Thoughts Upon Finishing Star Trek Discovery

Star Trek Discovery will always have a special place in my heart. I grew up with nineties Trek. After three shows hitting seven seasons a piece (and in the delicious days of 22 plus episodes seasons) this glorious era ended on a low of Enterprise being cancelled in only its fourth season with an finale that insulted its cast, the characters, and me, personally. (But at least that final season had aimed for fun and adventure, and easily has my most reached ENT episodes.)

But after twelve years Trek was finally, *finally* back on the telly (*insert long rant re Those Movies*). My excitement was high, my expectations were…actually they were pretty mediocre. All I wanted was a Trek series that I would enjoy and that wouldn’t be cancelled after three episodes.

And Disco went way, way, past that. I was so giddy when I saw the trailer for the first time, when it centred two woman as mentor and mentee (and one of them was Michelle Yeoh!) I was so excited to be thrown back into this universe that I loved. And I expected changes, incongruities, ships looking shinier than they did in 1966. I’m never thrilled with prequels as ideas, but I can come around. The wariness comes from wanting very much to see What Happens Next, rather than Oh No They Will Fuck Up Fifty Year Old Continuity feelings. (Let me tell you how much I don’t care about all the times they’ve changed the Klingon make-up…no, wait, I’m not doing that. I don’t care, I cannot emphasise enough how much I don’t care.)

Said wariness quickly turned to joy. The first hit was from the snappy chemistry between the Big Three of the USS Shenzhou in the pilot. I knew this wasn’t where we were staying, but the care with Burnham, Georgiou, and Saru in eking out every morsel of characterisation a a handful of scenes, effectively setting us up for a Whole Other Show was delicious. That two-part opener is one of Trek’s best two-parters. Every time I see it I get the same sort of tingles as a Best of Both Worlds rewatch, a few notches down, sure, but tingles nonetheless.

And there’s something special about that first season. I’m on the hill of it being one of the best year’s of Trek. It was so confident and exciting and fresh. Like the people making it felt the weight of what they were doing (much like the first series of Doctor Who’s 2005 return), and knew they might kill Trek forever, or at least for another generation. And so they threw everything they had at it in terms of ambition and skill and effort, and if they failed, well, at least they failed gloriously. But they didn’t, and the show got five solid years. And began a new Trek telly era.

There are bad episodes of Disco, but they are few. There really isn’t a bad season. It’s feeling around for its identity after season one, and it settles down by four, and I don’t mind that. I can see how it could feel like scrabbling around awkwardly, but I saw it as entertaining exploration.

I managed to stay unspoilered for the end despite watching it months after broadcast. And it’s not terrible. It felt even less terrible when I found out they didn’t know about the cancellation till the last minute and had about five seconds to wrap the story up with some kind of series ending. And I did tear up, so, hey, would be absurd to say they failed. It succeeded. Moderately. It’s no What You Leave Behind or All Good Things… but bloody hell is it leaping over Endgame and whatever the fuck was going on with ENT. There have been sufficiently shit Trek finales that any that don’t end with my yelling at the screen I consider good.

And Burnham. She’s what made me fall in love with the show. Especially in that first year. I don’t think any character in Trek has had such a powerful single season character arc as she did in season one. I enjoyed my rewatch of the show, I enjoyed seeing the final episodes at last, but it never matches the punch of that first season. Which sounds awful. but it’s not that the later seasons are bad, it’s just the first one is *so good*.

So I’m going to miss these guys, and now I’m just two episodes from the end of Lower Decks, thus I can shortly enjoy another emotional crises about telly characters no longer getting new adventures. Hurrah!