WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Star Trek: Discovery, "Will You Take My Hand?," which premiered Sunday on CBS All Access.

Viewers didn't really think the Klingon home world would be destroyed in Star Trek: Discovery's season finale, no matter how desperate Starfleet brass had become. Qo'noS exists later in the franchise timeline, after all, and it wouldn't be very Starfleet of them, besides. What viewers didn't expect, however, was for the series to take another big leap, not to the Mirror Universe or through time, but ... backward. With "Will You Take My Hand?," Discovery's producers tossed away a season's worth of bold storytelling in favor of fan service.

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Sure, that's been part of the show's fabric from the beginning, from protagonist Michael Burnham's connection to Spock and Sarek to the contents of Captain Lorca's private menagerie. But it's never been the primary point, like it was in the finale. What began as a mere wink to the franchise faithful with a prominent role for the Orions, the green-skinned species introduced in the Original Series' first pilot, picked up steam with a cameo by actor Clint Howard, who as a child played the alien Balok in the TOS episode "The Corbomite Maneuver." (He also appeared on Deep Space Nine and Enterprise) It culminated in the finale's final moments, with Discovery dropping out of warp to answer a distress call from Captain Pike's U.S.S. Enterprise, heralded by the familiar notes of the classic theme, and followed by the TOS end-credits music. It was a scene undoubtedly intended to make fans stand up and cheer. But they shouldn't.

Enterprise meets Discovery in Star Trek: Discovery's season finale

There's certainly nothing wrong with Emperor/Captain Georgiou enjoying herself at an Orion pleasure palace, or Clint Howard playing a shady drug dealer who gets Cadet Tilly high and tries to rob her blind; those are arguably the best, and inarguably most fun, moments of "Will You Take My Hand?" It's just that they underscore the much larger problems of the episode, which feels intended as a mea culpa to longtime fans who have groused since Day 1 that Discovery isn't "their" Star Trek.

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Those fans craved heaping helpings of comfort food, and until the season finale, Discovery's producers only gave it to them in small portions, with a little spice. They wanted an away mission? Fine, we'll travel to Pahvo, but focus on Saru's nature, and the burgeoning relationship between Burnham and Ash Tyler. They liked the Mirror Universe, a franchise staple? Great, but we'll go really dark, and kill off a couple of prominent characters in the process. Discovery delighted in challenging the conventions of the 52-year-old property, at least until it embraced them.

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In "Will You Take My Hand?," Lt. Stamets jumps the U.S.S. Discovery into a cave beneath the surface of Qo'noS, just as planned, and Captain Georgiou (Emperor Georgiou, really) leads her leather-clad away team of Burnham, Tilly and Tyler to the seedy Orion outpost on the planet. The mission, as stated, is to locate an entry point to launch a drone into a subterranean network of tunnels, where it can map Qo'noS and locate key military targets for attack by Starfleet, even as a Klingon fleet approaches Earth. But of course, that's not the real plan. As an intoxicated Tilly soon discovers, the carrying case handcuffed to her wrist doesn't contain a drone, but rather a bomb intended to destroy the Klingon home world, and bring the war to an end. This isn't merely Mirror Georgiou going rogue; this is a plot sanctioned by Starfleet (and, it turns out, Sarek).

It's a riveting scenario with stakes both galactic and personal -- or, at least it should've been. Again, we knew Qo'noS wasn't going to be destroyed, but the question was how Discovery's writers would find a satisfying resolution: Mirror Georgiou might double-cross Starfleet, and escape with the bomb, to use it for her own nefarious purposes; or Burnham could be forced to kill the "ghost" of her beloved mentor, and relive her biggest failure, only this time for the greater moral good. Either of those would have been intriguing, one for the overarching series plot, the other for character development.

RELATED: Star Trek: Discovery Confronts One Continuity Problem, Embraces Another

What they opted for instead was to fall back upon Star Trek tropes, beginning with a rousing speech designed to raise goosebumps. From the bridge of Discovery, Burnham confronts Admiral Cornwell about the deception. Reflecting on her own mistakes, only a year earlier, at the Battle of the Binary Stars, she threatens another mutiny "to prove who we are." What might've been a powerful scene is undercut by Discovery's bridge crew having its own Dead Poets Society moment as Saru declares "We are Starfleet," and the others stand in solidarity. It's more than a little saccharine, something the series hast mostly avoided in its debut season. However, "Will You Take My Hand?" isn't finished pouring on the sugar. Even tough-as-nails Cornwell isn't immune to such sentimentality, and decides to place the fate of the Federation in the hands of Starfleet's first mutineer, as you do.

Star Trek: Discovery finale

Burnham reaches Georgiou, but (surprise!) doesn't have to kill her in order to save Qo'noS, and what's left of Starfleet's morality. Rather, she appeals to Georgiou's affections for Mirror Burnham, and assures the bloodthirsty, conquest-minded Terran emperor that she will remain free to live out her life in the Prime Universe. As you do. While it's too late to call back the bomb, which is already armed within the bowels of the planet, Burnham has a solution that will not only save Qo'noS and end the war, but also unite the 24 Klingon houses and preserve their civilization. She has Georgiou key the bomb's detonator to their Klingon prisoner L'Rell, who now possesses a massive bargaining chip to negotiate peace among her people. With that, the Klingon attack on Earth is called off, and all is right in the Federation, just as the franchise likes it.

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But Discovery's finale isn't quite finished with its Star Trek tropes, as everyone -- even wise Sarek -- acknowledges Burnham was right, and she's rewarded with a pardon, expungement of her criminal record, and reinstatement of her Starfleet rank. That's followed by a commendation ceremony for Discovery's key crew, punctuated by a moralizing speech from Burnham about not taking "shortcuts on the path to righteousness," and not breaking the rules "that protect us from our basest instincts." The problem isn't that it's Burnham (again) delivering the sermon, but that we've seen virtually the same scene played out time and again across the franchise, most notably with James T. Kirk (Shatner and Pine varieties) in her place.

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Played by Sonequa Martin-Green, Burnham is easily the most flawed (and therefore realistic) protagonist in the history of Star Trek, a franchise known for Starfleet captains whose most crippling flaw is an eye for the opposite sex, an affinity for Earl Grey, or a tendency toward tunnel vision. Raised by the Vulcan Sarek and his human wife Amanda following the murder of her parents by Klingons, Burnham is a creature of two worlds, more torn between logic and emotion than Spock ever was. She tries to do what's right, for herself, for her crew mates and for the Federation, but she makes bad decisions, one of which sparked the war with the Klingons. Virtually every choice since then has been fueled by her desire to somehow make amends for the Battle of the Binary Stars and the conflict that followed, and for the death of her mentor, Phillipa Georgiou. That clouds her judgment, resulting in, say, the Terran emperor being brought back to the Prime Universe.

Burnham isn't Discovery's moral compass (that's Mary Wiseman's Sylvia Tilly or even Doug Jones' Saru), and to suddenly propel her into that role only so we may end the season with an uplifting speech that reaffirms Star Trek's principles isn't character development. It's a cheat, much like introducing the Enterprise in the finale's closing moments, swelling theme and all.

One of the challenges for viewers in this first season was in trying to deduce how the writers were going to get themselves out of the corners they repeatedly painted themselves into: mutiny, a game-changing spore drive with serious consequences, a Klingon sleeper agent, a starship captain from the Mirror Universe. While those developments were daring for Star Trek, the ultimate solution by the show's producers wasn't; it was cheap and safe. Instead of continuing to push the boundaries of the franchise, they retreated.


Streaming now on CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Shazad Latif, Mary Wiseman, Wilson Cruz, Mary Chieffo, Jason Isaacs and Michelle Yeoh.