Michelle Paradise discusses the Star Trek: Discovery season finale

Michelle Paradise was the most recent guest on The Ready Room where she talked about the Star Trek: Discovery second season finale.

This week the second season of Star Trek: Discovery will come to a close and with it, a promise that the series will boldly go where it no Star Trek series has gone before. It’s an audacious claim and one that given the events of last week’s “Such Sweet Sorrow” could actually prove true.

Theories about what happens in “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” have covered just about every possibility. And while there seems to be a leading hypothesis about where, or more specifically when things end up, all we do know is to expect the unexpected.

Given all the uncertainty, it seemed appropriate that this week The Ready Room welcomed Michelle Paradise to talk about “Such Sweet Sorrow. Part 1”. Paradise is the brand new co-showrunner for Discovery Season 3 and also co-wrote the two-part season finale.

Paradise considers herself a longtime Trekker, having gotten hooked on the show when the Original Series first aired.

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"“I grew up watching the original Star Trek and in fact it was fun when I got this job I went back and back and started watching all the original episodes again. I didn’t get through all of them of course, but getting to go back and watch them again just reminded me how special the series is and it has so many different permutations now, but it all started with Gene Roddenberry and his ideas for looking up and looking to the stars and what it means when we are equal and when we’re judged by what we can do and not how we look or what species we are or anything like that. For me, the original Star Trek has a special place in my heart because of that.”"

As some Discovery fans may remember, it was revealed back in January that the episode count for the second season unexpectedly increased by one, going from 13 to 14. It turns out the reason for the extra episode had to do with the season finale.

According to Paradise, the writers realized early on they had to ton of material for the finale that they wanted to be able to cover. Thankfully the executives at CBS decided to give them the room to tell the story like they wanted to by making “Such Sweet Sorrow” a two-parter.

"“It was originally just supposed to be one episode. We had thirteen episodes for the season and in trying to wrap up all the storylines and all the mythology, we developed the story — and the story was huge and the outline was huge and we realized it is not one episode of television. So, in order to do everything justice that we wanted to do – including all the character moments that we wanted to have – so, fortunately, our network partners said “have fun with another episode.” So, we did….There was so much story to tell and so much to wrap up and we really wanted to wrap up the characters’ journeys over the season and to try to squeeze that into one episode, we couldn’t have done it justice.”"

And while shoe couldn’t go into specifics about what happens, Paradise did say she thinks fans will be happy with the results.

"“What I can say is the mysteries that we have been exploring over the course of this season will be answered in what I feel is a satisfying way. The character journeys that we have been on will also be addressed in what I hope will be a satisfying way as well.”"

The second season of Star Trek: Discovery wraps up this coming Thursday on CBS All Access. Work on Season 3 has already begun with an early 2020 release entirely possible. Once Discovery wraps for the season it will be on to Star Trek: Picard which should arrive sometime later this year.