I gotta start with "Life, Itself." Which I was loving. Until that fucking epilogue they added after they got cancelled!
Each season of Discovery got further in before it would fall apart. S1 started going sideways in it's fourth episode. S2 held it together till episode seven. S3 made it ten before that narrative imploded. And S4 held it together allllll the way to the mid-point of the finale, when we hit Rillak's ridiculous long emotional monologue to the 10-C.
And then we have S5 of Disco, which was fantastic all throughout. "Life, Itself" is a fucking ride, I was loving it more and more, and we reach Saru's wedding, and even though none of this had been planned as the end of the series, it felt like somehow, against all odds, we were getting a PERFECT ending.
And then... that fucking epilogue. It's so stupid! "Calypso" did not need explaining! "Calypso" was obviously a first draft idea of how they'd get to the future, there was no way to tie it in to the rest of this seamlessly, and they'd already effectively explained it by having Zora dreaming about this stuff in "Face The Strange"!!!
I can't get over the hackiness of it. When they got the opportunity to add material to make this a finale, THIS is what they thought they needed to add? Not just... more scenes at the wedding to flesh out everyone's ending, which is a perfect way to wrap things up?
Instead, they decided their one must-address item was to add a pained, tortured, overworked explanation for a stray plot thread, from another series, that THEY HAD ALREADY RESOLVED? And that explanation involves exiling a sweet, sentient being, who derives her meaning in life from caring for others, to spend 1,000 years in a solitude that we know drives her a bit insane? That's the last thing we get to see Burnham do, inflict some cruel and unusual punishment on the gentlest hero this show had, for Reasons?
It's truly the most Discovery thing ever to accidentally, without planning, stumble into the most perfect final season imaginable - and then AT THE LAST POSSIBLE SECOND ruin it by adding one last thing to "make it a finale"!
They were almost there! They were about sign off by delivering their FIRST PERFECT SEASON! All they had to do was STOP FUCKING WITH IT!
AAAGGGGGHHHH!!! And that is my insane rant. Honestly the epilogue of "Life, Itself" makes me crazier than anything else in all of Star Trek. The judgment behind it... not since TATV have we seen that level of stupid.
"Face The Strange", though, that is a top 25 all-franchise classic -- like "Subspace Rhapsody."
Red Directive
Under the Twin Moons
Jinaal
Mirrors
Whistlespeak
Erigah
Labyrinths
Lagrange Point
