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Talk tying up loose ends, wrapping things up and putting a bow on it. That was the second season finale of Star Trek: Discovery. We’ve known since the series started that it was set about ten years before OG Star Trek and ever since then, the fans have been trying to guess how the producers and writers were going to be able to reconcile everything that’s happened with all those series that have come before since there’s never been a mention of the Discovery, its spore drive, Michael Burnham or anyone else for that matter through four TV series (the fifth, Enterprise, takes place before Discovery) thirteen movies. And now we know why.
The finale episode picked up where we left off last time with Discovery and the Enterprise surrounded by ControlLeland’s fleet of Section 31 ships ready to do battle as Burnham, Spock and others attempt to construct another time jump suit like Burnham’s mother’s … .not an easy task when your ship is being buffeted by photon torpedoes, and poor Paul Stamets nearly paid with his life while trying to get the suit ready for launch. And while the two Federation ship figured they could easily take down 30 Section 31 ships with their surprisingly large number of smaller craft, Leland had a big surprise for them when thousands of smaller unmanned battle crafts launched from the hull of his ships.
This entire battle was hugely cinematic and CBS All Access must have given the producers the password to the ATM card because the budget for this episode had to have been massive to put all that on screen. It was jaw-dropping, the scope of the effects used for the battle and then Burnham’s launch to attempt to open up a wormhole to drag Discovery to the future to keep the sphere data away from Leland.
The captains of both ships, Pike and Saru, were a bit surprised to learn that there were no life forms on any of the Section 31 ships (I suppose Leland spaced everyone like we’d seen on the last episode). That, of course, removes and moral obligations about killing potential innocent victims on those ships. But during the battle we began to see the visions that Pike and Burnham come true when they touched the time crystal, notably the unexploded photon torpedo in the hull of the Enterprise, forcing Number 1 and Admiral Cornwell to attempt to disarm it.
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Now in an otherwise perfect episode, this one little bit of action didn’t really make sense except to tie up another loose end. When Number 1 and the Admiral could not find a way to disarm, disable or delay the photon torpedo’s inevitable detonation, Number 1 returned to the bridge so Pike could help. At this point, we’d gotten flashes of the future he’d seen while the Enterprise was under attack, but he wasn’t in the same place to experience the radiation exposure he saw in his vision. When Cornwell told him there was nothing he could do to stop the explosion, she told him it wasn’t his time yet and she’d stay behind. Okay, but why? There was nothing to gain by her standing there to get vaporized while Pike watched from behind the blast door. The only reason for her to do that was simply so they could erase the character from the timeline. It also gave us a notable death for the finale.
While Michael and Spock got into position for her launch to the future, she encountered a snag in which the suit would not allow her to set a point beyond where she was at that moment, witnessing all of the action from her glimpse into the future. And in the process, Spock’s shuttle was damaged, preventing him from leaving once she launched. They both came to realize that before she could move forward, she had to move back and activate all of the red signals they’d seen up to that point, each one connecting all the dots of the season, from finding Jett Reno on the asteroid, the humans on Terralysium, to liberating the Kelpians, getting the time crystal from the Klingon monastery, and enlisting Po to help power it. Everything we’ve seen over the previous 13 episodes has led to this moment, and once Michael traveled to the past to light the beacons, she was able to begin her journey 930 years to the future.
There, or course, was one more snag to that plan with Leland beaming aboard Discovery (thanks to his ships knocking out the shields … which the ship needs to travel through the wormhole) to retrieve the sphere data. He can’t find it because Georgiou claims to have it on the recording device he originally gave to her, leading to hand-to-hand combat that also included Commander Nhan and a rotating set to simulate a lack of gravity. Georgiou was able to lure Leland to the spore drive and managed to trap him inside the cube while she magnetized the room. That’s not going to go well for a person made up of millions of tiny nanobots, and once she activated the magnets, Leland went to pieces … literally. Another loose end tied up.
As Spock and Michael had a final heart-to-heart (a very touching moment where Spock reveals she showed him how to balance both his Vulcan and human sides) and Michael promising to let Spock know they made it through by setting off the last signal, Hugh came to sick bay to attend to Paul, telling him that once he got to the Enterprise, he knew he belonged on Discovery because everything in his life led back to Paul. No, that’s not a tear, I have a speck of dust in my eye. (One little point of confusion I have at this point is when did the entire Discovery crew return from the Enterprise? We knew the bridge crew, Jett Reno and Nhan were staying to make the journey with Burnham, but everyone else came back too?) The Starfleet ships were also aided in their battle by some surprise guests, namely L’Rell and a fleet of Klingon ships (not to help the humans but to preserve their own future), and Saru’s sister leading a fleet of now battle-ready Kelpians. Which only made the goodbyes even more heartfelt as Ask was losing Michael and Saru had to say goodbye to his sister once again.
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But now with all of our players in place (and a big chunk of the Enterprise’s saucer section missing), it was time for Michael to open the wormhole and move the story forward as she and the Discovery really go where no one has gone before (except for her mother). And as the ship began to make its trip into the wormhole, did anyone pick up the visual reference to the wormhole scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture?
In a clever ending, we don’t see where they end up. Instead, the episode comes to a close on Earth, specifically Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco with Pike, Number 1, Spock and Ash Tyler being questioned about the disappearance of the Discovery. All of them claimed the ship was lost during the battle with Section 31, all souls on board lost with it. Whoever was questioning them seemed to accept their accounts of what happened. Ash was made the permanent commander of Section 31, tasked with making sure something like Control never happens again, and Spock made the suggestion that Starfleet should implement a new ruling that anyone who speaks of Discovery, Michael Burnham, the spore drive, Philippa Georgiou or anything else associated with the ship would be committing treason … and that’s how you retcon a story.
With a freshly shaven Spock now back at his post on the Enterprise, he’s still troubled by not having seen a signal from Michael in more than 100 days since they left. But … there it finally is, 53,000 light years away, a beacon of hope for the future. Pike is still captain, not yet having suffered the injuries that are yet to come — and aren’t we all thankful we didn’t have to witness that here? — ready to take his crew to investigate the beacon.
So what does the future hold for Star Trek: Discovery? Now that the ship is presumably removed from the Prime timeline, any future adventures can be conducted without having to reconcile anything with the past series and movies. Discovery is now free to explore strange new worlds and civilizations without even being beholden to Starfleet and the Federation. It should be interesting to see where this new chapter takes the series. And what of Captain Georgiou? We know that she is to have a spin-off series, so will that also be set in the same future as Discovery? All in all, it was a pretty fantastic finale that sets an exciting path to the future.
Star Trek: Discovery will return to CBS All Access at a date to be announced.
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