For the Captain Kirks and Luke Skywalkers of history, triumph over evil has always been enough. It’s possible I’m holding Discovery’s star to unreasonable standards, standards most white male action heroes get to bypass all the time in service of saving the day. Kirk, makes Michael Burnham’s decision-making look like bureaucratic red tape by comparison. I so desperately want to celebrate Michael Burnham finally ending up in the captain’s chair, but I have to reiterate my question from last week: has she really grown, or has the context simply changed? All those searing indictments laid out by her mother, by Booker, by Saru - were we supposed to see those moments as mere haterade, to be ignored rather than reckoned with? Admittedly, Star Trek has never really taken insubordination seriously the original Trek star, Captain James T. Osyraa isn’t the only one being robbed of complexity in this conclusion. They are empty, and perpetuating their emptiness hurts us all. Discovery’s third season finale has tweeted, “We are better than this,” and then signed off. We want to believe that a hero will save us, that simply voting a fascist out of office will end fascism. (I’d say white supremacy, as well, but I don’t think Star Trek is ready to have the “humans are the white cishet men of the Federation” conversation just yet.) As I struggle to focus on this recap, we’re watching the fruits of that kind of generational magical thinking unfold in real time. It is a simplistic, “one flaw in the Death Star” kind of victory, one that perpetuates the dangerous myth that there is an easy shortcut to defeating the cancer that is capitalist imperialism. To pithily suggest that “never give up” is the moral of the story here, as Michael Burnham does as she escapes a wall of programmable matter in the data core and blasts Osyraa into next week, borders on insulting. But at this scale, the kind of clean victory Discovery has created undermines itself, because it comes at the expense of offering an honest look at solving huge, seemingly insurmountable problems - problems that cannot be extinguished by the pew-pew of a phaser rifle, any more than they can by an AR-15. In many cases, I’m even a fan of wish fulfillment. I am all for presenting audiences with a better vision for the future. That’s not how organized crime works, even if this don fed her second to a trance worm.) In effect, Discovery has adopted the exact policy Osyraa herself was attempting to pull off, the one Admiral Vance refused to accept: wipe the whole slate clean and decline to reckon with our core flaws, the ones that got us into this mess in the first place. Even the FBI knows it can’t simply kill the don and destroy the mafia. Time to look to the future and get busy reuniting! (Come on. (We’ve even replicated the exact same chaos of the season two finale: huge space battle, allies arriving at the last minute, thanks to a last-ditch S.O.S.) The wicked witch is dead, which, as we all know, means the vast, vertically integrated empire she spearheaded - the one whose mercantiles dominate half the galaxy - has immediately disintegrated, never to darken a door again. Instead, we’ve chosen Hero Shoots Big Bad, Saves Day. I wanted her to pay for her crimes as much as Vance did - but then again, I also want a certain Senate majority leader to be consumed by Dinobulan flesh-eating bacteria. She was untrustworthy, ruthless, brutal, and yet her organization only flourished in the vacuum the Federation left behind she understood its limitations, its failures, better than perhaps anyone in the universe. It seemed like Osyraa was shaping up to be a Gul Dukat figure, an occasionally benevolent monster-turned-peacemaker our stars would be forced to tolerate through a tumultuous reconstruction period. Last week, I posited that the series might be trying its hand in Deep Space Nine territory. Because while none of our heroes die this week, this conclusion is a sudden death in itself, a bone-deep disappointment that betrays all the thoughtful, complex progress the series has made this season. Nevertheless, I feel it’s all I can do to mourn the loss of Star Trek: Discovery’s once-burgeoning appreciation for nuance, as well as its biggest wasted opportunity since killing off Captain Georgiou in the pilot. The Granny Smith Gotti was a monster who committed unspeakable atrocities, even against her own. Did she deserve death, objectively? Certainly. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of Osyraa the Terrible.
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