The latest Star Trek: Discovery episode was certainly bittersweet. While it was certainly cool to see Mary Wiseman and Sonequa Martin-Green’s Tilly and Michael get a big episode with “Whistlespeak,” we are officially in the back half of the series’ final season. The end is near, and pretty soon, we’ll see that big finale that was reconfigured post-cancellation. Having already heard several other co-stars’ thoughts on it, Wiseman is the latest to share her thoughts with CinemaBlend on the upcoming coda.
After watching an episode in which she appeared miserable running around dying of thirst (even though she was just peachy in reality), I had the opportunity to speak to Mary Wiseman about the ep, as well as the final season of Star Trek: Discovery overall. Knowing that Doug Jones found closure with the finale, I had to ask how the Tilly portrayer felt about it, and was surprised to learn she chose not to watch. That said, she did tell me what her thoughts were after reading the ending scripts, saying:
I thought it was lovely. I thought it was kind of kismet that our show felt like it was landing at a good place naturally at the end of season five as written. And so it wasn’t a big leap to add the coda. It just all felt very natural and I was pleased. I think it’s a sweet and satisfying conclusion to our story and our characters.
“Kismet” is a great word to describe the ending of Star Trek: Discovery, as it could apply to the fact that the cast and crew got to shoot it. As fans are likely aware at this point, the series had no heads-up about cancellation and only learned about it after the series wrapped production. Paramount+ gave the cast and crew the go-ahead and funding to shoot additional footage to slot out an actual ending, but even then, star Sonequa Martin-Green described the process as tenuous.
Fortunately, the scenes could be shot, and it just so happened that Season 5 worked out in a way in which it feels as though the writers went in knowing these would be the final episodes. Mary Wiseman will be watching them for the first time alongside the fans, and she explained why when I asked why she didn’t take the opportunity to watch the finale in advance:
I think I just like watching stuff in real-time. It’s just like a personal preference, you know. I don’t know what the function would be of watching it ahead of time, I guess so I could speak elegantly about it. But that was never gonna happen. That was a nonstarter.
Mary Wiseman isn’t the only person in the Star Trek: Discovery cast exhibiting such a choice, as Sonequa Martin-Green also stated she’ll wait to watch the finale. I give immense credit to both actresses for exercising the restraint not to buzz through all the episodes the ways fans would, but as Wiseman said, she may not have the same logic as others who have early access. Actors want to see how the fans respond, so it probably makes the most sense to watch the same day and then wait for responses to roll in.
She’s not fooling me.
Once Star Trek: Discovery is over, the questions will undoubtedly begin from fans on whether they’ll ever see these actors again in an upcoming Trek series. I’ve speculated that since Tilly still has her job as an instructor at Starfleet Academy in Season 5, she’ll likely return for the spinoff series set in the same era as Discovery.
As of writing, she hasn’t been confirmed to return, but given that we don’t have any casting news from the series thus far, I wouldn’t rule it out just yet. While the fact that it’s a show about Starfleet Academy would imply the cast will skew younger for the most part, I can totally see a couple of Discovery actors popping by the set to reprise their roles in an authoritative capacity. Tilly and David Cronenberg’s Kovich feel like the ones that I most see doing that, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see anyone from the Discovery crew as the series continues.
What I would do is continue to tune in for the final episodes of Star Trek: Discovery with a Paramount+ subscription. It’s a shame for me to see the series ending now, considering I feel it’s the best that it’s ever been currently, but hopefully, we’ll get some future novels or movies highlighting the adventures of this crew down the road.