and then... dare we speculate a season of Capt. Tilley?
I think it's pretty unlikely. Unless Sonequa wants out of the show at some point. (Which I wouldn't blame her for.) Discovery has always been the Michael Burnham show, with Sonequa at the top of the billing. First Officer Tilly to me, always felt like part of Season 3's recalibrating of the show into a more traditional Star Trek, and slotting Tilly into a real role on the ship instead of being a positionless Ensign. I think what's more likely is that Culber gets promoted to Chief Medical Officer in S4 instead, but there isn't the same urgency with that when nobody has really complained much about the Medical Resident being the one with all the screen time over the CMO.
Putting Burnham in the Captain’s chair is puzzling to me when they spent so much of the season establishing that she doesn’t do well in positions of authority and in fact does a lot better when she’s a bit of a wildcard. Obviously they could have her grow into that role but it felt kind of sudden here.
Related to above, I don't really find it puzzling in retrospect. In fact, the season really was one big long test of leadership for her. It wasn't that she has problems
in positions of authority this season, what happened was that she had problems dealing
with authority/taking orders. I actually really appreciated this arc for her this season, because it felt like the character finally came to terms with their past and examined/evaluated her fitness as an officer, which never really happened previously and frankly needed to happen after her insurrection in S1.
And it also asked and examined of the character, "Why are you even in Starfleet to begin with?" Because as you recall, she only joined Starfleet because Sarek placed her there, not because she originally felt it was her calling or had a fundamental belief in the institutions/service. S3 had her operating independently for a year so that she could better explore who she was as a person for the first time, without context of the expectations of others. Her problems reintegrating back with the crew were more about obedience rather than poor performance. Every time her fitness/performance as an officer was critiqued this season in some aspect, we see her genuinely self-reflect and take in the criticisms, and then avoid making the same mistakes the next time such a scenario presents itself. And once she had her personal epiphany in Unification III and realized that she is a true believer in Starfleet and that's where she wants to be, it was smooth sailing for her the rest of the season.
Add to that, and getting back to the point I made to Kirin above, this is the Michael Burnham show. If you go back to interviews and comiccon panels when they were first trying to pitch the show before/during Season 1, the way they repeatedly described Disco and Burnham was that this was going to be a unique show where we get to experience Burnham's rise to become captain. This was always the goal, it's just been a long road, gettin' from there to here. The move to captain should resolve a lot of people's "issues" with the character, so long as they remain open minded about things. Since again, her problems as an officer, stemming back to her original mutiny, was that she was a character who felt she was right in a situation (and let's be honest, she was right pretty much every time) but still had to follow orders. And now that she's captain, that won't really be an issue anymore since she's the one in command now.
Heh, my only issue with the entire season was how MASSIVE the Discovery's turbolift system was in that last episode. Kinda checked a bit there, but whatever - for me it was like ignoring a visible boom mic; who cares if the show is good overall.
Agreed. This wasn't the first time this happened either. Those big cavernous areas were present in Sesaon 2 on the Enterprise IIRC. It doesn't jive with technical images in the background of the ship's layout, or any previous descriptions of Starships outside of the reboot films. But it doesn't phase me much anymore. Trek has always flown fast and loose with canon (Enterprise-A having 100+ decks, and so forth) and it just takes some creative thinking to reconcile it if you want to. For example:
Recall Star Trek: Enterprise S2E16 "Future Tense" - Archer and the crew discovered a damaged, derelict time ship from the 31st Century. And while investigating the ship, they discover it has TARDIS, bigger-on-the-inside tech. So it's totally within the realm of possibility that during the Discovery's retrofit, that big cavern was part of the upgrade process.
