Warning: this post contains spoilers from the end of the season on Thursday Star Trek: Discovery.
Star Trek: Discovery ended its third season with a well-deserved promotion in the ranking. The end of Thursday saw Burnham lead the Discovery crew in a fierce fight to retake the ship from the evil Osyraa and save the Federation – and she was finally rewarded for being named the Discoverythe new captain of. She will now lead the Discovery how it sends much-needed dilithium to distant planets, now that The Burn mystery has been solved. (Read our full recap here.)
So, what’s next for Burnham and the Discovery? (CBS All Access renewed Discovery for the 4th season in October.) TVLine talked to Discovery co-host and executive producer Michelle Paradise (who wrote the ending) about Burnham’s big promotion, and we also asked him some uncomfortable questions. Will Stamets’ grudge against Burnham last? And Saru is still a member of Discovery crew, since he was visibly absent at the end of the end? (In addition, we had to ask about Grudge the cat.) Keep reading for answers, fellow Trekkies.
TVLINE | The season ends with Michael in the captain’s chair, which has been a long time. We kind of always knew she was going to get there, but why is this the right time for her to lead this ship?
It seemed like the right time to do that. It felt like we had taken her on this incredible journey over the course of three seasons, and we knew at the start of season three that this is where we wanted it to end. It’s something that I think people have been waiting for since the show started, and then when we started season 3, the conversations we had were: Well, if that’s where we want it to go, how far can we take it at the top of the season, so that she has the most satisfying arc possible for season 3, but also to make up for the journey she had over seasons 1 and 2? So, giving her the opportunity to enter this new future and stay here for a year without the rest of our heroes Discovery, and allowing it to grow and change during that time and come back and find out where it fits, it felt like the right kind of journey for the character. It also allowed us, throughout the 3rd season, to find new layers for that character and, of course, new layers for our incredible actress to play.
TVLINE | So, under Captain Burnham, the Discovery he is now in charge of delivering dilithium to distant planets. Is that the model for season 4?
I can’t really talk specifically about season 4, but thematically, season 3 was about connecting and disconnecting and how to find your way back to each other. And The Burn made this impossible in many cases, because civilization simply did not have the means to communicate. So it seemed like an important journey to start at the end of our season: How do we move forward in the process of reconnecting worlds with each other? It seemed to be the first important step. Now that they have a dilithium cache and they will certainly have to be responsible for not repeating the mistakes of the past and just abusing them, but it seemed like the right place to end the season and prepare whatever is to come.
TVLINE | You ended the episode with a quote from Gene Roddenberry and the old school Star Trek theme song. It was a way of connecting the ending back to those Trek roots?
Yes, in everything we do, we’re always thinking about the original Trek roots, and what Gene Roddenberry started, what he established with the original Trek series … it’s hard to overstate how innovative it was at the time. And, of course, it continues to influence all Trek series since then. The quote in particular was something that came up later in the editing process. Given what is happening in the world today, it looked like it would be an appropriate message to end our season, especially from it.
TVLINE | You didn’t even know how appropriate this week would be.
I know! This whole season really resonated in a way that we obviously could never expect. When we were writing all this, there were many divisions and disconnections, but we could never have predicted the pandemic to arrive. So, having this happening at this moment, when we were already thematically dealing with some of the things we were experiencing then, but we are experiencing it much more intensely now … a look at what was happening in society and use science fiction as a way to reflect a little bit about it, talk and comment about it and say: “The challenges we are having, we can overcome them. It doesn’t have to be as divisive as it is. ”All of that still resonates today, for sure.
TVLINE | It was just smiles at the end, but I realized that Stamets snubbed Michael a little. It seems that he still holds a grudge against her for putting Hugh in danger. How serious is this crack?
I think that they will overcome with time. It was a very emotional and deeply personal thing for Stamets: “Wait a minute, shall we take a break to get back to them? We can not do that! Burnham, of course, loves Culber, Adira and Saru, but he also knew that if they made that choice at that moment, there would be no Federation to go back to. And for Stamets, it was just that personal need. Fortunately, she and the team found a way to do both, but he was obviously still having some emotional responses to that. But I hope he gets over it.
That was one of those things, by the way, that we, throughout the third season, wanted to make sure that our characters, whatever they were experiencing, that their emotional responses were substantiated and that we didn’t blow things up. So having Stamets having that kind of emotional response at the time seemed realistic. It seemed as realistic as having our crew challenged to reach this new future and forced landing, and it is not what they expect. So, we wanted to try to find a way to look at these very real emotional responses in the middle of the science fiction narrative.
TVLINE | I didn’t see Saru on the bridge at the end. Just to confirm: is he still part of the crew? Can we count on seeing him in season 4?
Yes, he is absolutely coming back. The end of the season for him was to return to Kaminar to help Su’Kal, so he wasn’t there at the end, but we are not going to let Doug Jones go anywhere. He’s definitely back in action for season 4.
TVLINE | The book made a big impact this season, as did his cat Grudge, and it looks like they’re part of the Discovery crew going forward. What did he bring to Burnham as a character this season, and where do these two go from here?
First, David [Ajala] it’s phenomenal. We were lucky to have him with us this season. I think coming this season, we knew we wanted to explore different sides of Burnham. We wanted to give her a chance to grow and change, and to give Sonequa [Martin-Green] an opportunity to play new things with her. In previous seasons, she had a tense relationship with Tyler … “tense” is the kind way to say it. It was very tumultuous. We knew this season, when we started talking about Book, that we wanted him to be someone who could reveal other sides of her. The tone of this relationship can be different and fun and light. She hasn’t been able to have much fun before. [Laughs] We wanted to give it to her and see: what does it bring up in her and how does it change her? I think the relationship that the two have, they are able to push each other in new ways and help each other grow, and that was really exciting to discover over the course of the season. So I think that by reaching season 4, they will definitely have new places to go.
So, of course, you mentioned Grudge, who is by far the emerging star of any Trek series ever. I think at some point, we just need to give her name to the ship. [Laughs] The USS Grudge. Spoiler alert, season 4: let’s change the name of Discovery. This has been incredible. I love how people respond to this cat! And he’s a great cat.
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