I have mixed feelings about Disco ending. I really dug the first season’s look at a Federation at war, and following the person who arguably set that war in motion dealing with her culpability. Add to that a ship that is part weird science lab, part haunted house. And yeah, I could live with the Klingon redesign.
It was inventive, it took risks and broke some moulds — and not always successfully, mind you. But I stuck with it from the hopeful “First three seasons are for growing pains” Trek paradigm.
Then the show took some odd turns. Rather than focusing on the crew’s adventures in space and science, season two constructed a cosmic conundrum around Burnham and her family. I was still on board for the characters, even bearded Spock no matter how shoehorned in he felt. The show’s unapologetic optimism was still a big selling point, too.
With season three came the time jump into a future that absolutely does not feel like it’s a thousand years ahead of the previous season. The jump in technology should be proportional to a Viking longboat rocking up to the ISS, but it felt like a step back. And at this point, the extended crew of the Discovery was thoroughly sidelined: Burnham’s personal relationships took priority over everything else.
For one example: As great as Michelle Yeoh is, the show basically redeemed a murderous space despot because… she reminded Burnham of her Starfleet counterpart?! I’m going to stop you right there, Captain “This is Starfleet” — this is a person who kept rubbing in Saru’s face how familiar she was with the taste of his species’ flesh.
I’ll keep watching Disco through to its end because I’m invested in the remaining characters, but this isn’t the show I apprehensively fell in love with anymore. Its strengths are all but gone, its faults enhanced, and its commercial(?) failure seems to have convinced the Powers That Be that future Star Trek needs to be grounded in nostalgia for previous eras.
I will miss the first season’s promise of new, daring Trek shows writ large, and as much as I liked Pike and his crew in season two, SNW leans too heavily and knowingly on the franchise’s campier canon for my taste (I know I’m in a minority with that opinion, and I’m not here to argue for or against). With peak TV fading, I’m afraid we won’t see anything as bold as TNG, DS9 — or early Discovery — again.
Oh, never apologise for explaining such a good point at length! Ever so often watching Discovery I’ve had to remind myself that Burnham is partially raised Vulcan, and that that background at odds with her humanity is part of motivating her actions. Sometimes the writers are subtle about it, sometimes not so much.
Ah, I see what they did there…! 🤣
As for innovation seeping back into the shows, my hopes are also for a Starfleet academy show because it’s such a shift in setting and age group from what we’ve seen before. On the other hand, with Paramount dropping Prodigy and closing Disco to focus on SNW, they’re really circling the wagons around the well-known formulae and characters.
I sort of feel like Disco was our shot at reinventing Trek for the 21st century, and they dropped the ball early on.
There’s a Blind Melon lyric from the song Tones Of Home that I really like:
That’s a strong way of putting it, but it’s easy to see the canopy of greed holding back innovative writing as soon as it starts affecting viewer reception. The production companies (fairly or not) are always about that bottom line: it has to sell 😕. But hey, it makes us appreciate the glimmers of creativity all the more so, like stars, small points of light on the backdrop of the night sky.
Its hard to say how it will turn out too, like with Firefly. Fox cancels the show, but then we get the movie Serenity as consolation. Here’s to hoping Starfleet Academy is that consolation to us!