Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Discovery | 5x10 "Life, Itself"
Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Discovery | 5x10 "Life, Itself"
Logline
Series Finale. Trapped inside a mysterious alien portal that defies familiar rules of time, space, and gravity, Captain Burnham must fight Moll – and the environment itself – in order to locate the Progenitors’ technology and secure it for the Federation. Meanwhile, Book puts himself in harm’s way to help Burnham survive and Rayner leads the U.S.S. Discovery in an epic winner-takes-all battle against Breen forces.
Written by: Kyle Jarrow & Michelle Paradise
Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
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This was ... a DISCO episode.
Lengthy but meaningless action sequences? Check. Shaky cams all the damn time? Check. People talking about their feelings at the worst possible moment? Check. No apparent command structure and people just doing whatever they want? Check. One-dimensional villains? Check. Flamethrowers on the bridge? Check. (although, to be honest, those are so absurd that I'll actually miss them)
I liked the future scenes because they were noticably slower and cerebral than pretty much anything that Discovery did during its five seasons. I wish they would have done something like that more often.
But yeah, that's it. I'm somewhat glad it's over. I liked the first two seasons of the show. Despite their flaws I appreciated that they've tried something new in the Star Trek franchise. And ultimately that led to Strange New Worlds, so I'll have to give them credit for that. Anything after the season 3 time jump was not my cup of tea though. There was never enough worldbuilding for my taste because so much screentime was devoted to Burnham and Book, and that meant that the 31st century never really felt "real" to me.
Maybe I'll rewatch seasons 1 and 2 somewhere down the line but I have no interest in watching seasons 3-5 again. I'll just treat them as Burnham's fever dream or something like that.
The contemplative and slower tone of the coda really highlighted what was lost in switching to shorter seasons with a long serialized arc to babysit. Imagine if we had those arcs but with a handful of bottle episodes peppered throughout.