The start of the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery is unique in many ways, but probably the biggest one is that it establishes that the same person will be in command of the U.S.S. Discovery for the second season in a row, which has never happened before. The hallmark of the inaugural show of the Paramount+ era of Trek has been a new captain every year: Lorca for season 1, Pike for season 2, Saru for season 3, and Burnham for season 4.
But Burnham’s still in charge in season 5. And that’s an indication that—for once—nothing has changed on Discovery. They’ve finally found a status quo, and it’s one that works.
So, of course, it’s the last season. Sigh.
There’s only one really significant change, and it doesn’t come to fruition until the end of the second of the two episodes that went live today: Saru is being promoted to the role of Federation Ambassador-at-Large, and so will no longer be Burnham’s Number One. This is a good move on several levels, as it never sat right with me that Saru took a subordinate position to Burnham on Discovery after doing such a good job as her captain in season 3. Not that Burnham didn’t also deserve the promotion, but Saru didn’t deserve a demotion, either. They made it work last year, mostly because Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones make a really good team. But Saru is, bluntly, the best thing to come out of Discovery, and he deserves better.
And he’s getting it! Not only is he being promoted, but his relationship with T’Rina has deepened to the point that she hits him with a marriage proposal. Being Vulcan, she of course phrases the proposal in the most pedantic and bloodless manner possible, which Tara Rosling manages to make incredibly adorable.
Saru’s last mission comes from Kovich, a classified mission that’s a Red Directive. Not to be confused with other directives that are prime or omega, this one is not defined, but is obviously a shut-up-and-go-do-it-now-please mission that you go on and do not fuck around. (It’s Trek’s latest red thing. The original series had red alerts, redshirts, and the Red Hour, DS9 had Red Squad, the 2009 movie had red matter, and season 2 of this very show had the Red Angel.)
In this case, an eight-hundred-year-old Romulan ship has been found that has a Tan zhekran on it that needs to be retrieved. Established in Picard’s “The Impossible Box” as a Romulan puzzle box, this particular Tan zhekran has something very valuable and very classified on it. In fact, it’s so classified that even Vance doesn’t know the specifics.
Unfortunately, two ex-couriers named Mol and L’ak have gotten to the Romulan ship, and the Tan zhakren, first. Played by, respectively, Eve Harlow and Elias Toufexis, I’m honestly not sure what to make of these two yet. I’m getting a Bonnie-and-Clyde vibe from the two of them that’s kind of a mix of Spike and Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction, though as yet they’re nowhere near that level of interesting. (Their names are also interesting, as “moll” is a name given to a female companion to a criminal, and “L’ak” is similar to “lackey.” Makes you wonder if there’s a bad guy they’re working for…)
They take the Tan zhakren and some other stuff, and head out in their own ship, with Discovery and the U.S.S. Antares giving chase, a thrilling sequence that has Burnham in an EVA suit on the hull of L’ak and Mol’s ship, the Antares using a tractor beam, and a game of chicken among the participants. However, the ex-couriers get away, and do so in a manner that leaves dozens of warp trails behind, only one of which is the real one.
But Burnham knows this courier’s trick from her year as one between “That Hope is You” and “Far from Home,” and she puts in a call to the courier she knows best: Book.
Book is still doing his community service, helping out the worlds that were ravaged by the DMA last season. More to the point, this summoning is the first time Book and Burnham have spoken since the end of last season. Martin-Green and David Ajala continue to sparkle in their scenes together, but Book’s betrayal last season has twisted everything. The scenes are beautifully played and written, as Burnham and Book obviously still love each other deeply, but Burnham absolutely cannot trust Book anymore, and Book knows full well that he doesn’t deserve to be trusted, and it puts the pair of them in a weird place. That place remains weird, as Book stays on after the first episode, assigned by Vance his own self to be a consultant on the mission, since he knows how couriers think.
Book’s arrival signals the season story kicking in: chasing after the contents of the Tan zhekran. Mol and L’ak take the stuff they looted from the Romulan ship to a centuries-old Soong-style synth named Fred (which is fabulous). Fred has Data-like makeup, and his serial number is later established as starting with “AS” for Altan Soong, the cyberneticist son of Data’s creator, Noonien Soong, established in Picard’s “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1.”
Played with Spiner-esque curiosity-filled deadpan by J. Adam Brown, Fred is a collector of ancient things, and he’s thrilled at the twenty-fourth-century artifact. He’s also easily able to open the Tak zhekran, which contains a diary, written in Romulan. Being a synth, Fred is able to read the entire thing in half a second. He’s also not willing to pay a fair price—or, indeed, any price, and the negotiation turns into a fight, which ends with Fred and his security dead. (Why Fred doesn’t have the super-strength and speed seen in other synths like Data is left as an exercise for the viewer.)
Book figured out that Fred would be the fence in this little adventure, and so Discovery and Antares head there, but by the time they arrive, Fred’s dead, baby—Fred’s dead. Luckily, Fred is a synth, so they send the body up to Discovery, where between them, Stamets and Culber are able to extract his memory, including his speed-read of the diary. Which means they also have the text of the diary.
This is followed by another thrilling action piece, and it’s to the show’s credit that both action sequences in “Red Directive” are actually plot relevant. And character relevant, as in both sequences, we find out a lot about Antares Captain Rayner, played by new series regular Callum Keith Rennie, a Canadian actor who is, I believe, contractually obligated to appear in every show that films in Canada at least once. Rayner is a Starfleet captain of many years’ standing who is, in many ways, still acting like they’re in the middle of the Burn, when Starfleet was just trying to keep the tattered remains of the Federation together, unlike Burnham, who spent most of her life in the twenty-third-century version of the Federation.
That conflict comes to a head during the motorcycle chase through the desert at the climax of “Red Directive.” L’ak and Mol are heading to a cave system. The notion of phasering the caves to block off the entrance is floated, but there’s a 30% chance that it’ll cause an avalanche that will wipe out the city and kill thousands. Burnham rejects the plan, but Rayner thinks it’s worth the risk for a Red Directive mission and Antares fires on the caves. There’s no avalanche, and Rayner proudly declares, “70% for the win!”
But the problem is that they gave Mol and L’ak an idea. They do what bad guys have been doing in heroic fiction for ages: they cause an avalanche, meaning our heroes have to spend time saving lives, giving the bad guys the opportunity to escape.
That’s not the only consequence. The two ships are damaged when they both crash nose-first into the surface to break the avalanche and have to return to HQ for repairs. Rayner is the subject of an inquiry that includes Vance and Rillak (always good to see Chelah Horsdal as my favorite on-screen Federation President, whom I got to write a story for in Star Trek Explorer, cough cough). At first, he’s encouraged to retire, and he does lose his command, but Burnham convinces him to replace Saru as her first officer.
Before he can take over, Burnham and Saru have a final adventure together. Kovich has decided to read Burnham in on the full story. I said earlier that the season’s story is a chase, and that’s an appropriate way to refer to a season that is a sequel to TNG’s “The Chase.” The Romulan ship belonged to one of the background Romulan science officers in that episode, and he knows what the power source is of the Progenitors, the humanoid beings who apparently seeded the galaxy with humanoid life.
Now here’s where I have to confess that I really didn’t much like “The Chase,” as it was a giant wink at the viewer in desperate search of an interesting plot that it never found. I’ve got very little patience with taking the time to explain something that doesn’t need explaining, which is all “The Chase” was.
But since we do have the Progenitors (a term first heard from Kovich in “Red Directive”), it is also true that whatever they did to, in essence, create humanoid life is pretty powerful stuff, and is something that could be abused.
The diary leads them to a Promellian necropolis. (The Promellians were established as a long-extinct species in TNG’s “Booby Trap.”) This is a straight-up video-game adventure, as Burnham and Saru have to get through various security features and figure out puzzles and clues and things. And scripter Alan McElroy has a little fun, because you wonder if this is Saru’s swan song. I mean, he’s just accepted a marriage proposal, it’s his final mission, and he and Burnham have several conversations about the adventures they’ve had together, and you realize that Saru’s fulfilling every dead-meat cliché in the book. He’s the partner at the beginning of the cop buddy movie who’s one week from retirement and then gets killed to piss off the main character. We even find out he has a nifty nickname—coined by Reno and used by Book, he’s apparently referred to in his post-vahar’ai state as “Action Saru.” And it is the last season…
Luckily, McElroy is just toying with us. Saru not only survives, but proves his “Action Saru” chops by using his spines to blow up some of the security drones. And he’s returned to T’Rina in one piece, and with a new clue.
I’m liking this direction for the season. The stakes are high, but not a threat to the entirety of the galaxy as we know it. It’s a quest narrative of a type we’ve seen a thousand times before and twice at our weekly role-playing game, but we’ve seen it so often because, dammit, it works. More to the point, the threat isn’t so over-the-top insane with a high body count, as every other threat Discovery has thrown at us has been. It’s therefore a less exhausting storyline, which is all for the best.
The clue they find will send them to Trill, thus giving Adira a chance to be reunited with Gray.
I thought these two constituted a very solid opening to the season. We get the stakes (which are high, but not so high that it feels jarring to see the crew focus on anything else), we get a mystery (that’s mysterious, but not so mysterious that they won’t just tell us anything of what’s going on), and we get a few genuinely thrilling action sequences that make use of the technology of the 32nd century in a smart way. The season-long plot arc feels a little National Treasure-y, but it also seems like the sort of thing a paranoid Romulan scientist might set up, so I’ll accept it. I’ve always thought that “The Chase” would have worked well in a serialised format: a mission of discovery that takes our crew to a variety of planets and runs them up against a number of rivals, all closing in on a scientific secret of literally life-changing importance. I’m glad to see that Michelle Paradise apparently thought so too. And I can’t help but admire the boldness of picking out a random extra in a thirty-year-old group shot and declaring him to have been one of the greatest scientific minds in history.
Of course, I had a few minor nitpicks, too: especially with the implication that the Progenitors had been kept secret for the last 800 years. I feel like keeping a discovery like that under wraps would be just as unethical (and impossible) as trying to hide Darwinian evolution. I also had difficulty with the idea that Starfleet wouldn’t choose to develop the spore drive (an issue that I’ve had with this tech since the first season).
Overall though, it leaves me excited to see what happens next. And I love how they brought back the Synths not as major mystery-box items, but just as people who happen to exist in the universe. As it should be.
Yeah, I had that same issue. Why classify this? It’s a scientific discovery of profound importance. Sure, the technology they used is super-advanced, but the galaxy is littered with the ruins of super-advanced alien civilizations.
I’d prefer to think that the secrecy wasn’t imposed until the post-Burn world, when governments got more divided and paranoid and a lot of past knowledge was forgotten.
As for spore drive, it was established way back in season 1 that the drive was too dangerous to keep using regularly because of the risk that it could destabilize and wipe out the multiverse. You’d think they would’ve abandoned it as soon as that was figured out. In season 2, the conceit was that Discovery was allowed to use it on a limited basis because of the high stakes of its mission, and in season 3 it was used because it was essential in troubled times, but it bugs me that they haven’t abandoned it altogether like they were supposed to. In fact, I had the impression that the ship’s spore drive was destroyed last season, so I’m surprised it’s still up and running.
Good point about the matter-of-fact depiction of Fred, but I wish they’d stuck with “Soong-type androids” instead of that ugly word “Synths.”
I don’t see why it’s ugly. Seems like a pretty reasonably cool name for synthetic beings, I’d a but derogatory
Admittedly “Soong-Type Android” is a bit of a mouthful (and not even accurate in all cases; the Synths who destroyed Mars were designed by Bruce Maddox and clearly lacked the sentience of Data or Lore, or even B4).
Picard season 1 was going for a “cyberpunk” vibe with that name I think, but I can’t hear it without thinking of synthesizer music.
These were pretty good. I prefer it when ST is more of a drama and less of a roller-coaster action movie, but there are some good ideas here. I agree it’s good that the plot driver is a treasure hunt for a scientifically and philosophically profound discovery rather than a cosmic life-or-death threat (although I’d lay good odds that it’s going to build to something where the life-creating technology has to be kept from someone who wants to remake the galaxy in their image and kill everyone currently living in it). I like it that they’re having the characters stop to think about what it all means rather than just jumping from action scene to plot point to action scene.
Most of all, I love the unapologetic touchy-feeliness of it. The climax of episode 1 is driven, not by a battle between people trying to kill each other, but a desperate race to save a bunch of innocent lives. And that drives a philosophical conflict between Burnham and Rayner of just what the reason for Starfleet’s existence is, with Rayner finally admitting that Burnham was right to prioritize lives. Then in part 2, you’ve got the big life-or-death action scene with the security system, but afterward, Burnham still takes care to see that the sacred burial ground is respected and restored as much as possible (indeed, she seems to care more about the ruins’ integrity than the Promellians who installed that very destructive security system).
I did find it all a little predictable. As soon as the avalanche started, the first solution I thought of was Discovery coming to the surface and using its deflectors to shield the town, although I didn’t anticipate both ships doing it or doing nose-dives into the surface. And as soon as we saw Rayner’s disciplinary hearing, I knew the episode would end up with Rayner becoming Burnham’s new first officer, and his randomly showing up to help Tilly and Adira just confirmed it.
The whole “find the puzzle pieces to the map” format is kind of cliched and contrived, but I guess the modern shows have done enough to establish the Romulans’ obsession with secrecy and elaborate deceptions that it’s relatively justifiable. Although I have to wonder, if the scientist was so convinced that the secret had to be kept, why create an entertaining treasure-hunt LARP designed to lead people right to it? Why not just, you know, hide it forever?
Anyway, I am very, very grateful to the writers for not referring to the Progenitors as the Preservers, and I hope they keep it up. I’ve never understood why people want to assume they’re one and the same, since they have nothing in common. The Progenitors lived 4 billion years ago and seeded uninhabited planets to engineer new life, while the Preservers’ one known act was maybe around 300 years ago and merely involved relocating an existing population.
It does bug me a little that they’re talking about the Progenitors as the creators of all life, when they’re explicitly just the ones responsible for the parallel evolution of humanoid species on planets throughout the galaxy, which would mean they’re not responsible for nonhumanoids like the Tholians, Gorn, Horta, Edoans, Phylosians, Species 10-C, etc.
I’m also not sure about how they’re describing it as a technology to create life, when it was more like programmed DNA engineered to encourage the gradual evolution of humanoid forms over billions of years. We’ll have to see how they handle it going forward.
Still, it’s a nice idea to follow up on “The Chase” at last. It is a really big deal that didn’t get much followup in the episode itself. It’s nice to see it being explored, not merely as a handwave for why there are so many actors in makeup playing aliens, but as a catalyst for a classic Roddenberrian tale of the quest for the Creator and the meaning of life.
I don’t mind rollercoasters, but I’m tired of “The fate of the Federation/Galaxy/Multiverse hangs in the balance.” Can’t we have a rollercoaster about preventing a war between two star systems, or first contact gone awry?
The problem I’ve always had with Discovery (and a lot of other sci-fi and fantasy for that matter) isn’t just the scope of the stories but also the enormous amount of importance it places on almost every single action, character, and emotion that crosses the screen. It’s exhasting, and it weirdly makes me nostalgic for the era of characters wasting time on the holodeck. I never thought that would be possible, but here we are.
But this isn’t about the fate of the galaxy (at least, not so far), it’s about the secret of its origins. So it’s larger in scope, but in a different way. Star Trek has always purported to be a show about exploration and the quest to understand the universe, not just space battles or life-and-death struggles. This is basically another riff on Roddenberry’s desire to do a story about the search for God, the answers to the meaning of life and why we exist. There’s clearly an element of trying to keep such a powerful technology out of The Wrong Hands, but so far that’s a background element, nothing more than a catalyst for the search itself. I expect it to become more prominent, but it’s not the only thing the story is about. It’s more of an archaeological mystery than a war story or a survival story.
The producers have explicitly said they wanted an Indiana Jones feel to the season. The Jones movies were catalyzed by keeping the powerful artifacts out of the Nazis’ hands or whatever, but that was really just a MacGuffin driving stories that were more about the quest itself, the hero decoding puzzles and unearthing clues and overcoming obstacles in search of something profound and cosmic. If this season maintains the same focus, then it really will be a season about Discovery, the thing the show is named for.
I’m presuming that once you get the species that created every major humanoid race in the Alpha Quadrant involved, the stakes are going to mount.
Except the whole idea in “The Chase” is that they’ve been extinct for 4 billion years. That’s the whole reason they left the seeded DNA — because they were alone in the galaxy and dying out, and wanted to make sure they left a legacy. So I really hope DSC doesn’t retcon things so that they’re still around and hiding somewhere. Although I would accept it turning out that they evolved into an incorporeal superintelligence (though not the Q, since we know John DeLancie’s Q is at least 5 billion years old).
Also, presumably it’s the whole galaxy, not just the Alpha Quadrant. In 4 billion years, the stars would’ve mixed so completely that nothing starting out in any arbitrarily defined quadrant would necessarily still be there.
Hmm… imagine
Harrison Ford on Star Trek.
Make it happen, paramount
Well, we sorta-kinda almost got his “dad” in STAR TREK V….!
Give “The Chase” a little more credit. Sure, it did explain something that didn’t need explaining, but it also has that wonderful final scene between Picard and the Romulan attempting to express some kind of universal kinship to one another, leaving the door open to peace. Doesn’t get more Star Trekkie than that.
I did give “The Chase” a little more credit in my piece on the same in the TNG Rewatch:
https://reactormag.com/star-trek-the-next-generation-rewatch-the-chase/
But only a little….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Thanks, I enjoyed reading that again.
Looking back, I think the main issue I had with the episode was that it lacked that certain oomph you need from an archaelogical adventure story. The pace, as with much of TNG by that point, was too languid, and I’m assuming budget dictated that the big finale be shot on a set that had all the cinematic granduer of a phony rock-climbing wall in a mall parking lot. “That’s it?!” indeed.
I really love a good treasure hunt, so combining that with Star Trek is ticking a lot of boxes for me.
I agree about the action sequences, I thought they were thrilling and well-executed. Burnham walking on the outside of a ship that’s at warp while being chased by two other starships? Awesome. I can’t wait to see what else the season has for us.
I also noticed something that might be a stretch, but bear with me. Mol and L’ak, when put together, sounds a lot like Moloch, a biblical reference, which, depending on your source, can mean either “king” or (and this is what drew me to the connection) a power which demands a dire sacrifice, sometimes child sacrifice (could consider all the humanoid races the children of the Progenitors). Like I said, probably a huge stretch, but given what everyone is questing after this season, I just found it an interesting coincidence.
I had a problem with the idea of Burnham letting go of the ship and passing through its warp bubble. The edge of a warp bubble is a severe spacetime distortion on a par with a black hole, so it should’ve ripped her apart to pass through it. Granted, it did kind of ambiguously look like the ship dropped its warp field just as she let go, but before that, the characters were talking as if they expected her to be able to survive passing through it.
I’m happy the Progenitors are finally being followed up again for the first time in 30 years.
“The Chase” is a guilty pleasure of mine (as I’m always a sucker for the Precursor trope in Sci-Fi and Fantasy).
And as Keith pointed out, this is actually a logical repercussion and follow-up: What became of these advanced Precursors’ technology?
Reminds me a lot of David Mack’s basic premise for the Titan novel Fortunes of War (and what became of the Husnock’s weapons and technology after they got wiped out during “The Survivors”).
Honestly, I have an issue with the idea that the technology is all that magical. It’s really more of a specialized thing, DNA encoded with genetic software that can somehow survive through billions’ of years worth of mutations and guide evolution toward a preprogrammed path. And it works very, very slowly; if Earth was seeded 4 billion years ago, then it took another 3.5 billion years before the software managed to produce anything more than single cells. So it’s hard for me to buy that it’s really that big a deal.
Fair enough.
I’m just happy that a personal favorite TNG-era piece of world-building is finally being utilized again (much like the Reunification Movement finally came back during Season 3).
I just hope that all of the breadcrumbs in this quest aren’t going to tie into things from 23rd or 24th century canon.
I think I don’t mind a few 23rd/24th Century references, but it’d be grander to throw in a bit from Enterprise and refer to things from the 27th and 29th Century in addition to those for a fuller tapestry.
Haven’t they already? In addition to the Progenitor MacGuffin, we’ve got the Promellians from “Booby Trap” and a lot of Picard season 1’s Romulan worldbuilding (which was right at the end of the 24th century, with seasons 2-3 at the start of the 25th).
Although I’m hoping that the visit to Trill next week is more about following up on the threads from their season 3 appearance, and maybe reuniting Adira with Gray.
Speaking of Adira, what’s the deal with them at the start of this season? What’s their position on DISCO?
Yeah, they appear to be a science officer, since they’re wearing blue and are still Doing Lots Of Science….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
my guess is a junior science officer
I wonder if we’ll see Salome Jens this season. She’s in her late 80s, but is still working, if IMDB is to be believed, and the “this season on Discovery” teaser did show a character (I forget who) meeting a very old-looking woman.
She also voiced her Female Changeling character for the Victory is Life expansion for Star Trek Online that came out back in 2018. A lot of players were surprised it was her because of her age, but she still sounds just the same as she did back in TNG and DS9.
Star Trek’s first outing in 2024 AKA the year of the Bell Riots (and who knows when Prodigy S2 will air).
It’s been a while since LD season 4’s ending. And a looong time since we last saw Michael Burnham and company. After watching this two-part premiere, I take my time to repeat my favorite Bending Bender Rodriguez catchphrase: “We’re back baby.” This was a welcome return for the show after such an extended absence.
I’m surprised I remembered all the little details from previous seasons. Granted, the previously on segment did a nice recap of events, but stuff like Saru’s evolutionary process in season 2 is one I didn’t expect to remember, and I immediately did.
With him vacating the first officer post, we have Rayner stepping in, and I have to admit. I loved the new addition. He’s exactly what Michael Burnham needs. I said it before that I often get the feeling from Discovery that the crew in general doesn’t do nearly enough to challenge Burnham or stand up to her – especially considering her mutineering origin story. The touchy-feely approach the writers employ can make for some heartfelt scenes, but I often feel the show lacks that sense of a chain of command. For instance, Riker could be both gentle and easygoing and still be the boss for the lower ranked officers.
But Rayner brings a raw energy and a messed up militaristic outlook on the galaxy that should really generate some needed sparks within the ship over the next 8 episodes. And at the same time he knows when he’s in the wrong – as seen by his realizing his actions could have doomed a lot of innocent citizens. But the Antares crew still fired that phaser under his orders. There’s a clear chain of command there, and I’m eager to see how Discovery’s own chain will be affected. Easily the most layered and best written Trek character in a while.
The minute I saw Fred’s yellow eyes, I said Soong out loud – then instantly validated by his speed reading, Data-style. This is worldbuilding done right. We didn’t even need much of the Culber/Stamets info dump later on.
I’ve always known “The Chase” was a divisive TNG episode amongst fans and viewers. One of my first online experiences as a preteen was reading Tim Lynch’s Trek reviews. I remember his double sided take on that episode pretty well, one that I tend to agree to this day. A compelling, tense, well acted chase story in itself, with personal stakes for Picard, but with the big questionable creationist element that clashes directly with Trek’s humanist scientific approach. And of course, it was Menosky and Moore’s attempt at justifying all the humanoid similar-looking species, which always felt like a cheap excuse.
Since they’re revisiting that, I guess we’ll see what it is exactly, and how Discovery will handle it. I’m certainly intrigued. The only scene that didn’t sit quite right with me was the decoding of the map – it brought back some unwelcome Rise of Skywalker vibes. But the fact that it was Fred who did it made it more palatable.
We may not have needed the exposition, but there are first-time viewers who may not have the knowledge of Data and his history who might have assumed they were using technology to read a corpse’s brain.
What bugged me is, did Moll and L’ak kill Fred to silence him, or just as an incidental result of the firefight? Because if it was the former, they didn’t think it through. I recall that while the fight was going on, the thought came to me that if they wanted to make sure nobody learned what he knew, they made a mistake by shooting him in the chest instead of the head, or by not vaporizing him entirely. Indeed, I was surprised that he was actually dead, that Stamets and Culber couldn’t just repair him and get him up and running again.
I figured they killed him in the course of getting the puzzle box back. As far as shooting him in the chest versus the head is a) who knows what backup memories he has and where they are, b) it makes sense that they were just trying to get out of there and not thinking about “what do I have to do differently since Fred is a synthetic life form”.
“with the big questionable creationist element that clashes directly with Trek’s humanist scientific approach.”
Huh? I don’t see that at all. The Progenitors didn’t create humanoids directly; they just seeded the primordial soup with genetic sequences that would gently and gradually nudge evolution over billions of years to encourage convergence on a humanoid form long after the Progenitors went extinct. It’s entirely scientific. The concept depends on the reality of evolution and the fact that the universe is billions of years old. It bears no more resemblance to the cult of Creationism than a lecture on Solar astronomy has to the worship of a Sun god. Just because it has one element vaguely in common doesn’t make it the same thing by any meaningful standard.
It isn’t outright old-school creationism, but it is the trojan horse “intelligent design” pseudoscientific form. Evolution that is “guided” by an intelligence to its pre-determined end point, namely us humans. And hey, we’re even made in the image of our “creators”! It may not have been the writer’s intent, but the parallels with ID are definitely there, and there is an irony that Discovery is following up on this storyline when one of the main proponents of trying to inject this ID pseudoscience into American schools is the Discovery Institute.
Vague parallels are not equivalence. A giraffe has four legs, but that doesn’t make it an elephant. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Creationism or Intelligent Design, because those are excuses to discredit science in the name of a distorted religious ideology, while this is an attempt to use scientific concepts, genetic engineering and DNA nanotechnology, to rationalize the conceit of humanoid aliens in a science fiction story.
You brush off intent, but intent makes all the difference. Creationists want people to believe their lies are fact. Storytellers just want people to be entertained by their fiction. It’s preposterous to equate the two. Were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby trying to convert people to Norse paganism when they wrote comic books about Thor and Asgard? Of course not, they were both Jewish. They were just telling a story, not writing a religious polemic. They intended and expected their audience to understand the difference between fiction and reality. The same goes here.
Your comparison doesn’t even work, because Intelligent Design claims that evolution does not occur at all and that every change is micromanaged by God. “The Chase” simply posits that the Progenitors’ genetic software nudges the evolutionary process toward humanoid form on the planets they seeded. This results in species as diverse as humans, Cardassians, and Kelpiens, so obviously it’s not fixed and predetermined, but simply introduces a recurring theme into what’s otherwise a normal evolutionary process producing different results on different planets. And of course, there are plenty of nonhumanoid species in the galaxy, so their worlds weren’t seeded by the Progenitors and they must therefore have evolved naturally.
One of the things that leaves me dissatisfied with any “origin of universal life” story that posits a species like the Progenitors as the source (Alien/Prometheus included) is that it only kicks the can up the road a bit and leaves the question “what was the origin of life of the seeding, Progenitor civilization?” mostly unaddressed. It relies unnecessarily on bad philosophy to create an “Intelligent Designer” where frankly, none needs to have existed.
As I said in the “Chase” thread, it’s not about philosophy, it’s just about handwaving why most of their “aliens” look like actors in rubber makeup.
It occurs to me that this season may finally deliver what the second season promised before it was hijacked by all of that diabolical time travel/ CONTROL/ Section 31 nonsense: a series of plot coupons that can be redeemed for episodic adventure stories, all built around a central mystery that blurs the line between science and theology.
I’d say pretty much every DSC season has started out with episodic tales driven by a background MacGuffin and then become more serialized in the latter half — particularly season 4, whose first half (nearly) was individual tales about the various different impacts of the DMA threat before the rest of the season became a single serialized story about going after the source of the threat. I suspect much the same may happen here, given that there are only four more pieces of the puzzle to locate.
11 years ago (yikes KRAD we’ve been at this a long time) I wrote: “Once again I find myself going “What a great multi-episode arc this could have been.” Think about it- the point of Star Trek is to explore and discover and here is the ultimate discovery: Where did all life come from? And we wrap it up in 42 minutes??? It could have been some sort of uber-mystery that could take all season to unravel.”
This feels like we’re finally giving the episode its due. I will give credit to the writers who you can tell have definitely done their own rewatches- pulling together two dead races from different TNG episodes is just the latest evidence. They definitely are pulling a string in the grand cosmic tapestry (thanks Wesley!) and seeing what’s at the end of it.
The chemistry here is phenomenal with SMQ shining against both Doug Jones and David Ajala. I know many comment that Burnham is too emotional- she’s definitely not series Kirk who seemed completely unaffected from episode to episode (I know why). Rather she’s much more impacted by her experiences and that’s Martin-Greens strength. She does a fantastic job, especially in the second episode, of displaying the weight of her journey from logic driven and cold to passionate and warm. Just as Picard wasn’t Kirk and Sisco not Picard (Picard never punched Q!) Burnham is her own captain.
Also speaking of journeys I like that Tilly goes off to the academy and Saru is going to be an ambassador. It’s always bothered me that our crew too rarely seems to want to go anywhere else and stays together for years. It shouldn’t have taken Riker a couple of decades to decide to take a promotion for example. I like that discovery’s crew seems to want to do more than just stay on the ship for life.
Since this is a rewatch and I like to nitpick I’m somewhat annoyed by the programmable matter solves all things. Burnham and Saru blow up their phasers to create an EMP and then just shrug their shoulders and generate new phasers? Where exactly are they coming from? Hammerspace? And shouldn’t either that EMP or the disruptive EM field have some effect on their magical tricorder/transporter/replicator/communicator device. I think I would have liked it if they had to finish the mission without the magic devices.
Overall a great start to a season-it’s a shame it’s the last one.
You can’t answer the question “Where did all life come from?” without pointing that same question in the Progenitors’ direction.
I, personally, find parallel evolution to be a more likely answer than every races’ ancestor simply had to travel to all corners of the galaxy (or even the universe) and spread their basic seeds all over.
On the contrary. The Progenitors are not the origin of all life, only humanoid life. Obviously the Progenitors didn’t create themselves. They evolved naturally, like nonhumanoid life did, but they wanted to leave a legacy when they were gone, so they jiggered up some programmed DNA to nudge life on other planets toward forms that resembled themselves.
And I addressed the ridiculousness of parallel evolution as an explanation for humanoid aliens in the comments to Keith’s rewatch of “The Chase.” While parallel evolution does happen, it is not remotely near that exact.
A good start to the season.
Bobby
One thing that bugged me was the there’s-a-bomb-in-the-cave dilemma — disarming the bomb manually wasn’t viable for lack of time, detonating it carried a 30% risk, but they had two starships with transporters, and nobody suggested beaming the bomb away or using a code 14 transport to reduce it to dust?
I could do without Moll apparently being Cleveland Booker IV’s daughter because everything’s personal and everyone’s connected but enjoyed that L’ak and Moll’s vintage booty included self-sealing stem bolts.
I don’t see the problem of SUS as being that big a deal.
I mean, I agree that small universe syndrome is a problem (and that’s without even getting into the fact that Jean-Luc Picard is, simultaneously, the man who discovered the Progenitors, the man who recorded Michael’s brother’s “unification” speech, and the man who modelled the consciousness-upload technique used by Grey last season (as well as the man who allowed Michael’s foster father to exit the diplomatic service on a career high note)), but I also accept it as an excuse to delve further into Book’s backstory.
The name check of the Star Trek Corps of Engineers was great to hear.
After the breakneck speed of “Lower Decks” and “Prodigy”, it was jarring to re-encounter the “Discovery” storytelling pace after two years. My criticism of Season Four is that you could cut out three or four episodes, and the plot would still remain.
My first pass through watching these episodes was noticing, when we got to “quiet time” with two characters just talking, the plot… stopped. Dead.
Rewatching it, however, I took into account the pacing, and it was…. better. On a weekly basis will differ from viewing in the future in a mini-binge, but I’m okay with it.
“My criticism of Season Four is that you could cut out three or four episodes, and the plot would still remain.”
Why is that a bad thing? Serialization is not superior to episodic storytelling, it’s just another option. Not everything has to be about an overarching plot with no digressions. The best balance is usually a mix of individual standalone stories and a larger overall plot underpinning them. After all, why should we care about the overall plot arc if we never take the time to get to know the characters and the world in any other context?
I much prefer the first half of season 4, which was a series of standalone episodes exploring interestingly different consequences of the threat introduced at the start, to the latter half where it was all one multi-chapter story. I agree the second half dragged out longer than it needed to, but I’d rather have seen them extend the first half and do a couple of more standalones.
“when we got to “quiet time” with two characters just talking, the plot… stopped. Dead.”
Again, why is that bad? Plot is not the only thing that stories are about. It’s one of the four essentials of drama, along with character, setting, and theme. Arguably the plot is a vehicle for exploring the characters, their world, and the themes and issues raised by the situation. So taking the time to get to know the characters and their lives and their feelings doesn’t “stop” the plot, it contextualizes it and gives it meaning. Why should we care that a bunch of events happen if we don’t understand and relate to the characters that they happen to?
I’m a bit behind in watching, but pretty decent start for the series, especially the second episode with the treasure hunt and everything. And i’m joining the choir, i was totally fed up with the universe-saving idiotism in every bloody season and finally the stakes seem to be on a normal level. There was still a bit too much crying-and-whining to my taste, but at least now they did it at the right times when Saru was actually leaving and when they had time for it, not being destroyed by a galactic explosion at any second.
Overall, these episodes felt more comparable to SNW in quality.