The end of the third season of Star Trek: Discovery failed with its characters and plots

[Ed. note: This piece contains some spoilers for seasons 2 and 3 of Star Trek: Discovery.]

Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery sends the crew of the eponymous scientific ship into the distant future, releasing the series from the franchise’s established canon. It was a bold move for showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise, allowing them to explore issues such as resource scarcity – formerly anathema to Trek’s utopian principles – and show a version of the United Federation of Planets in even greater decline than Star Trek: Picard.

As the episodes aired in a world that seemed absolutely unarmed due to the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread social and political unrest, Discovery it had the potential to fulfill the classic Star Trek mission of providing perspective and comment on the biggest problems of the time. However, for each topic that the writers tried to address, the conclusion was confusing or superficial, rather than really enlightening. The main arcs were also rushed, as two of the 13 episodes of the season were entirely dedicated to creating a spinoff. The result was an extremely weak season that did not deliver satisfactory bows for most of the series’ characters. The writers introduced complex plots and then completed them with pleasant simplicity. See which season 3 of Discovery tried to explore, and how it failed.

Photo: Michael Gibson / CBS Interactive

Shortage of resources

The primary conflict of the third season is Burn, a mysterious event that affected the dilithium – the element responsible for traveling faster than light and many of Trek’s other wonderful technologies – and left the quadrant reduced and fragmented. Dilithium was at fault in the period immediately before and especially after The Burn, leaving the Federation and several other factions only able to apply force on the basis of their diminishing reserves.

Star Trek has always existed in a post-scarcity future, so this turnaround has allowed for a major rethink of how various species and planets would evolve and change to deal with the challenge. The fact that the Federation was hit so hard provided a particularly grim metaphor for the United States’ current decline as a world power. The realism of the near future of The Expanse it made it a much better place for stories about humanity’s never-ending struggle for resources and about people who are inevitably exploited and neglected as a result, but there was certainly potential to approach the subject through the lens of Star Trek.

A plot provided a critique of colonialism, with the Emerald Chain merchant union providing a powerful argument in favor of the First Guideline – the Starfleet’s ban on significantly interfering with alien civilizations. The Emerald Network presents itself to offer wonderful solutions to problems such as environmental crises, which depend on its ability to exploit the resources of the planets that it helps.

The idea shows Star Trek fans how the Earth was lucky to make contact with the kind Vulcans before meeting other alien species, and it fits well with the questions raised in 2020 about the degree to which Earth could really unify itself in life. alien got here. But while the second season of The Mandalorian provides a powerful analysis of how the great powers run over indigenous peoples, Star Trek: Discoverythe writers have solved their exploration of the topic with a solution that has all the nuances of a Capitain planet episode with some empaths using their connection to nature to solve the problem that the Emerald Stream was apparently helping them.

The appearance of the discovery in the future shakes future policy, with the ship and its spore engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) becoming the final commodity by providing a non-dilithium-based method for traveling faster than light. The show is at its best when the crew provides light in a dark world, such as when the protagonist and occasional first officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) inspires a man who keeps a vigil for the remnants of Starfleet, despite never having been officially appointed as a member. But his utopianism reaches absurd levels through Admiral Charles Vance (Oded Fehr of The mom and Resident Evil: Extinction), whose realpolitik’s ignorance of demanding an absurd number of concessions from a powerful potential ally – including that she be tried for war crimes – makes it disconcerting that he has reached such a high post. His intransigence pays off in any way, in a way that looks like an entirely undeserved plot plan.

Photo: Michael Gibson / CBS Interactive

Dealing with the trauma and burdens of leadership

At the end of season 2, Discovery’s crew heroically agrees to travel to a distant future in a desperate attempt to save all life in the galaxy, and at the start of season 3 they struggle to accept the consequences. Saru, a member of the Kelpian crew (Doug Jones of The shape of the water and Boy from hell) finally finds the courage to embrace his role as captain, but he also ends up in the exceptionally difficult position of having to make a team of perpetually gifted people recognize that they have been brought to the breaking point.

This plot left much room for comment on mental health issues in high-stress jobs, along with some mature personal plans on how to adjust to the change. 2020 was certainly a year that could use more thoughts and stories around these ideas. But these have been largely simplified, mistreated or used for strange comedies. Lieutenant Keyla Detmer (Emily Coutts) has been in charge since DiscoveryThe first episode of, but received virtually no character development, so the arc exploring its instability after the leap into the future could have remedied this oversight. Instead, it is considered resolved as soon as she is willing to ask for help.

Saru should also have had time to shine in the captain’s chair. Instead, he keeps making meta-jokes about which tagline to use when giving an order. When Michael is stripped of his role as first officer due to insubordination, he promotes Ensign Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) in his position, in a decision that clearly had more to do with the writers not knowing what to do with Tilly than any other. world logic. Michael may be the only character whose bow has a satisfying conclusion this season, but again at Saru’s expense. It seems that Jones was dropped from the show at the end of this season, which is probably the best, because the actor deserves better.

Photo: Michael Gibson / CBS Interactive

Gender identity

Paramount drew a lot of attention in 2020 with the announcement that the third season of Discovery would present the first great trans and non-binary characters in the series, Gray (Ian Alexander) and Adira (Blu del Barrio). Its introduction should have been a powerful embrace of representation in a franchise that was already a pioneer and was lagging behind the progress made by other major programs. But the idea fell apart because the writers were unable to decide which approach to take for the characters.

The ideal way to introduce them would be to not even comment on the genre. This happened to Gray, who has just been introduced as Adira’s boyfriend. But instead of stating her pronouns clearly on arrival at Discovery, Adira is called by female pronouns for most of the season before raising the issue with Stamets. He is apparently the first person Adira has said about his gender identity, other than Gray, which makes his identity seem like an inherently shameful secret.

If they were not playing the same role of portraying a more inclusive world as the original multiracial cast of Star Trek did, Gray and Adira could have been used as metaphors to discover and embrace gender identity. This seemed to be the direction the writers were taking in the beginning, with the implementation of the Gray’s Trill symbiote looking like a replacement for gender-confirming surgery. After the procedure, Gray assures Adira: “It’s still me. I’m just more of me. ”And Adira’s changing pronouns may have been part of them accepting how being a Trill host changes their perceptions of themselves. Given that the character is only 16, this plot can easily be a substitute for the way some teenagers struggle to understand their gender.

But the biggest problem is that the two characters are only used as accessories for the relationship between Stamets and her boyfriend, naval doctor Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), who went through a difficult phase after Hugh came back from the dead in season 2 . rectify these issues with the classic cliché of the novel of having the two effectively having a child in the form of Adira, although none of them actually asked Adira to consent to the role. A plot revealed at the end around Gray suggests a more significant arc for the characters to come. But this season, they were just another example of the writers setting bold goals and showing insufficient results.

CBS All Access has already been renewed Star Trek: Discovery for a fourth and fifth seasons, which will be filmed consecutively. Showrunner Michelle Paradise says the Discovery team will remain in the 32nd century and that Season 4 will have the same focus as Season 3 on “trying to make sure our characters grow, exploring new relationships, exploring how people can change, finding new layers to each of our characters. ”But writers need to grow and change too. It is not enough to have great ideas or a willingness to get involved with difficult subjects. The show needs to be better at getting involved with these ideas and the bigger themes of the show will work for the characters, the franchise and the fans.