10 Greatest Star Trek Feel Good Moments

"I'm already making a cocktail, bobcat." ~ Commander Jett Reno, aka the best reason to watch Star Trek: Discovery. (Season four, Coming Home.)

"A cat-door?" ~ Reno, upon seeing the gap in the forcefield created by Booker. (Season four, Species 10-C.)

The stakes in Discovery are typically higher than a countdown to detonation on the Genesis device. Each season normally centres around impending galactic doom or domination in one form or another. Whilst this can have its upsides in terms of captivating drama and sense of scope, it certainly doesn't leave the audience much room to grab a breath or to feel much more than existential angst.

If we can reproach Disco for a certain grandiosity in its all-or-nothing arcs, it is doubly refreshing when the series does pull the breaks to focus on more intimate moments. This is partly why the final resolution to the 10-C/Dark Matter Anomaly (DMA) crisis stands out as particularly cathartic in amongst the show's now four, soon five, season run.

Beforehand, as death and destruction rain down on not one, but two planets – Earth and Ni'Var – desperate evacuations are underway. Meanwhile, one Risian super-genius is trying to nab the DMA's power source so he can cross universes, a fact which, as Reno figures out, will also almost certainly end in cataclysm. Discovery has blown up its spore drive in order to go after him so, even if they do succeed (and shut down the DMA), it will now take decades for them to return home. How's that for high stakes!

In the last two episodes of season four of Disco alone we had (to name but a few): plasma venting, ship collisions, and many, many explosions; forcefield fisticuffs, last-minute libations, a jail-break, and a monumental nose-bleed-inducing mind-meld; treachery, 'death' by transporter, and whatever that yelling thing was. If you weren't on the edge of your seat watching, you'd probably fallen off out of sheer exhaustion.

It comes as a relief, therefore, when the solution to the whole problem is none of the above, but another tried-and-tested Star Trek combo-approach: dialogue, diplomacy, and rather complicated maths. When the crew of the Discovery meet face to... face (?) with the truly alien 10-C, it is a surprisingly touching and heartfelt moment of genuine connection and understanding between peoples. 'Seeking out' is Starfleet's mantra, after all, and this new life couldn't be more different than our own. Yet, the Discovery crew manage to open meaningful dialogue, explain their differences, and share in their similarities.

All this is quite literally done with feeling. Diplomacy, not deflector shields, saves the day – the 10-C agree to stop deploying the DMAs and even use the technology one last time to send Discovery back to Earth. The Alexander Courage fanfare plays as the ship enters the wormhole home. Now, that's a Star Trek!