Star Trek: 10 Episodes That Wasted An Incredible Premise

10. That Hope Is You, Parts 1 & 2

From what had been a pretty awesome second season, Star Trek: Discovery took a jump to 3188. It was a bold idea, ripe for storytelling. The 32nd was a previously unexplored century, and there were hundreds of years of largely unknown history to fill in before it.

In the first act of the first episode of the third season in this new century, we learnt of an event called 'the Burn.' Basically, when all dilithium suddenly went inert around 3069, every active warp core exploded, causing death and destruction on a massive scale, radically altering the political and technological landscape of the (now much less) spacefaring galaxy. In hindsight, however, That Hope Is You (Part 1) got our hopes up. The premise of the Burn was incredible; its explanation stretched belief.

One of the main problems was that the why of the Burn was left to a protracted investigation throughout Discovery's third season. During the wait for an answer, theories abounded from those genuinely excited by figuring it all out in advance. To say that the solution, given in That Hope Is You, Part 2, was disappointing would be putting it mildly. With so many opportunities to link the Burn to other parts of the canon, or to innovate with something new to match the stakes, the lone Kelpien option was truly a waste of a great premise.