Analysis: “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” Promo Reveals Epic ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season Finale

The first part of the Star Trek: Discovery season finale “Such Sweet Sorrow” set up the final showdown with Control. So what’s next?

The teaser for next week’s episode (titled “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2”) attached to Thursday’s episode gives us a glimpse at the epic battle with the Section 31 fleet. We also get a look at Michael’s great leap. To get ready for the end of the season, we are giving this promo the full TrekMovie screencap and analysis treatment. As usual, the following contains spoilers.

 

[WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW]

 

Prepare for battle

The USS Enterprise and USS Discovery surrounded by Section 31 fleet

Spock and Michael run through Discovery corridor

The Enterprise launches shuttles

Captain Pike on the Enterprise says “This is Captain Pike. We have one job: protect Commander Burnham until she reaches her target. Section 31 is in our way…”

Georgiou on the bridge of the Discovery

Detmer at her station on the bridge (Georgiou behind)

Large Section 31 ship launches a squadron of smaller craft, possibly drones

Pike finishes his speech saying “Get it done.”

Michael’s great leap

A shuttle piloted by Spock lifts off in Discovery’s shuttle bay, with Michael Burnham in Red Angel suit preparing to jump

Saru in captain’s chair on Discovery counts down “In five, four, three, two, mark!”

Michael readies herself to leap into space

Spock in Discovery shuttle

Discovery and Enterprise engage the enemy

Michael runs to the shuttle bay exit

Michael leaps into space

An explosion on Enterprise bridge

The battle continues

Crew on Discovery slides as corridor pitches with an explosion behind a closed bulkhead door

Discovery fires phaser (blue) and receives phaser fire (red)

Photon torpedo heads towards saucer of USS Enterprise (as foreseen in time crystal visions in part 1 of finale)

A console explodes on the bridge of the Enterprise

Through the hole

Spock’s shuttle and Michael land on the hull of a ship

Spock yells “Go Michael, now!”

Burnham views her heads up display which includes “Red Signal 04”

A close-up of Michael

The Red Angel suit’s wings deployed as Michael heads into a wormhole

Michael flies towards the wormhole

Michael passes through the wormhole

What does this all mean?

Our speculation is that our main Discovery crew is about to head into the future, which is where (when!) season 3 will be taking place. There will be a reason Spock leaves Discovery before they jump, to get him back to the Enterprise where we know he continues serving under Pike, and will eventually serve under James T. Kirk. Once the Discovery leaps into the future, the sphere data is safe from Control, and it will be clear why no other ships are using the spore drive.

“Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” debuts Thursday, April 18th.


Star Trek: Discovery is available exclusively in the USA on CBS All Access. It airs in Canada on Space and streams on CraveTV. It is available on Netflix everywhere else.

Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery news at TrekMovie.

148 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Why it will be clear that no other ship uses the spore driver?? In fact, the spore drive has been proven to be a success.. why the intentional travel to the future of the discovery can change that??

I guess it’s because it’s in the script. This entire time travel plot of S2 was mainly to get DISCO into the future where it should have started out two years ago. S2 was all about correcting some of the countless continuity gaps needlessly created by the creators in Season 1…

Klingon hair and overall design, holographic communicators (“We won’t be using them EVER again!”), starship designs and the very existence of the spore drive. While it was directed at the Sphere data, the episode has Pike stating “The very existence of Discovery [at this point in time] is the problem!” That was a meta-joke directed at Fuller’s choice to place DSC pre-TOS.

With Klingon hair grown back, the holographic communication systems ripped out of Enterprise for good, a relatively faithful Enterprise design and the transportation of DISCO into the future, most continuity issues have been resolved.

Does it make sense not to build another ship with spore drive tech? I dunno. Probably not, but then, Excelsior had Transwarp drive which WOULD have worked if Scotty hadn’t sabotaged it. Yet, 100 years later, still no Transwarp drive available. So yeah, it’s quite a Star Trek tradition to bury those technologies because the script or timeline demands for it. I don’t have a problem with that and the tech WILL be revisited in the 28th (?) century anyway which opens up great potential for season 3 and / or series going further into the future…

They can easily resolve the issue of why they abandoned the spore drive tech in a “history lesson” in Season 3, e.g. explaining that the Klingons demanded the end of those experiments (after it had helped Starfleet to win the war!). DSC has been quite good at debunking continuity issues with clever one-liners this season. I love that approach.

@Garth Yeah, pretty much. Trying to fix as many problems created by Bryan Fuller as they reasonably can.

What does ”meta” mean? Thanks

“Meta” in that regard, means that the on-screen character was talking about a plot point but, in a sense, he was also talking to the viewer through the fourth wall, addressing an issue the fans have with the show’s setting. “Meta” means “beyond”, taking things to a higher level…
BTW: Do you happen to have green hair, Noah? I know it’s a silly question as there are millions of Noahs on this planet, but if you have green hair, that would also be super-“meta”… I hope you don’t mind my curiosity.

In my own head canon, transwarp drive was the reason behind the change in warp scale factors between TOS and TNG.

I myself often wondered why could TOS mention warp 10 or warp 12 but TNG treated warp 10 as an asimptote.

Per the Okudas, the warp scale was changed in the TNG era.

“But this goes to eleven…”

Nicely played…

Discovery, however seems to use the TNG-era scale. At the beginning of the latest episode you can see “WARP FACTOR 6.25” morphing to “244c” (6.25 cubed) on one of the consoles.

I stand corrected. According to Memory-Alpha v = w^3 * c is pre-TNG, so it seems to be OK. For TNG+ it’s v = w^(10/3) * c.

I’ve also rationalized in my head canon that Transwarp is what allowed the Enterprise to reach the center of the galaxy so quickly in Star Trek V. Later shows established it would take decades to travel that far with regular warp.

The “Transwarp Problem” was always a head-scratcher for me. As if nobody figured out that sabotage is why it failed?

Yeah, that never made any sense.
What some fans are basically saying is that, while Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, the Transwarp drive on its own worked and it redefined the warp scale into what we saw in TNG (the one where Warp 10 is ‘infinite velocity’).

But realistically, the Federation by the 23rd century should have had more than powerful enough warp drive to explore the entire galaxy… not take hundreds of years to get from one end to the other.

Why?
Simple.
Technology and science already evolve at faster than exponential pace in reality (whereas many people/fans and writers usually portray this in a linear fashion)… in Trek, with dozens of species pooling their knowledge, resources and ideas together, coupled with automation, the Federation should have been VASTLY more advanced than what we saw even in Discovery – effectively, more technologically ahead than the Klingons or any other singular power that ‘conquers’ lesser planets, because the Federation uses cooperation to come up with fresh ideas from dozens of species… you cannot ‘force’ creativity really, and its something that would result in Klingons and Romulans for example suffer in regards to technological and science developments.

So, in regards to what we saw on Discovery with holographic communications systems, etc… that’s actually something that should be well within their technical abilities… heck, the Federation should have dyson swarms around every memeber planet solar system star in operation by that point easily (not an actual sphere, but swarms).

Orville was pretty good on the politics of federation or union and its downfalls. Very interesting

Well they do have a slip-drive buy the end of discovery and a possible spore drive in the future that fix viral infestation of its use. Plus Borg might be our allies and the possible trans universal drive where you can go to other galaxies

guess we will have to watch

Tardigrade DNA. Stamets is the only one who has it right now. Unless Starfleet finds another Tardigrade and allows for the genetic manipulation of its officers in the future, losing Stamets would set the Spore Drive concept back to the stage we saw in Context is for Kings – Jumps possible, but no way to navigate the mycelial network, with the result of covering only pitiful distances.

Exactly. It seems all but certain Discovery season 3 will be in the future. Getting Stamets safely locked away a thousand years in the future ensures that the spore drive idea is useless and abandoned in the TOS era.

It will be interesting to see how the showrunners integrate Georgiou into next year’s storylines when she’s supposedly going to star in her own Section 31 show soon. Will she go along on the ride into the 33rd century and somehow find her way back in time (heh) for her own series? Will next season take place in both centuries? Stay tuned!

Starfleet surely has a fridge full of Stamets samples; that would be a standard procedure even today, let alone in the future. He’s been to Earth at the end of S1 – so even if Starfleet didn’t have a vested interest in gathering all the samples they possibly could, they surely wouldn’t let him run in the streets with undocumented alien DNA without marching him through some tests in Starfleet Medical first.

Are we still counting on S31 series to happen in the foreseeable future? There haven’t been any news on it recently, maybe it was scrapped. Or rolled into Picard’s show, as some rumors seem to suggest.

She’s leaving the ship to save MB

I agree. Stamets is key to the spore drive, and other experiments have the disclosed disastrous results. For anyone who doesn’t know the (meta?) Stamets in-joke, Google. He’s a real life mushroom researcher.

Stamets is not the key to the Spore drive.
It was mentioned in Season 1 that say an AI could probably do it with… which in S1 they didn’t have… (even though technology would have been more than advanced enough by that time frame to allow for it).
If you think about it, computers process data ridiculously faster than carbon based lifeforms.
And given faster than exponential developments in science and technology, computerized interface (or non-organic one) would be more than fast enough to process the data in question.
Its just that the writers and many people attribute ‘linear’ progression to science and technology… which is not the case.
They still want to delegate some kind of ‘importance’ to ‘biological organisms’ and then they make up nonsense such as ‘the brain is intricately more complex than what a computer can process’ (which is A-grade rubbish).

If anything, the technology on the Discovery is not ‘more advanced’… the writers simply never took into account proper developments of the times they wrote the shows in to begin with.
If you take into account faster than exponential developments, along with dozens of species cooperating and sharing resources and idea like they to in the Federation, then the 23rd century Federation would technically be more akin to what we saw in the Federation in the 24th century… with an ability to explore the entire galaxy with Warp alone in a fraction of the time we actually saw.
By the 24th century though, it would have been realistic to see the Federation explore other galaxies though.

Setting shows 100 years apart with very little technological difference makes 0 sense.
The real world changes very fast in just 10 years which makes it very difficult to project what’s going to happen even in 5 years time (conservative estimates not-withstanding as they are stuck in the past and have 0 clue about many technical breakthroughs that occurred decades ago already).

I also see Discover untethering from MB in the wormhole causing to land somewhere in 24th century right with Picard

Well, Discovery is the only ship with a navigator who’s capable of executing spore jumps.

Meh. But he wasn’t capable at the beginning of the series. I don’t see why no other person in the galaxy couldn’t become capable the same way he did.

Because as has been established, it’s clearly a danger to the person being subjected it. It’s like the Equinox powering their warp drive with dead aliens. Sure, they could get home faster, but at what cost?

Starfleet can’t go around genetically manipulating, poisoning and/or killing officers just to power a new engine. Wouldn’t that be against Gene’s Magnanimous Vision?

@J.S maybe they could but it’s not unreasonable to assume that the Federation would ban another human from being injected with the tardigrade DNA. Section 31 on the other hand, well that’s a different story. They could continue to develop the technology independent of Starfleet and it could explain the tech used by Sloan to get on and off DS9 undetected.

The Federation has a ban on genetic engineering due to what happened with Khan in late 20th century in Trek timeline – but there are so many inaccuracies with that original prohibition which borderline with sheer lunacy.

At any rate, because of the genetic manipulation ban, no other Federation officer is allowed to use Tardigrade DNA to incorporate it into their bodies so that they can use the spore drive.
Hence why it was shelved.

But, that wouldn’t really matter because by the 23rd century, the Federation already has the ability to make a full fledged AI which can act as a replacement for an organic being in regards to the Spore drive… but I’m sure we will see yet another ‘prohibition’ ensue from development of full fledged AI due to what happened with Control (which again, makes no sense, and this ‘AI will inevitably turn against us and kill us’ is a pointless drivel that has 0 basis in reality… no AI would seriously reach that kind of conclusion unless it lacked exposure to relevant general education, critical thinking or problem solving… come on… Trek is supposed to be better than that).

As for the technology we saw on Discovery… to be frank, given the faster than exponential developments that we are experiencing in real life, in Trek timeline, with combination of dozens of alien species working together like in the Federation would result in a MASSIVELY more advanced combination of civilizations by the 23rd century… nevermind the 24th.

Many people (and writers) still attribute ‘linear’ progression to science and technology, whereas, both are evolving far faster than that.

I never bought into the idea the Feds in the 24th century would only be able to cruise or travel at 1000 times LS around the galaxy… the Warp drive by the 24th century should have allowed the Federation to explore other galaxies if you want to keep it ‘somewhat realistic’.

Nah. Superior life forms always conquer inferior ones. It’s ingrain in biology

That’s nonsense, and the only reason that happened is because Humans lived in an outdated socio-economic system which promotes competitive and greed like behavior and didn’t really result in well-educated population that was aware of how the natural world works (this is still the case).

Behavior is impacted by environment. You are alluding to some kind of ‘genetic component’ or basically equivalent to ‘human nature’ which simply doesn’t exist (the existence of this has been heavily disputed for decades now by real science).
But the writers like to pander to this myth because most people accept it as ‘fact’ (even though its not).
Most people are quite uninformed and lack basic understanding of science and how the natural world works… the general population also created a lot of myths as it went along which most still accept without questioning.

The AI’s reasoning is idiotic, and the writers use of AI is ridiculously limited because they project their own lack of knowledge onto the show.

An AI with such computational capabilities and access to a massive Federation database alone would be able to predict events with unmatched accuracy, develop new technologies in a blink of an eye, have superior understanding of sentient behavior, and would in all likelihood not make a ridiculous assumption that everyone are the same due to actions of the few (or the misguided people in power). We are already doing it in reality with automated algorithms… and we can do a lot more… just imagine what Trek could do.

But for an AI to destroy all sentient life makes 0 sense.
The said AI already has massive technological advantage along with the knowledge-base.
What possible threat do sentient species (especially a combination of cooperative cultures like the Federation) pose to it?
The universe is really vast… it could easily leave and do its own thing… or, it could help sentient species evolve further, build bridges between cultures, better educate everyone.
Eradication of all sentient life is inefficient. It requires a lot of resources and effort to actually execute. And, what have you accomplished really?
Life will evolve (and probably already has) somewhere else in the vastness of cosmos… so, you’d have to find it and eradicate all of it… which also detracts from the AI’s further evolution (though it could probably do both at the same time – but again, what’s the point?).

The possibilities are literally endless, and the writers pander to reasoning that is quite frankly a ‘drama maker for the lowest common denominator’.
They need to make drama on a TV show which leads to action, because the existing people ‘like that kind of thing’.
Trek is supposed to be better than that… it shouldn’t pander to stupidity as TOS and TNG had various basis in real science.

The fact is they are trying to rewrite the timeline to get back in line with the otc timeline that was obstructed by the Kelvin timeline or they are trying to get at least back to the Kelvin timeline ..

Starfleet has the specs to make more Spore Drives.

Pew pew pew. Bam bam ping. Zring! Michael Burnham! Who can wait????

“We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, man.”

It’s worse that that, he’s dead Jim, dead! (Love that song/video. Should there be a ‘Disco’ version of it?).

You cannot change the laws of physics, Jim. (Agree, that song is great).

There’s Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow! There’s Klingons on the starboard bow, SCRAPE ‘EM OFF, JIM!

It’s life Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it, Captain.

Not me, my wife and I are stoked for the finale, we even doing a season finale party with our Trekkie friends.

Do you think anyone in power cares how much we are begging for a Captain Pike series?

No reason for begging. That show will happen anyway. Have you seen the shaved Mr Peck in his Enterprise uniform on that fan cruise add? Mount, Peck and Romijn don’t have any major projects ahead of them either.
And Peck’s reactions to those questions were more than telling. If he hadn’t signed up for that trip, he could have just said “No!”… He didn’t, but just said “Can’t say!”, smirking all over the face.

That’s probably one of the reasons they’re sending Discovery to the future, so that the Enterprise crew has the 23rd century for themselves (along with Section 31)…

And there’s a reason Dr Culber leaves Discovery for the Enterprise. Will Cruz isn’t signed up for any further project on IMDB either. Since Dr Boyce has probably entered retirement at this point, a well-known gay person of color is probably a great choice to fill in his shoes prior to the arrival of Bones McCoy.

Great. Mount and Romijin aren’t officially signed..Peck won’t say. At some point, Burnham may go back, save herself, therefore never being adopted by Amanda and Sarek. Personally, the canon modification as is is fine with me. Note Spock’s recent comment on ‘not my biological sister’.

Seeing these pictures I get the impression this is gonna be like “Yesterdays Enterprise”.
I bet the Enterprise is gonna by destroyed to protect Burnham getting into the wormhole. At the end she goes back in time to undo all events and correct the timeline.

Maybe, just maybe, one of those Section 31 CONTROL ships is able to follow DISCO into the time vortex / wormhole but is fought of, severely damaged and lost in time and space, reentering the space-time-continuum in the distant past, the Delta Quadrant… :-)

All that happened a long time ago and will happen again… ehhmmm… wrong show ;-)

Actually, that was a very right show!

The Borg were created by man, and they have a plan…

Michael Bournham in th 25th Centruy

Good point, or they all do. Because how would they be defeated in current Discovery timeline. Does Section 31 really have that many ships? Wouldn’t they have bleeding edge tech? Why didn’t Disco spore jump much further away again -prior- to taking it offline to charge the Crystal, off which I wasn’t convinced. Spores being dimensional as opposed to a supernova or warp core. Just find an Omega molecule, LOL.

Section 31 probably has that many ships because of the number in the naming to begin with.
And Control did mention that there are over 7000 active Starfleet ships to Leland before ‘assimilating’ him… so ‘sparing’ 31 ships for a separate ‘intelligence branch’ would be a proverbial drop in the bucket.

Its possible that S31 would have ‘bleeding edge technology’ in various areas, which would make The Discovery and Enterprise really outmatched either way… but I suspect that to a degree, S31 wouldn’t have too much of an advantage in power generation, Warp capacity or weapons.
The Section is still an intelligence branch mainly, so its possible some of their systems are more advanced/cutting edge than others due to the kind of work they do.

I was also puzzled as to why Discovery just didn’t jump away thousands of lightyears away and then charged the time crystal… actually, Discovery could have just jumped away so far away where Control wouldn’t be able to get there with conventional warp drive – but, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that Control could just create a far faster means of FTL propulsion… maybe even access/use the Mycelium network just like Discovery (it was mentioned in S1 that an AI could do it, but at the time, they said their computers were too slow – which didn’t make sense because with faster than exponential developments occurring already in reality, let alone in Trek where you have dozens of alien species working together, this advacement would quite literally be propelled forward by many orders of magnitude further… so in short, the Federation probably should have been MORE advanced by the 23rd century than what we saw… nevermind by the 24th century).

That would seem like a no-brainer… but, Po did mention that she would need a large amount of power to begin with… indicating she needed to be on-board for the procedure to work in the first place, and of course, they wouldn’t want to leave Xahea with Po still on board (which she chose to do anyway – but by that time, it was already too late).

I was freaking SCREAMING, “Why don’t they JUMP?!!!!”

Or maybe control is actually the birth of the borg.

That’s a lot of budget — urm, space battle.

These days, in the cheap computing era, I would imagine CGI battles are the cheapest part of a SF show’s production budget. (Exploding consoles are probably the biggest line item in a battle sequence. All those pretty sparks!)

I can’t begin to tell you how wrong you are about CGI, Jonathan.

Good 🙄

Paul,
Because information and informed opinions are the least desired qualities on posting forums?

Why are the Section 31 ships arranged in circle around Enterprise and Discovery? Is control like Khan and only able to think in two dimensions?

No, just the producers.

Now that’s funny — and probably way too true.

To be fair no Trek show or movie has ever portrayed space physics correctly except for the final battle of Nemesis. Discovery takes advantage of rotating the ship somewhat and even the 2009 film did but other than that, yeah… not so much. Dramatic tension would be the answer to your question.

ds9 had some vertical stuff deliberate breaking glass tabletop.

That’s why CONTROL needs the sphere data… to evolve in a three-dimensional way :-)

😂

KHAAAAAAAAAAN!

In Season 3, the USS Discovery has become…UNSTUCK IN TIIIIIIME! Maybe.

How very Zathras of you…..

Or possibly Quantum Leapy. We just need Archer to show up now…

21st century trek so far is … not the one.

Lost in Space-Time. Danger, danger Michael Burnham.

Odd thought…

So, Discovery is going into battle and the future with bridge crew, an engineer, a spore scientist

…but without a medic or physician?

Will Hugh turn out to have changed his mind?

Or will it be Dr. Pollard?

I’d so love to see Raven Dauda as a regular in season 3.

Hopefully Reno survives this. She’s proven to be quite a good doctor.

They won’t get a medical staff until Tuesday. Sorry I had to say it. LOL

Excellent, Jerry.

Hugh? I haven’t watched season 2, is Geordi there too? 😉

Hugh Culber, ship MD and Stammets’ partner. Turns out he was only a little dead. :-)

We just had a season with Captain Pike. How about season 3 having Dr. McCoy?

Can I just say how perfect the Enterprise bridge is? I was scrolling down, reached the first photo (with Pike in the foreground), and — had to pause and look to make sure it wasn’t a photo from TOS. Wow!

Allow me to suggest a different outcome:

What are the things we know that have to be addressed for “canon”?
1. No spore drive in TOS or any subsequent show.
2. No Michael Burnham in Spock’s family in TOS.
3. Extremely different tech level / look / feel in TOS, which
4. TNG and DS9 established as part of their history (the TOS look / feel).

So — what if the TOS timeline is revealed to be a different universe from the Discovery timeline? A parallel universe in which for whatever reason tech didn’t develop as fast (thus the smaller ships, etc), Michael’s family never died (thus no Michael in Spock’s family), and which is not connected to the mycellial network (thus no spore drive).

Sincerely doubt it. The visual reboot is real, which also ties into things being higher tech. I don’t think they feel any need to explain it or ‘correct’ it.

What’s with people clinging to an outdated TOS look?
Also, technology on Discovery is not more advanced.
If anything its not advanced enough.

When you think about it, technical and scientific progress occur at faster than exponential pace in reality.
But people still attribute ‘linear’ progression to it (as do many writers).

The Federation which has dozens of species by the 23rd century would have ridiculously more advanced technology because combining all that technical expertise, resources and ideas together with automation would result in something quite frankly unimaginable… but probably advanced enough to allow them to explore the entire galaxy with Warp drive alone in the 23rd century (yes it would mean it would be very fast – much faster than what was originally implied).

By the 24th century, the Federation should be advanced enough to explore other galaxies really.

Setting 100 years between TOS and TNG dind’t make sense because very little has changed (and that never made sense for a show like Trek).

They could have just set it 20-odd years apart (the same amount of time that passed in real life) and had the Galaxy class and everything we saw happen in 24th century (expect Voyager would have to be flung millions of LY’s beyond the Milky Way in that case to have it require 75 years to get back… and actually set it in mid-late 23rd century).

Trek really needs to move away from the constrained notion of TOS because the writers weren’t really forward thinking enough (they didn’t already take into account technical and scientific progress that leapfrogged certain things… and the general population in reality had little or no clue on what Humanity was capable of already in 1974 for example … not FTL travel, no, but we could have colonized the solar system, or a good portion of it by that time).

Then make it a reboot.

no force fields in TOS. No warp capable shuttles, no holograms, no spore drives, ships far too big, no replicators, no comm badges…. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to make a prequel to a science fiction show in which none of the technology lines up, especially one so culturally iconic and widely watched as Trek. Idiocy of the highest order.

So back to the future..to encounter… Jean Luc Picard?

Where’s those Temporal Directive folks…?

They will come when it’s about time. “I guess you are always on time and never too late”?

Good question! Why haven’t Daniels or Braxton shown up amidst all this time-jumping?

I have that feeling. Which makes me ask, Discovery will be folded into that show? And thus a limited series? Or will Picard’s part be limited and the series continue?

I am … so … !!!

Hasn’t the spore drive already been explained? You can’t use it without either torturing a tardigrade, or performing illegal genetic modifications on someone.

Not to forget those network-dwelling life forms who weren’t exactly impressed with starships crossing into their realm either.

But I guess it could be solved by one of the Klingon treaties (Organia or Kithomer that is) as one of the agreements between the Federation and the Empire. The spore drive was a major embarrassment for the Empire as it installed a Federation puppet as the next chancellor. Getting rid of it for good would probably be one of the more pressing issues in such peace talks…

Speaking of which… When this season ends there will be a lot of loose ends that will likely not get tied up. Kaminar, Po, the upside down world…

On the contrary. Po tags along anyway and it will be much more interesting to see what has become of Kaminar by five centuries’ time.
Not sure what you mean by “upside down world”… If you’re talking about the Mycelial Network and the JahSepp, that’s certainly going to be a major topic in the 28th century as well.

None of that wraps up those threads. It is just an assumption they will get picked up at some future time.

In the case of Po either he stayed on board in which case we’ll likely see her in a recurring role next season similar to Reno or she left the ship in either case there’s not really a loose end. I think it’s already been suggested that we’ll revisit Kaminar so if we get time jump that’s a plot thread that could be enhanced as we’ll really get to see the consequences of that decision. Likewise the “upside down world”, there’s no reason they couldn’t go back there as taking them out of the 23rd century allows them to navigate the mycellial network again without it being perceived as a canon violation.

If this is to be a Borg origins story and close some, if not all, of plot holes so far in DISC, then they’re not going to make it a 1000 years into the future. No, they’re going backwards in time, anywhere between 300-1000 years in the past and deep in the Delta quadrant. Clues so far include Burnham’s mom attempting to go back in time only to be flung in the other direction. Time crystal is going to fry after one use due to massive amounts of energy being pumped into it. My guess is Discovery makes the jump, but is badly damaged when the crystal blows. The spore drive is ripped to shreds, as is most of computer core, leaving only fragments of the sphere data intact. Also, somehow, part of Control also makes it through and is likewise damaged. Stranded on the far side of the Delta quadrant, Control assimilates what’s left, endeavors to survive, and evolves into the Borg. On this side of the galaxy, it appears that Discovery successfully jumps away into the future, what remains of Control is destroyed, and the Federation takes steps to prevent another Control from emerging, and pretty much forgets about the whole Control/Borg thing (at least officially) until Q introduces Picard to the Borg a century later.

I guess that sums up pretty much what might happen. Exlaining the switch from “destroy everything” to “assmiliate everything” would be difficult but then CONTROL’s motives haven’t been coherently portrayed so far either. Maybe… if they can’t get a hold of the original Sphere data, they will develop an urge to collect knowledge on their own by assimilating anything in their way.

Now throw V’ger into the mix, seeking for his creator, would add a brand-new flavor to GR’s dictum that there might be a link between V’Ger and the Borg after all. V’Ger was basically a version of the Sphere to begin with, or vice versa…

Will evolve alone to be Zora and will be waiting 1,000 or 2,000 years to be picked up again, to be picked up by who is my question!? Michael!?

Well that’s just depressing as hell, Hugh.

I know it will make Certain fans very, very happy if it comes out that way.

Not me though

I’m with you Marja.

I will be very discouraged if they attempt a Borg origin story.

Burnham doesn’t have to be at the centre of the creation of the greatest Trek villains in two other series.

So, what I’m thinking is that Micheal has been ensuring that the Discovery gets what it needs to succeed. To wit:
1. Saving Jett Reno, because I’m certain we’re about to see why.
2. Saving Terralysium so her mother has a place to retreat to.
3. Making all the Kelpians “evolve” out of fear. Saru quite possibly will need this in the coming battle so the ship survives.
4. Obtaining the Time Crystal at Boreth.
5. Getting Po’s tech to power said crystal.

Now, there’s still two Bursts to go. But given that pattern, I wonder what’s next.

Two bursts and there are two Short Treks not yet tackled, the one set in the future being the most likely choice. I can’t see how Mudd fits into the mix, given the crew already has a time crystal. Would an army of fake robotic Mudd impersonators be able to handle CONTROL? But they probably can’t squeeze all of that into a single episode…can they?

I don’t think we’ll get a hard link with the Mudd short. The short was fun, anyway.

I think the only link to the Mudd short was the time crystal. I don’t think we will see a more significant link than that

Sticking with my prediction for next season – Discovery in the 33rd century, commanded by Captain Tilly!

I really hope you are wrong. Tilly doesn’t have the rank to make the jump to captain.

If a few crewmembers are incapacitated or otherwise occupied (or left in the past on the Enterprise), it could happen.

I just feel that the whole buildup about Tilly wanting to be a captain some day, and then seeing her counterpart as Captain of the ISS Discovery in the mirror universe, is leading somewhere.

Tilly is not competent enough to be captain.

Not relevant. It would be extremely entertaining.

She would only be a successful captain if she had Michael Burnham standing next to her making all the decisions for her.

More likely commanded by Burnham or Saru. I can see how they might plan to have Tilly reach first officer or captain by the series finale though.

One question if they do arrive far in the future is will there be anything left from the Federation (or Earth/Vulcan etc) for them to re-assimilate into?

New Star Wars trailer today. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I’m happy for Star Wars and Star Trek, the Picard show. Discovery will go to the future via time travel. Star Wars: Episode IX. The end of a saga. I liked the teaser. Ready for the grand finale.

Star Wars lost a little magic for me I think because it stopped being an EVENT and became an every year/every other year thing. I’m cautiously optimistic about Episode IX minus the Palpatine thing. What really has me excited is that both franchises will have a solid streaming lineup of both live action and animated shows. The Mandalorian looks like it’s going to be bonkers and I’m stoked for the Cassian Andor series. I can’t wait for the Picard series and the next season of Discovery and I’ve got my fingers crossed for a Pike/Enterprise series. Star Wars is taking a breather from the big screen after Episode IX and I think it’s fair to say Trek might be doing the same and I think it will be a positive thing for both franchises. Celebration is going on now and STLV happens in August so here’s hoping for announcements and trailers there (I want them to continue to use it as Trek’s ‘Celebration’ so to speak.)

The Palpatine thing made my day. He’s always been my favourite character of all franchises. Seeing him once again will be a blast.

Plus, we get a new Tomb Raider movie. I loved Alicia Vikander in that role and yes, I love her in a tank top.

A great day for movies and TV. Now bring on the Pike series announcement next week and there’s probably nothing left to desire…

This is turning into a fun months for genre fans! Discovery is ending but GOT is starting up. We just got the new Star Wars trailer and Endgame will be arriving in two weeks time. Its a fun month to be on the internet if you are fans of all this stuff.

And I’m more than certain we are getting big Picard news in the next few weeks once they start filming.

I still feel like Tyler went to get help and the D7 will be seen in action – could be wrong but I’m hoping for it at least.

I don’t think the Klingons can help them. Michael Burnham has a plan.

Yes, the Klingosn will come to the rescue. It’s the only way to set up a fair fight against that Armada.

Garth Lorca you spelled Klingon wrong. Klingons won’t help them. They are pretty much doomed from the start. Maybe Burnham can save them.

I don’t understand why aren’t the Klingons just aren’t involved now? They knew Section 31 was coming for them when they were orbiting Boreth. They also knew they couldn’t get in touch with the Federation (another thing that really bothers me but whatever) so it seem like they would’ve asked L’rell for assistance then.

The appearance of Tyler would destroy L’rell’s future of being the Klingon Chancellor. Tyler is presumed beheaded and dead. No, the Klingon’s helping out doesn’t make sense. That wont stop the writers from trying it though. We’ll see.

Tyler can use that cool disguise Georgiou was wearing earlier this season. He only needs to get L’Rell to help, he doesn’t need to convince all the other Klingons himself.

Toger, remember though that the original plan wasn’t going to be to face down Sect31. They were going to blow up Disco and aboard the Enterprise hightail it back to safe space. With Disco gone, the sphere data would be gone. That only failed when the AI took over

I hope so too, PEB!

Dump Burnham and bring in a lead character worth watching!

Have to agree. Not that Sonequa is a bad actress, quite the contrary. It’s just the show was Burnham, Burnham, Burnham! It took halfway through Season 1 before I was so sick of the Michael Burnham Show to Advance Progressivism and Social Justice I was begging for some guy named Eugene with a mullet to shove a pill down her throat or an apple pie full of the ingredients Eugene used to be set to the writer’s trailer. I wasn’t much of a fan of In Your Face “Gay is Great!” Stammets or Smolletts as written as well. And every 10 minutes hearing how Saru’s predator antenna were tingling was a mini drinking game in it’s own right. Most times I despised Cadet Crush….err Tilly sorry, and just wanted to see Giorgiou deck her with the back of her hand when Tilly busted into a conversation of senior officers one too many times.

I stayed for Giorgiou and Lorca and Ash, L’rell and the top special effects.
This season, the writers seemed to back down from their SJW agenda a bit, Saru got a testosterone shot, they at least appeared to know that feedback on Burnham as Mary Sue, narrator, and One Woman Show was getting to major suckitude levels. Hugh became less effeminate. Laconic Sam Elliot analog “Jett” was great. And most important, Anson Mount playing Christopher Pike as expectations of 50 years coming and piling on had wanted. Mount is perfect playing one of the legends of Starfleet. More than an equal when dealing with Burnham or handling The Empress. And while the waiting went on too long, Peck has delivered a great young Spock.

But with the Michael Burnham show still on, through not as obnoxiously permeating 36 of every 42 minutes, I thought the writers and producers had struck on a genius move better than the killing of Ned Stark. To save the Galaxy as only she could it meant Burnham had to take a one way trip to the distant future, lost forever. Taking Cadet Tilly, Stammets, with her. Leaving a rebooted Star Trek Enterprise prequel with Pike, Spock, #1 as center characters. Genius. No Eugene and his showsaver pill needed! But it veered back to “All About Burnham”. How character after character needed to make homage by exposition to the soon to be departing savior of the galaxy. How wonderful, how special Michael was, how what they said filled a gap in Burnham’s needy psyche. How wonderful Sonequa acted each moment of strong melodrama again and again and again with different homage givers seeing her out.

If I was a red shirt, I’d be clawing my way to get to serve under Pike on the Enterprise. I questioned brains of the bunch that wanted to stay in the Michael Burnham circle, because they can never get enough of Sonequa playing Burnham.

Nicely stated, chrisford1!

You nailed it, chrisford1.

He nailed it? With his bigioted “Advance Progressivism and Social Justice” (nice use of Capitalized Words, right up there with Dave Barry). Just how did the show do that? By daring to show a black female officer? And then there’s the whining about “Gay Is Great.” How about “More Bigotry from Chris Ford is great”?

What he’s doing is not OK, and I’m calling him out on it.

Thank you, Temarc, yes.

A lot of people seem to forget the show is centered on Michael because the show was conceived to be about a main character who is not the captain of the ship. Burnham is THE MAIN CHARACTER.

Uhm, Marja none of the other Trek shows have had the entire show centre on one main character.

Most Trek fans argue that it’s the relationships that make the show.

Spock didn’t exist just to make Kirk look like a hero. And neither did Bones.

Even for TOS, Roddenberry drew a line and wrote a memo to Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly saying that indulging their desires for more dialogue and more of the show centred on them ‘would make them and the show ridiculous.’

It’s been published from the archives.

So, Brian Fuller had the idea of a Trek show with the ensemble at a different level in the hierarchy….

Ok

But we don’t have to think that the way the idea is being executed is working out…

We’re not seeing Burnham growing and dealing with feedback from her captains.

We’re just seeing the fate of all sentient life in the galaxy being all about her.

Nothing in the premise demands that.

“Michael Burnham” is a perfectly good character that was well conceived and is given good plots and good dialogue, but I continue to feel, episode after episode, than Sonequa Martin-Green lacks the gravitas and range to make the character work. It seems like a majority of the criticisms of Burnham are about how the character is portrayed rather than how she’s written.

This episode was great but suffers from the two-part break. They should have just given us one epic two-hour culmination. They still haven’t figured out how to best use streaming media. It’s weird.

Also, so much for the “epic” #Culments romance. It’s kind of hollow and the one minute (if we’re lucky) they’ll give it next week won’t change that.

Many people will cancel their subscription after the season finale. Your plan would just lose them one week sooner. Why pass up the revenue?

@RonSalon @El Beau Or they could have just put a one week break between last weeks episode and the finale.

If people canceled immediately after the finale they would still get the rest of the month’s payment. CBSAA does not work in portions of months. It’s one month or none of it. The only way to effectively end the subscription after the season finale is to plan for that before the season starts. I started my subscription a few days after the premier episode so I can cancel a day after the finale streams. But, if you got the service on the day of the premier, you are stuck paying for 4 weeks for CBSAA. People can cancel but CBS would still get their money from people who did that. Bottom line, if they had one less week of Trek CBS would still get the same subscription money from most subscribers.

How is it hollow?

I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of this, I’m just no that clever, but I have a feeling that the Short Trek episode “Calypso” is a clue. Discovery was sitting abandoned for nearly 1000 years when Craft was brought aboard. Maintaining station by a very advanced AI. In Part 1, we know that the sphere data has integrated itself with the ships computer, which might explain where the AI came from. There has to be a connection.

In season one when they discovered the ‘Network’ Lorca talked about the possibility of exploring Alternate Realities. Of course this discovery involved his hidden agenda to get back home to the Mirror Universe but it also left the door open for the intriguing possibility of the show exploring other alternate realities. Another thing that has stuck with me is the idea of time travel affecting technology in the time line. This might explain all the ‘new’toys Starfleet has. I honestly believe that the TOS timeline has been softly rebooted which I am more than cool with. Retroactive continuity is cool but its not perfect. It gets muddy sometimes. When they decided to set this show in the years prior to TOS, they put themselves on an interesting tight rope. I want to see a new TOS series. I hope we get one.

The Klingon thing needs to be addressed and I got a feeling it will be. They need to explain how they got to the TOS look. Did they negate the Enterprise explanation? Or did the ‘virus’ impact a certain segment of the Klingon Empire? Has anyone noticed how our guy Ash Tyler kind of looks like a TOS Klingon. I like this show and this finale has me concerned. How far in the future are they going? Will control chase them through time?

They said that they couldn’t call for help because all the subspace channels had been blocked by control. Why even bother calling Starfleet to them when they could have just jumped to Starfleet? Why didn’t they OMG.

And Sarek seemed to know where they would be before they even got there, too. Either that or he had a spore drive in his shuttle.

” and it will be clear why no other ships are using the spore drive.”

Not really. It will never be clear why NO OTHER SPECIES invented it.

The argument that because Discovery jumps into the future, no other ships have the spore drive makes no sense. It may be the only one produced, but even in the time of Disco, they still have blue prints (probably holographic) with schematics and everything they need to build another. Discovery is proof of concept. It works. It is a huge tactical advantage.

Honestly, it is something Section 31 would have had and been using all along. They already have TNG style communicators. Apparently they get all the advanced cool tech first. Star Fleet owns it. They can do what they want with it.

The solution was obvious the instant the tech was presented last season. Although I must say that the more they use it the more likely it is this solution won’t work. But last year I envisioned Discovery jumping away somewhere (probably the future was my guess) but no one left behind knew what happened. The ship would be listed as missing and the spore drive concept would be labeled as either a failure or far to dangerous to continue to explore.

I don’t think they’re going into the future. I think they’re going ‘elsewhere’.

This reminds me of Star Trek Online when one plays a Discovery-era officer who is jumping to the future, like the 25th Century to be Temporal Agent.

So basically we have had the longest pilot ever for a series with 29 episodes. Now the show is really starting. Lets see where it goes from here.

I am all for this!
But Spock looks like an Elf.