TL;DR – While you can tell this was never meant to be a season finale, it did still give us a lovely swan song for the series.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this episode.

Star Trek: Discovery Review –

All good things come to an end, and while it was never meant to be the final episode, it is the end. In today’s review, we will first look at how the episode works as a finale. Then, we will take a look at Season 5 as a whole. Finally, we will take a moment to look back at the series in its entirety, the bastion of a new wave of Star Trek during the second golden age of Sci-Fi.    

So to set the scene, after spending all season trying to track down the Progenitor tech, the crew of the USS Discovery-A finally made it to the end of the treasure hunt. However, the Breen beat them to it in Lagrange Point. But as the portal to the tech gets flung into the binary black holes, Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Mol (Eve Harlow) get trapped inside. Now, the Discovery is trapped outside with an angry Breen dreadnaught and a new fleet on its way if Saru (Doug Jones) can’t stop them. Now, we will be looking at the Episode, Season, and Series as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

As you can imagine, two different plot lines run through most of the timeline, with Mol and Michael exploring the portal beyond and the Discovery trying not to get destroyed. The weaker of the two was probably what was happening outside. Part of that is that it never could have hit the story points of what else was going on. But also, it felt, for nearly all of it, that we were watching something cobbled together for the greatest his from the past. We get a less interesting Star Trek Insurrection, which could not have been more foreshadowed if they had tried. Thankfully, they pulled it back with an amicable saucer separation and a creative way of getting rid of the dreadnaught.

But while the battle was a bit hit and miss, and who installed flamethrowers on the Discovery bridge, that seems like a design flaw. We go inside a pocket universe full of gateways to other planets. A couple of dead Breen later, Mol and Michale have to work together, no sorry battle, no work together, oh wait no betrayal, no bonding time. Look, I kid, but I liked this section because it paired everything back. They deepened the mythos around the Progenitors in a direction that I was not expecting at all, which was a genuine surprise. This whole sequence was probably the best use of the digital backdrop to create a world that is fascinating to explore.

I think there will be some discussion as to Michael’s decision at the end because it was the focal point of the entire season, only to get thrown away. However, I think the rationale landed. The Progenitors used technology to make something out of nothing, but they already had infinite diversity in infinite combinations. It worked with Micheal’s backstory, and it made sense, given the destruction that could have been wrought. I also liked the symbolism of starting Discovery with the Battle at the Binary Stars and ending it with the Battle of Binary Blackholes.

Then we have the coda because this is more of an episode and a half, some of which were filmed after the cancellation announcement to help tie everything up. On this, I am of two minds. I did like the little tag that tied up everything with Calypso. However, it felt like paying off some other show rather than focusing on the family. I wish that we had spent more time at Saru and T’Rina’s (Tara Rosling) wedding. We got more than we got with Voyager, and it was nice that we did get one final family moment, which is more than what many cancelled shows get. But there was at least one lovely moment when we got everyone back together, which meant it was nice to see Bryce (Ronnie Rowe Jr.), Detmer (Emily Coutts) and Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) again.

Moving on from the episode to the season, and even though it was never meant to be the final season, I did feel that this might be the most consistent, or at least the post-future time jump part. While it never reached the highest moments, it also miss-stepped all the lows that have played the series up to this point. It is still another series-long story with a tremendous galaxy-wide problem that could destroy everything. However, unlike previous seasons, the focus was more on the journey than the destination. This limited the weight of the season being those last few moments and let us enjoy the ride.

It was also good that this season went out of its way to tie Discovery back on with the wider Star Trek world and previous series. It was a bit more explicitly shown in Kovich’s (David Cronenberg) room of Easter Eggs. Throughout the season, we got to visit touchstones from Voyager, DS9, TNG, SNW, and even a shoutout to Lower Decks, which was a fun moment. Discovery has struggled at times to find itself in the world it is set in. Wanting to keep within a dense world but also marching its own path. This was the first season where it felt completely comfortable in its own clothes, and I am glad that we got to that point.

One shift I did like was removing the storyline of Michael butting heads with a superior, which had been played to death in previous seasons. This time, they shifted things around to her being more of a mentor for Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie). I feel this helped change the tone and focus of the season for the better. It was sad that because of schedule and COVID requirements, there were a number of notable absences throughout the season. However, there was a nice shift in the writing to make it feel more like a family unit this season, which helped to offset that loss.

So, as Discovery comes to an end, how do we place it in the world? Well, without them, we would not have gotten Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Picard. With more on the horizon. As far as blazing trails go, that is a good one to hang your hat on. It also had a rocky start with the changeover of showrunner several times before it got to find its feet and finding that balance of being a prequel while also being made 50-odd years after the original. While not all of their choices have worked for me, I am sorry, no matter how they tried, the new prosthetics they designed for the Orions, Andorians, etc, always had an overproduced plastic feel to it. But on the flip side, the production was always stellar, and we saw it this season with some spectacular vistas.  

In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Discovery – Life, Itself & Season 5? Yes, yes, we do. While I am sad that this is all we will get from the show, other than hopefully some cameos in Starfleet Academy, I am glad it got to finish on its most consistent season yet, and that it got a chance to film a final goodbye.                

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Star Trek Discovery yet?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.   
Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek Discovery

Directed by – Olatunde Osunsanmi, Doug Aarniokoski, Andi Armaganian, Lee Rose, Jen McGowan, Chris Byrne, Jon Dudkowski, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour & Jonathan Frakes
Written by – Kyle Jarrow, Michelle Paradise, Alan McElroy, Johanna Lee, Carlos Cisco, Kenneth Lin, Brandon Schultz, M. Raven Metzner, Lauren Wilkinson, Eric J. Robbins, Sean Cochran & Ari Friedman
Based off – Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry
Created by – Bryan Fuller & Alex Kurtzman  
Production/Distribution Companies – CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout & Paramount+. 
Starring – Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Wilson Cruz, Blu del Barrio, Callum Keith Rennie, Tig Notaro & David Ajala with Oded Fehr, David Cronenberg, Annabelle Wallis, Rachael Ancheril, Tara Rosling, Eve Harlow, Somkele Iyamah-Idhalama, Sawandi Wilson, Elias Toufexis, Chelah Horsdal, Hannah Cheesman, Ian Alexander, Alfredo Narciso, June Laporte, Marium Carvell, Maria Del Mar & Elena Juatco and Patrick Kwok-Choon, Orville Cummings, David Benjamin Tomlinson, Victoria Sawal, Christina Dixson, Natalie Liconti, Emily Coutts, Oyin Oladejo, Ronnie Rowe Jr., Zahra Bentham, Raven Dauda, Barnaby Carpenter, Andreas Apergis, Clare Coulter, Ingrid Rae Docet, Glen Michael Grant, Victor Andrés Trelles Turgeon, J. Adam Brown, Gregory Claderone, Michael Copeman, Addison Holley, Molly Lewis,  Tony Nappo, Dorren Lee, Dorian Grey, Perrie Voss & Leeu
Episodes Covered – Red Directive, Under the Twin Moons, Jinaal, Face The Strange, Mirrors, Whistlespeak, Erigah, Labryinths, Lagrange Point & Life, Itself