Hey guys! I'm back. This time I'm going to be talking about the third season of Star Trek: Discovery, which ended last night. I'm also going to be discussing the future of Star Trek and how we don't actually know what the next season to come out is going to be yet. There is going to be spoilers for this season as I have to talk about the season as a whole. So let's get into it!
The third season of Star Trek: Discovery reminds me very much of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation with the quality of writing all over the place and the lack of character development. And yet the show is about a thousand times better than it was two seasons ago when it started back in 2017 and 2018. In fact there are episodes this season that are as good as any episode of Deep Space Nine or any fifth season episode of TNG even if the writing isn't quite up to par with how it was on both of those shows in their midway seasons. Visually the show looks better than it did in the first two seasons. But I still feel like something is missing.
At the end of the second season, on my old, no longer existent, blog, I wrote about how Airiam's death near the end of the season had done nothing for me because they hadn't done anything with that character leading up to the episode where she died. And while the main Bridge crew have gotten more development this season, the new characters, particularly Adira Tal and her dead boyfriend/former host of the Tal symbiont, Gray, did almost nothing after a certain point. Like Adira could've been any other character on the show and it wouldn't've mattered because they're basically a one episode character and their story ended in the episode where they're on Trill with Burnham. Same with Gray. I was wary of them as characters, because we'd done the Trill thing before, and it had been done better on DS9, and given the show's history of mishandling characters in previous seasons, a.k.a. not using them to their full potential, it left me nervous. And I was right because they did almost nothing with either of those characters even though they promised an interesting story with them when this season started.
Even Book wasn't as interesting this season as the first episode set him up to be. I mean we learned more about him because we spent an entire episode on his homeworld, but he ended up not being as interesting as I thought he was going to be. And I think the problem is that they try to do too much in a single season and end up having to drop half of the storylines because there aren't enough episodes in the season anymore and I think most of these writers are still used to writing for Broadcast Television where you still get twenty to twenty-two episode seasons instead of the eight to fifteen episode seasons that streaming shows get usually. And I think that's where the problem lies. They're still trying to tell too much in such a small number of episodes and they just don't have the wiggle room they had with the first five live action shows.
The best episode this season was "Unification III" which dealt with the Vulcans and Romulans and their reunification, which came about because of Spock's efforts in the 24th Century. That was the episode that felt the most like Star Trek. There was alot of things in the episode that screamed classic Star Trek despite the fact that it's modern Star Trek. Which I really appreciated. And the entire season did get there eventually. Especially with the Osyraa stuff even if that storyline wasn't always engaging, particularly the final two or three episodes of the season. But it was still good. Like I said, this season very much felt like the first two seasons of TNG, which I like even if there were episodes in both of those seasons that just didn't work for one reason or another.
The one thing that I do have reservations about going forward is Burnham having been promoted to Captain and given command of Discovery in Saru's absence. She's been court-martialed for starting a war with the Klingons back in season 1, and was demoted and relieved of her duties as First Officer for insubordination not that long ago. But she kills Osyraa and saves the remnants of the Federation and she gets rewarded, despite her earlier actions. I don't know if that's a commentary of some sort or if modern day Television writers just don't know how to write about characters facing the consequences of their actions. It's definitely something I saw on Arrow in the sixth season during that mid-season Team Arrow "Civil War" thing that made no sense and had no consequences for the stuff Wild Dog and Black Canary did or for what Oliver did either. Anyway, I'm hoping that the writers continue to write Burnham better in season 4, because they did a better job this season than they did in the previous two seasons. I do like how the finale ended, but I do wish they'd done more with the whole Tilly being promoted to First Officer while still an Ensign thing that they set up pretty well, but dropped pretty quickly in the final three episodes.
I think that's the big take away here. I wish they'd done more with the things they set up at the beginning of the season, like Tilly as First Officer, which was awesome btw, Adira and Gray, Adira's relationship with Stamets and Culber, which was pretty awesome, and whatever they were trying to set up with Detmer at the beginning of the season too.
In season 4 I really hope they explore Stamets and how he feels in the wake of discovering that he's no longer as necessary to operate the Spore Drive, since they found a way for Book to do so if necessary. Something that was basically deemed impossible back in the first season, it being such an experimental piece of technology in the 23rd Century. I also hope they explore his relationship with Burnham going forward too after she shot him out of the ship to save him from Osyraa. The final thing that I hope we get alot more of is Adira and Gray, because they are awesome characters, but they really weren't used very well this season, again because there were too many storylines to try and fit into the season.
Alright guys that's it for me for today. I'll be back on Monday with a review of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, the 1985 live action Teddy Ruxpin TV movie that predated the 1987 animated series. Though I might be back sometime this weekend depending on whether or not I finish reading The Tower Treasure this weekend or not. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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