Star Trek: Discovery’s series finale has all of the trappings of a Star Trek ending and none of the earning it. I loved the ending. It’s a stereotypically classic Star Trek ending, and nothing in it feels earned to me.

That’s a strange thing to say about a show I’ve become a big fan of, so let me work it out. The episode is called “Life, Itself,” it’s the last episode of the last season of the entire series, and it’s literally the end of the journey they started at the beginning of the season. There are Breen encounters and fights and the whole nine yards. You get action Saru one more time, flexing his diplomatic muscle on Tahal, who we never actually get to see. That makes Tahal sort of a nothing burger of a character, other than getting name dropped by Rayner earlier in the season.

Fine ending. The episode’s fine. It is what it is.

Burnham Meets the Progenitors

Burnham meets the Progenitors, and here I thought they were going to go somewhere along the lines of Sisko from Deep Space Nine. Some form of hey, she’s going to stay now and be the new steward of this thing. They didn’t go there.

I loved the Progenitor work area, with all the different portals to all the different places they’ve seeded. The conclusion Burnham comes to is that this technology doesn’t belong in the hands of any one person or any one species. She invokes infinite diversity in infinite combinations, because there are so many species out there already. I get it. So she decides to destroy the technology.

The conceit comes out of the conversation between Burnham and the Progenitor. You find out the Progenitors found this technology already sitting here, and they used it to seed life in a galaxy where there was no other life. They made more. It feels like a classic case of somebody writing something and not wanting to write themselves into a box, so they don’t close that particular loop all the way.

I’m not going to say anticlimactic. But I don’t know why, I was never once really concerned for the stakes. I was never worried for Burnham and them. Maybe that’s because we know Star Trek.

And I don’t necessarily know that I agree with the creative choice to have Burnham wipe it away. Whatever her reasoning was, it sort of takes something out of everything that happened to get there. It just felt off.

The Victory Lap

Then the show does all the things Star Trek does. It takes a victory lap the way only Star Trek can.

Saru and T’Rina got married. Wonderful, beautiful wedding. Burnham and Book got back together, finally, officially.

And then you find out Kovich is actually a code name for Agent Daniels. That’s right, Agent Daniels, the time agent from the future, from Enterprise. It’s great, and it’s something I predicted online. If you follow me on X, people were asking who I thought he was, and I said I think he’s a time traveler. I think he’s a survivor of the temporal war, and his job is to help keep things moving forward and avoid another one. That puts him part of Starfleet and yet outside its normal function, because after the temporal war nobody’s allowed to go back in time. So he’s still running things in that way. And we know Burnham goes to work for him eventually, because she ends up with that little infinity badge.

Right after that we jump to the future. Book and Burnham are older folks. Burnham’s an admiral, because every captain becomes an admiral eventually. They have a son, and he comes to pick her up for her final mission, which is to board Discovery with Zora. It’s a red directive, so it’s all classified. Burnham is going to take Discovery someplace out in space where the ship will wait for something. Another ship, something she’ll know. At the end of the day, Discovery is being set free, but on a mission.

The Longest Run, the Fewest Episodes

Part of why it doesn’t feel earned has to do with a statistic that came out this week: Discovery is technically the longest running Star Trek series, but with the fewest episodes. That makes a lot of sense to me. We didn’t get enough time with this crew, with these people, for this ending to feel the way it should.

Yes, it was great seeing everybody hug. But it means so much more after the time is put in. In “All Good Things” for TNG, the card playing scene meant more because of the time. Picard season 3 meant more because of the time. The work TNG did informed our love.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve become a big fan of Discovery. But I feel like they’re trying to give us a nice neat bow that didn’t feel earned, and that’s sad, because Discovery has been a good show. It blazed a lot of trails. It definitely inspired all the new Star Trek that’s out there. It deserves its place in the history of Star Trek, for sure.

The Verdict

Star Trek: Discovery’s series finale, “Life, Itself,” is an 8.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index. It felt like an ending, but I felt like we rushed a lot of things.

The season as a whole is a solid 8. For me this was a middling season, and I think that’s because we knew the ending was there, so the stakes weren’t as high. Mind you, I was half expecting somebody to get lost along the way. But even Moll gets saved.

I feel like I just converted. I just came into an understanding of what this show was supposed to be, and now it’s gone. The show is ending before I had the opportunity to really begin to enjoy it in its fullness, the way I do with the eyes I have now.

Did I get it right? And here’s the one I really want your thoughts on: I’ve done series overviews before, but I feel like I missed opportunities with this show. Should I go back and start at season 1, episode 1, and review the first three seasons week to week with these new eyes? Tell me in the comments on the video above.