The fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery is still in production, but the season has hit a big milestone.
Writing wrapped
On Tuesday executive producer and co-showrunner Michelle Paradise revealed that the writers have wrapped up their work for the new season of Discovery. She made the announcement on Twitter, revealing the season finale has been written, adding “End of Season 5.”
We finished typing many words yesterday. I was trying to post a screenshot of them but twitter doesn't like images shaped like rectangles and that's what you get when you take a photo of: "End of Season 5."
So, no photo. But words. And a season finale. 🖖🖖#StarTrekDiscovery
— Michelle Paradise (@michelleparadis) September 13, 2022
Filming on the 10-episode fifth season began in early June in Toronto and is about halfway completed. Paramount+ announced the fifth-season pick-up in January while season four was on hiatus and by the beginning of March writing was already in “full swing,” according to Paradise.
In a March interview with TrekMovie, Paradise talked about how they have applied lessons learned in the previous four seasons to how they approached the new season:
We learn from every single season, and not just from every season, we learn from episode to episode, both creatively and logistically working to be better and reaching to be better and reaching to be the best possible version of this show that we can be. And the best possible addition to the Star Trek universe. The things that come to mind immediately are probably things that are perhaps less interesting to fans of the show itself, but there were a lot of lessons learned last season in the lines of production and logistics and how we shoot during a time of COVID. What that requires and how to make sure that we’re not only keeping people safe, which is the priority, but also getting through our days and making a great show. We have the brand-new technology in the AR wall, which is a phenomenal technology. And that also has a learning curve. And so we’ve learned a lot about that over season four will be able to come in and use it new ways in season five.
An epic adventure
Little is known about the story for the upcoming season, but Paramount+ did release the following synopsis on Star Trek Day (along with a first-look image):
In season five, Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncover a mystery that sends them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well… dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.
Sonequa Martin-Green in first look from Discovery season 5
The set tour released on Star Trek day did offer a behind-the-scenes look at season five, including the return of Mary Wiseman as Tilly. And in August Paradise also shared some spoiler-free images from the set.
What’s on the monitors, you ask…?? #StarTrekDiscovery #Season5 pic.twitter.com/fJqQXXmrl9
— Michelle Paradise (@michelleparadis) August 26, 2022
We will likely learn more about season five at the Discovery panel just announced for New York Comic-Con on October 8. Paradise also teased this event today…
See you in NYC! #StarTrekDiscovery https://t.co/kM4Nuqf7ft
— Michelle Paradise (@michelleparadis) September 13, 2022
As of now, there is no release timeframe for Discovery season 5. Discovery currently streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. Internationally, the series is available on Paramount+ in Australia, Latin America, the UK, and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. It will also stream exclusively on Paramount+ in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria later this year. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave.
Keep up with news for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
Well that’s great but in the name of Kahless please let the writing this season be better than it was in seasons 1-4….hopefully much better.
agreed
Actually I want to see the writing get back to the great levels of seasons one and two, before they watered it down due to the ‘listening to the fans” BS.
Just be BETTER! All I care about. And I thought season one sucked, so yes better than that one too.
I rewatched a block of S3 episodes on the Paramount+ Star Trek “Live TV” channel and they played so much better in a batch than I remembered watching them weekly. Long form storytelling really should be released in complete sets of episodes.
You are so right! I recently rewatched season 4 while I was at home with Covid, watched the whole season in one day. I enjoyed the season when it aired but I had a few issues with the pacing of some of the episodes. When I binged the whole thing in one sitting the pacing worked so much better. Made me wish Paramount would do what Netflix does with Stranger Things and just drop it all in one or two hits, but obviously they rely on the drip feed model to keep subscribers. I have read comments here that other fans have enjoyed PIC S2 a lot more rewatching it in one hit, so that’s next on my binge list when I get the time.
Agreed — me too! Contrast this with Lower Decks S1 which I tried to watch again recently — the jokes fall flat and the canon references aren’t all that compelling the second time around — I gave up the re-watch after the first 4 eps.
I had that reaction with Deep Space 9.. Didn’t so much care for it UNTIL I binged it on Netflix.. And wow. My mind was blown.
Perhaps that was also why I loved S1 and S2 so much… I was watching them in one go instead of waiting weekly too.
Waiting weekly with all the fan speculations and criticisms REALLY drags the experience down
I wish I felt the same way but I rewatched the first 3 seasons last year afterI binged the entire franchise. It took me 9 months to rewatch everything and I will say for the most part I really enjoyed all the shows even though I seen them more time I can count, especially the classic shows. But I still struggled with Discovery. Sure I agree it’s better to binge it but every season still ended badly for the most part.
That’s the problem with both it and Picard, they all start out pretty strong but by the end it’s obvious the stories ran out of steam a few episodes ago or they didn’t have a stronger way to wrap up the stories after throwing out so many plot threads. I still think season 2 was easily the best Discovery season so far but I really hated how the mystery was wrapped up. But not as bad as a kid crying that wrecked the entire alpha quadrant (ugh). So bad and it doesn’t change my opinion of that watching it weekly or binging it in a week. Discovery just have a lot of bad writing issues IMO although it does have great episodes every season; but as a whole it just falters IMO.
When does the REwriting start?
That Road Warrior-like chase photo has me worried about this season. That just looks silly.
Yeah, the overall tech in the 32nd century really drives me nuts overall. Like these people have had transporters for a thousand years but they still need dirt bikes to get around? By now they should be able to transport to Andromeda if they wanted too.
It’s probably a first contact mission. And it’s probably the first intro scenes of the episode 1 of the season, just like how they did it in Season 1 and Season 4.
As I said on another thread, there seems to be particular kind of Trek ‘jumping the shark’ when we see hero captains made to make themselves ridiculous trying to look cool driving or riding dune buggies or motorcycles.
It’s almost as if the handcuffs of ‘The Hero’s Journey’ (never a good fit for Trek) have an unwritten final stage of development: “Hero has premature mid-life crisis mitigated by silly rides over rough terrain on vehicles to make them feel young, vigorous and in control again.”
Not sure whose fantasy this is supposed to be fulfilling.
One would think that the fan, audience and critical derision of Nemesis and Beyond might register, or even LDS’s send up within the family with the captains racing jet skis.
But no.
It’s enough to make one think that they really want to make this Discovery’s final season.
Fortunately, SMG is an incredibly fit woman who can credibly pull off some of these stunts, but the season one and two did better in using her athleticism.
Also, fortunately, there will be an entire season with other content – hopefully not though awkwardly timed, stilted conversations grinding action and plot momentum to a halt.
Trek had its own unique mythology before Campbell encapsulated the more traditional one that everybody has been trying to use as a paradigm post-SW. I think that is one of Abrams’ biggest goofs (saying a lot, I know), trying to cram Trek 09’s pseudoKirk into hero’s journey instead of relishing and exploiting the diversity inherent with the Big Three.
I think the midlife crisis is just another way they have of riffing on a TWOK aspect, Kirk (apparently) hitting age 50. It’s like they have one formula for alleged depth, another for how to do the antagonist. Even the folks on TFF realized they were too close to Khan with the original version of Sybok (Zar?) and that change wound up giving the whole thing more depth, even if many find the execution lacking.
I actually wrote a paper for a mythology class about Abrams use of hero’s journey for 09. My classmates and professor were unfamiliar with the movie and had only considered Star Trek as a ensemble style of storytelling, I had to explain that Abrams basically turned Kirk into Luke Skywalker for this thing and went full space opera, likely due to his fascination with Star Wars and Star Trek was as close as he could get (at the time).
I still think to this day that Trek ’09 was his audition for Star Wars
Yet between that, STID and SUPER8, it wasn’t enough to take him out of the running for all time. Hard to figure.
My first impression is that it looked silly as well. Shades of the motorcycle scene from “Beyond.”
And the buggy from Nemesis before that
Not All Trek Desert Scenes are created Equal/Bad.
Fingers Crossed.
Ok… seriously people… not every planet is going to be advanced! Why can’t this be a scene on a pre-warp planet.. or an outback planet?? Stop with the everything needs to be shiny idea…
I thought that it’s obvious that this is a scene from a first contact mission. She is not wearing her uniform.
I guess people are less bright when they are hating something irrationally.
That’s a good point. It’s a shame you had to be a dick about it though. If you see my posts in general you would notice that I am a big Discovery fan.
You don’t have to make this about yourself. Even a fan can hate aspects of things they like and then get irrational about it.
I guess people are less bright when they are hating something irrationally.
No, with this comment you made this a group-level personal insult about all the people posting here who were not happy with the sort of Road Warrior-like action photo — Suggesting that we are complaining about this because we have an irrational hate for Discovery.
I don’t have an “irrational hate” for the series and I know (from their previous comments on DSC) that most of the other posters here don’t either. We simply dislike what we are seeing in this photo. When I see this photo I kind of groan as it brings back the Nemesis ATV chase and Kirk riding a motorcycle – and I think many fans justifiably have the same reaction, because these vehicle chase scenes have a history of not working well in Star Trek.
Because this is the 32nd century. The planet itself not being advanced shouldn’t be the point. Starfleet should be. They have transporters built into their combadges. Why do they need vehicles at all?
Yeah this is true, but it’s really hard to say without knowing the context to any of it.
I hated the dune buggy scene in Nemesis like everyone else. I still roll my eyes watching Kirk riding a motorcycle in Beyond but UNLIKE Nemesis you can kind of justify it how they used it in the story. Still not really needed but I can buy it.
With this, we just have no idea. Maybe Burnham is living on this planet as part of a mission and this a mode of transportation. Maybe it’s some kind of race she is a part of. Or maybe it really is just a way to get a captain on yet another rugged vehicle because someone think it looks cool. That can be the answer too obviously but it’s hard to say without any context.
Then why do they still need to have to walk when they can get transported anyway anywhere? Using vehicles is way more logical than having to walk for hours after landing or being transported like we have seen it in soooo many episodes in so many years. How many times we saw a shuttle landing or crushing and then they were not only stuck on the planet but also stuck on the place and had to walk to move forward or to leave a place which would become too dangerous.
That never made sense in-universe. Star Wars and even Back to the future II got it right that way. Imagine flying a long distance in real life and then having to walk a long way after leaving the airplane instead of using a taxi. Doesn’t make sense, eh?
Yeah seriously! Why did Kirk and Spock need to try to drive that car in “Piece of the Action” in TOS? They could have just used the transporter. Right? Is that what you mean?
Or if they needed exercise, they could have had that part of the planet stunned from orbit and then walked to Okmyx’s place.
Makes Sense.
I’ve been on board with discovery since episode 1, and there’s something special about the show for me because it brought me back into the franchise again (and led to a franchise rewatch) after late seasons of voyager and enterprise all but made me lose interest. I think discovery has been a fun ride.
Looking forward to season 5, I just hope the story isn’t all about the federation or the galaxy being in danger because that got old seasons ago.
There’s been writing on this show?
(Oooh! A jab of snarkiness!)
Apparently it’s been written with large crayons
‘an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. ‘
Doomsday Machine?
Vger?
Genesis?
Whale Probe?
Sha Ka Ree?
Red Matter?
Orcis ST3 multiverse device/mcguffin?
Another galaxy ending thing Burnham to solve on her own.
I don’t think it can be Genesis because if the wave has reached the edge of the galaxy it should have wiped out everything in it’s path in it’s wake. I went with v’Ger for last season and was totally wrong so I am not going there again lol. Honestly I would love it if Sha Ka Ree was erased from canon because there is a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy, not a planet.
Time travel?
Remember it was banned after the Temporal war
It can also be just Carl.
They already showed that Carl had deliberately hidden himself for centuries.
Nomad? 🤔
Well, writing is by far the weakest aspect of Disco. I guess infinite monkeys on infinite keyboards are done with season 5 :)
No those infinite monkeys came up with the entire works of Shakespeare. For Disco it took only 3 monkeys, and one of them was sleeping.
You guys should get an act at the Improv. /s
Ok, Ok… I know you like Disco. To be fair, I did like S1, S2 and S3 (despite the idiotic Burn). I even liked Burnham in S1. S4 was a different story. I will certainly watch S5 to give it a chance.
I am hoping that S4 of DSC and S2 of Picard were outliers due to the COVID production period both were in.
Agreed. I didn’t watch Picard S2. I was late watching S1 as a lot of the posters seemed to dislike it, but I actually liked it a lot. S2 is getting such bad reviews though that I decided not to watch it at all… If Burnham can tone down the hubris and whispering and if the writers can stop having the cry-baby bridge crew members insist on having a therapy session discussing their opinions and feelings while the ship is under fire, or having a group of people all proud of themselves to have solved a problem together and patting each other on the back teary-eyed… Then S5 should be fine. Less mush, more grit. Oh and less Blu and Ian please… and more Tilly. Yeah, that should do it.
Yeah it’s way too much touchy feely stuff for me about Discovery among other things. I don’t have an issue with Burnham and others crying, its the AMOUNT of crying that’s the problem on that show. When I saw that episode in season 4 and they all go down to the planet where Species 10c used to live that caused them to all cry and be sad made me want to throw something at the TV. I still can’t believe they made that into an entire episode.
Awesome. S4 was one of the best seasons of all Trek imo and it was one of the best written too. Each season of Discovery has been great and i hope S5 continues to be just as great.
I was thinking this was going to be the iconians but after getting V’ger so wrong last season I’m pretty much going to drop that thought now.
I think the Iconians are a good bet. Yes, it’s a retread to past shows but we’ve never seen an Iconian in live-action Trek, despite coming across their gateways.
Which color crayon did they use?
Nice article picture as well, Burnham in full superhero mode
*Yawn*
Excerpt from last episode final scene:
RIKER: Computer, end program…and delete.
Or, shades of ds9, we find out Burnham is ‘really’ Benita Betty Sue’ Russell, an 11 year old girl dreaming of or writing about a far-off future in which people of color can achieve anything they set their mind to — even in immensely dumb and egocentric universes.
.
… written by Kestra Riker
Haha, very meta
We heard you the first 873 times.
LOL!
While I’m not as cynical about the show as you are, I have to admit I basically given up on Discovery too which is sad to say since every show before this one I loved by their fourth season if not their third (NOT counting TOS ;)). I’m a fan though and still plan to watch of course but my ‘anticipation’ level for season 5 is hanging around a 3 right now. I could change on a dime if the season is just better but my hope for that is still quite low.
Another excerpt: Spock wakes up in the shower and realizes he never had a adopted sister.
Given the writing on seasons three and four, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
And season one and two…
Captain Burnham and her crew discover a secret map that sends them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find the Sacred Chalice of Ventoozler with its ancient power. But there are others on the hunt as well… sinister Zazis who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it. Adventure has a name and it is Disco.
Fingers crossed the big mission relates to the Iconians … finally after so many teases, please make it so!
Was kinda hoping she would tweet that she finished writing the series finale not the season finale.anyone really interested in DSC anymore with LD, SNW & PIC S3?
Sounds like a reworked TNG 2parter story that I’m sure they’ll stretch & fill full of filler for 10 episodes…SOP for DSC
I have a feeling questions about the desert scene will be at least partially answered when we see the first trailer for season 5.
At least, I hope so.
NOT looking forward to the fifth season… I’ll watch it eventually when I’d have nothing better to do at some point. The fourth season is to blame. I can’t care less about the story or any of the characters. Enormous wasted potential. It’s just sad.
Good, I do like Discovery but I hope they bring it to a conclusion.