This season of Discovery has been a mix of two storylines. There’s the search for the Progenitor tech that led to the creation of all humanoid life in the galaxy (spinning off of the revelations in TNG’s “The Chase”), which has been a fairly standard but quite enjoyable quest narrative, as Burnham and the gang use their big brains to search for clues that will lead them to putting all the literal puzzle pieces together to find the tech.
And then there’s Moll, L’ak, and the Breen. This week mixes both storylines, and also introduces us to the Archive, a traveling library that exists outside of any political structure, and which is currently located in the Badlands. Introduced in DS9’s “The Maquis, Part II” as a turbulent, dangerous region wracked with plasma storms, it’s where Voyager was lost in “Caretaker,” and it’s where the Archive is located now.
The Archive is where the last of the clues is, placed there by the Betazoid scientist, Marina Derex, in a volume entitled Labyrinth of the Mind. Not surprisingly, given that Betazoids are telepathic, the clue involves ENTERING BURNHAM’S BRAIN!
That’s the fun part of the plot. Burnham is in a mindscape created by Derex but shaped by her own subconscious. The avatar that helps her through the mindscape looks like Book (though Book is dressed like Hy’Rell, the librarian who serves as Discovery’s guide through the Archive), and the mindscape itself is the Archive. The avatar gives Burnham some vague assistance, but she has to find her own way. She takes many a wrong turn—including believing it relates to the history around the Dominion War when the gaggle of scientists were examining the Progenitors, and also thinking it’s a maze she has to find her way through—before finally figuring it out. The fact that they’re in the Archive is a clue: The mindscape is dictated by what Burnham is thinking about, and what she’s focused on primarily is the current mission. So of course it took her to a place that looks like her current mission. The avatar looks like Book because she trusts him, though he acts nothing like Book (credit to David Ajala, who does a lovely job of playing not-Book when they ENTER BURNHAM’S BRAIN, as well as Book in the real world).
Eventually, Burnham admits that she’s scared, specifically of failure. Which makes perfect sense, especially given that the first time we saw the character of Michael Burnham she failed pretty spectacularly and she’s been trying to make up for that failure ever since. But that’s what convinces the avatar that she’s worthy to get the final clue: the self-awareness and knowledge of her own limitations. So the avatar tells her where the final puzzle piece is and also gives her one other piece of knowledge, which they cut away from before we can hear what it is.
Burnham wakes up only to find that all hell has broken loose. The Breen showed up in the Badlands, and—once it was clear that the Breen had no intention of moving peacefully through the Archive—were denied entry. And so they’re forcing their way in.
One part of that plot is fun: Rhys (in charge because Rayner beamed over to the Archive with Culber once Burnham fell unconscious) has Discovery hide in the plasma storms in the hopes that the Breen won’t know they’re there. Then Reno, Tilly, and Adira work their technobabble magic to foil the Breen as much as possible.
Nonetheless, the Breen do get a boarding party on board, and Rayner and Book have to hold them off while Culber protects Burnham’s unconscious form, and then Burnham leads them to the clue, getting off the Archive in the nick of time.
I do want to pause here to sing the praises of Elena Juatco, who does a wonderful job playing Hy’Rell. As the child of librarians, and someone whose first job out of college was as an assistant editor for Library Journal magazine, I really loved seeing a librarian be a helpful and heroic character who is devoted to the preservation of knowledge, but not to an absurdist degree. As an example, they invite Book to join Burnham on the away team because they have an artifact from Kwejian. They want Book to provide context for it, and also offer to let him take it with him. My wife kept thinking that the Archive was going to be some sinister thing where they’d imprison Book in order to preserve him as the last survivor of Kwejian, and I’m so glad she was wrong, as that would’ve been tiresome. Instead, the Archive is what a library should be, and it’s a wonderful thing.
It would’ve been nice if it had a few more ways of defending itself beyond “good shields and hide in the Badlands,” as I can’t imagine that the Breen Primarch is the first person to get cranky at them.
Which leads us to where the episode falls down, and again, it’s the Breen.
On the one hand, we get a great visual of the Breen all tapping their glowy staffs on the deck of the dreadnought in unison. It’s very effective and menacing in the same way that the Cybermen moving in stompy concert with each other on Doctor Who is effective. The thing is, on Who it conveys their menace as a united, mechanized front, where individualism is subsumed. Which would make sense for the Breen, given that they all look the same on the outside.
Except the entirety of the plot line involving them is all about individuals: the Primarch being a dick, L’ak being the scion, Moll being his wife and therefore the only connection to the scion, and the scion being the only descendant of the monarch that has the legitimate claim.
Every cliché is hit in this: the Primarch going back on his word because he’s the bad guy. And of course he made a special oath that no Breen would ever go back on, because societies in fiction always have some stupid-ass oath that they never go back on that is necessary to make the plot work, and half the time the bad guy goes back on the unbreakable oath to show what a piece of shit he is and I’m falling asleep just describing this incredibly tired storyline.
Worse, when Moll tries to call the Primarch out on his dickishness, a fight ensues, and she kills him and then takes over, and I did not buy that for a nanosecond.
One of the biggest problems with this season is that the ticking clock/competition for our heroes has not been that compelling. Moll and L’ak are just a couple of ex-Couriers who should not be able to run rings around an entire starship full of smart people. Nor should one of them be able to put herself into a position of power on a Breen dreadnought. I’ve said all along that Moll and L’ak reminded me of Honey Bunny and Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction. And that’s the problem—the characters played by Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth in that 1994 film would never have taken over, say, an Army regiment. Hell, those two characters were pretty much undone by bumping into two only-very-slightly smarter criminals in the diner they were robbing.
And that’s the problem with Moll’s storyline here. Ever since the Breen showed up looking for the pair of them, she’s been punching way above her weight class and the scripts have insisted that she win those fights, and I have yet to actually buy it. At one point in “Labyrinths” Moll casually mentions that Discovery has the other four clues, which is the first time the Primarch even knows there are other clues. At that moment, the Primarch should’ve shot and killed Moll. Which, frankly, would’ve been fabulous, a great twist that actually would make sense. Usually what undoes criminals is getting too big for their britches, as it were, and getting hammered.
The Primarch is perfectly happy to blow up the Archive, even though it has some important Breen artifacts, even though he swore on the bizarre-ass alien oath that he wouldn’t. So why does he even let Moll live? She’s proven to be untrustworthy and he’s got the bigger ship and now knows that Discovery has all but one of the clues.
In the end, the Primarch confronts Burnham, and while the Breen half of that conversation is tiresome (swearing the stupid-ass oath and then going back on it), the Discovery half is a delight. Burnham agrees to hand over the completed puzzle (though not until after she’s activated it and had Zora record everything it provides, including stellar coordinates), and then creates the illusion of being blown up by activating the spore drive while they’re being fired on and venting plasma.
Discovery now gets to proceed to the coordinates with two advantages: The Primarch thinks they’re destroyed and Burnham knows about the one more thing that the avatar told her before she woke up.
One final note: This is yet another episode without Doug Jones as Saru, Emily Coutts as Detmer, and Oyin Oladejo as Owosekun. I know that the staff didn’t know this was the final season when they wrote and produced this season, but it’s still disappointing that we’re getting so little of these three—especially Saru, who is the best thing about Discovery. Sigh.
