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.
That was an ending alright. I feel like the epilogue was nice, with no killing of a main character for no reason (looking at you ENT) and everyone got a pretty happy ending. And Calypso at least is canon, but it'd have been nice to have more context on what the end game is.
But my problem is that the emotional pay off just doesn't feel deserved. I really just don't feel connected with the characters and crew enough. I really feel like more episodes (or a lot more) to really flesh things out would have helped a lot.
But you know what I think I might actually like. A movie. I feel like tightening up the epic galaxy ending plot in a 90 to 120 minute feature film would feel better then a 10 ep season. I doubt we'll get one, but it'd be nice to see what kind of nonsense Burnham gets in to since they end it on a pseudo cliff hanger (as is DISCO tradition).
But what was up with Detmer and Owo being side lined for the second half of the season. I was expecting some kind of pay off for that, but nothing... It seemed unnecessary.
Discovery did emotional payoff for characters it never used all the time. Or like, emotional payoff was a sign that they were about to get used the first time. Discovery really wore it's emotional payoff on its sleeve.
It looks like they're doing a better job of retaining props from shows once they've wrapped, so maybe there's a chance they'll put the sets in storage in case they decide to use them again - either in a movie (the rumour is/was that they want to do a streaming movie every two years), or for the occasional guest appearance on the Academy show.
But what was up with Detmer and Owo being side lined for the second half of the season.
Michelle Paradise said yesterday that both actors were unavailable during filming, having booked other projects.