Three takeaways from the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery:
1. The hell with the Picard series and the Section 31 series, I want the adventures of Number One starring Rebecca Romijn. She’s due for her own command anyhow. Get on that, CBS!
2. There are few things more conducive to making a subplot sing than to put Tig Notaro, Mary Wiseman, and Anthony Rapp in a locked room.
3. Doug Jones remains the rock star of Discovery.
Thanks to some unauthorized digging around by Number One (who apparently likes cheeseburgers with habanero sauce), they’ve managed to track down Spock’s shuttlecraft. Unfortunately, they’re snagged en route by a sphere that seems to attack the ship. Part of the damage to the ship includes engineering being locked off by systems failures, and the mycelial-network life form that attached itself to Tilly takes advantage of the chaos to take possession of Tilly.
Oh, and Saru’s dying.
Saru’s subplot ties directly to the Short Treks episode “The Brightest Star.” He’s undergoing the process that all Kelpiens undergo before being culled by the Ba’ul—and if, for whatever reason, they’re not culled, they go mad and die. He spends his dying hours trying to save the ship—but also learning more about the sphere.
This particular subplot is full of some of the worst clichés imaginable, but it works on two levels: one is Jones, who infuses Saru’s suffering with tremendous dignity and grace and, as Burnham puts it, empathy. But the other is that this isn’t just something like, for example, the last-minute revelation that Vulcans have an inner eyelid in “Operation: Annihilate,” which was introduced solely to give Spock a way to be restored to normal and never mentioned again. But the revelation that Saru’s ganglia are just supposed to fall off like that and that he is now, not mad, but no longer fearful, has major implications. The Ba’ul have been lying to the Kelpiens about a major biological function. It’s like telling caterpillars that they’re supposed to die when they go into a cocoon, never letting them know that they are to become butterflies and killing them before they can.
The tearful scenes between Saru and Burnham go on a bit too long, but it’s nice to see that the pair of them are fully back to the friendship we saw in “The Vulcan Hello,” having repaired the rift that Burnham’s mutinous actions caused that was the source of so much delicious tension between the two over the course of the first season. It also helps Burnham realize that she is obligated to be there for family, whether it’s agreeing to help Saru die, or being there for Spock when they finally track him down.
They don’t, of course, because apparently they’re gonna delay us seeing Ethan Peck as Spock as long as they possibly can. First they’re delayed by the sphere, and next week they’re going to be delayed by the results of the cliffhanger, as apparently Tilly has been kidnapped into the mycelial network and our heroes have to go in and get her.
But that’s next week. This week, we find out that Discovery’s copious use of the spore drive has led to incalculable damage within the network. (Yet one more awful legacy of the reign of the Mirror Universe version of Gabriel Lorca.) The spore that came through and has been communicating to Tilly by appearing as her childhood friend is trying to find out who’s responsible and stop them. Stamets is devastated, of course, and is ready to shut down the drive forever—until Tilly is kidnapped.
Prior to that, we get some magnificent banter between Stamets and Notaro’s Jett Reno, who’s still on board and now serving in engineering. In addition, Wiseman gives us some insight into Tilly’s childhood. (And of course her favorite song is “Space Oddity,” and of course Stamets knows the words, too. And yes, my wife and I sang along with them when they started singing it, and yay for a Star Trek show with the budget to actually get the rights to David Bowie songs, instead of subjecting us to the same twelve public domain songs over and over again.) Notaro and Rapp have their banter down cold, and it’s a delight, from Reno’s insistence that she can’t be insulted no matter how hard Stamets tries (and he does try), to the snotty comments about mushrooms, to Reno’s facility for fixing things with duct tape, to Stamets throwing Reno’s “house dressing” remark back at her. Plus this entire subplot has the three engineers throwing technobabble together at a great rate, in the finest tradition of Starfleet engineers who can, as a Vorta put it once, make rocks into replicators.
My favorite part of the episode, though, was the sphere messing with the universal translator, with everyone suddenly speaking in various different languages. It was hilarious and delightful, and everyone did a beautiful job language-hopping.
Buy the Book
A Memory Called Empire
Best of all, though, is that we have two different alien life forms, both of whom seem hostile but who turn out to be tragic. The spore is trying to find out who’s been destroying their home, while the sphere just wants someone to remember it before it dies. Yes, we’ve seen this sort of thing before—“Arena,” “The Devil in the Dark,” “The Inner Light,” “Tin Man”—but it’s also very much a Star Trek story, because the best Trek tales are the ones where there are no monsters, just sentient beings trying to survive in a crazy universe.
Rebecca Romijn makes the first of what I hope is several appearances as Number One, Pike’s first officer, a role originated by Majel Barrett in “The Cage.” Romijn nails Barrett’s cadence from that failed pilot, while putting her own spin on it. I particularly appreciate that Pike and Number One—and, according to the latter, the entire Enterprise crew—wants to help Spock and will be there for him. (I’m also amused that they’re continuing Pike’s disdain for holographic communicators, insisting that the Enterprise get rid of them and go back to good old-fashioned viewscreens.)
This is an excellent standalone episode, but also one that lays out the ground for the future, from setting up why we don’t see the spore drive in any of the 30 seasons of television and ten movies that take place after this, to the repercussions of Saru’s revelation to Kelpiens in general and Saru in particular (I can’t imagine the transition from always fearful to not always fearful will be a smooth one), to the ongoing search for Spock. (Gee, what a great title…) I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what happens next.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is at Farpoint 26 this weekend at the Hunt Valley Inn in Cockeysville, Maryland, just north of Baltimore as an author and musical guest. He’ll be debuting his new novel Mermaid Precinct at the con, and also will be performing with the Boogie Knights. Other guests include Star Trek actor Wallace Shawn (Grand Nagus Zek on Deep Space Nine), and fellow Trek fictioneers David Mack, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Dave Galanter, Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, Glenn Hauman, Steven H. Wilson, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Derek Tyler Attico, Howard Weinstein, and many more. Keith’s schedule can be found here.
1. Somebody has to track down the Ba’ul and nuke ’em. Prime Directive be damned.
2. Spore drive really Bad Idea even in story. Let’s lose it.
3. Somebody put a tracker in Spock.
This worked better than 2.3 “A Point of Light” in having subplots that supported a single theme.
Story
Saru’s threat ganglia shrivel and drop off. If you put them under your pillow, maybe the Ganglia Fairy will bring you money! :)
For a planetoid-sized entity that’s 100,000 years old, it’s really bad at communicating its intent to smaller beings. Maybe it spent most of its time surveiling rather than conversing? Or it’s senile?
Computer virus: like TNG’s “Contagion”, but the intent is benign.
How is it that the only way to access Main Engineering (when Burnham tries) is via the spore drive engineering lab? How is there no duty staff in Engineering?
Production
We get Linus the Saurian, Nhan the Barzan, and Jett Reno the sardonic. Were portions of eps 2.1 and 2.4 filmed back-to-back, I wonder?
Number One (no name given) transports aboard, but there’s no establishing shot of Enterprise, another starship, a planet, etc.
The bridge officers meeting in Pike’s office — Nhan suddenly appears to one side. And then it turns into an episode of The Orville, with the makeup-alien using 21cen idiom. “Sinus congestion? That sucks.”
We’ve met the ship’s CMO (Pollard), but not its chief engineer — who isn’t Stamets or Reno. Was Reno officially transferred to Discovery, or is “hitchiking” a standard process?
“Ten thousand degrees kelvin … twenty thousand degrees kelvin … ten to the sixth power degrees kelvin.” (A), the SI unit is just “kelvins” — do you not have a scientific adviser reviewing your scripts, Living Dead Guy Productions? And (b), that’s an unnatural place to use exponential notation.
The Mays-entity is giving me some Stranger Things “upside-down” vibes.
Technology
Planting tech-continuity seeds: Number One’s report re: the cascade failure on Enterprise causes Pike to order its holographic comm systems removed. It seems odd that the contagion would originate that way, and weak story-wise (“nope, not invaders, just a software bug”), but maybe Pike’s using it as an excuse (“I never liked them anyway — felt like I was talking to a ghost”). And the UT virus on Discovery — will Starfleet respond as in Battlestar Galactica (2004), by dumbing down and isolating its tech, and switching to physical controls rather than touchscreens whose GUIs can be hijacked?
The universal translator, putting the “U” in ubiquitous and universal. As depicted, it must cancel whatever a person emits, and then project new sounds, ventriloquist-style. Some kind of modulated ultrasound? (Leaving alone the visual lip-sync.) The captioning indicated Klingon, French, Italian, Welsh, Mandarian, Wolof (a language of West Africa). Saru, annoyed: “Did nobody else take a second language?”
“Eject the warp core”? So far as we previously believed, a warp core style of engine wasn’t used in this era. I suppose Discovery might have a different system than Enterprise, but it’s more like the writers are taking their cues from TNG technobabble.
The planetoid communicates by UV, visible even in interior compartments of Discovery, like Sickbay. So, the planetoid’s virus somehow causes the interior systems to emit the UV — are all the lights multi-spectrum capable? Some kind of UV wifi transceivers?
Duct tape is still a thing? Maybe it’s the nickname for “magnatomic adhesion strips” (to borrow a term from the classic Shane Johnson tech manual).
There is a “Sickbay Two”.
CBS All Access
Re: the CBS-AA stream … Last night, the marked commercial breaks had no commercials prior to 9:30 pm ET. All season the closed captions have had mixed case, but no apostrophes.
It was always obvious to me that spore drive would have to be abandoned, and that the seeds for that abandonment were built in to the story back in season 1 (it requires either torturing a sentient being or conducting illegal genetic augmentation, and its use endangers the mycelial network). So it’s no surprise to hear that they’re following through on that at last and laying the seeds (spores?) for the drive’s abandonment. But it’ll sure be a surprise to that one guy on The TrekBBS who keeps insisting that it’s absolutely impossible to reconcile spore drive with later Trek and therefore the show had broken canon forever and must be an alternate universe. I wonder how he’ll react to this episode.
@2/Phillip Thorne: While it’s true that “degrees Kelvin” is not formal scientific usage, this is a show made for a general non-scientist audience and thus “Kelvins” might be unclear to the average viewer. Fiction allows breaks from reality for the sake of clarity.
And Star Trek: Enterprise and the Kelvin movies have both retroactively established that the term “warp core” was used in the 22nd-23rd centuries. It’s just an alternate term for a warp reactor. Also, the cutaway graphic of the Defiant in “In a Mirror, Darkly” showed that the Constitution class actually did have a cylindrical warp core of the familiar type running horizontally under the engineering deck seen onscreen.
To my great shame, my exposure to Doug Jones is limited to this series. A situation I *need* to rectify. That being said, I loved the scenes between him and Burnham at the end of the episode. My only gripe is that I did not feel the sense of danger that Saru would die. I know there’s precedent in Trek history for main characters to shuffle off this mortal coil, but I watched that (admittedly very powerful) scene between Saru and Burnham, and was telling myself that he was going to live for the entire time. On the other hand, I eagerly await the direction the change will allow them to take his character.
I really liked this episode. The 3-way banter between Reno, Tilly, and Stamets at the spore drive was great, and the smooth transitions between languages was amusing to watch.
Yeah, the spore drive needing to be abandoned was pretty obvious. That doesn’t make it any less of a weak plot setup (“oh here’s a fancy technology thing that has to be abandoned and never talked about again, despite the fact that we clearly left room for future generations to improve the thing until its workable”). Like the holodisplays causing software glitches right now, it provides a cursory explanation, but nothing really definitive, or that prevents them from rehashing it and then taping over it again later.
This is probably where I’ll be accused of being that guy who declares the spore drive irreconcilable.
I like what they did with advancing the concept of Saru’s species. Its a predictable plotline, but not an uninteresting one, and fits very well with the concepts they were playing with. If they then provide strong, not Saturday-morning-cartoony reasons why the Ba’ul would push this (other than “Kelpiens are delicious”, which I guess is the general concept behind Saru’s species now) I’ll be pretty satisfied.
And Tilly gets possessed because of course she does.
Rebecca Romijn looks ravishing as a brunette.
@6, Kelpiens do seem to be the Spoo of the Star Trek ‘Verse
If Number One becomes a recurring character, it will become awkward to never mention her name. It should of course be Majel, or Commander Barret (or Commander Roddenberry)
I completely loved this episode. I didn’t have any of the problems with it that you did. I thought the callbacks to “The Brightest Star” improved that story – which, like you, I wasn’t impressed with. “Starman” being Tilly’s favorite song was mentioned in the new Tilly book, so hearing that on the show had me cheering, even as I was cringing at what was happening. I didn’t feel like any of it went on too long and I also didn’t feel like Saru’s story was anything like Spock’s inner eyelid; the latter was a cheat that didn’t really lead to anything more, while Saru’s revelation changes almost everything for the character and his people, giving them a relevance and storyline that I care about, when the previous short completely failed to do so IMO. I love Jet Reno and I hope they continue to bring her back; her banter with Stamets was a highlight in an episode filled with them. I can’t say enough good things about it. I’m a very happy Star Trek fan.
I really liked the episode, it wasn’t as good as New Eden, but it was a very Trek episode, and I liked how they handled all the different threads. I knew they wouldn’t kill Saru off, but I still worried about him in that scene in his quarters. I would have appreciated him making a reference to “Si Vis Pace…” when he says the fear is finally gone. Doug Jones, as usual, remains a rock star (like krad says). The amount of emotion he conveys behind the make-up is amazing.
At least now the Kelpien’s culling by the Ba’ul and why the Federation doesn’t intervene (or at least the characters don’t comment on it) makes a bit more sense: they, and the Federation by extension, believe they only give themselves up to the Ba’ul when they’re already going to die. It’s like they’re voluntarily allowing themselves to be culled. I just didn’t get that from “The Brightest Star”, and to be honest, I didn’t understand it until this episode review. I just thought Saru had evolved beyond normal Kelpien biology because of the sphere’s influence. This makes more sense.
I loved the Babel Tower sequence, even if Martin-Green’s Spanish sucks (Doug Jones’ is pretty good). Another favorite was Stamets and Tilly singing Bowie, and my favorite song of his to boot!
Some questions I still have: Who’s the chief of security? Why is Detmer handling shields if she’s the helmswoman (maybe because the systems were effed up)? Why do they keep calling the spore room “engineering”, when it’s obvious the ship has to have a traditional warp core engineering section? Who’s the actual chief engineer? What’s Linus’ specialty (he seems to be a scientist)?
@3 – Chris: That guy will double down on his Disco hatred.
@10 – Jason: The song is “Space Oddity”, not “Starman”.
“How high will the sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you’ll never know.”
-Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz
@2: ” And (b), that’s an unnatural place to use exponential notation.” Haven’t watched the episode, but it makes sense if they’re reading off a graph that switches over to exponential notation to save space.
The most impressive thing about the episode for me is that while even the logical part of my brain new that they weren’t killing off Saru, I still found myself holding my breath in the scene in his quarters. Also, Sonequ Martin-Green is no acting slouch, but Doug Jones was at such a high level that she couldn’t keep up with him. That’s no knock on her, but rather an impressive acting job by Jones.
I loved the set design of Saru’s quarters- I remember KRAD saying in earlier rewatches that alien species should act alien, and Saru’s quarters certainly were not something a human would live in. It was an impressive piece of set design that they didn’t have to do- they could have redressed standard quarters and no one would bat an eyelash, but to help develop the intimacy of the scene they made it so personalized.
Question on the Universal Translator scene (three actually): Was everyone actually speaking whatever language they were hearing (was Burnham and Pike actually speaking Klingon) or was the translator porting new words into each others heads? Also, have we ever figured out how the UT works? If I’m talking to someone speaking Spanish to me, I get that the UT makes it so I hear them in the English (or presumably whatever language I want) but do I hear the Spanish words first? Lastly, why wouldn’t Starfleet teach all of their officers to speak English (or Federation Standard) on duty just in case the UT fails. While I understand the need to not force English down everyone’s throats, I’d think that in a fleet where everyone receives training from one system that teaching the primary language would be in there?
Still, a super fun scene.
As far as “hitchhiking” – this is an actual thing in the military called “TDY” or temporary duty, and its actual fairly common. I’ve seen people being sent from one ship to another for months at a time for various reasons, from getting certain qualifications, to ship being shorthanded, or specialized gear being installed. In the Trek universe, I’m pretty sure we saw this a couple of times. In the DS9 tribble episode, when Kirk asked Sisko why he didn’t recognize him at the end, temporary duty was his response, and Kirk didn’t blink.
@11/MaGnUs: “Why is Detmer handling shields if she’s the helmswoman…?”
In TOS, Sulu generally seemed to act as the tactical officer.
@14/Mike: I haven’t seen the episode yet, but I gather that what was happening was that the translator was scrambling what people were actually saying in English (presumably) so that listeners heard something else instead. And no, it’s never been explained how the translators work, because it’s impossible to explain it in a way that’s consistent with the dramatic conceit allowing us to see aliens speaking English all the time. It’s one of those necessary breaks from reality that it’s better not to think about most of the time. (I loved how Star Trek Beyond handled it, with both the original speech and the translation audible — it’s probably the most realistic depiction of how such a thing should work — but that’s impossible to reconcile with all the episodes where the UT is used to let the crew pass as natives on pre-warp planets.)
god I hate tilly, she will be forever the victim in this series, gingers are frightening (joke)
This episode saw the return of that classic Trek staple, the random use of the number “47”.
What bugs me about Discovery is all the elementary science errors that a high school science student could spot, if given the script to check.
This week we’re told that all the oxygen in the spore lab might ignite. Er… oxygen doesn’t burn (or we’d all be incinerated ever time we lit a match).
And the sphere’s force field is reversed “one nanosecond” before it exploded, pushing Discovery away from certain destruction. One nanosecond?? Really?? Ever heard of inertia, or even the speed of light (which only travels about one foot in a nanosecond).
UV light doesn’t penetrate opaque matter. So how is Saru seeing it (from the sphere) inside Discovery? Was he running from one window to the next? Will everyone have a tan next week?
Nobody would say “ten to the power six degrees”. You’d say ” a million degrees”.
It’s unnecessarily sloppy, and a bit embarrassing.
Would have liked some reason why Discovery abruptly encountered the alien entity other than the plot needed it, like taking a shortcut in the rush to catch up to Spock.
MaGnUs: in TOS, tactical systems were handled by helm and navigation, so it’s fitting that that’s true on Discovery as well, as Christopher said.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@19, while Discovery certainly makes many scientific errors, the ones you mention are fairly explainable (though the Saru one is still weird for WHY reasons).
Oxygen can indeed ignite at normal atmospheric concentrations, it just requires an extreme temperature (like that of an exotic nuclear reaction, which is basically what overloaded warp plasma might be) There’s also an argument to be made that any transformation to plasma counts as ignition, and large electrical discharges are completely capable of turning atmosphere to plasma, and make the oxygen in it burn nearly anything (even/especially metals.) Even a small area of burning metal localized to the arc points could potentially cause lethal harm in a confined space without extreme ventilation. Given that they were in a confined, sealed space with failing life support, ignition of the room’s oxygen could also just suffocate them to death. We’ll never know exactly what Tig’s remark was referring to, but there’s a bunch of options.
The sphere was exerting a stasis field that cancelled the Discovery’s warp drive. Reversed, that would imply it could create a warp bubble, which could easily move Discovery to safety in a nanosecond. Warp acceleration doesn’t cause inertial problems for passengers.
The virus had control of Discovery’s computers, and therefore also their holographic projection and internal lighting systems. Discovery has holographic emitters in every crew quarters, command space, and science lab. I’m assuming that those emitters can produce UV light, but that doesn’t seem like much of a reach. The alien’s bizarre reasoning to restrict its transmissions to UV only might puzzle me, but its ability to do so within the bounds of physics doesn’t.
Bridge officers using slightly unbelievable wording doesn’t really register for me. Technobabble like “Reverse the polarity” is just as bad.
Yeah… I don’t know what language that comms officer was speaking but it certainly ain’t welsh. I did a double take when I noticed that on the subtitles and had to rewind to make sure I hadn’t misheard. I’d be curious to know what it was though and maybe figure out how whoever did the captioning got it so wrong.
@17, I thought Tilly sounded amusing from the descriptions but having actually seen her now I find her annoying. Like some real people she jangles my nerves. Obviously she’s intelligent and technically able but they’re training this girl for command? Seriously?
Space Oddity could not help me recall this performance of a famous Elton John song by non other than Captain Kirk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hARDXYz2io
Update:
Apparently he made a whole album of this stuff, and he did Space Oddity/Seeking Major Tom too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L-bTza_7-I
I kind of like how Pike says to ripout the holodecks because they are causing problems, somewhat justifying its use before TNG and explaining why not in TOS, also like nod to Scotty when Pike says no engineer will love Enterprise more
Has anyone watched the Ready Room Facebook live after shows with Naomi Kyle ? While she may be a lot prettier than Matt Mira, her boringness is making me seriously miss After Trek
@26 — I think the problem is less in the hosts and more in the format. After Trek had multiple interviews, fanart, behind-the-scenes sections and audience participation. Ready Room is just a interview without any frills.
Fan art, behind-the-scenes stuff, and audience participation would be the only things of interest for me in an after show. I don’t know why anyone bothers with interviews anymore. They’re all, I’m guessing required, to sound like glowing acceptance speeches. Whatever project or person they’re asked about is “the most amazing experience of my life,” or words to that effect. It’s getting a creepy Manchurian Candidate kind of feel sometimes.
Burnham is the least convincing Vulcan I’ve ever seen. I mean, she’s biologically human, but having been raised on Vulcan, you’d think she wouldn’t be the most emotional person in the room absolutely all the time. And why do people care so much about Spock? The ship is about to get destroyed by an unknown lifeform, yet everybody is panicking over how they’re going to lose Spock’s signal!
I’m still not getting all the hate with the show, recently read some on YouTube. I think it’s good and enjoy watching it each week. Saru (Doug Jones) is by far and away my favorite character now. When the show started I didn’t care for him that much, it’s a testament to Doug’s acting ability and the writers that now I love the character. I’m ok with where it is in canon and even if they threw away canon and said this is like the newer films, that’s ok too. I hope the rumors of it’s cancelation are not true.
I’m not “getting” why people always automatically equate dislike with “hate.” Some people don’t like what they have done with certain aesthetics, or they don’t like the writing, or they don’t like the characters. Maybe it’s all the above. That doesn’t automatically mean a person “hates” something. I absolutely dislike a lot of what I have seen of this show. I don’t find most of the characters compelling, interesting, or believable, to say nothing of the BS the writers and the suits throw out about the look of the technology, the Klingons, and the initial constant drumbeat from the cast about “diversity” (IDIC was a concept in Star Trek well before this semi-current buzz word caught fire.) But hate? Seriously, this word (like so many other accusative words these days) is used far too fast and loose. Sometimes people simply don’t like things for the same reason some people don’t like broccoli or lamb or Dr. Pepper or cigars, etc., etc.
That said, I agree that Jones is a great actor with what he is given. The design for his character is pretty damn cool. The Fed ships (aside from Discovery’s open rings and viagra nacelles) are also fantastic designs. I like the redesign for the Tellarites. The Andorians look good, though I would prefer they had eyebrows. Anson Mount is a perfect Christopher Pike, and the Enterprise is quite lovely. It’s just not enough to compensate for the mountain of stuff I dislike. For the record, I enjoyed all of the new movies with Pine and Quinto, so I’m not some old school Trekkie who’s against anything new and different. I was initially very optimistic about the show and the cast, but they all really turned me off with the writing and patronizing attitude towards fans. Moreover, I really feel they should have set this in the 25th century. The aesthetic would have fit better with Star Trek Online, the uniform and tech styles would have made more sense, and they could have made the not-Klingons into a new race instead of space-Drow who happen to speak Klingon.
If they were going to be so adamant about having a prequel, I think making this series about Pike and Number One would have been a much better angle to go on. They are known characters and they are familiar characters. The positive reception of them and the Enterprise speaks volumes.
** Deposits $0.02
“Does the UT do this or that–” Don’t care.
“So many scientific errors–” Don’t care.
“How could the sphere do this or that–” Don’t care.
Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care.
Number One. The Number One (appropriately not named, not yet at least). I think I’ve been waiting for that moment on Trek since I first saw “The Cage.” And Rebecca Romijn knocked it out of the park with about two minutes of screen time. She and Anson Mount give us a glimpse of the dynamic between Pike and his Executive Officer. More, please.
And I agree with you, krad. Ditch everything and start on the adventures of Number One and her ship.
A very Star Trek episode (it feels good to finally say that after what feels like forever). Not just one, but two apparently hostile life-forms whose intentions aren’t inherently hostile at all, but are, in there own separate ways, trying to survive. The two approaches vary widely, but the goal is the same. Terrified for poor Tilly though, of course.
Hey, Discovery, you don’t have to keep waving Spock in front of us like a carrot just to not show him. I will agree the tracking Spock thing while the ship is seemingly about to be destroyed seemed unnecessary. It’s okay, we’ll keep watching. No need to do that ( you’ll keep doing it, because of course you will).
I’m so glad to see Saru and Burnham friends again. Like I said last week, their recovering friendship has been a highlight this season. In their friendship (and Burnham’s friendship with Tilly) Michael is discovering what it is to be human, and Michael is slowly shedding the shell Georgiou referred to, that the Vulcans placed around Michael. It’s good to see.
It was also good to see an officers’ meeting with our friends from the bridge we’re getting more time with these days, thankfully. And also good to see snarky Stamets reappear. His back-and-forth with Commander Reno (who I’m glad to see is still aboard) and the talks between him and Tilly are pitch-perfect.
I usually try to keep my two cents here brief, but I have to add to the praise of Doug Jones’ performance. Yes, my brain consciously knew Saru probably wasn’t going to die, but man that “probably” felt heavy during that heartbreaking scene in Saru’s quarters; hell, in really all the scenes between Saru and Burnham.
Another good standalone story, while moving an overall arc along. Very keen to see what happens next week.
Why is everyone so concerned with finding Spock even though the ship is in great danger and a senior officer is dying? Because this universe revolves around the Sarek family and everybody knows it.
I was a hold out on this show. I waited until the first season was nearly finished before I watched it. I hated the first several episodes but you know, it’s hooked me. It’s sort of Trek-like if cock your head and squint. But it’s so much more interesting and darker and less structured than the original Treks–which I loved by the way. Huge fan of Trek in all incarnations. But this, this is something special.
I like it. I like Tilly. I am very intrigued to see what happens to Saru. I could never imagine him in this situation despite how unusual he was for his species because being an explorer, being a leader takes a certain amount of ignorant fearlessness that made his character never make sense in the show up until now. I wish Tilly would have liked Starman rather than Space Oddity, but Bowie is Bowie, I guess.
To everyone griping about the science, it’s always been half-baked horrendous in Star Trek, so move on. Heisenberg Compensator, anyone? If you don’t like physics, just change it!
Canon? I’m surprised they are doing as well as they are. I commend their ability to even be sort of close.
I miss Lorka. I hope he comes back in some form or another. Jason Issacs was so weird and interesting in a normal, just accept-me kind of way.
Ashe is a mystery to me. I think the premise is intriguing but the actor just leaves me cold.
Okay, TMI for now. Thanks and keep up the comments. They are fantastic.
Where to begin? Where to begin?! I think most of what I’d say has been said after all.
– I certainly want to see more of Number One and I reckon scenes between her and Saru would be electric.
– I’m pretty certain that I remember Saru even saying the UV bursts are coming from the ships systems as a result of the virus.
– This is Star Trek, Science accuracy has always been a bonus event at the best of times (they certainly tried harder in the TNG era, but this is called Science Fiction.
So Burnham, who never accepts things at face value and never takes the easy road, is just going to cut off Saru’s wigglybits? Excuse me…
WHAT?!
No! Just No!
Why is she not dragging him into sickbay and getting Pollard to help her find out what’s going on and deal with it? Just like she did LAST EPISODE with Tilly.
Also, body parts don’t just fall off unnannounced. Yes, Pollard saw they were inflamed earlier in the story, but seriously?
And why just suddenly roll over and accept things now?
As a fellow Michael, I’m dissappointed in you Burnham.
Otherwise, I like this episode. We’re still on-Trek to be track… or something like that.
@35/Berthulf: Please don’t say “this is science fiction” as a justification for bad science. That’s not what the term means and it’s an insult to the whole genre, especially those of us who write hard science fiction and strive to make our science as credible as possible. Science fiction is fiction about speculative science, whether that science is realistic or fanciful — just as detective fiction is about detective work, historical fiction is about history, etc. Calling it fiction doesn’t mean it treats the subject matter implausibly or nonsensically, only that it’s a narrative work about invented characters and situations. A solid, plausible SF series like The Expanse or movie like The Martian is every bit as much “science fiction” as a more fanciful work.
As for Star Trek, it’s run the gamut in terms of credibility. Roddenberry wanted it to be as plausible as it could be within budgetary and dramatic limitations; he was one of the first SFTV creators ever to consult with actual scientists and engineers in an attempt to achieve verisimilitude. But few of his successors have paid as much attention to credibility, especially in the movies. So the best science in Trek is usually in the productions Roddenberry had the most influences over — TNG seasons 1 & 2 (up to a point), ST:TMP, and early TNG.
I appreciated the effort to pick various languages (both real and fictional – like Klingon, Andorian and Tau Cetian), but hearing Martin-Green and Jones attempt Mandarin (krad I think you made a typo above) was both exciting and cringeworthy because the enunciation was all over the place. Admittedly it’s not Firefly bad.
Truly enjoyed this episode! It actually makes me wonder how the show will change now that Harbets and Berg are gone.
So Discovery, which isn’t even supposed to know about Spock, is the only ship that tracking his shuttle? The initial tracking info must have come from somewhere. Where’s the rest of the fleet? Of course, the only ship with Spock’s captain and foster sister is the only one that’s bothering to track him even though he’s wanted for murder.
The encounter with the sphere was a bit random but that’s OK. It’s not as if random encounters are anything new. I do have to wonder about the timing though. Why wait until you’re a hour away from dying before deciding to track someone down to tell your story to? Someone needs better time management.
Doug Jones continues to impress as Saru. The most alien of regular Trek characters and often times I find myself forgetting that there’s a human being under all that latex. Most impressive.
I’m still at a loss for the attraction to Tilly. She was introduced as this character who has such problems fitting in that she was exiled to private quarters because nobody wanted her as a roommate and yet now it’s like she’s Ms. Popular with very little change in personality. And that personality is annoying switched up to 11. What was it that Stamets told her in “Brother”. “talk less”?. Good advice. I wish she’d taken it. Am I the only one who hopes that they don’t get tilly back from the mushroom dimension?
More Jett Reno, please and thank you.
Boy, Saru sure is lucky that Burnham wasted all that time before cutting off his threat ganglia. If sh’d been just a second faster, he’d be dead. Or something. Seriously, the knife gets within a millimetre and they simply fall off? That said, it’ll be interesting to see where Saru goes from here. Will he overcompensate and act recklessly?
Two episodes ago – “The Federation has a standard language based on English”
This episode “That very few members of Starfleet ever bother to learn.”
You’re sending ships out into the unknown without a method for the crew to talk to each other that doesn’t depend on the computer? Yeah, what could possibly go wrong.
36. ChristopherLBennett – I think you meant TOS “TNG seasons 1 & 2 (up to a point)” since you mention TNG at the end.
Also, Roddenberry wasn’t that concerend with getting the science right so much as not wanting something that would be seen as wrong. Case in point, he wanted the ray guns to be able to do things that lasers couldn’t. So he came up with Phasers which might as well be magic wands. You zap someone and the disappear? OK, where do they go and why isn’t everyone killed when they are converted to energy? After all, that’s basically what nuclear weapons do. E=mc2 and all that. Transporter? Same problem. That was invented to 1) save money so they didn’t need EFX to land the ship and 2) to get into the story quickly. Having a scientific basis didn’t enter into it. Same with Spock being a human/Vulcan hybrid. Amanda would have more DNA in common with a sea cucumber or an oak tree. And let’s not forget the “spacecraft fall out of orbit if the engines are shut off”. Good thing NASA didn’t know about that.
@34/mj: “To everyone griping about the science, it’s always been half-baked horrendous in Star Trek, so move on. Heisenberg Compensator, anyone? If you don’t like physics, just change it! “
The Heisenberg Compensator is not bad science, it’s good science fiction. It’s acknowledging real physics and the problems that would have to be solved to achieve the fictitious technology depicted in the show. Science fiction isn’t required to limit itself to known science; on the contrary, it’s all about extrapolating beyond known science into the unknown. But you can make the extrapolations seem plausible by grounding them in references to real scientific principles and acknowledging the sorts of things that would have to be done to transcend the limits they set.
And since science is always advancing, that kind of informed speculation often turns out to seem prophetic once real science finds a way to solve the problem after all. And the problem of “Heisenberg compensation” may have actually just been solved in real life:
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-smart-atomic-cloud-heisenberg-problem.html?fbclid=IwAR3fYh01IYNwDkj0sBg2MyihwgfD2969szXdtAnWYXdIj_x2ibaib0f3hog
@16 – Chris: True, Sulu did that. As for the UT, Discovery also did it as in Beyond, remember when T’Kuvma heard Burnham’s UT speaking Klingon? That was because it was plot-convenient. And now they’ve done it in the usual way in which it’s undetectable (which I tend to think it’s telepathic in some way), again because it served the plot.
@27 – Steven: Agreed. Kyle is not boring, but the format is very dry. I do understand that this way cheaper to produce.
@30 – Paul: There are no cancellation rumors with any substance, only hopeful hate spewed by people who’ve been against Discovery from the start.
@35 – Berthulf: Non-canon, but Saru and Number one have already met in a novel (Desperate Hours), and they made a good team.
@37 – Peter: Firefly at least has the excuse that Mandarin is not the characters’ native language (IIRC), it’s just something that’s apparently used as a trade language because of a big Chinese influence. People use English words everywhere now, and many have awful pronunciation, even when they do speak the language. The UT, however, is supposed to render languages perfectly, so the bad pronunciations are less plausible.
@11: I didn’t say that it was “Starman” in the episode, though I can seen now how my comment could be interpreted that way. Sorry if I was unclear, but we’re both right. In the book Tilly listens to “Starman” and what I meant was that hearing ‘that’ (meaning David Bowie) made me smile because it tied into the book as she’s clearly a David Bowie fan.
@36, CLB: Sorry Chris, but no, that wasn’t what I meant. Rather, whilst I do appreciate it when story follows the science accurately, as fiction, it is not the be-all-and-end-all of a story to need that.
Captain Obvious Alert: I’m not a scientist. I may have some scientific training and a great respect for logic, but at the end of the day, I’m a layman. When a writer is dealing with scientific concepts in a story, and gets it wrong, so long as the characters know what they’re talking about, and the science is internally accurate to the story, and any mistakes in the real science are not glaringly obvious to the majority of the story’s consumers (and therefore immersion-breaking), it really doesn’t matter all that much if it’s also wrong.
Now, if I was a scientist, and the science in question was something I was specialised in, then yes, I would be a bit miffed over any mistakes, but I’d also have to accept that said mistakes aren’t really all that important. I would wager that for every prophetic scientific extrapolation in fiction, there have been two or more painfully bad and easliy disprovable notions written about. Star Trek can hardly be considered hard sci-fi either, even if it does have a lot of good science buried in the technobabble.
TLDR: Being wrong about the science in a story does not invalidate that story, or the science in any other story.
So, I think I have a different interpretation of the Tower of Babel bit. My impression is that everyone but Linus was actually speaking English, but that the translator was randomly mangling what others heard – not that crew members (besides the aforementioned Linus) are speaking a multitude of different languages at any given time and always relying on the translator Would’ve been more effective perhaps had they had the actors mouthing the words in English and then dubbed the other languages over the top. Sonequa Martin Green’s clearly having trouble enunciating in Klingon and it shows in her facial expression.
It felt like Star Trek, and the rest doesn’t matter to me. This is why I’m here, this is why I watch. In addition to what Keith mentioned, I saw elements of “Ethics” and “Galaxy’s Child.” I enjoy picking apart an episode on a second watching, but this is feeling like Trek to me and I’m just basking in the feel of it for now.
Mrs Slocombe: And don’t forget that power surge in engineering, which we are told sent “a hundred giga-electron-volts surging through the relays”. I actually paused the episode, saying “Wait a second – isn’t that actually a really small amount of energy?” A quick Google search revealed that it’s about 1.6 times 10^-8 joules. N.b.: minus eighth. I had to spend a bit of time giggling before resuming play.
Amazingly enough, the rest of the episode managed to redeem itself in my eyes. Props to Jones and Martin-Green for making what could have been a very clichéd scene into something genuinely affecting.
I find myself suspecting that those ganglia are not a natural part of Kelpian biology, but are a tool of subjugation.
Still not much caring for the series. The A-threat was half-baked (a super-intelligent millenia-old planetoid that can create a computer virus that messes up a starship and yet can’t say hello, here’s what we need… yes, it’s been done in Trek before, but that’s no excuse for a stupid concept like that being done again), and, I mean, yes, it was obvious that the Spore Drive was going away, still doesn’t cure the dumbness of having it in the first place, and how they’re going about it, to stretch out the suspense, just makes everybody in the cast look back. I mean, seriously… last episode, they find Tilly’s got a parasite… while they’re figuring this out, it’s talking to her, pointing out that Stamets is the one it needs her to get the message to… and it’s clearly desperate to get that message out, instead of anybody saying, “Hey, wait a minute, maybe let’s listen to what this thing has to say!” they immediately rig up a solution to rip it out of Tilly and lock it in a containment cage and apparently forget about it. While apparently being fully aware it’s a sentient being with intention and some kind of mission… Stamets cutely suggests they GIVE IT A NAME, other than Mae. YOU’RE AWARE IT’S A SENTIENT BEING YOU DOLT, IT’S NOT A PET. HOW ABOUT WORKING NIGHT AND DAY ON HOW TO TALK TO IT AND FIND OUT WHY IT’S THERE? But no, they don’t care about that, it’s all an excuse to let Tilly talk about her backstory.
Saru’s plot was okay, I guess, if predictable, and annoying for other reasons. “This condition is unique to my species and it’s always terminal, there is no hope for me.” … you mean the culture among which technology is forbidden and scientific curiosity is discouraged have discovered no cure for this condition, how about letting Federation science take a crack at it? Maybe it’s the Kelpian equivalent to appendicitis, which yeah, can be absolutely fatal if you know nothing about surgery, but pretty easy to treat otherwise. Or, as turned out to be the case, it’s all apparently a lie, but nobody even questions the possibility. “Oh, he says it’s terminal, must be.” (Also, did Saru have a cold, and the sphere exacerbated it into the condition? Or was he going through this all the time? Because he said when he woke up he hoped it was a passing cold, and then said his theory was that the Sphere was triggering it, but he had the cold symptoms BEFORE they warped into the area with the sphere. I honestly can’t tell if either of these theories was intended or maybe if Saru was just, in pain, grasping at straws connecting them, or if it’s sloppy plotting, because that’s just how sloppy the writing is on the show in general.)
@11 – Jason: Cool, got it now.
@43 – twels: That’s exactly how I took it.
@45 – David: They could have missed it, but I think that if they were the result of genetic manipulation, the Federation would have detected it when Saru was given asylum.
@46 – ghostly1: Despite enjoying the show, and this episode, I agree with you that they dropped the ball on the spore being. As for Saru, his beliefs are deeply ingrained into his psyche, and that sort of blocked him from considering that the Federation might have a cure for the condition. The other characters should have insisted a bit more, though.
@45 David:
I did the same double-take regarding eV! There’s something off about the actors’ delivery of scientific amounts. The way they read them, it really sounds like they have no idea of what they’re talking about. “Captain! It has a mass of one point eight five times ten to the eighth kilograms! Those sure are some numbers I just read! Science!”
Of course, the script isn’t pointing them in the right direction, either. In a tense situation, somebody scientifically literate would give a ballpark estimate, they wouldn’t sound like they’re reading out of an abstract. Something more like “Captain! Its mass is on the order of ten to the eighth!” Or “Captain! It’s a thousand solar masses!”
After that, it’s a matter of the actor putting the emphasis on the impressive part. Not “ONE POINT EIGHT times ten to the eighth!” but “one point eight times ten to the EIGHTH!”
It’s a subtle thing, but it bothered me the whole episode. But yeah, being impressed by an electrical discharge that you measure in *electron* Volts was just laughable.
PS. I’m not trying to bash Discovery in particular. Star Trek (and TV science fiction in general) has always struggled with stuff like this. Nor is it (only) the actors’ fault. It starts with the writer, production staff, science advisor (if any), script editor, director…
“It’s a thousand solar masses!” Would have sounded way cooler too… but re my above: meh.
It occurs to me that even if Saru manages to bring this new knowledge about his species to his people, there are those among them, probably his father included, that would reject science in favor of their religious indoctrination. It would fit in with this season’s theme of science vs religion as well as be a reflection a real world happenings as well.
I apologize if this is a bit off topic again, but are these episodes accessible at anytime before 8:00pm EST on Thursday? The reason I ask is because this episode had a 5.0 rating at about 4pm EST last Thursday before it was even released. Must be the haters.
jmsnyc: No, they aren’t. That was trolls being trolls.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I loved this episode for the same reason you did, Keith. Also agree with you that Saru and Michael’s scene went on a little too long.
One thing you forgot to mention was Reno asking Tilly if she had any gum, taking it, chewing it, and then using it like glue. Loved it. (Tig Notaro is rockin’ it as Jett Reno!)
Also loving that the bridge crew is doing more than just sitting there! Loving their interactions!
“My favorite part of the episode, though, was the sphere messing with the universal translator, with everyone suddenly speaking in various different languages. It was hilarious and delightful, and everyone did a beautiful job language-hopping.” Best part of the entire episode for me, too.
Gee, am I gushing too much?
I must admit that at first the organic sphere grabbing them just seemed a, frankly, a tired plot device to stop Discovery from finding Spock too soon. But it was used so well to do what ST has always done best, imho: the growth of the characters as individuals who really are a crew who not only work together, but live together.
I hope that Tilly doesn’t become the “Miles O’Brien” of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. Y’know, the one who gets the shit kicked out of her all the time, always suffering, etc. Not that I didn’t adore Miles O’Brian and Colm Meaney, who became one of the brightest lights of the entire Star Trek franchise–actaully, now that I’ve written that, I have a feeling the same thing is going to happen to Mary Wiseman (one of the brightest lights of the franchise, I mean.) .
Anton Mount is also doing a great job as Pike–playing him as not yet “burned out” as he was in the original pilot of ST:TOS is, pun intended, fascinating.
Also want to add that Doug Jones is pretty amazing, able to display the emotions and his acting skills under all that makeup.
@50. Steve McCullen: Totally agree!
@14. Mike Klein: “I loved the set design of Saru’s quarters- I remember KRAD saying in earlier rewatches that alien species should act alien, and Saru’s quarters certainly were not something a human would live in. It was an impressive piece of set design that they didn’t have to do- they could have redressed standard quarters and no one would bat an eyelash, but to help develop the intimacy of the scene they made it so personalized.”
Yep, and it totally fits in with his background!
Mindy
Quoth mindyp51: “Anton Mount is also doing a great job as Pike–playing him as not yet “burned out” as he was in the original pilot of ST:TOS is, pun intended, fascinating.”
It’s “Anson,” and Discovery actually takes place after “The Cage.” Pike has gotten past the burnout after the experience on Talos IV.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One problem with abandoning the spore drive because of ethical considerations (if they do) is that it doesn’t jibe with it not being used by pretty much every other species in the galaxy outside the Federation. The Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, Dominion, Kelvans, etc. just never happened on the mycelial network? Or decided not to use this vastly superior drive because it was Wrong?
But maybe the network will wind up with some way to enforce “and *stay* out!” by the time everything is resolved.
@58/mschiffe: It’s not just ethics, it’s survival. We’ve seen that spore drive can endanger the mycelial network’s integrity/existence, which endangers the entire universe. Even an “unethical” power would avoid a technology that could lead to its own annihilation. Cf. Voyager: “Time and Again,” which establishes that the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans all mutually agreed to ban polaric ion power because it was too destructive. And that’s a far smaller threat to existence than something that can wipe out the universe.
Maybe. But I feel as if the lesson at least some of them would take away was “the Feds were able to use it literally hundreds of times, and win a war with it, without destroying the universe”.
Especially since the same network evidently extends into parallel universes which also contain reckless and/or ruthless people willing to mess with it.
@60/mschiffe: Unfortunately, the Trek universe is already overloaded with technologies that realistically should have been further developed but were abandoned once their narrative purpose was served, like interstellar transporters (“The Gamesters of Triskelion,” “That Which Survives”), kironide-injection telekinesis, soliton and quantum-slipstream drives, various methods of resurrecting the dead, the Genesis Wave, etc. This is just an inbuilt break from reality in series fiction of this sort, and it’s 40 or 50 years late to start complaining about it now as if it’s never happened before.
Tell me about it. The one thing TOS ever followed up on was slingshot time travel.
I think it’s reasonable to express the desire that they get out of, or at least not double down on, the habit. Some things do go away or get downplayed. (When’s the last “planet exactly like Earth at X time period down to the geography, by parallel evolution” they landed on?)
I’d also say that making it the focus of two seasons of storytelling is actually escalating the trend from the disposable single episode innovation.
But sure, it’s arguing with the wind. Trek is gonna Trek.
The Vulcan Inner Eyelid was actually mentioned again in Enterprise.
Finally seen it, and it’s the best of the season so far. The Saru subplot was potent and moving (I loved the part where Saru asked Burnham to catalog his journals so his people could someday see that a journey like his was possible), and Doug Jones was as fantastic as usual (though I am starting to find SMG a bit melodramatic). The banter between Stamets and Reno was loads of fun. The sphere plot was a classic Trek kind of story, a bit by the numbers, but since it was just a catalyst for the other stuff going on, it was a nice touch. Although I find it a bit implausible that they didn’t consider communication as a possibility earlier (couldn’t the ship’s sensors pick up UV as well as Saru’s eyes?). And I wonder why the later Federation isn’t more knowledgeable about the universe after getting this huge trove of historical data from the sphere, but then, I’ve been wondering the exact same thing about the Guardian of Forever for decades. And who knows? Maybe this is how the Federation first learned about elements of ancient galactic history mentioned in other shows. Maybe it’s how they knew about the Fabrini, or the Menthar-Promellian war, or the Tkon Empire (although the novels — mainly mine — have offered other explanations for those first two).
These episodes seem to be packed fairly closely together, since Linus had a cold in the season premiere, and here in episode 4 he says that was “last week.” Well, maybe it was a long-lasting cold. And technically “last week” could be anywhere up to 13 days in the past, if it’s late in the current week and you’re talking about something from early in the previous week. The reason I’m wondering is because I’ve been trying to figure out where the hell Short Treks: “Runaway” could possibly fit in this season. I gather that it has to be season 2 based on Tilly’s hairstyle, but so far it looks like the only likely place for it is between “Point of Light” and this one, since there’s enough of a story break between them to allow a little time to elapse. (“New Eden” seemed to pick up almost right after “Brother,” since Burnham wouldn’t have waited days to report what she found in Spock’s log, and while “Point of Light” doesn’t seem to be immediately after “New Eden,” presumably Tilly would be hallucinating May during the interim, so “Runaway” doesn’t fit there.)
I still dislike Discovery‘s VFX design. After the sphere exploded, the characters were talking about how beautiful the light was, but it was just another ugly clutter of blobby orange light and debris, like half the space shots in this show.