So, that’s all she wrote for DSC! End of the series.

I don’t feel much of any kind of way about not seeing these characters in new adventures.

As a season finale, I suppose the episode was okay? Typical DSC fare. I was very bored by the early episode fights Burnham had with the Breens and Moll. The fights were too long and often looked very CGI and fake. Moll remained one-note, predictable and unlikeable to the very end. Her and Lak’s entire relationship felt like they were in love because… the plot needed it. There wasn’t a single reason to care about them as individuals or as a couple. And, it’s possible I missed it, but I don’t think we were shown or told why Lak is so different from the other Breen? More relaxed and open minded enough to fall in love with a non-Breen? I don’t think he got any character work, actually, beyond “I’m in love with a human”. Moll at least got some development, even if it didn’t make her any more likeable or changed her nature in any way.

Also, I don’t understand why, if Lak is the scion of the Breen emperor without whom no-one can be the new emperor, then shouldn’t Lak become the new emperor?? Why didn’t he? And why was it treated as a given that he wasn’t the new emperor and that his uncle or whatever he was, was totally entitled to be the new emperor as long as Lak was alive and in the uncle’s control? And it was fine and dandy for the uncle to treat Lak awfully and nobody cared, but when his uncle tried to destroy Lak’s dead body when there was still a chance of revival by a god device, suddenly half of the uncle’s own troops turned against him?? Just. I remain unconvinced by the whole Moll/Lak thing and all the Breen royal succession things.

Just like I remain unconvinced by DSC crew supposedly being a “family” despite Burnham spouting that nonsense every other minute. Right. That’s why they are never (seen) interacting with each other if they are not in duty, showing them just being people who enjoy each others company. That’s why no-one but Burnham plus very few mains got attention and development and even the other main characters got increasingly less as seasons wore on and what they got felt like forced on them, was often (or rarely) never mentioned before or after. And never mind the bridge background crew. They were just bodies. They got a few meaning glances at each other per episode and one personality trait/hobby/worry dump per season if that and even *that* little bit was done in the clumsiest way possible in middle of an action or emergency scene which came to a screeching halt so that a bridge grew character could dump some surface-level-relevant-to-the-situation but actually irrelevant thing about themselves to the viewers. And I’m still mad about how they did Airiam and her plot. And I still don’t believe that the entire Discovery crew had all chosen to follow Burnham into unknown (future), perhaps to die. The character relationships between them and Burnham just weren’t there except for Saru, maybe. I’d believe it of any other ST crews (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, even ENT), but not Discovery.

I was also so very bored by the loooong musical montage at the end in Saru’s wedding. So bored actually sped through it, stopping a couple of times to hear if they were actually saying something – anything! – but apparently it was just empty hugging the whole thing trying to sell the “family” thing. Still didn’t buy it.

I am happy that I was wrong when I said in one of my earlier DSC posts that now that Saru has big career change and is in love and getting married, he is certain to die. I’m very glad that didn’t happen – the show did at least one thing right!

The best thing about season 5 was Rayner. I liked Rayner a lot! Wish he’d had more screentime! He’s probably my favorite character of the entire series. I also like Book very much, although I don’t care for the writers destroying his world and having him act abusively by latching on to and trying to force a familial relationship on Moll who rightly refuses to have anything to do with him until their final scene together. I also liked Culber and the Jinaal thing a lot, and enjoyed the actor’s performance as Jinaal a lot more than him as Culber. It would’ve been nice to be shown more of his resurrection/self-discovery/existential crisis (so that we’d actually see him having thoughts about it all for more than one minute in one conversation) before he shoved himself into a deadly mission because of it, to have a sudden epiphany, from his time as Jinaal, that saved their lives. There have been quite a few bits in this season and previous that I’ve liked, but they’re just that – bits. The whole isn’t that great for me.

There are also two things that particularly bother me, now that the series has ended. First is, Tilly became and remains a teacher?! When the show started, she had three defining characteristic: she’s extremely intelligent, she’s extremely ambitious and is going to Command a big important starship, and she’s socially awkward. I can see her gaining Captainship of something like Discovery or Enterprise once she has years and years of experience and that has brought her confidence, or I can see her being a brilliant scientist, making brilliant discoveries and developing amazing tech, and again gain confidence. What I can’t see is her making teaching her career! For little while, sure, if Starfleet needs her to do that. But as a passion and a career? Nope. Not at all.

The other thing that bothers me – Zora. So they just send an sentient, intelligent, feeling being to spend literally an eternity alone in isolation? That’s how you get insane villains/computers/ships rampaging for revenge a few thousand years down the line. Starfleet and Federation aren’t cruel enough to make horribly cruel desicions like this, but DSC writers clearly are. Or more likely, they just didn’t think it through, just like so many other plot and character things during the run of the series.

I might or might not have continued watching further seasons, but I don’t feel that I’ll miss the series or the characters, and at least right now, I don’t feel like I’ll re-watch it either. Maybe seasons 1 and 2 at some point, but I have zero urge to re-watch seasons 3-5.