The final season of Star Trek: Discovery was promoted as a momentous occasion — and the Blu-Ray release doesn’t quite reach those same heights. Star Trek: Discovery – The Final Season comes to Blu-Ray, DVD and digital as a collection that has everything fans will expect, but not enough of the things that make a home video release worthwhile. Especially for the last season of a Star Trek show, it’s missing a little bit of magic.
Discovery Season 5 tells a serialized story about a secret “red directive” mission to investigate an 800-year-old Romulan science vessel. When something powerful is stolen off the ship before they arrive, the crew must pursue the couriers who committed the theft and decode the mystery surrounding the starship. The season features several major changes for the characters, which is part of what makes the Blu-Ray edition feel like it could do better.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Aims Understandably High
The Final 10 Episodes Are Big in Every Way
The fifth season delivers the same kind of storytelling that audiences grew to expect from Discovery over the previous four seasons. It has the same dramatic but ultimately hopeful tone, and characters doing just as much introspection as looking outward into the universe. The choice to do another season-long story arc means that Season 5 can be watched if not entirely caught up, but there’s character development and some closure that is less effective for those fans who aren’t familiar with the crew’s whole journey.
With that in mind, there are plenty of plot twists within Season 5 that not only change the heroes, but change the way the audience considers them. One example is Season 5, Episode 2, “Under the Twin Moons,” which reveals the backstory Cleveland “Book” Booker shares with one of the season’s new antagonists, Moll. In the very next episode, “Jinaal,” Dr. Hugh Culber shares his body with the consciousness of the title character. All of these developments and the self-reflection they prompt are exactly what audiences are used to seeing in final seasons of TV shows. As a long-running story winds down, there’s typically a lot of looking back, and Discovery tackles that idea better than most. It truly feels like it’s time for the characters to move on.
Rayner: I love the feeling of interrupting something.
The best addition is the arrival of Battlestar Galactica alum Callum Keith Rennie as Captain Rayner, the commanding officer of the USS Antares. By the end of Episode 2, Rayner has joined the crew of Discovery, which introduces a variable within the tight-knit lineup. Rayner also has considerable development throughout the story — more than one would expect from a character introduced in the final season — and genre veteran Rennie turns in a strong performance. It’s enough to make audiences want to see more of Rayner in the future.
And speaking of the future, it’s not a surprise that the whole series ends with a jump forward in time to show fans where folks have ended up, while leaving the door open for what comes next. There’s always something next with Star Trek. That hopeful ending and the general themes of Season 5 feel so very familiar, yet it’s easy to forgive that because they also feel like they make sense for this particular group of adventurers. If only the Blu-Ray release had explored them just a little bit further.
Discovery’s Season 5 Blu-Ray Special Features Are Missing Something
There’s Plenty of Bonus Content, but Room for More
There’s a fine selection of special features available for Star Trek: Discovery’s final voyage. In fact, the set comes with more bonuses than were included in the home video release of Season 4 — which just had a handful of deleted scenes, a gag reel and some behind-the-scenes footage. But given all that happens across the 10 episodes and wanting to go out on a high, it’s a bit surprising that Paramount didn’t cram these Blu-Rays full of new material. There’s no shortage of subjects to cover.
The gag reel is back for Season 5, but there’s only one single deleted scene included, and so it feels relatively inconsequential. The same can be said for a few of the featurettes, which are standard promotional material. “Being Michael Burnham” focuses on Sonequa Martin-Green as Captain Michael Burnham, and the journey Burnham has taken across the whole of Discovery. Burnham certainly deserves an individual spotlight, both in terms of the character’s growth and what Martin-Green has done with the character. However, it would have been nice for Paramount to have included some other character-specific features, instead of folding the rest of the crew into more broad features like one simply titled “Character Development,” just because there’s enough to say about a half-dozen different players.
Michael Burnham: Connection isn’t a skill; it’s a choice.
While it’s awesome that Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 included an audio commentary track, it’s likewise disappointing that there’s just one, on the series finale “Life, Itself.” An episode like “Jinaal” or Season 4, Episode 5, “Mirrors” would have been fun to discuss further. And within the included commentary, Martin-Green and David Ajala are the only cast members. They’re joined by showrunner Michelle Paradise and director Olatunde Osunsanmi. The quartet provide a pretty good listen, yet it’s impossible not to wish that more actors were involved to offer their stories and thoughts about the final episode, and because it would fit the “found family” feeling that Discovery has captured on-screen. Even considering the logistics of trying to get the actors back to record bonus material, if there’s any set that would deserve that extra effort, it’s this one.
It’s also somewhat surprising that there’s not more devoted to the show’s place in the larger Star Trek universe. After all, this was the first Trek show to be exclusive to Paramount+, and a very different series in tone and style than most of its predecessors. Plus, this show introduced the character of Philippa Georgiou, who’s now headlining Star Trek: Section 31. That makes this release a prime opportunity to at least put in some trailers, whether it’s for Section 31 or the upcoming final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Yes, they’re available on YouTube, but why not do some easy additional promotion? Or at least take one last opportunity to talk about how Discovery shook up the Star Trek franchise. Season 5 comes to Blu-Ray having completed its mission, but it could have been a truly epic collection.
Star Trek: Discovery – The Final Season is now available on Blu-Ray, DVD and digitally on platforms including Apple TV.