Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Paramount+
As we’re all well aware by now, Star Trek is at its best when it’s horny. After all, if you dump a group of people on a tin can floating through space, you can bet they’re going to knock space boots. With its return after a two-and-a-half year hiatus, it’s a message that Star Trek Discovery now appears to understand—and it only took until its final season.
In Season 5, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Book (David Ajala) find themselves on an awkward break, having hogged the romance limelight in previous seasons. In response, Discovery gives us not one, but two other couples to sustain us. The first is a budding-yet-fumbling relationship between the ever-flustered Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Lt. Jax (Gregory Calderone)—who does not have a first name and does not need one with that jawline—while the more interesting is Captain-cum-Ambassador Saru (Doug Jones) and Ni’var president T’Rina (Tara Rosling), who are now an item, having spent much of Season 4 side-eyeing each other.
Discovery is no stranger to relationships. The series has reveled in the enduring love of Doctor Culber (Wilson Cruz) and Commander Stamets (Anthony Rapp) in prior seasons. More recently, it’s given us one of the Star Trek franchise’s most affecting relationships in Adira (Blue del Barrio) and Gray (Ian Alexander), as their respective transitions have pushed love on Discovery to its most human. Yet, therein lies the problem that Season 5 solves: Things are more charged this time around, maybe even sexier; but whether it’s face bumps, pointy ears, or that weird flat-face makeup they kept using in the ’90s, Star Trek has always skewed toward human-looking love interests.
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