Logline
Season finale where lots of wild stuff happens!
Written by: Mike McMahan
Directed by: Megan Lloyd
I feel like I’ve been pulled off Ketracel white cold turkey. So many good episodes. My ultimate conclusion is the best episode is probably season 2 finale, with season 4 finale very close behind.
The Rutherford thing was weird - they could have written in a bit more foreshadowing. I’m gonna tell myself it’s a way to make Eugene Cordero’s makeup easier for a live action film. 😉
Overall, I think it was foreshadowed enough. In the first episode of the season, we see him having transitioned entirely to inorganic parts to fully bury his emotions, and in the end of this we see him deciding to go the other way. And I liked it.
I’m often a little critical of what seem like anti-transhumanist takes that assume organic parts are inherently superior, and mechanization is a defilement of god’s creation. But in this case, I didn’t feel like his choice was that. It felt like – and this is a complicated comparison, so follow me – an examination of what is often called “detransitioning”.
I say “often called” because I don’t think a transgender person adopting a prior gender presentation IS “detransitioning”. I think it’s just transitioning further. There’s a sort of irony, to me, in the taboo within trans-allyship toward transitioning back towards a prior gender expression, because bigots will always say that anyone who does so is proof that their transition was a mistake, and then claim that every transition is a mistake. I think this is ironic, because I celebrate anyone living their truth, and truths are complicated, and they change as we change.
Which is to say that I like cyborg Rutherford. And I also like non-cyborg Rutherford. And if Rutherford got cybernetics again or got biopunk mods, I think I’d like that Rutherford too.
I hope we do get to see more of all these characters.
Spoiler throughout:
Is that an angry bullpup version of the unicorn dog from the Original Series? I like the Sense-oars pronunciation I spotted. OMG I should’ve expected them to address the different Klingon looks but I didn’t expect to see a T’kuvma / Discovery era Klingon reappearing. When they said “solidton” particles I imagined it was going to be a metaphor about keeping “canon” stagnant. First time I see a ST character say “those words aren’t real” to Treknobabble. I’m glad they’re keeping the Star Trek tradition of holding up way too many Pads on the table where one should’ve done the trick. I never wondered if Klingons had claws for toenails, now I am. I like how Brad tries to convince others that William’s the worst. How’d they know they were dropping out of warp if the next shot shows them cloaked? I expected as much with the ship changing. Never really cared much for the different classes of ships though. This Rutherford bitterness feels like it came out of nowhere. Those whales are thirsty again. I thought she was going all Kamehameha. I have a feeling the clam is a reference to something but I’m not sure what. IDK why, but that one shot of Boimler turning his head and us being able to see under his chin particularly stood out as a “bump the lamp” moment. Was there a cut scene, what was (silver?) Badgey doing there? Or was that Goodgey? Have I forgotten about them? I like how Ransom made his own rule for provisional first officers. Engage the core is a perfect Warp catchphrase.
Is that an angry bullpup version of the unicorn dog from the Original Series?
I believe it was a jackal mastiff, which hasn’t been seen (outside of STO) in quite a long time.
I never wondered if Klingons had claws for toenails, now I am.
We got to see Worf’s feet once, and I apologize for the reminder.
Or was that Goodgey? Have I forgotten about them?
Goodgey did remain with the crew, and was last seen in episode 5x02.
I am very displeased that they left the Rutherford and Tendi relationship hanging.
The showrunners said from a very early point that the two would not get together during the shows run, and I get the distinct impression that they actively enjoy trolling shippers. So this is pretty much exactly what I expected, and I’m perfectly happy with it.
(Also, look at Tendi in that last scene, when she gets a scan of Rutherford during a conversation about them being “just friends”. She saw something on that Tricorder which she didn’t expect, and then when Rutherford gets up and has his back turned, she’s clearly checking him out. Draw your own conclusions.)
Honestly, for me, the finale covered it enough. It’s obvious they like each other. I don’t think it needs to be directly confirmed in dialogue for it to be legit. :)
Yeah, Also, this really lets people make their own future for the characters.
Those two don’t need to necessarily fall in love and having a conventional monogamous romantic pairing. Just seeing a best friendship evolve is fun, and who knows? Maybe they have a fling and decide to remain platonic. Maybe they have a down-low FWB thing. This one little moment where they both see each other in a new way lets people imagine anything.
As a finale, I think that was satisfying. I’m glad they got the cameos out of their system last week, and primarily focused on the core cast this week.
The main thing that I wanted to see this season - a tie-in with the impending Romulan supernova - didn’t come to fruition, but I’m trying not to hold that against them. They’ve very clearly left themselves a path for continuation in some form, so we’ll have to see what comes of it.
Boimler eventually turning away from the alt-universe PADD was an inevitable conclusion, but I like the reason they provided, avoiding the low-hanging fruit of alt-Boims turning out to be a dick or something.
The overall Rutherford arc was less successful. I guess they seeded it previously, but I always just assumed his implant was on the fritz, so it was odd to see him suddenly blaming the ship.
The impending supernova doesn’t occur until 2387 and the latest stardate available indicates a year of 2382 (“Fully Dilated”). The synth attack on Mars, which as a reminder was orchestrated by Zhat Vash to stop the evacuation fleet, happened on First Contact Day of 2385. The closest we’ve gotten was PRO. And I can’t figure out how to add a spoiler so I won’t mention it.
One has to dig into the novels for some of this, but Picard took his promotion to oversee the evacuation plans, so in theory, Starfleet already knows about the supernova and is beginning their initial evacuation effort.
The Utopia Planitia fleet was a major project, but evacuations took place even before the fleet was built - Elnor’s colony was an evacuee settlement, and Laris and Zhaban stuck with Picard after he rescued them.
I had been hoping that such a major re-evaluation of Starfleet’s mission would affect this show, but it was not to be.
Which leads me to think this occurred before any of it. Or at the time they relegated their lower tier ships and starbase to this mission (explaining why we haven’t heard of California-class before). Everyone else is trying to help Romulus. Which of course we know the black hole created didn’t work, thus leaving the Prime Timeline without Spock.
The overall Rutherford arc was less successful. I guess they seeded it previously, but I always just assumed his implant was on the fritz, so it was odd to see him suddenly blaming the ship.
I am at a loss as to how Rutherford’s implant could be flexible enough to function as part of his brain in day-to-day life, and yet somehow be incapable of helping him solve engineering problems on an old ship? Is there some kind of weird DRM installed that prevents it from opening schematics older than a couple years? Or is all the data on California class systems stored in a file format that they latest and greatest starfleet tech can’t open? Both of which would be rather colossal failures of Federation computer tech.
Rutherford upgraded his implant to be little more like Alternate Rutherford who had a super implant that also blocked out his emotions entirely.
This wasn’t a story about how his implant was bad at dealing with alternate universe versions of technology. His story was about how he had always used his implant to protect him from feeling emotions. Cranking it up slightly was all it took to finally block him from loving anything. Himself as he is, the Cerritos, Tendi. As soon as he took it out all of those emotions flooded in.
That makes quite a bit more sense, and if that was the intention I wish they’d been a little more explicit about it. I didn’t even realize the implant was mucking with his emotional processing? Despite the Episode 1 throwaway line about it being a “Vulcan” implant, he seemed to have pretty normal emotional responses to me.
This makes this season’s Rutherford make a lot more sense. I am definitely a Rutherford-Tendí shipper, but even my friend who is significantly less so of one than me noticed that the two of them seemed to barely interact after she returned from Orion. They didn’t have a lot of screen time, but even the screen time they did have was more being in the same scene together than interacting together which seemed so unlike them. But I thought the whole Tendi-T’Lyn rivalry was very unlike Tendi, too.
Edit: spoilers ahead, stands to reason I remember on the final LD episode
Loved loved loved the Wrath of Khan style shots of the Cerritos’ saucer section, the DIS style Klingons, the ultimate fate of Starbase 80 and Carol along with it. Nice way to wrap it all up with a tribute to the ship’s crew, but I’m still so sad it’s the end at least for now. Time to hunt down the comics…
