Warning: spoilers as much as Discovery S05E07 inside.
Playing cards on the desk: I’ll watch something if it has Star Trek within the title. Hell, I’ll fortunately watch Enterprise, which infamously ditched the franchise branding for its first two seasons in an ill-advised try and modernise. It was a bit pants – an ill-fitting prequel collection the place the ship appeared far more superior than Kirk’s and had a captain unfit to lick his boots, within the form of Quantum Leap’s good boy Scott Bakula. On the time, all of us thought Star Trek may scarcely get any worse. Oh boy.
Star Trek, very like its hyperactive youthful sibling Star Wars, has succumbed to a destiny that befalls many legacy IPs in that these answerable for it are so scared of alienating its present viewers that they not often, if ever, invent new stuff. And so each new addition to the canon turns into an train in navel-gazing: the place Star Trek was about exploring unusual new worlds, it’s now principally about Star Trek. Star Wars is much less in regards to the star warfare than it’s about the identical twelve lads kicking sand on Tatooine. New Ghostbusters is an costly eulogy for Previous Ghostbusters. Even Physician Who has favorite variations of himself. The record goes on.
And look, I get pleasure from all of these issues. I’m not sensible or discerning sufficient to be above one thing that trades on nostalgia, removed from it. My absolute favorite of the brand new Trek exhibits is Decrease Decks, which is actually an prolonged love letter to the “Berman period” Trek I grew up with. It noodles round in that world, selecting up lengthy discarded threads whereas machine-gunning jokes at an viewers of which it assumes quite a lot of prior information.
Discovery is not any much less with the franchise’s baggage and no much less eager to roll round in it. However it’s a irritating beast. There’s a good present in there making an attempt to get out from beneath all of the wet-eyed staring, the cloying overtures, and the tedium of season-long arcs that stretch single-episode concepts over a dozen torturous hours of drip-fed algorithm fodder. In actual fact, this season, the final ever, has been the very best but for minimising all that.
In earlier years Discovery has oscillated between irritating and boredom-inducing with its erratic pacing and unfixable character points – which require a number of extra articles than I wish to write to correctly focus on, however it may be summed up as Michael Burnham having a number of dozen extra likeable characters round who’re not often given something to do past wanting impressed along with her antics. However Season 5 kicks off with a uncommon deal with: a full reveal of what all of the fuss is about earlier than the primary set of credit roll.
In a small means, it’s a disgrace that it’s the ultimate season, as a result of this exhibits actual development. We all know very early on, because of a diegetic PowerPoint presentation made up of Star Trek: The Subsequent Era stills (nonetheless that’s speculated to work), that this season is all in regards to the Progenitors. That’s, a race of latex-smooth humanoids who had an unlimited Milky Approach-spanning empire within the dim and distant aeons earlier than the Federation existed, who had been as soon as revealed to have seeded the genesis of all of Star Trek’s numerous bipedal humanoid races. This occurred in an episode of The Subsequent Era referred to as The Chase which aired round thirty years in the past and wasn’t supposed to be some form of earth-shattering revelation for the viewers: if something, it was a little bit of a joke. A refined, model of the form of jibes Decrease Decks often makes. A bit of nudge and/or wink to a savvy viewers acknowledging that each one the aliens are simply common people with rubber glued to their heads.
In these days, it wasn’t deemed obligatory to clarify each possible quirk and side of a fictional universe. Significantly not if that real-world reply boiled right down to time and funds, as these items invariably do. Star Trek may have fortunately continued with out ever having answered the query of how a Vulcan and a Human can produce viable offspring. It by no means wanted to clarify why Bolians, Andorians, Romulans, Bajorans, Cardassians, and Trills all have the identical variety of knees and nostrils. It definitely didn’t want to clarify why Movement Image-era Klingons had Cornish pasties for foreheads, whereas within the authentic collection, they had been simply dudes coated in Ronseal – and pointedly refused to, even throughout an episode of Deep Area 9 the place each eras of Klingon ended up side-by-side in a Area Welcome Break for causes I gained’t get into.
Years later, Enterprise would spend two treasured hours of its jam-packed closing season developing with a silly clarification for the Klingon discrepancy that was as pointless because it was self-indulgent, invoking Khan Noonien-Singh and Information alongside the way in which for good measure. As a result of by that time, the rot had set in. All the things had a prequel. All the things had an origin story. We had been initially of a pattern in media that might finish with us right here, three or 4 Borg Queens later, the place we have now a whole TV present explaining how Boba Fett survived the Sarlacc pit (was it even obligatory for him to outlive?) as a spin-off from the present that explains his hat.
So now, years on from explaining why Mirror Universe ships have moodier lighting, giving Part 31 its personal fleet when it’s not even speculated to have a single-ring binder, and strolling again its personal try at a Klingon redesign with lore additions that frankly make no sense, Discovery is again to unravel the thriller of the Progenitors – besides first, it has to gaslight us into accepting that there’s a thriller to unravel.
TNG’s episodic nature not often left something unresolved after an hour. The Chase’s conclusion is not any totally different. The Progenitors are revealed to be, effectively, the Progenitors. Requested and answered. Directed panspermia has been a well-liked concept in regards to the origins of life on Earth because the mid-sixties. The concept this planet was “seeded” with the genetic code to humanity as a conceit venture by another humanoid species is only one of many science-not-necessarily-fiction ideas, proposed by legit scientists and philosophers, which were folded into Star Trek’s lore. Wormholes. Antimatter. Androids which have working willies. On the time of broadcast, the existence of an ancestor race was no kind of particular than a Dyson’s Sphere, or an area probe filled with cryogenically frozen capitalists, or some other single-episode thought.
There was no follow-up supposed, nor was it deemed essential to reveal the means by which the Progenitors achieved their galactic seeding venture – Discovery’s now fabled “Progenitor Know-how” – into a selected factor. It was a time of 22-26 episode seasons, livid competitors for advert spend, and nothing in the way in which of catch-up or on-demand TV service.
Issues change, after all. The Chase is now merely Half Certainly one of a multi-episode arc of streaming TV, one through which the Progenitor’s tech has been retconned as a factor you may wield like a weapon, versus the huge multi-discipline engineering venture you may need imagined it being. Panspermia, as a rule, proposes asteroid impression as a supply mechanism, so it’s not laborious to think about how that particular bit could possibly be used as a Huge Gun. However individuals with warp drive and transporter know-how hardly want a sensible ancestor race to clarify “hit with huge rock”, so one assumes that when this Progenitor Tech is ultimately revealed, it’ll be some form of summary swirly factor that magics planets to demise. Or life. Kind of just like the Genesis Machine, which is a factor that the Federation already has. We’ll discover out in just a few weeks, I suppose. Name me cynical, however I’m bracing myself for underwhelment.
It appears vapid to take one thing merely reflective of a author’s Clinton-era optimism, and reverence for the likes of Carl Sagan, and switch it right into a militarised MacGuffin. One other tedious thriller field for a present that’s obsessive about them. However, you could possibly fairly argue that the Progenitors are fertile floor for fleshing out, and that the producers of Discovery are effectively inside their rights to develop and mess around with this mythology. It’s not like there was ever a selected intent to by no means refer again to it. It could in all probability have been way more attention-grabbing to look at its impact at a societal stage, a diplomatic stage, a spiritual stage – however Disco has a quota of cool flips to fill, and Star Trek being a affected person present about competent individuals having conferences is a factor of the previous. So, if one squints, it’s not laborious to see why this present is the way in which it’s.
No quantity of squinting can clear up the horrendous choice to spoil The Breen, nonetheless. It has stripped away the mystique of a Star Trek race whose total USP was mystique. From scant mentions on Subsequent Era to their emergence in Deep Area 9 as a serious Alpha Quadrant energy of never-nudes, canonical details about them is intentionally scarce, imprecise, and contradictory. What little we had been led to grasp in regards to the Breen homeworld, for instance – that it’s frozen – was contradicted on-screen by fan-favourite Dominion schemer Weyoun, describing the planet as “fairly temperate”. Was he telling the reality? Who is aware of. If that’s the case, why does the Breen want refrigeration fits? What do they appear to be beneath their helmets? Are they androids? Are all of them Carrie Fisher? Beats us, however have enjoyable discussing it on TrekBBS!
However now we have now solutions to these questions. Solutions so contorted round these contradictions that they barely make sense. Refrigeration as a type of therapeutic remedy? The Breen are gelatinous until they select to not be, which they’ve an enormous cultural stigma towards? Their mysterious language being an digital distortion of sounds they apparently make with regular humanoid throats? Nothing that Discovery may have imagined to fill in these gaps would ever have stood as much as a long time of fan hypothesis, but it surely’s gobsmackingly poor kind to make them regular Star Trek guys.
Unmasking The Breen demonstrates, for what should be the dozenth time, that the makers of Discovery have been let free on one thing that they barely perceive the enchantment of. And it’s nonetheless irritating as a result of there are glimmers of a significantly better present midst all of this.
The earlier season finale handled Star Trek’s most alien race but – aliens from the sting of the galaxy whose language was so incomprehensible that precise problem-solving needed to be executed by the crew to decipher it. It was in all probability probably the most life like depiction of what an actual first-contact scenario can be like. Let’s not neglect that Discovery gave us the backdoor pilot for Unusual New Worlds, which is an nearly flawless Star Trek present for the trendy age that merely wouldn’t have been potential with out Discovery’s breakout success in reviving the franchise altogether.
This season has had some barnstorming motion scenes, episodic adventures, and the addition of a fantastic new character within the type of Commander Rayner who provides some much-needed battle to the obscenely schmaltzy bridge dynamic. It additionally had a type of episodes the place they go right down to a primitive planet and find yourself getting caught up in a seemingly innocent ceremony that seems to be a sinister human sacrifice ritual. That’s correct Star Trek, that’s. They even disguised themselves by turning into rags and drawing some crap on their foreheads. Bliss. The nineties are again, baybee.
We’ve nonetheless acquired three episodes to go, so it’s not over fairly but. However whereas I’ll keep it up till the top as a result of it’s Star Trek and I’m a mark, I gained’t miss it when it’s gone – I’ve a love/hate relationship with Discovery that leans a bit closely towards the latter finish. It’s typically tedious, the artwork route is edgier than a young person’s bed room wall, it’s filled with bland characters, and a few of the retcons and lore additions it has made have been completely atrocious. Vile. Bordering on cultural vandalism.
And but, it defied the ranty YouTube critics who forecast its cancellation inside one season. Then two. Then three. Then 4. A few of these individuals will probably be gloating now because the present involves an awfully profitable run for an costly science fiction present within the streaming period, however solely to make means for its second of three spin-offs: a Starfleet Academy-focused present which I’ve little question will probably be primarily Discovery Season 6 in observe. And I’ve to credit score it with bringing again my beloved Star Trek for a spherical of recent triumphs: a definitive ending for the TNG crew, Decrease Decks, Prodigy, and the aforementioned Unusual New Worlds have all been fully price investing in.
Sure, it’s a bit crap. However what a legacy it leaves behind. In that means, it might be probably the most Star Trek present of all.
