Star Trek: Discovery fifth season teaser: David Cronenberg dares you to be great
Michael Burnham and crew are going to have to save the future again in the Paramount Plus show's upcoming fifth season
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Look: It’s never not going to be a little funny that director David Cronenberg has become such a visible part of the Star Trek universe in recent years—to the point that it’s Cronenberg’s face and voice that welcomes fans in the new teaser for the upcoming fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery, unleashed at the franchise’s big New York Comic Con panel today.
Of course, it’s not just the director of Rabid and Crimes Of The Future who shows up, daring Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham to be great—again. Although the teaser is very light on plot, we do get little check-ins on all our favorite crew members, including Saru, Stammets, and, of course, Tilly. They all seem to be having a nice time living in the future, at least until—
Wait.
Hey, wait.
Is that the dang Lament Configuration from Hellraiser? Damn, this series really is indulging its love for 1980s horror films of late.
(Alternate joke: We never expected to see Discovery’s obsession with the seasonal structure of J.J. Abrams-style puzzle box shows get quite this literal.)
But we kid Discovery, which looks typically energetic in this teaser. (Lots of desert planet shenanigans, from what we can see.) The short vid also features a few new cast members for this season, including Battlestar Galactica alum Callum Keith Rennie and outlaws played by Elias Toufexis and Eve Harlow.
What we don’t get, unfortunately, is a release date for this new season: We’re still hanging out on “early 2023" as an arrival point, which is more or less when all these dang Star Trek shows—i.e., the third season of Picard, slated for February, plus the second season of Strange New Worlds, which is currently standing at an even more nebulous 2023, in general—are supposed to be rolling out.
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*sigh*I caught up on fourth season a few weeks ago, and my general thoughts are that, as a character drama, it’s kind of wretched…but as a science fiction show, I think it’s a lot of fun.Everything about the emotional divide between Michael and Book was really boring, because they’re really boring. I care nothing at all for their relationship. They tried to inject some late-stage pathos into Shawn Doyle’s character and it was trite and hollow. Moments of truth emotional connection and truth between people – authentically captured and earned – are excruciatingly rare.But once they started tracing down Species 10-c and all that good stuff, I had a really, really great time with it; both third and fourth seasons went really weird by the finale, and I thought it was great. Plus, the whole discussion about trying to peacefully approach a species whose careless actions are harming others was really, really solid.I’m skeptical the show will ever do well when it comes to characterization; at this point, Michael is just the Magic Special Genius Who is Always Right and Awesome in All Things; they’ve sanded down a lot of character’s edges (like Stammets and Reno), while character relationships are largely bland and boring (or sugary sweet). Newcomers like Adira and Grey are painfully twee. I wasn’t even really sad to see Tilly go because she was bordering on insufferable.With all that being said, I do appreciate and enjoy the show’s ambition. And for that, I’ll keep watching.
Yes, it does seem Michael is too good at everything. On other ST shows, sometimes the not-Captain did the heavy lifting. Picard didn’t always save the day, sometimes Riker or Data did. But they are trying something different with Discovery, so I do enjoy it. By the way, Tilly is in season 5, she’s was in the clip for a brief second.
Oh, I know Tilly’s still around. But she’s gone down to recurring instead of regular, and was gone most the back half of the season.
I’d say the show has steadily gotten better, but it still hasn’t really gotten good. Its reach still well exceeds its grasp. Michael Burnham is dull and the only reason she is special is because people keep saying she is special. The bridge crew remains mostly anonymous and exists purely to sprout technobabble which they use as deus ex machina way to much. But at least they got away from the idea that this is a prequel to TOS. That was a horrible idea that wrote them into corners they couldn’t get out of and they are trying to write new stories now. That’s an improvement.
I actually liked the first two seasons more, though I know I’m probably in the minority on that. Partly because there’s no authority figure keeping Michael in check anymore (like Lorca or Pike) and partly because they’ve overcorrected with the characters and relationships, and the result is that none of them have any real depth or meaning pretty much at all. People tell things a lot – but there’s not near enough showing.
I think what I liked most about latter season four was its ambition. Like, everything about Species 10-c was really weird, in the best way possible. And there was a scope to it all that older Star Treks couldn’t have pulled off – both due to budget, and the limits of technology. This felt like creating something truly alien on a much grander scale, and it was awesome. Plus, the whole dialogue about how to approach the people behind the DMA was really great – it was totally a whole ‘Devil in the Dark’ ‘Darmok’ ‘First Contact’ (episode, not movie) vibe that emphasizes the importance of peaceful diplomacy and communication, even and especially when people are already dying, and the alternative could so easily lead to war. The show is messy…but this plotline in particular was very, very Star Trek to me, and I really enjoyed it. In fact, it’s something I enjoyed about both third and fourth season: both the DMA and the Burn were ultimately caused by someone without malicious intent.
I think having Michael embrace her human side in seasons 3 and 4 did wonders for how she interacted with the crew. It made her feel lighter, more expressive, more alive. Having established 2 seasons of Vulcan, and 2 seasons of Human, I’d be okay if they started to explore the fact that she is of both worlds.
Look, I gave up on this show two seasons in (not even sure I ever finished season 2, but I do know I never got to the future season), but after Strange New Worlds was such a breath of fresh air for NuTrek, I’m more willing to entertain the idea that this might be capable of a turnaround. And I will say, as bad as this show was, it never quite descended to the hateful morasses that is Star Trek: Picard; it wasn’t irredeemably awful, which was part of why it was so frustrating.