Star Trek: Discovery Season 5
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
501: Red Directive 2024 April 4
(First watched 2024-04-04) My interest was piqued when they mentioned an 800-year-old Romulan vessel. From the point of view of Discovery, that would put it very near the time frame of the earlier Trek shows. And sure enough, it seems the season is expanding on well-known TNG episode The Chase. They even made the star long-dead Romulan in this episode a continuation of a background extra from that episode. And Picard gets yet another mention in Discovery, it's at this point almost funny. But The Chase was an episode with a pretty Big revelation, and it's something novels and games have done more with. I think it's not a bad idea for a shorter season of Discovery.
The villain Moll sure seems to have similar hair and makeup style to Shin Hati from Star Wars: Ahsoka.
Star Trek movies sometimes try to have ground vehicle action scenes and I don't think it's been pulled off in a great way. Mostly feels superfluous? And in this era of big budget TV a show like Discovery can try to do it too. But I think this time it was actually pulled off decently? I think mixing up a motorcycle chase with the more Trek-traditional task of trying to protect a town from an avalanche gave it an extra layer of importance and credibility.
So elsewhere in the universe... spore drive development has been cancelled? I don't understand. They mention another new drive type that is continuing on, but unless spore drive research was a MASSIVE resource suck, why not let it continue? And considering Stamets was basically doing said research on his own on one ship for a few years, why would that be the case? It bit the Federation in the ass the last time they didn't have a spore drive to fall back on, and even in this episode we see how they keep running to Discovery in crises because it's the One Ship able to get to important destinations quick enough. So having a few more spore drives around seems like it would be useful?
I continue to enjoy the Saru/T'Rina relationship, and how strongly it comes across even though they both act so reservedly.
Fred! What a surprise, to see another Soong-type who had apparently been operating since the ~26th century? He had a very classic Data style rather than a look that would better blend in with biological people.
502: Under the Twin Moons 2024 April 4
(First watched 2024-04-04) I don't think they were meant to be directly connected, but the defense drones also reminded me of early TNG, The Arsenal of Freedom.
Major cast seem to come and go with some frequency in Discovery. I wonder how much more we'll see of Saru this season, and whether Rayner would've carried on to further seasons. Well, let's see if he survives this one first. First officer of Discovery is sure covered by a wide range. Sometimes it's an ensign, sometimes it's a captain.
The clues on this chase seem a bit simplistic. Or rather, people seem to jump to possible conclusions that turn out to be correct very easily. Like this latest one about twin souls or whatever that they're sure is about Trill, I was thinking Bynar. And who knows how many other possible places in the galaxy a 24th century Romulan might've been thinking of.
(First watched 2024-04-11) A problem I have with this whole treasure hunt thing. It seems kind of... one shot only? Like, here they deduced that they needed to go to Trill, found out who to look up, contacted that person, and after proving themselves were given part of a puzzle. But say Discovery screws up the rest of the season. Can anybody else try again? Say somebody in 300 years follows the clues to Trill, and even if the symbiont left a message behind... sorry, already gave the puzzle piece away to Discovery, don't have any spares!
Rayner still... trying to do his own thing, following the letter of the command to get to know the rest of the crew without getting the intent of letting the rest of the crew know him.
So Discovery is an OK show, but I just want to watch Star Trek: Saru.
504: Face the Strange 2024 April 18
(First watched 2024-04-18) What a fun and crazy episode. Like a less targeted All Good Things.... A few people jumping through time having to solve a problem, giving an excuse to revisit past situations, uniforms, and characters as well as giving a warning about the possible future. We did see the return of some old characters, but not the BIG BIG guys. Lorca I wasn't too surprised to see not brought back for something so small, but considering he's still active on another show I thought there was a good chance for Pike or Spock to be seen. Burnham vs Burnham, what a fun fight. And of course through all of it Rayner learns the value of cooperation and yada yada yada.
Production wonder: Saru was in this episode, but only as a collapsed body seen briefly. I wonder how they pulled that off. I mean, making Doug Jones lay on the floor, easy. But I kind of hate to think of them making him (or a stand-in) go through the big makeup process just for a few seconds of laying on the floor. I wonder if they could get the footage necessary for that on a shooting day for another episode (even with the uniform change), or just use a prop, or... something.
(First watched 2024-04-25) OK, so we didn't get any Strange New Worlds cast members last week, but we got some Strange New Worlds sets this week. The mirror Enterprise from some point after Mirror, Mirror gets taken by people somehow trying to escape to this universe, and apparently made it. Worth noting this does show that the mirror Enterprise at least did not revert to TOS sets in later years. The ship seemed to have a decent amount of power left if it's been sitting in that area for nearly a millennium.
So L'ak is a Breen, and we see what Breen look like in real canon... sort of. I still don't quite understand what's going on with them looking translucent when they first take off the helmet? Can they take different forms? Do they... "go opaque" when a helmet isn't squeezing on them?
Moll and L'ak are on the loose again, but given they're in something centuries old it strains credulity that they'll get very far. Tune in next week to see that they've gotten very far.
(First watched 2024-05-02) Tilly and Michael clearly haven't watched TV. I (and much of the audience, I'm sure) could smell that twist about the winner of the race being a sacrifice coming a mile away. I wonder how often those contests were held? Were they "lucky" that they showed up at just the right time, or were people dying like each day?
The ultimate hiding place for the piece of the puzzle seems like it wasn't as hidden as some others. "Tower 5 on this planet". Well, OK. But these were machines that were degrading with time, wouldn't there be a pretty fair chance someone would be coming along to work on that and not be part of any progenitor hunt at all? It didn't happen, though, and I wonder why. The Burn would explain the last few hundred years, but it was apparently untouched for hundreds of years post TNG time, even though it was a project big enough it couldn't have been one person's secret.
Kind of nice to have scenes between Culber and Booker. Not two characters we see interacting on their own much.
(First watched 2024-05-09) OK, the main thing that episode leaves me with... that Breen dreadnought was ENORMOUS. It can be hard to tell exact sizes of things in Star Trek, but it seemed to dwarf Federation HQ and multiple ships put together. A few episodes back we saw a possible future with Federation HQ destroyed and were led to believe that was due to the Breen getting the Progenitors' technology, but seems like they could smash up the Federation at any time if they wanted to if that's what they're working with.
It was mentioned they didn't have a lot of information about Breen, and Culber even went as far back as records from the Dominion War era. It is... kind of hard to believe that as relative neighbors in the grand scheme of space, the Federation never got any more solid information about them in the following hundreds of years before the Burn. No Breen outcasts or rebels or loners? Even the true nature of the Romulans only stayed a secret for a bit over a century, back in the day.
(First watched 2024-05-16) Nothing particularly wrong with it, but the biggest part of the episode kind of fell flat to me. Passing yet another test to get the last piece of the puzzle, and the test was about knowing oneself? So was the program just not supposed to count it as a victory unless the subject broke down and started talking about their personal fears like Michael did?
Now that the Breen and Discovery both know where to go next, it seems like the final two episodes will be the big climax of this arc. So we ever gonna see people like Saru again who haven't been very involved? Or even Detmer and Owo who were last seen hauling off the ISS Enterprise?
509: Lagrange Point 2024 May 23
(First watched 2024-05-23) From binary stars to binary black holes.
They took advantage of the Breen's armored appearance to disguise themselves and fit in, but... seems a bit too easy. You'd think this is something the Breen might've come up against before in the last thousand years? Or maybe from their point of view even armored uniforms would have enough distinctiveness to tell an individual apart?
(First watched 2024-05-30) Kind of a weird episode. I was wondering how much we'd notice whatever extra scenes they filmed after cancellation, and yeah, at least that ~15 minute segment at the end was pretty obvious. Several Trek shows before have ended with glimpses at a possible future, but this is the first one that straight up jumps forward several decades. This also means it sets some limits on what can happen on the upcoming Academy show or other things set in that time period, but for the most part probably not TOO restrictive. Like, "don't kill off Michael Burnham on another show" is probably easy to work with. Also, they mentioned something about Tilly setting a new record for longest time as an Academy instructor? I found that a bit surprising considering there are other species like Vulcans with significantly longer lives.
And after a few episodes back halfway suggesting that Short Treks episode of Discovery in the far future was a weird hallucinatory Zora, here they go back and NOPE, the reason it appears to be a pre-refit Discovery in the distant future is because... well, they're not going to tell us the exact reasons why, but we do know they did it on purpose. Speaking of secret secrets, Kovich as Daniels? Well I wasn't expecting that, but the timeline works out well enough.
Back to the non-future bits, some of the Burnham/Moll stuff early on felt a bit dumb. Like Burnham convinces Moll to work together, then Burnham attacks Moll, and when Moll's got a gun pointed at Burnham's head she's like "Hey, we can work together!" Yeah, she sure has reason to trust you now!
Best reveal was the... non-reveal. The Progenitors didn't create this technology, but believe THEY TOO were the products of this technology. So instead of closing a mystery, they just blew it wide open.
Congrats to Saru and T'Rina. They got a room.