10 Terrible Star Trek Episodes With Awesome Endings

If we're including the season four finale of Star Trek: Discovery on this list, then it's not because the episode was terrible per se, but that it came to conclude what was an imperfect season in general that often fell afoul of its overarching plot, stretched to its limit across 13 episodes.

No sooner was Discovery out of the gate in what was looking to be a bit of a brighter galaxy after the resolution to the Burn, than yet another doomsday event was set in motion with the Dark Matter Anomalies (DMAs). We weren't even given the first episode to catch our breath before disaster kicked in.

What the ending to the DMA crisis provided, however, was something distinctly spectacular. We might have been teased with all sorts of candidates for Species 10-C — from the Q to the Nacene to the Metrons to the Iconians — but the actual choice was innovative and truly in the spirit of Star Trek, aided by outstanding visual effects.

The 'coming home' to Earth, and of Earth to the Federation, at the very end of the episode also felt like a welcome return to basics for Discovery itself. With season five soon to air as the show's last, Coming Home, as an episode and a title, is ever more prescient. Discovery now has to finish what it started.