Discovery to end with Season 5

Oh thank God

You do know though that season 5 will be 100% internal monologue. While she walks through the ship in slow motion with swirling camera angles as the rest fawn over her

Ah…so sense does exist at some level in that organization. As others have said, Season 3 should have been the finale (and even seemed to be framed like one), and this final 5th season smacks them running out of ideas / resources to keep this going.

I honestly thought they’d limp on for another two seasons. Season 6 would probably chronicle how Michael single-handedly brings The Dominion in to the Federation while Season 7 covers how she’s made Federation President, because why not it’s Michael.

Any bets on Michael dying in the final episode to save the entire Trek multiverse, thus cementing herself as Trek’s most important character? That or she’ll live and threaten to pop up in cameo at any moment in future Trek.

Now that we know it’s over (unless Murphy’s Law somehow reverses this) I guess it is time to consider the legacy of this show.

Some people might credit it as the show the got Trek back on TV, but I am of the view that the JJ Movies are more deserving of this credit and that Discovery merely rode the wave that these films generated as well as the promise to bring us back to the established Trek time-line we had known for years.

But there I think lies the main problem with Discovery. It was born of JJ Trek and looked like it belonged to that universe, but then pivoted to be part of the TOS Trek world we were used to. It felt like a show that was unsure of what exactly it was supposed to be, and instead of making it’s mind up it reacted to audience whims.

• Burnhams wooden Vulkan-lite performance was recieved poorly, so they went the opposite way turning her into an emotional wreck.
• The fans complained about continuity, so they threw the show into the distant future that didn’t really work either.
• A lack of focus on the rest of the crew resulted them stopping several times during Season 4 episodes to give the extended crew screentime. But the way they did that was artificial and dragged the episodes down.

The show just reacted to the audience in an admirable yet alas talentless attempt to make Trek that the fans would happily consume.

Finally, they attempted to make a Trek show built around a single character, which in theory should work, but required excellent writing, casting and directing to make that one character work….and they failed on all three counts. Discovery is essentially the “Soniqua Martin-Green SCI-Fi Hour” and alas she hasn’t the range to be the singular focus of a show like this. She normally plays supporting characters and my guess is she won’t be headlining a show again after Discovery. The showrunners should have identified this problem earlier and addressed it, but they didn’t. They doubled down and made it that much harder to get behind this show.

We do owe Discovery thanks for having more Trek on TV, but alas I feel that is it not due to it doing a good job. I feel that Lower Decks was made as almost a reaction to Discovery, highlighting classic TNG-era stylings possibly even showing what Burnham might have been if written correctly in the form of Mariner. Strange New Worlds exists as a reaction to one of the few highlights of Discovery with the reintroduction of Pike and the pre-TOS Enterprise crew. This was an escape from the Michael-centric slant of Discovery and people wanted more. Finally, Picard appears to exist as a definitve answer to something Discovery was not really good at answering..."Is this the same Trek universe as before?" Having a show about Picard seemed like a solid way to answer that, and like many I was excited by this. But again...that was in spite of Discovery and their dancing on the border of JJ-Trek and what we had before. All of these shows came about thanks to Discovery's failures.

It should now remain as yet another example of a wasted chance to do something new & interesting with Trek. I hope it serves as an example of what not to do when you wish to continue a show like Trek and that future TV folk can learn from this.

Great news. Gave up after they made Burnham "Space Jesus" in S2, and that she was the reason Spock reached out to humans and eventually formed the bond with Kirk and McCoy we all love from TOS etc

Then there was other nonsense like Tilly. Saru was about the only good thing/actor in the show.

Won't be missed. Several years too late but better late than never I guess!

She already is in charge of a new section of Federation politics that has total veto and oversight of the President.

Not surprised it's finished. The 32nd century stuff felt like it was going nowhere.

The mis-use of the Spore Drive sort of broke the whole concept of the show for me. As you wrote, as a risky last-minute desperate move it seemed interesting. But they spore-jumped so often I don't really remember the ship ever being at warp. On that note, was Main Engineering ever shown? By the time I stopped watching after Season 3 I do not remember them going there once. I assumed the ship had a warp drive, otherwise those gignantic naycelles are just silly.

The spore-drive also introduced the word "Mycelial" to Trek technobable which I feel like they swung around like a plot hammer whenever they needed an excuse for the Discovery to factor into anything. Sort of their take on "Sub-space" I guess.

I do also miss Jason Issacs, I feel that his precence was a lingering echo of the much better Trek show that was originally planned before the production got handed over to talentless f*ckwits.

This too. It's so far removed from the Trek we consumed before it's very hard to get invested in the Future Federation or Future Starfleet (a better uniform & comm badge might have helped).

In fairness, TNG started with a new expanded Trek world that TOS viewers had to get used to and that many initially hated. But with TNG they put the effort in to build the TNG-era Trek world into something that Trekkies would later even tune into Voyager to revisit. 32-Century Alpha Quadrant appears bereft of any of the character and I had a very hard time caring about any of it.

I could however see myself watching some more Trek post-Picard. 1000 years seems to be plenty of room to keep Trek rolling without going near this mess of a timeline.

I think not having the mycelial network be a metaphor was the beginning of the end. Putting some kind of limit on the spore drive in general would have helped like if it had a minimum jump distance or something.

Shte talk like "klignots" and childish edgelord STD stuff was one of the most annoying things about the whole experience that was Discovery.

It has so much wrong with it but you couldn't have a decent conversation about it.

Also you seriously need to learn what " is for.

Can we stop using the word edgelord for things like calling DSC STD and keep it reserved for actually spicy jokes?

I liked the show well enough, though always felt the last episode or two where they revealed the actual source of the problem was a major let down. 'The Burn' cause... uuuugggghhhhhh.

I felt this was a persistent problem in Discovery and at least the first 2 season of Picard.

Kind of smacked of not only bad writing, but also bad overall planning of the story arc. They'd always seem to rush to the conclusion in a way that negates the entire season.

• DIS S1: Klingon War! (Resolved last minute by bomb iPad)
• DIS S2: Mysterious Red Angel! (It's Burnham, because reasons)
• DIS S3: Warp destoryed, Federation in bits, need to find Starfleet. (Finds Starfleet...barely an inconvience, makes space-kid feel better. Everything fine in last 10 minutes)

I could go on, but you get the idea. They just didn't know how to finish. I am somewhat tempted to watch the final episode of this. By now I know that I don't actually need to watch Season 5 itself since they'll just fill it with the usual nonsense and cram everything plot-related into the end. It will interesting to see if they know how to finish this, or if they are true to form and can't even do a finale right.

She will also be crying. She constantly has tears in her eyes. I heard people calling it Cry Trek :)

Picard S3, SNW and Lower Decks give me some hope that the mistakes made on Discovery have helped them learn for future Trek projects.

Discover really felt like it was supposed to close on Season 3, but I suspect the need to keep their production roster full kept it going past that point. Season 5 wasn’t even supposed to be the finale, and got pushed to be reshot as one. I still think they would have tried for 7 seasons if whatever prompted them to pull it hadn’t happened.

Which cast members ?

Agreed, the rabidity of certain fans isn't ever an accurtate barometer of the quality of a show. I think it's fair to say in the face of this much - almost widespread - criticism, Discovery isn't simply divisive, it's (objectively?) badly, badly, written.

Great news terrible show.

Yea, you could almost describe Discovery as Star Trek’s Marmite. It’s one of those things where you have total love or total hatred for it. Although for moderate souls for myself, not «total hatred» but lack of love for the show, and without that love I seem to have no patience for it either. Without patience the mistakes they make are harder to ignore and quicker to irritate.

I also agree that it is telling that they had to keep retooling the show’s concept. This is something they appeared to have nailed down early in the production of previous Trek shows:

• TNG: Essentially TOS, but 100 years later with updated tech.
• DS9: Political thriller set on a remote outpost.
• VOY: TOS again, putting a ship in unexplored space, but with a twist of them also trying to get back to Earth.

Discovery on the other hand:

• DIS S1 (Take 1): Antology series of various Trek characters, starting with a mutineer named Burnham
• DIS S2 (Take 2): Crap, we had to change production staff! How about we just run with our first antology idea for as long as we can? Kay?
• DIS S2: People like Spock right? Lets make Burnham his sister, then they’ll like her too! Also I suppose a TOS crossover will shut up those compaining fans?
• DIS S3: Damn it! Alight, how about this, we put the show in the future? Then the fans are happy about canon. Also people are complaining about Burnham being wooden, so lets make her cry alot. Also lets copy the concept of Voyager for very short while.
• DIS S4: People still don’t like Burnham?! Fine, we’ll make her Captain, then they’ll love her. Bad guy for the season? Emm….guess we could copy V’Ger from TMP?
• DIS S5 (Take 1): I dunno anymore…they are in a race to find space treasure. Get Burnham to «surf» on the ship or something. If we get her to do dangerous stuff surly they like her then?
• DIS S5 (Take 2): Cancelled?! Dammit, reshoot stuff to make our stupid space treasure race seem more important to a finale…somehow.