‘Star Trek: Discovery’ EP Alex Kurtzman Breaks Down Major Season Finale Reveal
SPOILER ALERT: Do not keep reading if you have not seen the Season 1 finale of “Star Trek: Discovery,” titled “Will You Take My Hand?”
“Star Trek: Discovery” wrapped up its first season with the appearance of an unexpected visitor in the closing moments of the episode.
Last chance to avoid spoilers.
As the Discovery makes its way toward Vulcan, they receive an emergency distress call from a nearby Federation starship. The ship turns out to be the USS Enterprise under the command of Capt. Christopher Pike.
Series executive producer and co-creator Alex Kurtzman tells Variety that while the iconic starship will play a part in the next season, it will not becomes its central focus.
“The show is called ‘Discovery.’ It’s not ‘Enterprise,'” Kurtzman said. “So yes, the Enterprise will play a part of Season 2 but it will absolutely not overshadow Discovery. And I think with Enterprise’s arrival in the finale we recognize that the audience has a lot of questions about our synchronicity with the original series, which really means or synchronicity with canon. So the promise of the Enterprise holds the answers to a lot of those questions, including Spock’s relationship with his half-sister who he’s never mentioned. Which does not necessarily mean you’re going to see Spock, just that we owe an answer to that question.”
The episode sees the Discovery crew, led by the Mirror Universe Philippa Georgiou, making their way to the Klingon homeworld Qo’noS. Their plan is to map the surface to help Starfleet prepare for a full-scale invasion.
Georgiou leads an away team consisting of Burnham, Tilly, and Tyler to the planet’s surface disguised as weapons dealers. Tyler is brought along due to his access to Voq’s memories, granting him significant knowledge of the planet and its customs. They infiltrate a local marketplace, where eagle-eyed fans will catch a quick glimpse of the Ceti eels from “Wrath of Khan” being cooked up as a tasty snack. Clint Howard, who previously appeared in several different “Trek” iterations, also makes an appearance.
As they hunt for information, Tilly finds out the case she has been carrying does not contain a mapping drone as she thought, but instead a powerful explosive. Georgiou takes the explosive and vanishes, planning to detonate the explosive within an active volcano, causing a catastrophic reaction that will destroy the planet.
Burnham returns to the Discovery to contact Starfleet, who admit they always knew of Georgiou’s intentions. Burnham and Saru speak for the crew when they tell their superiors that they would sooner mutiny before they would allow Georgiou to destroy the planet. The moment mirrors Burnham’s mutiny in the show’s pilot.
“The whole season was reverse engineered from the ending that we know that we wanted,” Kurtzman said. “Really the big driver there was [Burnham’s] arc and the confusion about how and why she decided to mutiny in the pilot to the absolute certainty that it was the only way to protect the ideals of the Federation. She doesn’t literally mutiny, but she does threaten it in the finale because she understands that it’s much more important to protect those ideals than to protect herself.”
Burnham gets Georgiou to surrender the detonator to the bomb and allows Georgiou to escape. Burnham then hands control of the detonator over to L’Rell. L’Rell uses it to essentially hold the leaders of the other Klingon houses hostage, telling them they must unite and cease their war against the Federation to regain their unity as a race. The plan works, and the Discovery returns to Earth, where the crew is met with a hero’s welcome.
“Season 1 was really about the war and how the war tested our ideals as Starfleet,” he said. “It was very much about Michael’s story arc and her getting comfortable on Discovery. Fundamentally, it was really about bringing that crew together as a family. If you look at the crew in the beginning, they’re very separate and they’re not really connected yet. They are not sure of each other and their place on the ship. Over the course of the season, they really become a family.”
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