Season 5 expectations/wishlist

[Deks]

What would you like to see in Season 5 now that we know Disco was renewed?

I'd like to see UFP creating infrastructure for Transwarp beaming across the galaxy, and merging replicators, transporters and tractor beams for the purpose of replicating ships and structures into existence (coupled with programmable matter doing the finishing touches and using solar power with assistance from 10-C (as a continuation of good relations, UFP could have requested their aid in this) in setting up their own Dyson Swarms around member planet stars - sort of as a background followup, only scaled up so UFP basically takes it further - aka towards Type III status - implementing full scale automation, which Zora could help coordinate).

More peaceful rebuilding of UFP along with negotiations with previous member planets we hadn't seen or heard of before .
Maybe see what has become of the Delta Quadrant and perhaps existing/emerging technologies actually changing how people live their lives (instead of keeping the familiar setting - it IS the 32nd century after all, shouldn't stuff like this start chaging?).

Re-development/improvement of Quantum Slipstream technology and other technologies such as SB-19 (seeing how that had nothing to do with the Burn).

Create a method for easier time of traversing the galactic barrier so that SF ships can go on exploring other galaxies using the Spore Drive v2, and we see phasing out of Dilithium and M/AM tech.

Perhaps we could use this opportunity to visit nearby Dwarf Galaxies and/or Andromeda (to see what happened to the galaxy with the mention of the radiation levels increasing since the 23rd century) and see UFP sending Disco along with another SF HQ type base there to establish a base of operations and see if they can fix the radiation issue - maybe bring a few 10-C with them as a joint mission and helping setting up a Dyson Swarm in a 'starter solar system' as an extra tool for clearing the radiation (something like that might need something like the Dyson Swarm - or several - to fix it).

Instead of a season long arc... perhaps break up the season into say 2 story arcs (each being 5 episodes long) and both building up towards a grand finish of the 5th season (maybe even tying it all up into Calypso - though with 32nd century Discovery).

 

[Markonian]

Instead of a season long arc... perhaps break up the season into say 2 story arcs (each being 5 episodes long) and both building up towards a grand finish of the 5th season (maybe even tying it all up into Calypso - though with 32nd century Discovery).

This is something I'd like. DSC has dabbled into it by having the "Terran universe" mini-arcs.

Having two arcs would organically allow characters who are not serving aboard Discovery to be involved in the plot, like Gray on Trill, Captain Saru on his own ship, Tilly at the Academy, etc.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

What would you like to see in Season 5

WAY less angst.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I think the series that Discovery has evolved into would suit smaller arcs, a bit like Enterprise season 4. Maybe two five-parters, or three three-parters that add up to a larger story. Part of season 4's problem was that people were eager for the crew to hurry up and solve the DMA problem, and then when the Ten-C were revealed every story along the way to meeting them felt like padding.

Shorter arcs mean that something introduced in part 1 can be reached or dealt with in part 3, so people aren't left waiting for things to happen, they're left eager to see what happens next.

 

[Lord Garth]

1. Follow-up on the expansion of the Spore Drive fleet.
2. Show the Voyager-J in action. They've been teasing it for two seasons.
3. Reintegrate Tilly into Discovery. If they could do it for Saru, then can do it for her.
4. Bring back Nhan again, preferably back for good.
5. Have an episode about Kovich.
6. Move Oded Fehr's name to the front credits.
7. Give Rillak some political rivals. Expand that part of the series.
8. Have former Federation worlds who refuse to rejoin and are too far gone.
9. Explain why the Federation has been called the V'Draysh by other worlds. This whole angle's been dropped and I'd like to see it addressed again.
10. Keep giving Detmer and Owosekun more to do. I don't care about the other B-listers, but these two have the chops to be up there with Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Stamets, and Culber.
11. Make Culber full-time Counselor and have Pollard completely take his place.
12. Check in with Gray. Give him his own arc, separate from Adira.
13. On a related note, I don't think Adira and Gray have much in common or on-screen chemistry, so break them up.
14. Don't put Starfleet Command back on Earth.
15. There's concept art from Planet of the Titans with the ship that was the inspiration for Discovery travelling into what looks like an asteroid starbase. Find a way to work this into the series somehow.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

1) No more galactic-sized threats. Try some planetary or ship-scale crises for a while.

2) The whole season doesn't have to be one continuous arc. That leads to too much filler with the resolution coming in the last episode. Try some Enterprise Season 4 style mini-arcs that last only as long as you need them to to tell a proper story.

3) The resolution doesn't have to come in the last episode. Wrap things up an episode or two early and then explore the aftermath of what happened and how it affected everyone. Would have liked to see the situation on Earth and how the recovery efforts are going. Plus just seeing 32nd century Earth would be cool.

4) Spread the wealth. Deep Space Nine had an enormous ensemble cast and yet they still managed to give everyone something interesting to do on a consistent basis, and not just one and done. Don't pat yourself on the back because Owosekun got a boxing episode to be a badass for five minutes, she and the rest of the senior staff on the bridge should have contributing to missions and storylines throughout the season.

5) Practice doctor / patient confidentiality and leave the nine hundred counseling sessions behind metaphorical closed doors from the audience. A few times is adequate, this season just went over the top.

6) Do more to make 32nd century life more technologically and socially exotic to the crew. Remember the trip through the Klingon marketplace in Season 2? Do that on a Federation world and show us how weird life is thanks to their technology. Right now they don't seem all that different from the people of the 23rd century.

7) Don't tease consequences for the crew unless you're going to actually follow through and make it stick sometimes. If someone goes on a suicide mission their ship shouldn't bounce off without killing anyone. If someone dissipates in a transporter beam, maybe leave them dissipated, or don't tease it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

There's concept art from Planet of the Titans with the ship that was rhe inspiration for Discovery travelling into what looks like an asteroid starbase. Find a way to work this into the series somehow

Wasn't it already in the very first teaser for Disco in 2016?

 

[FederationHistorian]

1. A reset to the boldness of S1; a few or several f-bombs dropped over the season won’t hurt. Maybe someone get anatomically inverted, or a transporter malfunctions and their body parts are in all the wrong places. Maybe a sex scene, as opposed to the rape scene with Ash Tyler in S1. But be bold nonetheless.
2. Visit Argeth & Archanis Sector
3. Finally visit Denobula Triaxa and have a proper Denobulan centered story set on the planet (basically take the Denobulan subplot of “Stigma” and, merge it with the Denobulan centered episode “The Breach”).
4. Revisit Pahvo, Corvan II, & Cancri IV (all followups to the Federation-Klingon War in S1); revisit the binary star system from the Battle of the Binary Stars – what is it known as in the 32nd century
5. USS Shenzhou-G
6. Continue building on tension between Burnham & Nhan over Burnham’s decisiveness/indecisiveness
7. Stamets/Detmer has the conn for an episode, in addition
   Spoiler

   Nilsson and Rhys
8. If Klingons appear in the season, there should be a half-Betazoid Klingon, a half-Trill Klingon, and a half-Talaxian Klingon.
9. Sequel episodes

• "Shuttlepod One", but with Detmer & Owosekun. Or Stamets and Reno.
• "Two Days and Two Nights", part II – shore leave either on Wrigley’s pleasure planet or 32nd century Risa
• "Bounty", part II – Surely someone is upset that Discovery deposed Osyraa and threw the Emerald Chain into chaos?
• "Observer Effect", part II. The Organians return 1 thousand years later. This time though, the test subjects die and stay dead.
• "The Ensigns of Command",part II - Discovery finally face off against the Sheliak Corporate!
• "Living Witness" II - The Doctor’s shuttle is at least found; getting the EMH up and running again is a secondary arc that runs though the season and possibly S6.

10. A standalone Mirror Universe story, that does not use most of the main cast (aside from maybe a recording of a centuries old speech from mirror Burnham) and focuses solely of the mirror counterparts of the characters met in the 32nd century. As a follow of from the last DS9 mirror universe episode.

• Terran Rebellion successors: Adira Tal, Senna Tal, Grey, Vance, Willa, Starfleet cadets, Kovich, Ndoye, Wen
• Terran vessels: ISS Tikhov, ISS Avenger-B (for Admiral Black), USS Defiant (NCC-1764), ISS Defiant-S (for mirror Sisko, Smiley, or Sato), ISS Enterprise-K (for mirror Kirk; Crossfield class refit), ISS Warship Voyager-J (referenced)
  
• Klingon-Cardassian Alliance successors: Rillak, Klingons (Sarcophagus)
• Mirror Emerald Chain: Osyraa, Molly, Book, Grudge, Cosmo Traitt
• Regulators/invigilator/couriers (Orions, Andorians, Terran, Akoszonam, Akaali, Kwejian, Lurians, Betelgeusians, Cardassian, Aamaarazans)
• Mirror Planets: Kokytos, Sanctuary Four
• Mirror Emerald Chain ships/stations: Viridian; Federation Headquarters redressed as Emerald Chain Headquarters, with Emerald Chain banners
• Mirror Ni'Var: T’Rina, 23rd century BoP as seen in PIC but with a green hull, NSS T’Pau, DIS S1 Klingon BoPs & raiders, and S2 cleave ship with the signature bird on the hull; Ni’Var in the mirror universe is located on Romulus

 

[Takeru]

No season long arc, I'd prefer three shorter arcs. They can still be connected but each arc should have some kind of conclusion to it.

• Bring back Tilly, missing 1 or 2 episodes is fine but half the season is not.
• Bring back Nhan at least for one arc, preferably more.
• Bring back Georgiou, have her hop out of a stasis pod she climbed into in the 23rd century, if she makes it to the 31st century naturally and not via time travel she should not be ripped apart.
• Bring back klingons with them having abandoned the militaristic warrior stuff hundreds of years ago. Do something with them that isn't "Grrr, Argh, honor, fighting, blood wine ..."

 

[ED-209]

Crying, lots and lots of crying.

Hey, at-least it's unlikely I'll be disappointed.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well.. Since the federation has been redone and all core members are back in the fold. We can move on to more world building and going back to areas that are outside the federation core like delta quadrant or Gamma.
Abit more "Wonder" to be in the 32nd century. Show a city- planet
Space elevators ( I know.. Redundant with transporters..)
Visit higher lifeforms like the metrons
Check in on the Tholians (personal favorite that needs more screen time)

 

[eschaton]

Hrmm, okay:

• Give other characters aside from Michael coherent character arcs which develop over the course of the entire season. At minimum, this means that Saru, Stamets, Culber, and Adira should start and end the season in different places than they began, changed by the events of the season.
• Work to distinguish the characterization of the series regulars more. I feel like they're all basically the same now - whingy and insecure, yet willing to be good friends when the other characters are whingy and insecure. Someone needs to have some rough edges to make character interactions spicier.
• Don't introduce a ton of new recurring characters. Discovery has had a bad history from Season 2 onward of introducing a team of recurring characters, and making them the focus of the story by the end of the season. As a result, you have people like Stamets - who has been on the show from the start - who are still underbaked. Try and develop a story which can use all of the core characters in a deep fashion, rather than trying to shoehorn in a few little moments of domesticity (or whatever) to give them something to do.
• I'm less concerned with plot, but if we're going to have a season-long mystery, I'd kind of like some sort of archeological-type mystery. Maybe a prominent race that we're well aware of has gone long missing, and Discovery is sent on a quest to uncover what happened to them? Low global stakes, but work in high personal stakes for the characters themselves.

 

[Lord Garth]

Wasn't it already in the very first teaser for Disco in 2016?

Yes, but I want something like that in the series itself.

 

[The Wormhole]

Some worldbuilding for the 32nd century. Two seasons in and it doesn't really feel like all that unique a setting yet. Especially since what did set it apart, a crippled Federation has basically been undone over the course of both seasons.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Some worldbuilding for the 32nd century. Two seasons in and it doesn't really feel like all that unique a setting yet. Especially since what did set it apart, a crippled Federation has basically been undone over the course of both seasons.

Good point, we're basically in TOS/TNG land with the exception of spore jumping ships (which we have one of and another mentioned in dialogue), teleporting badges (which aren't used much anymore and would redefine so much it's insane) and programmable matter (which they stopped using this season for no reason)

It's like as soon as they established their new setting, they back pedalled.

 

[ScottJ85]

Wasn't it already in the very first teaser for Disco in 2016?

Yeah, I remember that was the first Discovery-related thing I ever saw.

 

[SJGardner]

As long as we get Tilly back in a fashion where she's still interacting with the main cast and isn't confined to dealing with her cadets, anything goes.

But for expectations, I expect the showrunners to keep playing it safe and once again learn the wrong lessons from online feedback and take away even more of what has made Discovery unique. Like it or not, I've found the 32nd century to be bland before anything else, and the fact that they're dead set on rebuilding the Federation exactly as it was doesn't help in that regard. I wouldn't even be surprised if the Starfleet Command headquarters station stayed permanently in Earth orbit from the fifth season on.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Good point, we're basically in TOS/TNG land with the exception of spore jumping ships (which we have one of and another mentioned in dialogue), teleporting badges (which aren't used much anymore and would redefine so much it's insane) and programmable matter (which they stopped using this season for no reason)

It's like as soon as they established their new setting, they back pedalled.

DIS needs smaller stories to build the A, B and sometimes C plots and general worldbuilding. And its not even about emulating ENT S4 either. Even a series as serialised as DS9 had smaller two-part arcs within a larger arc that played out over the season that fleshed out the main and supporting characters and contributed to worldbuilding.

Whatever the season long arc is for S5, several two-part arcs or three-part arcs within the season 5 arc would be beneficial to the show, if the goal is to have stronger worldbuilding..

As long as we get Tilly back in a fashion where she's still interacting with the main cast and isn't confined to dealing with her cadets, anything goes.

But for expectations, I expect the showrunners to keep playing it safe and once again learn the wrong lessons from online feedback and take away even more of what has made Discovery unique. Like it or not, I've found the 32nd century to be bland before anything else, and the fact that they're dead set on rebuilding the Federation exactly as it was doesn't help in that regard. I wouldn't even be surprised if the Starfleet Command headquarters station stayed permanently in Earth orbit from the fifth season on.

Would it be a bad thing if, aside from a few conversations over the holocomms, we don’t see Tilly in S5 and she rejoins the Discovery crew in S6 instead? I don’t see why it would be a bad thing if she spent time away from the Discovery crew and grew as a person. They did that with Burnham, having her grow in the span of a year between the S3 premiere and “People of Earth” and it benefitted her greatly. And we already have Adira to be the Tilly of S1 &2.

There are a number of characters that need a bit of screen time that would benefit in Tilly's absence. There are complaints of how Stamets is used less and less compared to when he first started on the show. Both Nhan and Reno were brought onto DIS in S2 and have had limited screentime since then. We rarely see Linus outside of comic relief, even though he can help flesh out Saurian history and culture. Dr. Pollard is a virtual unknown on a personal level heading into the fifth season. We’ve never seen anyone mention Nilsson by her first name or be seen as a close enough friend to her that we know a bit of her backstory, or train her to be a spore drive navigator like Stamets and Book are, considering she's the spore drive ops officer.. Rhys hasn’t been romantically linked to anyone after being rejected by Tilly all the way back in S1. The effort made in S4 to give everyone more dialogue was great, and it needs to continue so that these characters can be relatable.

And in general, there are complaints of how the Discovery crew don't act as professionally while on duty. It's something that could be worked on over the season so that when Tilly returns, its a bit of a culture shock to her

 

[SJGardner]

Would it be a bad thing if, aside from a few conversations over the holocomms, we don’t see Tilly in S5 and she rejoins the Discovery crew in S6 instead? I don’t see why it would be a bad thing if she spent time away from the Discovery crew and grew as a person. They did that with Burnham, having her grow in the span of a year between the S3 premiere and “People of Earth” and it benefitted her greatly. And we already have Adira to be the Tilly of S1 &2.

Yes, it would be a bad thing. Mary Wiseman is one of the best performers on the show and she has not only served consistently as the emotional center of the crew as well as a convenient audience surrogate, she's been effortlessly able to portray a kind of comic relief that no one was able to in her absence and I'm surely not the only one who actively felt the empty space she left behind. Her talents would be wasted on what would effectively be a just bunch of cameos and reaction shots that could be shot over a day the same way Tig Notaro's scenes were this year. And despite how much they tried to force Adira to become "the Tilly" in her stead, they were, no offense to Blu del Barrio, a really lousy replacement, because they showed only the awkwardness but none of the energy or the bubbly charm, and couldn't even properly utilize or sometimes even remember the fact they have a freaking Trill symbiont in their abdominal cavity.

And why would Tilly even need to "grow as a person" while absent for a whole season? Hasn't she grown enough already? She spent the entire third season becoming more confident under Saru's wings, then her whole arc in Season 4 was the logical conclusion of her growing up and finally finding her place. The only reason I can imagine her being absent for a whole season to get some off-screen character development would be if she was so unlikable or written into a corner to a degree that she needed to be retooled completely, which I'm definitely not seeing in her. And even if we so sorely needed to discard one of the main characters of the show to allow the Joe Careys and Ayalas and Michael Eddingtons and Broiks of this cast "enough time to be fleshed out", why must it be Tilly specifically?

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Yes, it would be a bad thing. Mary Wiseman is one of the best performers on the show and she has not only served consistently as the emotional center of the crew as well as a convenient audience surrogate, she's been effortlessly able to portray a kind of comic relief that no one was able to in her absence and I'm surely not the only one who actively felt the empty space she left behind. Her talents would be wasted on what would effectively be a just bunch of cameos and reaction shots that could be shot over a day the same way Tig Notaro's scenes were this year. And despite how much they tried to force Adira to become "the Tilly" in her stead, they were, no offense to Blu del Barrio, a really lousy replacement, because they showed only the awkwardness but none of the energy or the bubbly charm, and couldn't even properly utilize or sometimes even remember the fact they have a freaking Trill symbiont in their abdominal cavity.

And why would Tilly even need to "grow as a person" while absent for a whole season? Hasn't she grown enough already? She spent the entire third season becoming more confident under Saru's wings, then her whole arc in Season 4 was the logical conclusion of her growing up and finally finding her place. The only reason I can imagine her being absent for a whole season to get some off-screen character development would be if she was so unlikable or written into a corner to a degree that she needed to be retooled completely, which I'm definitely not seeing in her. And even if we so sorely needed to discard one of the main characters of the show to allow the Joe Careys and Ayalas and Michael Eddingtons and Broiks of this cast "enough time to be fleshed out", why must it be Tilly specifically?

I was utterly shocked how much I missed Tilly. I absolutely hated every story arc they wrote for her like absolutely hated. The first officer thing was the worst plot I've seen in Trek and this is a show with Salamander evolution. But she was a distinct character in a crew lacking them and definitely gave an energy you don't see often in "read coldly from script" Trek actors.

For me season 5 needs more of the crew but I have been saying that from day 1. Also hopefully not in a TNG season 7 everybody gets a family/candle ghost episode sort of way