Despite the publication date, I wrote this before watching "Lethe" and the other recent episodes. Check out my other "Discovery" reviews. Spoilers follow (duh).
In its short time on the air (err, the web), “Discovery” has produced some nice moments, often in the episode-closing scenes, and this week's edition adds a couple to that list. Michael and Saru begin mending their relationship with an emotional exchange. Stamets shows he’s willing to sacrifice — even his own life — to maintain his integrity.
But after what I considered a high for the season in "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry," this episode represents regression, lurching from nice moment to nice moment without much connective tissue (or network of spores?) between them, at least during a bumbling first half-hour.
Once again, I’m harping on the show when, generally speaking, I quite enjoy it. While the production values have sagged a bit since the two-part pilot, that’s less a criticism of the more recent episodes than a testament to just how great that opening looked. The art direction is, a few nitpicks aside, superb, and the performances have typically been strong (Doug Jones is the early standout).
The flaws, despite the number of words I've spent enumerating them, might simply be growing pains: the choppy editing, the inconsistencies in the characterization, the plot turns that chip away at the verisimilitude. This is a show still finding itself and its voice, and we have to remember that even the best Treks stumbled in their first seasons.
The concern here is that the blemishes together make the show feel a bit aimless and that, perhaps, no one is steering the ship. The faults might be relatively easy to fix by a showrunner with a strong vision, but the narrative shortcomings give the impression that the writing is happening by committee.
