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.
We start with Michael having a nightmare about the treatment of Ripper. It's immediately clear, though, that this is a manifestation of guilt, not of apprehension over a difficult choice to make. She's made up her mind about the tardigrade. The moral quandary, then, belongs to Saru, and that's an odd choice by the writers, not just because the episode's focus in the early going seems to be Michael's inner conflict but because our protagonist is essentially sidelined for most of the episode, literally spending several scenes alone in her room, as if in timeout. A show like "The Next Generation" benefited when it spread its storylines around; "Discovery," on the other hand, has stayed so attached to one character and her perspective that it suffers here from that ensemble approach, particularly at this point in the series, when the supporting characters haven't been fully established. And speaking of inconsistent characterization: It sure didn't take long for Michael to let go of her Vulcan upbringing and embrace her emotions. (It makes you wonder what we gain from that background of hers if not a struggle of self-identity. Just an excuse to have Sarek around?)
The catalyst to this episode's main plot line — Lorca's kidnapping — is rather contrived, but it produces some decent developments, including Lorca's revelations about his last crew and his decision to, ahem, choose his pain, keeping his eye injury as a reminder. We also get a look at Captain Saru and a nice scene at the end when he finds some self-confidence, realizing that his success in mounting a rescue comes not from what he shares with other captains but from what makes him unique: his background, knowledge and instincts as a prey species.
That said, the scene that sets up that conclusion — wherein Saru asks a computer what successful personality traits past captains had in common — is so preposterous that I can't even begin to articulate its problems. (How can one even pick out the worst part? That Saru would ask a question he must know the answer to? That he would expect something as vague as the word "brave" to help guide his actions? That the computer would have the database to run this kind of analysis?) And the long exposition about the way the spore drive works, as Michael, Tilly and Stamets try to work out a virtual Ripper that will take the place of the real one, is similarly a chore to get through. (Why are these characters explaining to one another what they all already know?) Also, the use of "fucking" was fucking gratuitous.
Back aboard the Klingon ship, we meet Lorca's cellmates, including (what?) Harry Mudd, and again I have some concerns about the way this show's creators are choosing to link it to the broader Trek universe. This can probably be filed under fan service because, honestly, what's the point in this being Mudd? What does he provide here that a random character wouldn't? We know from the start that he'll survive the events of the episode — perhaps a narrative shortcoming, perhaps not — but regardless, it's hard to imagine how the Mudd that we meet, bitter at the start and then abandoned on a brutal prison ship, is going to turn into the lovable rogue we remember from the Original Series. After surviving months of torture, he's going to be pulling small cons, setting up miners with mail-order brides, and trading quips with Kirk?
So again — and especially so if this new Mudd doesn't remind us much of that old Mudd — what's the point? The argument, I think, would be that our pre-existing relationship with the character means we're invested in him in a way we wouldn't be with your usual redshirt/cannon fodder. That, though, serves to highlight this episode's fatal flaw: Lorca's decision to leave behind Mudd is unforgivably dark. Justice for your sins is one thing, but this amounts to condemning a man to torture for the rest of his life (as far as Lorca knows), a life that will probably end in execution. And all of that for snitching, more or less.
Lorca tells us the tale of his being ambushed by Klingons and deciding to kill his crew as an act of mercy. (That situation sounds an awful lot like the Kobayashi Maru, by the way, and it's perhaps instructive to contrast Lorca's solution with that of Kirk, the man who never accepted a no-win situation.) Regardless of our reaction to the events, Lorca can at least try to justify his decision in moral terms; I see no possible justification for his treatment of Mudd. Both we and the characters support (or accept) Lorca's devious methods only because we believe he has reasons for doing what he does — he is taking ethical shortcuts on the way to a greater good. That isn't the case here. And Lorca doesn't even seem torn up about it. Abandoning the high ground in wartime? OK, sure, interesting enough. Not even noticing you've left the high ground? That's sub-human. Perhaps the writers want us to connect Lorca's decision with Saru's choice to consign the tardigrade to (probable) death, but that would be tenuous.
You may notice I'm avoiding talking about our new character, Ash Tyler — it's because I've come across a fan theory on the web that seems so plausible that it must be true and I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. (I'm also mad that I didn't think of it myself — and that I'm presumably going to have to wait for the big reveal for several episodes.) But while we're on the subject of the Klingons, I again have to ask why the show insists on making them so alien, or so orc-like, if the creators ostensibly want us to follow the war on both sides. For humans not named Lorca, there is not much relatable in their brutality. I also didn't recognize L'Rell, thinking throughout this episode that this was a random female Klingon captain. (I learned her identity on "After Trek.") I'm not sure if her makeup was a bit different, or if there was a clue I missed, or if I'm just not that bright, but that sailed over my head, and now I'm just wondering how she was able to secure this position in the matter of a couple of weeks. It's certainly possible, or even probable, that the creators want us to ask that question, but I won't say anything else. Anyway, my confusion at least took my mind off the (apparent) neglect of the Voq plot line.
If I'm going to give the writers credit there, though, I also have to question plenty of other developments in this episode. I really do want to suspend my disbelief — I promise — but this series is making that downright impossible. As I hinted at, we have Lorca meeting with Admiral Cornwell in person rather than by hologram — just so he can be conveniently captured by a Klingon ship that has somehow been tracking Starfleet's one untrackable ship, which has been jumping across the galaxy for three weeks. Then Mudd and his captors show off some convenient knowledge about Lorca, with Mudd reciting, for Tyler's benefit, the professional history of a total stranger and the Klingons announcing Lorca's eye injury and position on Discovery.
At the climax, Stamets "injects" the tardigrade DNA and gets special powers. Even with the DNA-swapping qualities of tardigrades as mentioned in the episode, this is hard to swallow. (My immediate reaction: If I pump bat DNA into my arm, can I echolocate?) And then without any evidence as to whether the tardigrade can even survive in a vacuum, Michael shoots it out into space, thereby reinforcing her cartoonish trait of "I do whatever I want, and somehow things work out."
We end with a spooky cliffhanger at the end as something bizarre happens with Stamets's reflection, but the emotional moments are and will be the key to this show's success, so it's nice that that weirdness is preceded by a tender exchange between Stamets and Culbert. I had a small complaint that often occurs to me when I'm watching TV or movies that feature gay characters — Why aren't they kissing? Would they be if they were straight characters? — but that's a somewhat artificial criticism, and it's heartening to have a gay relationship on TV that doesn't need the announcement "this is a gay relationship on TV!" Trek is a little late to the game in sexual diversity, but this is the approach that has always suited the show. And the fact that Stamets and Culbert verbally spar provides another relationship to the Treks of yesteryear, which found fertile ground in bickering relationships (B'Elanna and Tom Paris, T'Pol and Trip, Worf and K'Ehleyr, Riker and Ro, McCoy and ... Spock ... and Kirk ... and ... everyone). The characters and the camaraderie carried shows like "The Next Generation" through some pretty weak episodes. We might not be at that point yet with "Discovery," but there are the ingredients of a strong and well-rounded ensemble.
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