Michelle Paradise's thoughts about DSC ending with Season 5.
Showrunner Michelle Paradise on STAR TREK: DISCOVERY's Cancellation, and Filming More Scenes for Season 5 • TrekCore.com
Cutting-and-pasting:
“I don’t think [knowing about the cancellation] would have [changed Season 5]… Each season in Discovery we explore big themes and big ideas; this season is no exception. Without giving any spoilers away, this season is – thematically — about purpose and meaning. I’m not sure you can get much bigger than that, ultimately.
So after we finished filming and then found out that this would be our last season, we sort of talked about it – if this [had to] happen on any given season of the show, it felt like this was the season for that to have happened. Because when we found out that we were going to be able to shoot some additional material, we looked back, but there was nothing that we changed in the season itself.
We did some additional shooting, but we didn’t do reshoots. We didn’t have to go back and chop up episodes and change a bunch of things. It felt very organic, what we were doing for those last few days of shooting, and I think people who don’t know that we didn’t know going in that it would be our last season will have no idea that we didn’t know. I think it will have felt planned.
Even for people who do know, I think it will feel very, very satisfying when we get to the end, I think we’ve done really wonderful work over the season just for the season itself — and then, our characters get, you know, a proper ending.
If Michelle Paradise is satisfied with DSC ending after Season 5 if it has to, then I'm satisfied.