Here's Why Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Didn't Feel Like A Proper Finale
You know the drill by now: This article contains major spoilers for the series finale of "Star Trek: Discovery."
"Discovery" is over; long live "Discovery." At the end of the day, the somewhat divisive "Trek" series managed to go out on its own terms (as /Film's Jacob Hall accurately foresaw in his review of the final season's premiere) and delivered a fitting sendoff for much of the established cast. We laughed, we cried, and we were kept fairly entertained by a planet-hopping race against time that dug deep into franchise lore and tied things together with the mysterious Progenitors. But as the credits rolled on the finale and we bid farewell one last time to characters like Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Saru (Doug Jones), and all the rest, perhaps you were left with the same nagging feeling that I had: "Wait, that's it?"
As thrilling as these last several episodes were, it's hopefully not too controversial to say that the ultimate conclusion didn't quite feel as, well, conclusive as fans may have expected — especially since Paramount made sure we knew well ahead of time that season 5 would be its last. But what came as a mild surprise to many of us at the time was more like the shock of a lifetime for the creative team, none of whom had planned on having this season serve as the show's swan song. If nothing else, this certainly goes a long way towards explaining why these last several episodes may not have felt like the goodbye tour that "Discovery" and its crew truly deserved. What we all witnessed instead, particularly with the very last scene set decades in the future, was the writing team's best attempt to make lemonade out of lemons.
Showbiz is a ruthless place to make a living, huh?
Star Trek: Discovery's final moments were a last-minute addition
Imagine spending years of your life crafting a brand-new addition to a storied franchise, only for one decisive blow from the higher-ups at the studio to seal the deal and bring it to an abrupt end. For the writers of "Star Trek: Discovery," that's more or less how it all went down ... though the timing couldn't have been worse. You see, they only found out after filming had already wrapped on season 5, which left the creatives scrambling to craft the best possible finale they could make with the time they had left.
That's just one of the astonishing revelations in Variety's recent post-mortem interview with executive producer/showrunner Michelle Paradise and star Sonequa Martin-Green. According to the article, the original intention was to end with Burnham and Booker (David Ajala) on the beach, having made up and running off to their next off-screen mission. But in order to make the ending a little more satisfying, Paradise and finale co-writer Kyle Jarrow came up with the epilogue of an older Burnham and Booker, now married, sending off their grown-up son to his first Starfleet captaincy. According to Paradise, "We want to know what's happening to Burnham, first and foremost. And we knew we wanted to see the cast again."
For Martin-Green, the chance to put on aging prosthetics served multiple purposes, both narratively and personally:
"You just get to see this manifestation of legacy in this beautiful way. I will also say that I look a lot like my mom, and that was that was also a gift, to be able to see her."
Incredibly, the crew only had three days to film this sequence. Tacked on or not, there's something quintessentially "Discovery" about pulling off one last miracle.