Not perfect, but none of the flaws got in the way for me giving this one a 10. That felt good, and Discovery is all about the feelings. I'm glad that the tension was resolved in a way that didn't leave a bitterness lingering, even if it's perhaps not realistic.
There's certainly a lot of conveniences here, but I'm a lot more forgiving of those in service of telling a story where things turn out okay then one where they don't. I'll take a convenient happy ending over a convenient depressing one. People did have to make hard choices, and I feel they even managed to convince me of Book's death, so his later recovery was an unexpected relief. He didn't just come back to save Michael from her grief, but because he had something important to add to the conversation. In the end, the choices matter more than the consequences, and I'm mostly satisfied in retrospect with what was there. There are consequences other than death or loss.
I think why this works for me is that the consequences are going to happen in-universe, instead of one or more writer-dictated deaths to serve the perceived narrative. Probably because the record so far in that regard isn't particularly strong; it's a permanent ending to an arc that may or may not have sold me on that being the inevitable conclusion.
For Book, Community Service is a very Federation solution to his transgression. People still died because of what he did, and he's not likely to forget that. Ndoye, too, sacrificed herself to make it right. I would expect her to lose her position, but I find it very interesting that the show explicitly took a stance that intent matters alongside the consequences.
Not every situation has to be a Kobayshi Maru, even if it looks like one.
One more thing: Tarka is Lorca done right. I never liked Tarka, but I do feel for him. He was tragic, and they never had to undermine that part of his character to make him into a threat.
He was wrong, a lot, but he was wholly unable to ever admit it. He could have gotten what he wanted if only he had found that inside himself, but it was not within him to do until it was too late for him to accomplish more than save one life. I wish he'd been able to find his friend, but in the end he had only himself to blame for everything that kept him from that goal. Maybe a part of him thought it was futile and was acting self-destructively? We'll probably never know.
At least not until he comes back from another universe, bringing a rescued-from-exile Lorca along for the series finale.
