Star Trek: Discovery Closes Third Season With Tribute to Gene Roddenberry

Star Trek: Discovery closes out its third season with today’s season finale episode, “That Hope Is You, Part 2.” (SPOILERS for the episode follow.) At the end of the episode, after the threat of Osyraa and the Emerald Chain is gone, Michael Burnham is heard in voiceover giving a monologue that drives home the key theme of the season, which is the importance of interpersonal communication and relationships. After the final shot of Capt. Burnham giving the order to Discovery to head to warp, the episode displays a quote from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek: The Original Series and the Star Trek universe, before playing The Original Series‘ theme over its end credits. The quote reads:

“In a very real sense, we are all aliens on a strange planet. We spend most of our lives reaching out and trying to communicate. If during our whole lifetime, we could reach out and really communicate with just two people, we are indeed very fortunate.”

Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise wrote the episode. During an interview with ComicBook.com, she spoke about the seasons’ theme and the use of the Roddenberry quote.

“It emerged closer to the end of the post process as we were finishing post for the season and just recognizing that this was going to be airing at this particular time,” she says. And we just felt like it would be appropriate to have something from him. I mean, Gene Roddenberry, we’re only here because of what he did and because of the show that he created and there’s the baseline, the template that he established. And so it felt appropriate to have something from him, a quote from him at the end of our season. And that was one that resonated with us.”

When asked about seeing the season air during an unexpected global pandemic, Paradise said, “I don’t quite have words for it. It’s really incredible. We’ve talked about that quite a lot. Just how this season resonates with this present moment in such an unexpected way. Even prior to all of this, it felt like it would resonate because when we wrote the episodes, there was and remains such a profound disconnect in our society and more globally as well. So we felt like it would resonate on that level, but with the pandemic, which of course we never could have seen coming at the time. It’s resonating at a deeper level, I think.”

Star Trek: Discovery is streaming now on CBS All Access.

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