Star Trek: Discovery's Final Season Was Given A Very Apt Nickname By Its Writers [SXSW 2024]

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery" debuts on April 4, 2024, and it is a time of ambivalence. "Discovery" has struggled throughout its tenure, unsure as to what its identity should be, or what its general vibe is. Other "Star Trek" shows always featured staunch, stone-faced diplomats in ultra-professional workplace environments. The "Discovery" characters, in contrast, are teens at a slumber party, if the teens were over-dramatic theater kids and the slumber party was held after they all lost the one-act-play competition. The crew of the U.S.S. Discovery openly discuss their feelings at all times and perpetually need shoulders to cry on. The professionalism of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is long behind us.

But then, that seems to be what the show's fans like most about it. Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) encourages both emotional vulnerability and her crew to approach one another with open hearts. They will still engage in battles and firefights — and even murder foes — but then the crew will reconnoiter to weep about how hard it all was. Sensitive souls likely appreciate the steady stream of tears and affection amidst all the death.

The farewell season seems to have been equally emotional for the actors and crew. Indeed, it was while they were filming the last few episodes that the "Discovery" cast and crew received word that the fifth season would be their last. After that, it seems that everyone looked back over the show they had been involved with since 2017 and became intensely wistful, feeling a bittersweet warmth for the adventure they had been on.

Indeed, at this year's SXSW, where "Discovery" screened its season 5 premiere, Martin-Green noted that this season was "the adventure season."

If there's any time to go all-out on a TV show, it's in the final season. Here's how Martin-Green, speaking at SXSW (where /Film's Jacob Hall was in attendance), explained the situation:

"Oh, man. Okay. Well, this is [...] as you can see, it's an adventure. Season 5. And that's something that we ended up saying that all the time. It became a mantra on set to be shooting, did it not? Because [showrunner] Michelle [Paradise] let us know before we start shooting [that] this, this was going to be the adventure season. This is going to be the fun season. That we were going to do things we had never done before. We were going to endeavor to just do the impossible." 

Indeed, there is a scene in the fifth season wherein Captain Burnham rides on the exterior of a starship ... while it's going at warp speed. There will also be an exciting action sequence on a desert planet, with Michael riding a futuristic motorcycle away from an encroaching threat. Martin-Green was impressed with the sequences.

Martin-Green also mentioned working with the VR wall, a relatively new filming process that involves virtual sets (think ILM's Volume technology). Rather than filming against blue screens and compositing in CGI environments after the fact, the VR wall allows showrunners to render the environments first and then plug them into a circular digital screen that surrounds the actors. The animated environments are then hooked into the camera's movements, allowing cinematographers to walk their cameras freely among the actors as the digital background adjusts in real-time. VR walls are a little disorienting to actors, but they do provide an inexpensive way to make convincing backgrounds; they're certainly less wasteful and a lot faster than building practical sets. 

Martin-Green was impressed with this technique, stressing how great it made "Discovery" look:

"And that, oh my goodness, those sequences in that first episode. The sand runner sequence, which I know is one of your favorites. Oh my goodness. At the VR wall with 11,000-plus screens, all these elements coming together. It's fire, smoke, and wind. It was just incredible to watch it come together. Because we really were doing the impossible. And there is [...] It just keeps going. There's more of that. It just keeps growing." 

The final 10 episodes of "Discovery" will stream on Paramount+ from April 4 through May 30, 2024. The show will have lasted 65 episodes in total. However one may feel about the adventure, "Discovery" was the crowbar that cracked "Star Trek" open again and brought it into the world of streaming television. It may have been clumsy, but it was always open about its feelings.