Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham. Michael Gibson/Paramount+ hide caption First, an admission: Though this column will offer a lot of discussion and defense of Star Trek: Discovery as a pivotal show, it won’t spend much time talking up the series’ current, final season or its finale episode, “Life, Itself,” dropping Thursday on Paramount+. That’s because, for this critic, the last few seasons of Discovery have been a bit bogged down by the stuff that has always made it a tough sell as a Trek series: overly ambitious, serialized storylines that aren’t compelling; new characters and environments that don’t impress; plot twists which can be maddening in their lack of logic; big storytelling swings which can be confusing and predictable at once.
The show’s finale features the culmination of a sprawling scavenger hunt which found the crew of the starship Discovery bounding all over the place, searching for clues leading to a powerful technology pioneered by an alien race which created humanoid life throughout the galaxy. Their goal was to grab the technology before another race, ruthless and aggressive, could beat them to it, laying waste to everything. It's no spoiler to reveal that Discovery ’s heroes avoid that nightmarish scenario, wrapping its fifth and final season with a conclusion centered on Sonequa Martin-Green’s ever-resourceful Capt.
Michael Burnham and fond resolutions for a multitude of supporting characters (there’s even a space wedding!).