Intellectually, I want to hate half this episode because it uses every cliché in the book. Tilly and Adira are sent to run some cadets through a Training Cruise That Goes Horribly Horribly Wrong, complete with The Inevitable Shuttle Crash, and The Disparate Personality Types That Must Put Aside Their Differences To Work Together.
But it works, partly because it’s a good bit of development for Tilly, but mainly because it makes very specific use of the Burn-induced isolation that most of the galaxy was stuck with prior to last season.
Mind you, there are still elements of that storyline that rankle. While Tilly’s growth works nicely, Adira’s is pretty ham-handed. And the death of the lieutenant when the shuttle crashes is barely acknowledged, and in a show that has usually been really good about not falling into the redshirt trap, this episode stumbled right into it, as that death should’ve gotten much more play.
Tilly also is seemingly written out, as she decides to leave Discovery to teach at the Academy. The conversation between her and Burnham in the cabin that they used to share is a beautiful talk between two friends who have been through hell and back—and the reminiscing about Burnham’s early days on Discovery as a disgraced prisoner rooming with the green cadet is lovely—and is particularly enlightening with regard to Tilly’s issues that have been a running theme this season. We finally see that (surprise!) it goes back to her mother, as seen most notably in the very first Short Treks episode, “Runaway.” But her mother is nine hundred years dead, and Tilly needs to move past her influence on her decisions. Tilly also improves tremendously as a leader while under fire, as the disaster forces her not to try so hard to be a good teacher and to just rely on her instincts for interpersonal relations, which has always been her superpower.
I do like the dynamics among the surviving cadets: an Orion, who is not trusted because of that species’ involvement in the Emerald Chain, another alien who was a slave of the Chain, and a human from Titan who’d never met another alien until Discovery reopened the galaxy at the end of last season. Tilly’s attempts to get them to just talk to each other all mostly fail, though their bonding over the difficulties they have after crash-landing help get them to actually speak—first to air grievances (real or imagined), then finding out that the Orion is the child of a dissident who spoke out against the Chain and died for that sedition. It nicely shows the growing pains that this revived Federation will have.
As does the other plot, which is much more compelling. Just as Ni’Var is on the brink of rejoining the Federation, President T’Rina throws a curveball in the form of a last-minute addendum to the agreement: Ni’Var must have an “escape clause” that allows them to leave the Federation for any reason. President Rillak will have none of that, as it sets a precedent that has the potential to completely fracture the Federation at a time when it’s trying to put itself back together. Neither side is willing to negotiate this.
Burnham and Saru are present for the ceremony, last-minute substitutes for Vance, who is said to be ill. Burnham makes a last-ditch effort to convince Ni’Var to not walk away from this new alliance, using logic and everything, which nonetheless fails. Rillak then makes it clear that there’s nothing more she can do, so unless someone comes up with a way to get Ni’Var to compromise, they’re shit out of luck. Rillak does everything but wink at Burnham when she says this.
And so Burnham and Saru go to work, the latter using his friendship with T’Rina and the former presenting a proposal that makes use of her childhood growing up on The Planet Formerly Known As Vulcan: a committee that will keep an eye on things and hear grievances and deal with issues. It puts a process in play for member worlds to work through difficulties. And Burnham herself offers to be part of the committee, thus leveraging her own status on Ni’Var, both as a person who was raised on the world and as the sister of the great unifier Spock.
I like the fact that Rillak—having already bitched to Burnham about her shortcomings in “Kobayashi Maru“—is still perfectly fine with using those shortcomings for her own ends, going so far as to have Vance fake an illness so Burnham and Saru can replace his presence at the ceremony. Neither Rillak nor T’Rina wanted this out clause to be part of the agreement, nor a sticking point to kill negotiations, but both presidents’ hands were tied with regard to negotiating position because of the need to see to their constituencies. Burnham’s direct methods give them what they want while maintaining political cover.
The only part of that storyline I didn’t like was Burnham dictating terms to Rillak afterward, demanding that she be more transparent, which felt like a sop to Sonequa Martin-Green’s place atop the opening credits. But for all that she’s the star of the show, she’s not the leader of the Federation, Rillak is, and Burnham’s merely one cog in the wheel. I wouldn’t normally even complain about it, but one thing that the first three episodes have done such a good job with is showing that, while Burnham is our POV character and the star of the show, she’s still the first violin to Rillak’s conductor (to use Vance’s analogy from last week). Burnham demanding more transparency from Rillak—and, more to the point, Rillak’s nod of agreement—doesn’t ring particularly right.
Still, it’s a minor point, and overall that plotline resonates very nicely and brings Ni’Var back into the Federation, which can only be a good thing. Relations between Vulcans and humans have been a bedrock of Star Trek going back to the Kirk-Spock friendship on the original series, and continued through the Janeway-Tuvok friendship on Voyager and the post-first-contact years chronicled on all four seasons of Enterprise, not to mention Burnham’s entire backstory. It’s nice to see progress on that front, and also to note that—as established in last season’s “Unification III“—the unity between Vulcans and Romulans is still fraught and a tough road for T’Rina to navigate.
Culber’s new role as ship’s counselor continues, as we see him having actual therapy sessions with Tilly and especially Book. I like that Book’s mind-meld with T’Rina last week was only the start of solving his problems—grief is a process, after all—and I like that Culber’s own PTSD from coming back from the dead hasn’t been forgotten. Wilson Cruz is absolutely shining in the added role of therapist, and it’s a joy to see.
I hope that Mary Wiseman’s absence while Tilly is teaching at the Academy is a short one, or that they find reasons to bring her back—goodness knows there’s enough going on at Federation Headquarters to justify looking in on her, plus watching her as a teacher could be great fun. And while Adira’s growing ability to work with others is heartening to see, it’s looking like it’s a prelude to eventually losing Gray—after all, Gray has stated that his desire is to become a guardian back on Trill, and that means he won’t be staying on Discovery forever, thus leaving Adira alone again. One suspects that’s an issue that Culber is going to have to help them deal with also…
The anomaly takes a back seat again this week, which is fine, as dealing with Big! Major! Disasters! every week gets exhausting, and the anomaly is more effective as a threat than a menace. However, Ni’Var rejoining the Federation will ease Stamets using their scientists to study the anomaly and figure it out.
Everything comes together very nicely in this episode, but I’m especially impressed with the performances. Martin-Green and Doug Jones are particularly fantastic. In the alternate reality where the new show was about Captain Georgiou on the Shenzhou with Burnham and Saru as her first and second officers, there was a real chance for a great working dynamic between the emotionally logical Burnham and the endlessly curious and methodical Saru. (That is to say, the show that the first two episodes promised us, before switching it up to a completely different show in the third episode…) We’re finally getting that here with the two of them, and they work really well together, playing to both characters’ strengths.
Indeed, all the performances here are excellent. The cadet guest stars all do quite well with their minimal screen time, able to make their characters into people rather than types. Blu del Barrio does a great job with Adira’s nervousness, as does Wiseman with Tilly’s growth. Both Tara Rosling and Chelah Horsdal do superlative work as two politicians who are threading some very difficult needles, and Cruz and David Ajala play off each other magnificently. Ajala in particular is doing great work as a grieving Book.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also reviving “4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch” for year’s end, looking back at Black Widow, The Suicide Squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Eternals. Look for it on Wednesdays here on Tor.com.
I believe Kurtzman recently stated that the Academy spin off is still in the works. Maybe they’re looking at setting it concurrent with “Discovery” rather than “Picard?” Could Mary Wiseman be up for the lead role?
While I loved the pure character moments in this episode with Culber and Book, the two main plots didn’t do much for me this week.
When it came to Ni’Var, I had a number of smaller issues, and one big one. Going through the smaller ones first, the conflict seems a bit forced (Federation worlds could leave freely in the past) the new characterization of Burnham as a “natural diplomat” cuts against her earlier characterization as something of a loose cannon, and the idea that a Starfleet officer would be accepted as a “neutral party” due to being adopted by a Vulcan family 900+ years ago struck me as odd. Also an issue is the conflict seemed to be way too obviously rooted in emotion on the side of Ni’Var for me – they didn’t even really try and rationalize their feelings (of course, maybe they’re more in touch with them now that Romulans have joined). But the big issue is all of the interesting stuff seems to have happened off camera. I wanted to find out what the faction who opposed Federation membership was actually opposed to, and see how the crisis was resolved. Instead Michael offered herself as a mediator, and we cut back to a handshake and a flag being turned over. Hopefully they dive into this more later in the season, because they skipped what I would have considered the “good part.”
Tilly, Adira, and the cadets didn’t work well for me either. Of course, this is a cliched plot we’ve seen before – not even the shuttlecraft, but also seeing an experienced Starfleet officer take on a group of underperforming rookies (Voyager did it at least twice, IIRC). These episodes live and die by the character dynamics, but for me personally, the cadets were unmemorable, other than Taahz Gorev, by virtue of being a jerk from the beginning, along with being a more experienced actor who put in a better performance (I think). Tilly did get some nice character work here, but given this was leading up to her exit from the crew (if not the show) I think they could have played up her weariness even more.
I also feel like Discovery way too often fails the “show not tell” aspect of storytelling, and this episode showed this flaw in spades. There was so much exposition in the first half of the episode, and so many things were said through overlong dialogue which could have been communicated better through camerawork and physical acting. This is part of why the scenes with Saru and T’Rina flirting stand out – there’s subtext there that is somewhat lacking elsewhere.
Not bad, with some good character work, but you’re right, I could’ve done without the shuttle-crash-compels-bonding cliche. In particular, it’s ridiculous that 32nd-century medical science can’t do more to keep someone from dying. Early TNG showed that 24th-century medicine could revive someone who’d been dead for minutes — or even centuries in the case of “The Neutral Zone” — but later Trek ignored that and went back to instantly writing people off within seconds of death, which is less than even present-day emergency medicine can do. This wasn’t as egregious as Carey’s death in VGR: “Friendship One,” but it was awfully cavalier, and I can’t believe that the best a 32nd-century medkit can do is programmable-matter gauze rather than some kind of nanotech life-support treatment. I mean, good grief, programmable matter can turn into any substance, so it should be child’s play to turn it into synthetic tissues that could patch damaged blood vessels and organs or even replace them altogether. Not to mention that everyone’s carrying a portable transporter — can’t they just program in intact patterns of their bodies and edit away any injuries when they beam? Gross failure of futurism here.
It also felt awfully contrived the way they set up the situation to put Burnham and Saru at the center of a political negotiation that’s way outside a Starfleet officer’s wheelhouse. They made an attempt to justify why such an unusual situation was set up by Rillak and Vance, but that just called attention to how forced it was. Also, Burnham nominating herself for the committee seemed like more of the same. Why not just recruit committee members from every Federation world so everyone has a voice?
The timing is a bit confusing this season. This was said to be a week after the last episode, but Tilly said the cadets have been at the Academy for a couple of months, so we’re that long past the premiere — yet episode 2 was only 2 days after episode 1. So that requires a gap of over a month and a half between episodes 2 & 3. There was a gap implied there, but it didn’t seem like it was nearly that long.
“another alien who was a slave of the Chain”
That was a Tellarite, using DSC’s tusked design for the species.
“the anomaly is more effective as a threat than a menace.”
I always thought the point of the iconic J. Jonah Jameson anti-Spider-Man headline was that “threat” and “menace” are basicaly synonymous. I guess there is a difference in immediacy, now that I think about it, with “threat” implying more of a potential danger and “menace” an active one.
@2/Karl: “the conflict seems a bit forced (Federation worlds could leave freely in the past)”
Rillak did say the Federation would never force a world to stay. I think the difference is that there would’ve been a process a world would’ve had to go through, one that would give both sides a voice and fairly resolve its obligations to other member worlds, while Ni’Var was demanding the right to withdraw unilaterally and unconditionally, even if it left its partners in the lurch.
This reminded me a lot of TNG’s “Final Mission” and while it was cliche, it was effective. I’m enjoying the pacing of this season a lot since the first few seasons were very breakneck. The idea that there’s a major problem looming but a lot of smaller issues to deal with too helps break it up.
As usual great character work by the series regulars and I’m enjoying Culber as counselor- it’s a far better use of the counselor than Trek ever did before, and appropriate since these characters – unlike those before them- don’t come with magic reset buttons between episodes.
One thing that bothered our recapper a bit was Burnhams conditions for the President didn’t bother me at all. Burnham realized that she was being used and that she’s a fairly unique situation (fleshed out by Dr Kovich) and I saw her condition of accepting this. She doesn’t mind being used so long as she’s not lied to. Then again the President could be going the way of TNG era crazy admiral or TOS ambassadors- guess we’ll have to see.
A nice change of pace
Just what is Dr. Kovich’s position anyway? In season 3, he came off as some kind of government agent or interrogator, but now he’s the boss of the Academy? It feels pretty obvious that they just wanted to use David Croenenberg more so they made up a new excuse.
@CLB
Nebulous political operative? Undefined government minister? Chief interrogator/academy superintendanr/overall know-it-all? But yeah- this is probably a realization that he’s brilliant and they wanted to use him as much as positive. Personally I expect him to be the bartender on Discovery’s bar as well (probably not, but rule nothing out).
Although if I want to create head canon, he’s a civilian overseer of a much reduced Starfleet (think Secretary of the Navy) which explains why he would be involved in the investigation/interrogation when Discovery arrives, consults on the Emperor’s medical situation and now is in a position to choose professors for the Academy. It’s all in his political portfolio
@6/Mike Kelm: ” But yeah- this is probably a realization that he’s brilliant and they wanted to use him as much as positive.”
Is he? I mean, I know he’s an accomplished director, but I find his acting unremarkable.
Can you imagine how bad a Discovery movie would be?
@8/Mark: What prompted that question? Trek movies as a rule are not as good as the shows, no, but Discovery is currently better than it’s ever been, and if this season maintains its quality, it could end up as one of the best Trek seasons in a long time. So a movie made by the current TV creative staff could be pretty good.
Christopher: I deliberately used threat and menace there as a play on that famous headline, but you’re right — they are similar in meaning, but there’s a difference in the level of immediacy.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
CLB said, “This was said to be a week after the last episode.” No, it was stated during the Ni’Var scenes that it was four months after the last episode.
@8
The question is: How would a Discovery movie be different from the TV series? Movies are typically about larger stakes, with big battles and characters having big emotional scenes that beg for Oscars. So by that standard… we’ve already seen several Discovery movies! I believe the first season had at least 20 of them packed in.
My biggest issue with the redshirt problem in this episode is that it could so easily have been worked around: instead of killing him, just say “the medical tricorder says we have to put him in stasis until he can get to a starship sickbay” and throw in a quick shot of him getting beamed out at the end. Better to use a 32nd-century-technology handwave than to have the death of a crewmember be almost immediately forgotten by anyone else on the shuttlecraft. I cringed at Adira’s line at the end of the episode when they said they were glad they’d gone on the mission because only David Cronenberg (and none of the actors named in the opening credits) actually acknowledged that all of that bonding had come at the cost of someone’s life.
(I also wasn’t a huge fan of “this Orion is okay because his dad was a dissident,” because it implies that he wouldn’t have been nearly as acceptable if not for his parentage. I found myself wishing it had been the other way around, where his dad had been a bigwig in the Emerald Chain and he was rebelling against what he saw by joining Starfleet.)
@13/elcinco: I’d go even further: Why did anyone need to be injured or die at all? It had no bearing on the rest of the plot. I guess maybe it was an attempt to establish the seriousness of the stakes, but surely the crash and the predators and all would’ve done that sufficiently without a gratuitous sacrificial victim. Just send them out with one less character in the shuttle.
@14 Christopher L Bennett
@13/elcinco: I’d go even further: Why did anyone need to be injured or die at all?
I think its a symptom of a common tendency to impress on the audience that this is SERIOUS! Someone died, so it must be. Nothing else can impress on the audience that seriousness except death. Of course, once the doomed cast member has died, and impressed the other characters and the audience as to gravity of the situation, there’s no longer any reason to recall or mention them again. After all, they are only a prop.
The story reason for someone dying is to make it clear — to the characters and also to the viewer — that this is real and not, say, a holodeck simulation. Even with that, both Wrenn and I were half expecting it to be a simulation exercise, and the lieutenant was also a hologram.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought that the unlucky lieutenant had to die in order for Tilly to properly take charge of the cadets. I can see it as being within her character to shrink back and let the other ranking officer control the situation; there being no other senior officers meant that she was forced to step up and lead.
“the unity between Vulcans and Romulans is still fraught and a tough road for T’Rina to navigate”
So I guess you could say that it’s a…long road, getting from there to here?
….I Should go.
@16/krad: “The story reason for someone dying is to make it clear — to the characters and also to the viewer — that this is real and not, say, a holodeck simulation.”
I don’t think that works here, because it was after the guy died that the other cadet said “This has to be a simulation, right?” So if that was what they intended to convey, they failed miserably, which just underlines my point that it was a bad idea to do it at all.
@17/CNash: “I thought that the unlucky lieutenant had to die in order for Tilly to properly take charge of the cadets.”
Couldn’t it just have been written so that she was in charge in the first place? She’s a lieutenant herself, after all.
@11/Ditchwitch: “No, it was stated during the Ni’Var scenes that it was four months after the last episode.”
Not since the last episode — since the start of the negotiations to bring Ni’Var back into the Federation.
I’m normally just effusive with praise for new Star Trek, but I have two niggles at the minute. One I believe justified about this episode, and one I hope will prove unjustified about this season.
We saw Cadet Harral be subject to prejudice solely on the basis of his race. And the lesson it seemed we were supposed to take from it is that it’s generally justified against his race, but in this specific case he should be let off because his dad went some ways towards breaking the sins of the father. No, not in a million years is that anything other than disgusting. Cadet Harrall is responsible for his own words and actions, no-one else’s. Bigotry should be left in peoples quarters, there should be no room for it on any bridge. The only lesson worthy of Star Trek is that all people are of equal worth, and Cadet Harral’s uniform does not fit any less because of those he superficially looks like.
And my fears are receding but I *really* hope this season doesn’t go down the lazy cliched route of “democratically elected politicians are slimy and shifty and not to be trusted because they’re only in it for themselves” trope. Not only do I not believe that to be true, I think spreading distrust of democracy is just about the most malign message that can be spread. There are some terrible politicians about (don’t get me started on the previous resident of the White House and the current incumbent of Downing Street), but the only answers to terrible politicians is freely electing better ones. Unelected members of a quasi-military organisation have no moral authority over elected representatives, and woe betide us all if the opposite starts to be considered normal. I hope the Presidents of the Federation we see on screen are seen as those we should aspire to, not distrust.
But I have to finish on some positives, because there is always positives to be had with Discovery. The scene between Michael and Tilly was magnificent. The writing and the performances were *chef’s kiss*. Tilly is such a wonderful character, I really hope this isn’t her being sidelined in any way.
One of the worst tropes Star Trek gets accused of is of supposed “evil Admirals”. It’s clearly nonsense. Every time, for example, Picard opened up an episode monologuing “The Enterprise is on a mission to…” they were almost certainly sent on that mission *by an Admiral*. The missions were almost without exception trying to do good. You didn’t see the Admiral in question because it would add nothing whatsoever to the episode. The only time there would be reason to show an Admiral from a dramatic POV are the rare times when there would be a question mark over those orders. That didn’t happen often at all, and the Admirals were not always wrong. I’m so glad that we’ve got an Admiral we see often who we can have some love for. #TeamVance
I appreciate that this crew, unlike those in most previous Star Trek iterations, experiences consequences. And all of the Discovery crew should indeed be messed up by having skipped ahead a millennium from everything they knew. (I thought the Detmer PTSD/awful dinner dealt with this nicely last season!) But having Culber or Saru intone platitudes about how everyone must grieve in their own way/time for episodes on end is honestly tedious. (Contrast it with how tossed-off Stamets’ response to Burnham spacing him last season was, for instance! Though it will probably arise again if we need to reestablish that Stamets Has a Family.)
Tilly and the cadets on the moon was hackneyed but I was with it until they paused, in the midst of horrific danger, to have a teaching moment about identity. And while the Burn may indeed have made everyone more species-ist — having had little experience with others — that doesn’t mean that they’re somehow incapable of working in groups. (Not to mention that any half-capable military* academy would have already put them through a bunch of stuff specifically designed to encourage cohesion.)
This was a nice respite from Saving the Universe, but I don’t think we know more about our characters now — apart from Tilly’s parent issues, just like every other Trek character — than before. Star Trek: You Got This.
@21/jmwhite: “And the lesson it seemed we were supposed to take from it is that it’s generally justified against his race, but in this specific case he should be let off because his dad went some ways towards breaking the sins of the father.“
I didn’t take it that way at all. I took it to be a reminder that you can’t generalize about an entire species, that there will be good and bad people in any culture and you need to get to know them as individuals rather than judging them all for what the worst of them did.
“I hope the Presidents of the Federation we see on screen are seen as those we should aspire to, not distrust.“
I think they’re pretty clearly portraying Rillak as a well-intentioned and sympathetic character, but one who occasionally has to make calls that conflict with what the lead characters want, just like Admiral Vance did last season. It’s the nature of fiction for authority figures to be foils or obstacles for the protagonists, but that doesn’t automatically make them villains. Heck, this series started with Burnham mutinying against Captain Georgiou, but we were never supposed to think ill of Georgiou.
jmwhite: Rillak and T’Rina are both very sympathetic characters, and also very strong characters, and I don’t see anything in how they’re being written to justify your concern. They are sometimes in conflict with Burnham, and with Vance, but they are not being portrayed as villainous in the least.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@24 They’re both manipulative as hell, and they used Burnham like a tool to get what they wanted—they both got exactly what they wanted from her. If Captain Burnham is going to have some agency, she’s going to have to level up her political skills (maybe take some lessons from Honor Harrington).
Hm. How Star Trek would it be for us to see Burnham to rise to become a major political player in the post-Burn galaxy? Because she’s got some incredibly valuable political cards she could play…
@16… I’ve always had problems with death as the final indication that “this shit is real”. Why not simply sever an arm? A comrade screaming wildly in pain and disbelief may be more than to convince that this is indeed not a holodeck exercise.
There seems to be a Hollywood trope that each character’s body must kept whole.
@26
I’m not sure how much of an effort it takes to digitally erase a limb, but time and budget still might be the issues there.
It’s certainly more believable than in the olden times. Take Terminator 2 for example. Its effects hold up for the most part, but Arnold trying to hide his massive arm inside that jacket at the end sure ain’t one of them.
Rillak literally ordered Burnham to be present and silent (which, naturally, the latter ignored, because that’s our show.) Yet somehow Burnham, having earlier been dressed down by Rillak for being a loose cannon, was supposed to read the winks? And then, having actually accomplished the mission in the face of said orders, was out of line for asking for transparency? C’mon.
We’re all acting like Tilly’s being written out, but she’ll be in basically the same location as Admiral Vance and President Rillak, who’ve so far been in every episode this season.
(Continuity note: we also saw Tilly’s mom –and the going-to-Starfleet conversation/shouting match itself– in Una McCormack’s The Way to the Stars novel.)
krad, I had an immediate reaction to your opening comment about the shuttle-crash plot it uses every cliché in the book exactly because of your later point @16: both Wrenn and I were half expecting it to be a simulation exercise, and the lieutenant was also a hologram. Even when we get to the end, and they’re all back at the Academy, I expected Tilly to be confronted with the realization that it was all set up as a hologram to elicit her leadership skills. (So they didn’t use quite every cliché they *could* have.)
@30/srEDIT: “(So they didn’t use quite every cliché they *could* have.)”
They didn’t use the “It was a test after all” cliche, but they did lampshade it. So it’s in there, sort of.
As of the last episode of Discovery I made the realization that I’m basically over it at this point. Now I’ll certainly watch it of course, since I paid a Paramount+ subscription, and I don’t actively hate the series either. It’s just I feel so dispassionate about the series. My initial excitement for a brand new Star Trek series kept we watching through season one. Season two had the hook of bringing in the Enterprise and other classic TOS characters. Season three had the exciting premise of time traveling to the 32nd century and staying there. But the status quo continues into this season and without any of those prior hooks or gimmicks I’m often just staring blankly at the screen. It’s certainly a well written, and acted, and lavishly-produced show. I just feel at arms-length from it and not really caring so much about these characters for the most part. I think I’m watching mainly because Star Trek is in the title (which is still better than me not watching Lower Decks because I was turned off by it). I am enjoying Prodigy at least and I’m looking forward to the second season of Picard and the debut of Strange New Worlds. I think I’m just missing the well-worn and familiar format of a group of characters sitting around the bridge (or even a command center at the mouth of a wormhole) having different weekly adventures and ending the episode with a warm fuzzy feeling. Rant over.
P.S. It doesn’t help matters for me that I find the U.S.S. Discovery itself an unattractive ship. Lol
@32/garreth: Funny — I’m going the other direction. I like Discovery more this season than I ever have before. I’ve kind of been at arm’s length to it in the past, because so much about it was frustrating, even though it had its moments of brilliance. I liked season 3 better, but it was still uneven, with the Georgiou stuff and the Emerald Chain stuff not really working that well for me. So far, though, season 4 is firing on all cylinders and it finally feels like the show has found its way.
I agree with you about the aesthetics of the ship, though.
@33/CLB: I certainly appreciate that other people such as yourself are going to feel different or the complete opposite as I do and that’s great you’re enjoying it. It’s the same way I can appreciate that some people like Lower Decks and find it funny when it’s not my cup of tea. I perhaps am stuck on Berman-era Trek and the comfort-food feeling of those mostly episodic series. I also just miss an ensemble cast that’s not lead actor-centric doing some exploring. Supposedly SNW will get back to that format to appease those kinds of Trek fans.
The strength of the show is its characters. Love them all. I just wish the first few seasons weren’t so focused on the HIGH STAKES.
I think I would have been hooked more into the series if the template of the very first two episodes had been left intact: Captain Georgiou of the Shenzhou with her senior officers Burnham and Saru competing and vying for the attention and approval of their captain. No season-long war arc, just episodic adventures, and no need to shoe-horn Michael in as the never-mentioned sister of Spock. That was eye-rolling and she could have been made the adopted daughter of any Vulcan family.
@36 Oh,sweet god yes. That would have been far better.
@36/garreth: I would definitely have preferred Captain Georgiou to Emperor Georgiou. But the new insights into Spock and Sarek in “Lethe” and “Light and Shadows” were my favorite parts of seasons 1-2, and giving Burnham a connection to Spock made “Unification III” more potent in season 3.
Besides, Spock is all about the never-mentioned family members. He never told his crewmates about T’Pring, Sarek, or Sybok until they showed up. So an adoptive sister he never mentioned is entirely on brand.
Michael Burnham is the best thing to happen to the Spock character since the Genesis wave.
I don’t know why I didn’t see this sooner – but my issue with this new wave of Trek is the intentional ways in which they try to capture the success of the Marvel cinematic universe by emulating it. It hit me while watching this episode, and then I searched for supporting information online – the New York Times issued a feature peice on Alex Kurtzman years back in which he repeatedly states that the Marvelization of Trek is basically his only goal for the franchise. He spoke about it terms of structure and marketing savvy, but it’s clear that the idea permeated the two flagship shows in every sense.
The reason it doesn’t work with Trek, is that the Marvel universe features strong archetypal characters with superhuman abilities, who are simple but precise and effective vessels for the the real life struggles they represent, and who are instantly relatable and emotionally engaging. When overlaid on Trek and stripped of the superhuman abilities that provide that stark commentary, we get a group of TV series that are all style and little substance – flashy special effects and tight zoomed choreographed fight scenes, interspersed with muddled social commentary and half fleshed out plot concepts that lean too heavily on visual grandeur to carry the momentum. The cinematography, the attempts at whedon-esque dialogue, the impending catastrophes, and most importantly the speed with which they’re trying to churn content – it’s all there. The largest hurdle this has created is that the writers have resorted to emotionally overwrought bite-sized dramatic sequences to compensate for the lack of soul that has resulted from the approach Kurtzman chose. There are a handful of lines in each episode that make you ask, “did they take a second pass at this draft? Was that placeholder dialogue really the best catchphrase they could have inserted at that moment? Are they rushing this?” There have been zero essential episodes generated by these projects – zero episodes you can point to and say, “if you’re not familiar with Star Trek, this episode is a great place to start.” It’s not about the serialized nature either – it’s the conscious decision to be more Marvel than Trek at multiple key junctures. Trek is built on the thoughtful consideration of real life issues represented through classic sci-fi allegory – not the trappings of superhero theatrics. Discovery does a poor job of both.
Discovery is the Avengers – a group of capable individuals with character flaws that cause them to repeatedly have to learn to work together, while facing wildly powerful universe ending catastrophes (the burn/the blip), and often without the support of the government who wishes to keep them on a leash, and many episodes represent this paradigm on a micro scale repeatedly throughout each season. Side note, Burnham has lost and regained multiple mother figures so many times in three seasons – can’t they write something else for her?
Picard is Guardians of the Galaxy – a ragtag band of societal exiles who tour the galaxy in a small, nimble craft, and who work outside of the law to combat the problems that civilisation is unwilling or unable to address.
At least Lower Decks is awesome, largely because it eschews the Marvel directive I’d venture – I wouldn’t have guessed it would be the standout series.
@40 Ironically, it occurred to me a few months ago that the perfect template for a modern Star Trek show was Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD; a tight-knit “found family” of highly-trained (yet endearingly eccentric) professionals, dedicated to an ideal but also with a strong moral conscience, being given specific missions, which they deal with through a combination of scientific investigation, technical creativity, and (as a last resort) surgically-applied force.
Especially visible in S1, with Coulson as captain, May as his hand-picked XO, FitzSimmons as chief engineer/medical officers, Ward as newly-assigned security/tactical officer, and Skye/Daisy as the token alien/outsider who gets to ask expositionary questions.
Both my girlfriend and I had the same thought: If it’s essential to the treaty that Burnham should be a member of the Federation / Ni’Var committee, what happens if she gets killed or has to rush off to the other end of the Galaxy on an urgent mission?
@42/John: As I understand it, Burnham’s inclusion was meant as a way of getting initial approval for the idea of the committee, since she’s both a citizen of Ni’Var and a representative of the Federation, so she has the trust of both sides that she’ll represent them and thus can get them both to accept the idea. But once the committee’s established and working, presumably her ongoing presence won’t be as vital. Also, presumably the UFP and Ni’Var will learn to trust each other more once they’re partnered again, so the need for the initial bridge that Burnham provides won’t be as strong.
I always enjoy trying to figure out where they’re going with a season at about this point.
In episode one we have the new president calming down a crazed space station captain by referencing the Fissure of Joran (a feature on the crazed captain’s home planet which the captain says most of his race doesn’t even know about), as though the president read his mind. She later references the Kobayashi Maru test when Burnham is thinking about it, but when asked if she is starfleet, the president deflects and says her father was a freighter captain and she met a lot of people through his work. She was unfazed by her first black alert jump and claims it was thanks to her experiences on her father’s freighters. To me, these freighter anecdotes don’t check out. She then says that Burnham has yet to learn how to prioritize the burdens she must carry, which is clearly spoken from her personal experience and may have gravely sinister connotations given her political power, and the unknown nature of the other burden she willing carries, which may run counter to the greater good of the federation. One of our players likely knows more about the true nature of the anomaly and my money is on her – as much as people want to embrace an example of non evil federation brass, they may be disappointed again.
In episode 3 we meet a displaced unknown race whose planet was destroyed by an unknown calamity, but who were able to escape by converting their moon into an ark. The etched relief that references this event looks similar to what occurred on Kweijan.
The leaders of Ni’var are intimately familiar with the details uncovered on that ship as the Romulan woman who discovered it is in their custody – they may have already been privy to some details regarding it before she took on the lost cause of saving the unknown race.
We have seen that the anomaly is likely sentient or manipulated by sentient beings, and Stammets has opined that it is a primordial wormhole. Sentient wormhole entities, a child of Bajoran and Cardassian descent (this time a starfleet president), where have we seen that before?
The vulcan scientists outright dismiss Stammet’s theory, perhaps suspiciously quickly. When viewing Book’s memory of the anomaly, a faint blue line is seen, but the Vulcan prime minister says there was no blue glow, no sign of tachyons. Could have been one of this series’ needless lens flares, could have been the blue glow they were looking for.
The Vulcan contingent is suddenly wary of the treaty as negotiated with the federation (perhaps they have specific reason to think thusly) and Burnham is made go between for the federation and Ni’var, perhaps as foreseen by the president, putting her at the center of the unfolding intrigue.
@32
I agree, I’ve taken a similar trajectory with this series.
I think one reason for me was their lack of stability in previous seasons. There was so much running around, twists and turns, surprise deaths and surprise villains, jumping from wars to different universes to different points in time and so forth, not to mention different captains, that I struggled to find the usual comfort I usually get with a Star Trek series starting off. I mean there weren’t the usual foundational seasons of cruising around in space or hanging out on a space station and getting to know the characters before they started taking big swings like assimilating the star of the show or having a big war. They began the series with those swings and now in Game 4 I’m already exhausted, ha. (That baseball reference is for you, Sisko).
@46/RocketSurgeon: What you mention is why I’m enjoying season 4 better than the previous ones. Seasons 1 & 2 suffered from multiple upheavals of the creative staff and shifts of direction, and season 3 made a huge shift and still had to deal with leftover baggage from before. Now, though, we finally have a settled, ongoing status quo for both the cast and the writing staff, so things feel less turbulent. The season started by introducing a big new threat, but it’s subsided into the background while the show focuses on advancing its character and worldbuilding arcs at a measured pace, and it just feels more stable and sure of itself now.
I’m enjoying this season much more than the others for the reasons mentioned. The plot lines are consequential, but they’re not save-the-universe desperate, and there’s been some pacing that allows for character development and interaction, which is really what drew me to Trek in the first place. If I have a quibble with this episode, it’s that the consequence for murdering someone and getting remanded to the custody of Ni’Var is an all-expenses-paid trip to a spa where you go into rehabilitative meditation.
@48/fullyfunctional: Well, Trek has usually shown rehabilitative therapy as the way that criminals are dealt with, going clear back to “Mudd’s Women.” It’s supposed to be a more humane system than ours, one dedicated to helping wrongdoers reform and become productive members of society again.
But, in this case, we’re not dealing with a Federation member Vulcan. There’s a sizeable population of Ni’Var who are Romulan. If the Vulcans are OK with the Qowat Milat, who knows what Romulan practices are in force in the justice system. As there are unlikely to be many Vulcan criminals, they may allow more extreme measures to be used against what would most likely be a largely Romulan criminal element. Infinite Diversity and all that.
@@@@@ 49, CLB- . I get it, and I understand rehabilitation is one of the traditional goals of dealing with criminal behavior, but I don’t think there’s much in the way of deterrence here. I mean, she’s being sent away to be rehabilitated under the counsel of Gabrielle, who has said she “owes everything” to J’vini. Again, this seems more like a retreat with her bestie to go find herself, rather than consequence for murder. I know I’m old school when it comes to my views here, but I would have preferred that J’vini’s fate would have involved a bit more punishment. I don’t see much in the way of mitigating circumstances. She committed murder with a clear mind.
@51/fullyfunctional: They did say that once Jvini had been sufficiently rehabilitated, she would be required to make amends to the family of the officer she killed. So she’s not being let off the hook. She’ll have to face the people she bereaved and atone for what she did.
Besides, think about the Vulcan rituals we’ve seen in the past. The Kolinahr. The Kahs-wan. These are a people who send 7-year-old kids out to survive alone in the desert. And you expect their meditative rituals to be soft or easy? And that was before they reunified with the Romulans. Jvini is probably in for some severe asceticism at the very least. Hell, she’s already a member of a strict monastic order. Whatever counts as punitive measures for a warrior nun used to harsh training and self-abnegation is not going to be anything remotely resembling a cushy day spa.
@52- then I guess I would fault the writers for leaving those plausible consequences to be inferred. Especially since Michael made such a big deal about the issue in this episode and previously. It would be difficult to compose a way of describing a harsh sentence more benignly than “monastic rehabilitative meditation”
What sort of amends could you possibly make for killing someone? Even if you spend the rest of your life taking care of the family, the person you killed is still dead and their families and friends lives are irrevocably changed. If someone killed someone I loved, the last thing I’d want is to have anything to do with them. A continuing reminder of why this person is in your life.
@53/fullyfunctional: I didn’t say “a harsh sentence,” not in the way the US’s prison system would define it. That’s counterproductive if you actually want to rehabilitate a criminal and make them less likely to do harm in the future. What I meant was that your comparison to a day spa or a friendly outing is unreasonable and fails to consider the context. Vulcan/Ni’Varian penal rehabilitation would not be abusive or vindictive, but it would not be cushy or easy either, because nothing in Vulcan discipline is cushy or easy. Changing yourself for the better is hard work, even if you do it voluntarily.
@53. Vulcan amd Ni’Varian life is not cushy or easy in any sense. And my guess is the Quowat Milat is much more strenuous in terms of its focus on mental stamina and physical training. So when someone with the benefit of all that physical and mental discipline uses it to kill someone for some dilithium, maybe they ought to consider making the consequences a bit more severe than a meditative refresher course at Spa Pijar, under the stern guidance of someone who believes she owes her life to her. And why wait for those “amends” she’s supposed to make to the family of the slain officer? When does that actually happen? What do those amends consist of? How long is that family supposed to wait for any sort of meaningful atonement by the person who willfully killed their loved one? It was left pretty vague in that discussion between Rillak and Burnham.. Almost sounded like a bit of hand-waving to me.
@56/fullyfunctional: “Severe” is just petty revenge. It doesn’t actually make people less likely to commit crimes in the future. Just the opposite — the more trauma you cause someone, the more it damages them and the more likely they are to behave badly in the future. Anyone who knows actual psychology understands that positive reinforcement is more effective at constructive behavior modification. “Tough on crime” is just a ploy used by politicians to score points. It doesn’t actually work as a deterrent, and if anything it makes things worse.
And I already explained why the “spa” thing is a preposterous straw man.
All that is assuming that what works on a human works exactly the same was on a totally alien species
I actually liked the Tilly plot more than the Ni’Var one this time around. Yes, we’ve seen Shuttle Crash 101 done countless times over the past 55 years, all the way back to Galileo Seven. But it still works, and they came up with a pretty good set of cadets for this one. I particularly like the new Orion character and his brief, but compelling backstory. Like Tendi on Lower Decks, that’s a Trek race that deserves more screentime, especially when we get to know them as people – and not just Orion, the green-skinned slave driver race.
I hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Sylvia Tilly. She was always the most human, everyman Starfleet officer amongst the cast. Plus, her exit didn’t have the same feel or impact as Georgiou’s last season. I think she’ll still be around. I mean, between 32nd century technology, Dilithium back in abundance, and Discovery’s spore drive, all it takes is a Black Alert to check up on Tilly. I just hope there’s still room for her in the story. As pointed out, she got somewhat lost in the shuffle* as the show repositioned Burnham.
Also, about time they gave Adira a role beyond her relationship to Grey and Culber. They can be reliable on an away team.
I had issues with the Ni’Var plot this time around. On one hand, T’Rina and Rillak’s maneuvering both make perfect sense. It gives Saru and Michael the freedom to solve the current political impasse, while it also allows them to save political face amongst their peers.
But once again the show goes back to making everything revolve around Michael Burnham. Is she really that vital and indispensable? Even Sisko and Picard, with all their responsibilities, still felt like cogs in the machine rather than the driving force behind the Federation. This to me feels like a regression to that very problematic second season, where the entire mystery revolved around our lead. Between being related to Spock/Sarek/Amanda, kickstarting the Federation/Klingon war, the entirety of season 2’s convoluted plot, and spending a full year alone on the 32nd century, just how many more elements can be thrown at a single character? It feels seriously imbalanced, considering this is an ensemble show.
*Also, I miss Captain Killy.
@59/Eduardo: ” I mean, between 32nd century technology, Dilithium back in abundance, and Discovery’s spore drive, all it takes is a Black Alert to check up on Tilly.”
Oh, it’s simpler than that. The new Academy is in Federation Headquarters along with Starfleet HQ and the Federation government. So it’d be as easy to see Tilly again as to see Admiral Vance or President Rillak.
“Also, about time they gave Adira a role beyond her relationship to Grey and Culber. She can be reliable on an away team.”
They/their, not she/her.
“But once again the show goes back to making everything revolve around Michael Burnham… It feels seriously imbalanced, considering this is an ensemble show.”
Is it? Burnham has always been the central character. I don’t see it as an ensemble show so much as a show with a lead and a supporting cast.
Is it? Burnham has always been the central character. I don’t see it as an ensemble show so much as a show with a lead and a supporting cast.
@60/Christopher: But even TOS didn’t pile up on Kirk/Spock/McCoy or treat them as the center of the universe (aside from the 2, 3 films where they save Earth). The Enterprise just felt like one ship amongst many in the fleet. It didn’t treat Kirk as indispensable, or any more important than predecessors like Pike or April. With Discovery, it feels as if everything would fall apart without them and especially without Michael and her uncanny resourcefulness.
They/their, not she/her.
I stand corrected. I’m still not used to the pronouns.
@61/Eduardo: I find the claims that Burnham is “indispensable” to be overstated. Last season, while she did play a significant role in getting data about the Burn, it was Tilly, Stamets, and Adira who figured out the meaning of that data and found the cause, and it was Saru and Culber who had the pivotal roles with Su’kal in the finale while Burnham was fighting Osyraa along with the rest of the crew. And this season, she doesn’t feel any more “indispensable” to Starfleet as a whole than any other series-lead captain. Overall, the entire cast seems to be getting about equal focus this year. Yeah, Burnham proved integral to solving the problem with Ni’Var, but that was specifically because of her history as a Vulcan citizen and a Starfleet officer, and it doesn’t make sense to generalize that to “everything” going on this season. And Saru was just as important to the solution because of his relationship with President T’Rina.
it doesn’t make sense to generalize that to “everything” going on this season
@62/Christopher: I was really talking about previous seasons with that comment. The Klingon war, the Mirror Universe arc, Season 2’s overall plot, and even to an extent season 3 (I have a hard time buying the notion that an entire galaxy couldn’t crack the Burn mystery before the Discovery crew).
Season 4, for the most part, has been pretty balanced in not centering every story thread around Michael. It’s only the events on this episode that have felt like a momentary regression.
@63/Eduardo: “(I have a hard time buying the notion that an entire galaxy couldn’t crack the Burn mystery before the Discovery crew).”
The entire archaeological community failed to discover the ruins of Troy until Heinrich Schleimann did, and he was an amateur. That’s the way it often works when things are hard to find. There’s no predicting who will find the crucial clue, and whether they’ll have the knowledge to recognize it or the drive to follow it up if they do.
And sometimes conventional wisdom gets in the way, so it takes an outsider to look beyond it. Most archaeologists thought Troy was a myth. Similarly, the whole galaxy assumed the Burn was simultaneous everywhere. Burnham wasn’t raised with that assumption, so it occurred to her to question it when it might not have occurred to others. And her work as a courier enabled her to travel more widely than most and collect enough Starfleet black boxes to prove it. I doubt there were any other couriers alive in 3188-9 with Starfleet training and the knowledge of what to look for, and Starfleet proper was too busy dealing with the aftermath of the Burn to worry about what started it.
“Season 4, for the most part, has been pretty balanced in not centering every story thread around Michael. It’s only the events on this episode that have felt like a momentary regression.”
How is that a regression? Balance means that everyone gets a focus, including Michael. If she were never the focus, that wouldn’t be balance, it would be an imbalance in the opposite direction.
@64 = “Similarly, the whole galaxy assumed the Burn was simultaneous everywhere. Burnham wasn’t raised with that assumption, so it occurred to her to question it when it might not have occurred to others. “
This is the absurd part. Not one person in the entire Federation or allied planet thought that the burn didn’t occur simultaneously. Not a single one. We’re talking billions if not trillions of beings but somehow they all came to the conclusion that it was a simultaneous event without ever looking at the evidence.
If course, the people in the credits show up and solve a century old mystery in a matter of days. Sahil basically tells her that she’s the only one that can save all of civilization in the season opener. Even people that are just meeting Burnham for the first time realize that she is so very special in solving galactic scale problems.
“Yet I watch this office every day, as I have for 40 years, believing… one day others like me would walk through that door, that my hope was not in vain. Today is that day. And that hope… is you, Commander Burnham.”