have to admit, bringing all these characters back for one last hug without any of them saying a single word is the most Discovery thing imaginable so I guess the writers nailed it.

Plus I'll say one thing about this episode: despite its extended ending I had no idea that it was over an hour long. I would've guessed 50 minutes maybe, not 85 minutes. I can get bored of 20 minute cartoons, so this must have been doing something right.


RATING

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Life, Itself is Discovery's big finale, the end of the series, so the obvious episodes to compare it to would be other Star Trek series finales. Well it's clearly better than TOS's Turnabout Intruder and TAS's The Counter-Clock Incident, those were more like admissions of defeat than true finales, but can it match TNG's legendary All Good Things...? Well one's a celebration of the series that visits its past, present and future, and the other has bad shaky cam fight scenes, so I'm giving this round to TNG.

DS9's What You Leave Behind is the first time Trek ever ended a 10 episode story arc and it set the bar for later series like this to fall short of, so I'm ranking the episode higher. Voyager's Endgame is a bit derivative of All Good Things... and could've really done with a 15 minute epilogue. But I can respect how the series got comprehensively concluded and overall I think I liked the episode a bit more than this. Saru intimidating a Breen is good, but Janeway vs Janeway is better.

Enterprise had These Are the Voyages..., which was so bad Star Trek didn't show its face on TV again for 12 years, so that's getting ranked lower than this. And Picard's The Last Generation was a big hit on the internet, so I'd probably rank that higher.

That puts Life, Itself right in the middle of the list, which feels like the right place to me. Discovery didn't end on its own terms, but it ended in its own way, using a quest for godlike technology as an excuse to explore who Burnham has become at the end of her arc and to get her to an ending far happier than she could've imagined for herself at the beginning at the series.

So I'm going to give it...

7/10

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COMING SOON

That's it for Star Trek: Discovery, there are no more episodes after this, it's done. Though I'll probably write a season 5 review at some point. I wrote for one for each of the last four seasons, it'd be weird if I stopped now.

But next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's Doctor Who episode 5, Dot and Bubble. I'm trying to catch up before the season finale airs!