All the pieces of the puzzle have been put together. Now with the end in sight, Burnham and her crew are on the edge of their greatest discovery. Yet there are still obstacles in the way with Moll and the Breen having taken possession of the combined Progenitor Artifact, the USS Discovery dead in the water and a potential all out conflict in the background. No wonder Rayner keeps pacing….
The season so far has been a mixed back that’s used the larger puzzle to scatter more personal and smaller scale episodes into the mix. From the planet of the week Whistlespeak, to the time jumping bottle episode Face the Strange right up to last week’s internally driven Labyrinths, it’s time for it all to be dialled up to 11 as Discovery does what it’s al;ways done best by letting everything out for the finale.
Everything gets set up nice and quickly in the episode within the first few minutes, which is a nice relief. Where certain ideas, such as the Langrange Point itself – a point between two black holes where theres an equilibrium of pull – could have been drawn out for a larger technobabbley story, things instantly take a left turn.
Moll and the Breen are winning the last leg of the race. Discovery makes it just before after a rough patch job on half melted systems, and just as they find the Progenitors surprisingly small artefact balanced between the two black holes, the Breen swoop in and tractor it out before Burnham can even ask her bridge crew for options. While Discovery’s defeated, cloaked and figuring out a plan B, back at Federation HQ Saru and T’Rina get roped in to more Breen tensions as another Primark’s heading towards Moll’s new buddies to give them all a spanking to leverage their position.
The entire episode is the first of the big finish for the season and it’s a fairly mixed bag. Some things seem utterly mental but there’s a certain logic to it that’s oddly fascinating. Burnham’s big plan is a weirdly nice callback, whether it was intentional or not. After we dove into her insecurities and pretty much addressed certain subreddits opinions of the captain head on last week, there’s a strange satisfaction to her plan being to sneak on board the Breen ship and steal the prize back.
Sneaking on board enemy megaships is how her story started, and where the bulk of her self loathing and insecurities came from after that resulted in the death of her mentor and captain. Pulling a heist may seem a tad odd, but it does link nicely to Not-Book inspiring her to get over her fear in the library. It’s also a lot of fun that uses Kira’s technique of running around Cardassia with a Breen helmet in the final days of Deep Space Nine, letting Burnham’s away teams hide in plain sight while they try sabotage the Breen ship in an attempt to beam the Progenitor tech away.
Despite some weird moments, mainly the split screen “Aye Captain!” which was a bit odd, and Michael opting to yet again choose the worst possible moment to have a talk about feelings which may have been better placed at the same time Adira was talking to their space dads before their first undercover operation, a lot of the character work in the episode really did showcase just how good this cast are.
Burnham felt more believable with a little bit more assured confidence behind her as she helped inspire and pick her team and the pairing with Book still brings a bit of humanity to them. Rayner was a scene stealer again however, showing how settled he’s become alongside the bridge crew despite not quite gaining his own confidence back after being demoted. Picking Tilly as his first officer, and their reverse mentoring also seems to play nicely which worked well as he finally sat in the Captains chair by the episodes end.
On the outskirts, despite being back at Federation Headquarters propping up the inevitable arrival or another Primark to the mix as a teaser for the finale, T’Rina and Saru still make a calmly interesting pair. It’s also nice to see a Vulcan with more balance following the Enterprise era sort of redefining any Vulcan that wasn’t called Spock into a more arrogant cultural persona. The only downside being that their story is merely a prequel for whats to come while breaking up the more action orientated heist in the A plot.
As a story the episode was fairly fun though being a split finale did harm the momentum a bit. Some beats were always going to be obvious tropes. The heist gone wrong being the big one. And as soon as we saw the artefact was a portal, it seemed destined that Moll and Burnham would end up inside for a cliffhanger ending. But the only real disappointment for me was Moll. Sure, maybe because I was hoping that the arc for her would be a little more sympathetic villain with a twist more than a surprisingly beloved outsider suddenly becoming a supervillian in her own right with flimsy reasoning. I suppose I always expected her to crumble at the wrong grail and wanted a surprised but at the same time, it seems inevitable we’re heading to the finale of The Last Crusade.
For the space action scenes, I quite liked that everything had a science base to the action. Well, kind of. The shuttle in the exhaust miscalculation was more just fun than science, but Tilly and the new pilot figuring out how to counter the binary black holes was a good start while Stamets figuring out how to use Discovery to ram the Breen’s shuttle bay containment field was a very nice touch in using knowledge over just mindlessly giving us an action sequence.
Overall as a set up episode, it was quite a bit of fun. Though it leaves a lot to folow up on in the extended finale. Aside from the reshoots to close the series off as a whole, we’ll have Moll and Burnham in the Progenitor realm – which I can imagine being atest of faith much like their Indiana Jones hints prior to the series launch – Rayner finally accepting his role and the fact his Breen oppressor is on their way with a huge army, and Saru joining the fun in a shuttle to try and not look intimidating as a diplomat. Or rather, finding an excuse to get back on board!
There’s a lot to carry into the last hour and a bit. And a lot of expectations. Aside form the final boss battle and what I imagine will be a question of morality when it comes to the end of the treasure hunt, the excitement for the final piece of the puzzle does come with a lot of expectation as it’s not just the end of the road for the mission to find out how well things will wrap up; but the unexpected and of an entire era which puts a lot of pressure on the next episode…
Star Trek Discovery’s Final Season is avfailable to watch weekly on Paramount+. MEmbers of SFC Quadrant 2 are welcome ot join the Discovery SPoilers & Discussion groups for erpisode discussion in line with Europa’s spoiler policy. For more informaiton, visit Starbase Europa on FB or reach out to your CO of DoFA.
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