Discovery season three concluded with Burnham and the crew continuing their fight to retake the ship from the Emerald Chain, Saru reaching through to Su’Kal, and a new captain.
“That Hope is You, Part 2”
Written by Michelle Paradise
Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi
1. Battle Fatigue
While Gene Roddenberry (who gets quoted at the end of this episode) described Star Trek as an action-adventure, it is always possible to have too much action, and like last season, the sheer amount here gets exhausting — Burnham has to reset the ship’s computer! Booker defends Grudge’s honor in a speeding turbolift! Owosekun battles the shutdown of life support to sabotage an engine!
I think the underlying issue is that the Chain (except Aurellio) have defaulted to the thug setting, and they don’t feel like big enough of a threat to justify all this. That said, Osyraa’s death felt pretty cheap: the concept of her trying to vertically “drown” Burnham in the core’s programmable matter was admittedly cool, but it didn’t feel very Trek-like having Michael shoot her blindly with a lethal phaser bolt. Janet Kidder chewed the screen wonderfully this season, and it’s a shame her character won’t get to have that Hannibal/Clarice interplay with Burnham that Georgiou had. I think the exhausting amount of action could’ve meant something if someone had died, but it seems that after Georgiou’s departure, the creators weren’t in the mood to get rid of more cast members (which just proves this season peaked with “Terra Firma“).
2. No-Win Scenarios
There’s a tense moment when the Chain threatens to torture Booker to death, unless Burnham gives them the location of Su’Kal’s dilithium world, something they quip is a “no-win scenario.” Unlike Wrath of Khan though, Burnham is not forced to cope with losing someone under her command: oddly, the one character who does wind up sacrificing themselves is the Sphere data, who keeps dying when the DOT-27s are destroyed, only for the last one — who prevented Owosekun from sacrificing herself — to be repaired at the end by Reno, meaning it’s not permanently lost to the crew. Burnham did make a big sacrifice last week though, when she flushed Stamets out of the ship into Federation HQ, and it’s clear from the look he shoots her at the end of the episode that the repercussions of this will cast a long shadow next season.
3. Foster Families
As I predicted last week, Gray’s brain patterns are detected by the Khi’eth‘s computer, and he receives a holographic Vulcan body to accompany Adira’s Xahean (Po’s species) shell. It means Culber (and Saru) can see and speak to him for the first time: I gotta say, I doubt they ever expected to meet like this. When Su’Kal is persuaded to end and leave the simulation, Gray is worried about becoming invisible to anyone other than Adira again, but Culber vows he’ll find a permanent solution to the issue: it was really sweet seeing him embrace his (unofficial) son-in-law this way.
Likewise, Saru basically becomes Su’Kal’s adoptive father or Bigger Brother after helping him leave his planet. As risible as I’ve found the whole reveal of what caused the Burn, this storyline was a nice way to bring Saru home, and give him a new family, although I do wonder how much screentime he’ll have next season if he’s busy helping Su’Kal adjust to living on Kaminar. (Doug Jones is, after all, 60, and may be getting tired of always wearing prosthetics.)
4. The Elephant in the Room
For the record, I’m really unclear how Booker’s empathic abilities enabled him to teleport Discovery away from the Viridian‘s destruction (I half-expected him to summon another space tardigrade): are mycelium spores actually sentient? Maybe that’s why Vance and Burnham don’t bring it up while sending her on their next mission, but delivering dilithium from Su’Kal’s planet so it’s easier for the Federation to gather together is only a start: it’s well past time they quit relying on space rocks, and found a way to install a spore drive on every starship (you could mass-produce clones of Stamets: you know he’d love it).
Continued below5. Telling Not Showing
It was great seeing Burnham complete her journey to becoming Discovery‘s commanding officer, but it rang a little hollow since we didn’t see her discuss her promotion with Tilly or Saru: I like Vance, but he and Burnham aren’t exactly close. It also felt a bit cheap having Burnham state the Emerald Chain fell apart without Osyraa in voiceover, another example of how every storyline the writers presumably didn’t want to deal with next season was hastily stuffed into a box before time ran out (makes you wonder what other kinds of lowlives — or bigger fish — Starfleet will have to deal with though).
Bonus Thoughts:
– Can Owosekun please have an episode focusing solely on her next season? She’s been getting more and more dialogue, but would like to have a story really substantial for her to sink our teeth into.
– Turns out Cleveland Booker was the name of our Booker’s mentor. (Anyone fancy taking bets that he’s actually still alive?)
Overall, this was an excellent season, even if could’ve been a better season finale: I do feel a bit empty though, as it would’ve gone down better if season 4, or Prodigy — the animated Nickelodeon series, which is the only other Trek series in production — were coming sooner. Regardless, live and long prosper friends.
