Imagine spending years of your life creating a brand new addition to a historic franchise, only for one decisive blow from studio brass to seal the deal and bring it to an abrupt end. For the writers of “Star Trek: Discovery,” that’s pretty much how it all went down…though the timing couldn’t have been worse. See, they just found out After filming on season five had already wrapped, which left the creatives scrambling to create the best possible ending they could make with the time left.
This is just one of the surprising revelations contained in Variety’s recent post-mortem interview with executive producer/showrunner Michelle Paradise and star Sonequa Martin-Green. According to the article, the original intention was to end with Burnham and Booker (David Ajala) on the beach, having made up and escaped to their next off-screen mission. But to make the ending a little more satisfying, Paradise and finale co-writer Kyle Jarrow concocted the epilogue of an older, now-married Burnham and Booker sending their adult son off to his first Starfleet captaincy. According to Paradise, “We want to know what’s going on with Burnham, first and foremost. And we knew we wanted to see the cast again.”
For Martin-Green, the ability to wear aged prosthetics serves multiple purposes, both narrative and personal:
“You get to see this display of heritage in this beautiful way. I will also say that I look a lot like my mother, and that was a gift too, to be able to see her.”
Incredibly, the crew only had three days to film this sequence. Attacked or not, there’s something quintessentially “Discovery” about pulling off one last miracle.
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