Star Trek: Discovery closes out its fourth season with a largely-satisfying finale that rounds out the Species 10-C story, and brings another year of the show to a tidy conclusion.

“Coming Home” does a lot to make up for the imperfections of the back half of Season 4, though even a full 60-minute runtime is not quite enough to cover everything that was held back for this final episode. After 13 episodes — with several kind of lifeless entries in the back half of the year — it’s a shame that so many of the really interesting elements of this story were held for the last chapter.

To make it a “big” finale, the show chose to try and balance way too many story points: stopping Tarka’s mission, making real contact with Species 10-C and convincing them to turn off the DMA, the DMA’s impact on Earth (and Starfleet’s efforts to evacuate the planet), Book coming to terms with the destruction of Kwejian, General Ndoye’s betrayal of Discovery’s efforts, Burnham’s crumbling relationship with Book, Burnham’s evolving dynamic with President Rillak, and Saru’s attraction to President T’Rina.

It’s actually more successful than you might think in juggling all those plot lines — in a gripping hour that largely pays off a lot of these stories in a satisfying way — but I can’t help but feel like the decision to hold so much for the finale ultimately detracted from the overall season, and did not give everything quite the breathing room it could have had to really pop.

There are a couple of convenient leaps to accelerate the story that may not have been necessary if the DMA story had been doled out in a more evenly-balanced manner, but overall, the season ended stronger than I hoped (given my frustrations with episodes like “The Galactic Barrier.”)

The episode picks up outside the galaxy with Tarka (Shawn Doyle) in control of Book’s ship, preparing to destroy the DMA by taking control of its power source. I was pleased that Tarka’s role within the episode was resolved quickly, even though — after how obstinate and inflexible he had been in previous episodes — it felt like the speed of his turn towards abandoning his plan was a little abrupt.

But I am okay with that; the character had largely outlived his usefulness, despite a good performance — and I enjoyed the decision to shroud his ultimate fate in the same mystery as his partner Oros. That was a poetic choice that I appreciated.

As for Book (David Ajala) seemingly dying after his transporter beam failed to deliver him back to Discovery’s bridge… well, a nice effort by the writers, but four years of this series have conditioned us to expect character departures to come with a much greater focus.

So while there was a a solid reactionary performance from Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) — who gets understandably emotional for a moment, before pulling herself back into command mode — it was hard to see how that would be the end for ol’ Cleveland Booker.

After stopping Tarka, the main meat of the episode was in Discovery’s continued attempts to start a dialogue with Species 10-C. After establishing the enormous aliens that humanoid species don’t exist in a hive mind the way they do, Burnham and crew set about working to convince them to back down.

The scenes with direct dialogue between Species 10-C and the Discovery delegation are tense, as both parties begin to explain their perspectives on the universe to one another, but this is the part of the story that really could have used a larger focus.

It’s wonderful to see the climax of the series revolve not around some kind of fight, but between two parties who are completely alien to one another learning to communicate and share their needs. But if I have one criticism of the sequence, it’s that the hard-to-overcome communication barriers established last week get ratcheted down as the need to speed up the plot ratchets up.

Last week, the two parties were struggling to communicate basic mathematical concepts and how they perceive and process the universe, by the time they get into the meat of the discussion in “Coming Home,” the Federation group is trading words and concepts like love without much difficulty — punctuated by lengthy, easily-translated speeches from the rematerialized Book, Burnham, and Rillak (Chelah Horsdal).

Beyond that, though, it’s been really gratifying to see Discovery chose to explore something truly alien this season. Species 10-C was an entirely new concept for Star Trek, as promised by Michelle Paradise, and Star Trek is better off for it. I hope all the shows will continue to thoughtfully balance revisiting familiar Star Trek species, locales, and ideas with forging new ground in this manner.

It was also nice to see Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) again, returning for the first time since her departure from Discovery back in “All is Possible.” Still partnered with a group of Starfleet cadets (including the Tellarite and Orion from “All is Possible”) as part of her new assignment, Tilly’s scenes with Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) were a standout, as the two officers coordinate Starfleet’s limited evacuation of Earth.

The special effects work in this episode was top notch — especially the Starfleet ships coming to lead Earth’s evacuation efforts, led by Starfleet Command’s base warping into orbit (!). While it seems likely Vance will continue as a regular guest star next year, there’s still no word how often we’ll see Tilly in Season 5, but producer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi said in a new interview Tilly will be back in some capacity.

Once the 10-C call off the DMA and graciously send Discovery back to Earth via wormhole, we find that Book’s sentence for taking Tarka’s side and chasing after the 10-C isn’t prison, but what is essentially a “community service” assignment: helping other people displaced from their homes following encounters with the DMA.

It’s good to see he wasn’t let off scot-free, even though it may seem like a light “punishment” compared to incarceration; Rillak makes clear that she wants true justice for the situation, and with Reno’s reporting that Tarka was making all the bad decisions in this last part of the story, an assignment to a Starfleet-supervised relief-worked position seems pretty fair.

It appears clear that David Ajala won’t be a Star Trek: Discovery regular next season — revealing the truth behind Cleveland Booker’s name last week was a pretty big hint that his run on the show was nearing an end — but as Burnham says in her closing monologue, we’ll see him again, someday.

HAIL TO THE CHIEF

After Federation forces came to its rescue during the DMA disaster, “Coming Home” concludes with United Earth choosing to come back into the fold — and as the President of Earth disembarks from a shuttlecraft, Discovery brings us the franchise’s first modern-era major cameo — like the several well-known, real-world faces who have made their way into the franchise in eras past.

When that shuttle door opens, who do we see? No, it’s not that President of Earth, but former Georgia Senate Minority Leader, two-time candidate for the Governor of Georgia (including her current campaign), groundbreaking voting-rights champion, progressive hero — and most importantly, a true, longtime Star Trek fan: Stacey Abrams.

Of all the current series, Discovery has always been the one that was the most willing to engage directly with modern politics. The casting of Stacey Abrams as the president of a United Earth — especially as the planet emerges from a period of aggressive isolationism to rejoin the galactic community — certainly sends a strong signal about Discovery’s political point of view.

It happens to be a point of view that I support, so I’m fine with it, but I am sure there will be A WHOLE LOT of opinions about it (both in favor and against). Personally, it’s always a thrill for me to see any longtime Star Trek fan realize their dream of actually getting to be part of Star Trek, and from that standpoint alone it, must have been the coolest experience imaginable for her. I’m certainly jealous!

Sonequa-Martin Green and Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise shared some thoughts on Abrams’ appearance with Deadline today; Paradise noted that they “knew that she was a fan of the show and of Trek in general, and for us, there was no one better to be that President.”

I think that’s where we should all choose to focus our energy — in congratulating a fan for being able to touch some small part of the franchise in a real way, while hopefully not getting into too much of a scuffle over Is This What Star Trek Has Become?! along the way.

(Comments section below, I’m looking at you!)

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• T’Rina (Tara Rosling) and Saru (Doug Jones)? All in.
   
• President T’Rina’s telepathic outreach to Species 10-C isn’t without precedent; Spock himself performed a long-distance mind-meld in “One of Our Planets is Missing,” reaching out from his seat on the Enterprise bridge to make contact with a living cloud.
   
• After learning that Species 10-C exist in a hive-mind state, President Rillak asks T’Rina if they are like the Borg — the first reference to the cybernetic species in Discovery.
   
• Will the Voyager-J ever get a new captain?
   
• Burnham and Book discuss a chilly night on Tiburon, the home of the big-eared Dr. Sevrin from “The Way to Eden.”
   
• Book’s ship is destroyed, and with it, the first new spore drive prototype. While Stamets (Anthony Rapp) notes that Discovery‘s burned out drive can apparently be repaired, one must wonder how far back the loss of the prototype — and of Tarka with it — will set back the Federation’s efforts on replicating the technology.
   
• Missing from the already-stuffed finale are updates on how Gray (Ian Alexander) is doing back on Trill, and on what kind of secret project Kovich (David Cronenberg) is managing at Starfleet Headquarters; so far we don’t yet know if the two will return next season.

Discovery wraps up its fourth season with one final captain’s log from Burnham, which mirrors and builds upon her similar log entry from the end of Season 3. Both are similar in that they discuss how the resolution of the season’s arc has revitalized the Federation, driven everyone closer together, and set sights for a more hopeful future.

Where last year’s ending felt like the start of the renewal process, though, this time it feels like the Federation has finally come full circle as Earth pledges its intention to rejoin the alliance, and the Discovery story can now truly move forward once more.

While the Discovery crew heads off to much-needed vacations — aside from the slight time-jump after the Season 3 finale, they haven’t really had a day off since the series began! —Star Trek: Discovery ends its year with a pretty blank canvas for where to go from here.

I hope that Season 5 brings us a new narrative structure, interesting new concepts, and more of a chance for Star Trek: Discovery’s characters to shine through. See you soon, Discovery!

Star Trek: Discovery will return for a 10-episode fifth season sometime in 2023; as of this writing no production-start date has been announced.