Really Gorn Places

 

Fangs of a Tribble

I Will Take You By the Hand, with Reservations

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK DISCOVERY'S

"WILL YOU TAKE ME BY THE HAND?"

The season finale of Star Trek: Discovery opens with a lovely sequence of two worlds in opposition: our lovely blue marble, Earth, and its grey sister, Luna, threatened by an approaching Klingon fleet; and Qo'nos, shrouded in green mist, home of the enemy. This short sequence heralds the end of the main story arc of the show's first season, the Federation-Klingon war. We know from other shows that the war must end without either side being destroyed, but how exactly does it end, and will that ending bring redemption for poor Michael Burnham? We find out the answer in "Will You Take Me By the Hand?"

The End is Near
As you might expect--this is, after all, a utopian vision--Michael is indeed redeemed, but I'm sorry to say that her arc, and that of the war itself, ends on a note so puzzling that it undermines the good work of the season thus far.

Last episode, Admiral Cornwell made a deal with Mirror Georgiou: her freedom and temporary command of the Discovery in exchange for her experience exterminating the Klingons in the Mirror Universe. While Michael, Saru, and the other Discovery crew suspect that trusting Georgiou with this task isn't the best idea, they reluctantly obey her orders; with the Federation on the brink of defeat, they have little choice.

Georgiou and company use the spore drive to jump the ship into the porous crust of Qo'nos, where they can stay hidden while assessing the planet's defences. Meanwhile, Michael, Georgiou, Ash Tyler, and Sylvia Tilly meet in the transporter room; there's a cute moment where Tilly, figuring out that Georgiou is the Empress and not "their" Georgiou, starts to offer the Terran Empire salute.

"Don't do that," Burnham mutters, pushing Tilly's arm down.

These Little People Went to Market
The quartet beam up to the surface of Qo'nos, to an Orion market. I fully accept that Qo'nos is cosmopolitan enough to have communities of offworlders, but it seems a little strange that the Klingons at the market don't care that humans are walking around openly. They are, after all, at war...

At the market, each member of the landing party searches for information about a shrine to Molor, which they've previously determined would be the best place to release a drone to locate military targets for a Starfleet assault. Tilly, who seems to get a lot of the best scenes (and more power to her), tries to ply information from an Orion trader played by Clint Howard, a lovely cameo from the actor who famously appeared as Balok in "The Corbomite Maneuver." After getting high with Clint, Tilly discovers to her horror that the drone she's carrying is in fact a doomsday bomb, but doesn't have time to tell Burnham and Tyler before Mirror Georgiou, having slept with a pair of comely Orions to find the shrine's location, knocks Tilly out, takes the bomb, and makes her way into the planet's crust.

While all this is happening, Michael Burnham and Ash Tyler take a different approach to finding the necessary information; Ash draws upon his Voq persona to ingratiate himself to a group of gambling Klingons. I must say I was impressed with the character's portrayal here, so much so that I believed in this character more as Voq than I do as Tyler; he really makes a quite natural Klingon, and clearly Michael feels the same way; she's visibly disturbed by Ash's all-too-easy transformation. And here we learn the exact, horrifying circumstances of Michael's central life trauma, the loss of her parents; they were killed by Klingons while she hid in a cupboard. To his credit, Ash Tyler is genuinely disturbed and shamed by this revelation.

Tilly arrives at this point to explain what Georgiou has done, and, fearing the worst, they beam back to Discovery to simulate the effect of the bomb: it would wreak massive destruction, probably killing most of the population and forcing the rest to evacuate. Burnham asks Saru to open a channel to Admiral Cornwell, who confirms that Georgiou's plan is endorsed by the desperate Federation Council.

Burnham threatens mutiny, this time to end a war rather than to start it. Cornwell asks what Burnham would suggest...

What if They Started a War and Nobody Came? 
This is where the episode goes completely off the rails. Burnham makes her way to the shrine and confronts Georgiou, who has already dropped the bomb-carrying drown down a well into the planet's depths. Burnham begs Georgiou not to detonate the bomb, and gives her proof that the Federation will still give her her freedom even if she doesn't destroy Qo'nos. Instead, she must hand over the detonator to...L'Rell, who arrives with Ash Tyler. Smirking, Georgiou agrees, heading off to wreak havoc in season two, one presumes.

Burnham offers the detonator to L'Rell, saying that the Klingon can consolidate power by holding the doomsday weapon as a trump card against the divided Klingon houses. To my shock, L'Rell agrees, and she and Ash Tyler go off to unite the fractured Klingon Empire. With a metaphorical shrug, the Klingons on Earth's doorstep turn around and head home.

This development might have been believable if L'Rell hadn't been presented as a war-mongering xenophobe from the first episode. Why in the world wouldn't L'Rell just keep the detonator and continue the war, wiping out humanity for good and then disabling the bomb? Failing that, why didn't the writers have Ash Tyler/Voq convince L'Rell to end the war by offering to stay with her? L'Rell clearly adored Voq, and I can believe that she would do anything for him, even this. This would also have been a nice resolution for Tyler--a way to pay the price for the acts he committed in the Voq persona. And it would have taken all of 30 seconds' worth of dialogue.

The war ends, Discovery heads home to Earth, and Michael Burnham gets her rank restored while everyone else on the ship gets medals. This was a nice scene--it's always great to see how the showrunners visualize future Earth--but for some reason, Michael makes an inspirational speech, when really you think the Admiral or Saru (poor, disrespected, best character Saru) would be the more logical choice in this context.

The show almost saves itself with an eleventh-hour cliffhanger that's pure high-octane fan service, but the war's resolution is so distracting and nonsensical that I really wasn't in the mood for the tease. And that's too bad, because it sets up some pretty interesting possibilities for season two.

Final Frontier Thoughts
While some of this first season's twists and turns have annoyed me--the war's resolution, the inability of the writers to pin down what they were trying to do with Tyler, and Lorca's heel-turn chief among them--there's still a lot to like about this opening storyline. I genuinely like most of the characters, with Saru and Tilly being my favourites, followed by Stamets, Tyler (despite reservations about his arc), and Burnham...though I don't like her as much as I feel I should, considering she's the lead. I don't blame Sonequa Martin-Green for this; she's a fine actress, but the writers have made her deliberately unsympathetic for much of the first season, and playing a human raised by Vulcans, she comes off as pretty cold; colder, even, than Leonard Nimoy's Spock, who somehow managed to express his character's humour and humanity from his second appearance onward. (He feels a bit stilted in "The Cage.")

I'm also finding that it's difficult to name truly standout episodes that work outside the context of the season's arc. I can name two dozen or more classic episodes from the other Star Trek shows, but nothing in this first season really works unless you sit down and watch the whole thing. That's the nature of television these days, of course, so I don't blame the showrunners for it; but I do feel that something has been lost.

None of my friends will be surprised that I'll keep watching--I made it through Voyager's seven mediocre seasons, after all--but I'm not watching out of duty; I think this could become a great show, with more careful forethought on the part of the writers and producers, and perhaps - please - the infusion of some more science-fictional ideas. Star Trek works very well as a mirror for our present-day foibles, but it should also spend time living up to its initial premise, exploring the final frontier and simply asking us to marvel at whatever scientifically plausible marvels await our descendants. Maybe they can explore why future humanity hasn't lost itself to VR or runaway nanotech or artificial intelligence, or why people still get bald or grow fat; there has to be a sociological or scientific reason for that. Or show us a quasar, or the birth of a solar system, or just visit a geologically interesting moon. Something. I love space opera, but let's see some giant space amoebas or sentient rocks from time to time, you know? 

Maybe the writers will surprise us. See you next season! 

What's Passed is Prologue?

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S

"WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE"

Here's a little extra spoiler space for those who see this on Google Plus...

And so the U.S.S. Discovery's excursion to the Mirror Universe ends as I was afraid it would: serviceably, and not without considerable entertainment value, but stopping short of excellence. 

Holding Up a Mirror to Ourselves

"What's Past is Prologue" concludes the Mirror Universe arc with Gabriel Lorca plays his final hand: unleashing a violent coup to take over the I.S.S. Charon and overthrow Emperor Georgiou. The action is well-orchestrated and effectively violent; people are exposed to biological weapons, knifed to death, and vaporized by phaser fire; it's all as awful and ugly as it should be. It is also, however, somewhat contrived. The plot is constructed in such a way as to give Michael Burnham victory despite overwhelming odds: she wins over the Emperor and they essentially win out with fisticuffs and swordfighting. It's a little tough to swallow. 

That being said, the scenes aboard the Discovery, with Saru taking command of the ship, were extremely well done; Doug Jones really shines as Saru in this episode, throwing shade at Lorca and delivering a truly inclusive and inspiring speech to the crew before they head into battle to rescue Burnham, destroy the Charon, and make the jump back to their home universe. The climactic sequence is well-staged, exciting, and comes with a surprise twist that had me leaning forward in my chair...only to slump back, disappointed, in the final moments. More on that below. 

With the conclusion of the Mirror Universe arc and the upcoming (one assumes) end of the Klingon War in the episodes to come, it's transparently clear that this first season of Star Trek: Discovery has been intended to serve as commentary on the world's currently upside-down political realities, with the rule of law, secular pluralism, and scientific rationalism under threat more openly than it has been for quite some time. (None of these threats are new, and one could argue that freedom, prosperity and democracy have long been somewhat illusory or at least unevenly distributed, but it's been a while since it's been at the forefront of public consciousness.) The allegory has been somewhat ham-handed, but then Star Trek has never been subtle; in fact, some might say that ham-handed allegory is the series' stock in trade. And while getting older has made me more cynical, the show gives me hope for the future despite its failings. In this case, it's that scene with Saru motivating the Discovery's crew, and Michael Burnham's anguished sincerity in believing in the angels of our better natures. She even rescues Emperor Georgiou, despite knowing she's a murderous cannibal--that's how much she believes in redemption and in the value of life, even evil life. (Of course, it's also true she has selfish emotional motives in play; but characters in Star Trek have always been imperfect.) 

 

Reflections on Mirror Lorca

I had hoped that Captain Lorca, once revealed as a native of the Mirror Universe, would turn out to be supporting the coalition of rebels fighting the Terran Empire, which might have added some shades of grey to the story; imagine what an endorsement of Federation values it could have been if Lorca changed his original plan and forswore his imperial ambitions? 

But no, Lorca was a wannabe dictator all along. There is a great moment, though, just before Lorca dies, when Burnham, confronting him, says that if he had just asked, the Federation would have helped Lorca get home. Jason Isaacs' reaction to this news is great; you can see on Lorca's face that asking simply never occurred to him, but given his experiences in the Federation, he realizes that Burnham is telling the truth. He doesn't say so (nor does he have much chance to, as he's killed by the Emperor moments later), but Isaacs' performance speaks volumes here. I'm going to miss him, and I hope we get to see him return as the yet-unseen original universe Lorca. 

A digression: I want to commend the sound designers of this episode for mixing in some old-school sound effects from the original series--a nice, nostalgic touch. 

Back Through the Looking Glass

When Discovery returns to the prime universe, they discover that they've overshot the mark...arriving much later than they had anticipated. This is when I leaned forward in my seat; I knew that Bryan Fuller's original plan had been to produce an anthology show that visited the various Star Trek eras, and I thought maybe Discovery had jumped forward 10 years, to the time of the original series, which would have utterly blown my mind. Unfortunately, they only missed nine months, and so the last two episodes of the first season will doubtlessly conclude with the wrap-up of the war with the Klingons. 

I know my initial hopes were unrealistic, but just imagine how cool it would have been if the writers had developed a strategy to make a Trek anthology work. Handled properly, it could have tapped into the powerful nostalgia that helps make the show work, while also using our current reality as a lens through which to re-evaluate that nostalgia and the Trek shows that preceded Discovery. 

I suppose, though, that would have broken the show's budget, and it may have failed utterly. But it could have been cool...

Here's where I tie this review back to the pun in the title. You can guess where this is leading: what we've seen so far from Star Trek: Discovery this year--what's passed--may or may not foreshadow what we can expect to see in season two. Depending on your response to the show, that may be (in my case) good television that falls just short of greatness, or more disappointment if you think the series has fallen short this initial season. The show may not be perfect, but it's trying to bring something new to a series with literally hundreds of episodes. I applaud the showrunners for their efforts thus far, even if they sometimes miss the mark. 

Faulting Ambition

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S

"VAULTING AMBITION"

In "Vaulting Ambition," Michael Burnham, Captain Lorca, and the rest of the U.S.S. Discovery's crew are still trapped in the Mirror Universe, searching for a way home while hoping to avoid being revealed as intruders by the vile cutthroats of the Terran Empire. To that end, Lorca and Burnham infiltrate the I.S.S. Charon, the gigantic flagship of Emperor Phillipa Georgiou in the hopes of finding the data that will give them a way home. 

Kudos, by the way, to whoever designed the Charon. It's a city in the sky powered by a small sun, and looks much like a dark, floating castle; it's beautiful but malign, and exactly the sort of vessel you might expect an evil empire to build. 

Using a gambit as old as fiction, Burnham poses as her own evil self, with Lorca posing as her prisoner, delivering Lorca into the Emperor's talons - or more accurately, into an agony booth. As a reward, Emperor Georgiou invites Burnham for dinner...

Burnham discovers the meal she's been genuinely enjoying with the evil version of her beloved former captain Phillipa Georgiou is cooked Kelpian, essentially turning Burnham into a cannibal who's just eaten, if unknowingly, the flesh of a sapient being. In the context of Burnham and company's current predicament, the story beat makes an awful kind of sense, viscerally illustrating the perversity of the Terran Empire. Even so, I found the idea gratuitous - surely the torture, genocide and backstabbing already established in the Empire is enough to signify their evil? 

Meanwhile, Stamets' consciousness is trapped in the mycelial network, where he meets his own Mirror Universe counterpart, who is similarly trapped. After a tearful (and well acted, I thought) encounter with a vision of his murdered partner Doctor Culber, Stamets manages to break out of his coma (and so, too, does his counterpart), only to discover that the Discovery's supply of mushrooms has been corrupted. This could be why the spore drive is nowhere to be seen in future iterations of Star Trek...

Back on the Charon, Georgiou figures out that Burnham is up to something, and prepares to execute her. Out of desperation, Burnham reveals that she's from a parallel universe, prompting Georgiou to spare her. Because of the crossover of the U.S.S. Defiant into the Mirror Universe a century ago, Georgiou knows about the prime universe, and one senses that she's eager to conquer it. So she and Burnham make a deal; Georgiou will hand over the Defiant files to help the Discovery get home, if the Discovery crew hands over the secret of the spore drive. Hopefully Burnham isn't dumb enough to believe the Emperor will hold up her end of the bargain...

This episode also confirms what some fans suspected: that the Gabriel Lorca we've been watching this whole season is, in fact, a native of the Mirror Universe, and he deliberately engineered the Discovery's crossover so that he could...well, the jury is out. Either Lorca wants to take the throne for himself and rule as an evil dictator, or he could be on the side of the rebels and want to restore freedom to his universe. We'll see, but his behaviour as the episode concludes is so brutal that I suspect we're meant to see Mirror Lorca as irredeemable, especially since Georgiou earlier claimed that Lorca "groomed" Mirror Burnham to be his lover/protege, a word choice with connotations so disturbing it essentially ruins Lorca's character if true. 

Finally, this episode was really, really short, clocking in at under 40 minutes. I miss the days when an hour-long show was closer to 52 minutes...

While I'm still enjoying Discovery, I'm finding that the Mirror Universe works best in small doses. Hopefully the Discovery gets home next episode, with this particular plot resolved - save for Lorca's fate. I hope we get to see the "good" version of Gabriel Lorca; I'd love to see Jason Isaacs tackle that. 

Confronting The Wolf Inside

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S 

"THE WOLF INSIDE"

"The Wolf Inside" establishes definitively that poor Ash Tyler was the Klingon Voq all along, surgically altered and overlaid with Tyler's personality to appear human. To my mind, this somewhat blunts what I thought was an important and interesting examination of post-traumatic stress disorder, trading it for subterfuge and intrigue. Everyone saw this coming, so I'm not surprised, but I am somewhat disappointed. 

On the other hand, this revelation (or rather, clarification) certainly raises the stakes for Michael Burnham, who, on top of all her other issues, now knows she fell in love with a Klingon spy, with all the attendant betrayal that entails. To complicate matters still further, it appears as though the Ash Tyler personality implant/overlay is making it hard for Voq to take control, or at least to maintain it. And now that he's been revealed, surely Tyler/Voq has been neutralized as a threat, which makes you wonder where this story was going in the first place. 

On to other matters. This week, the Discovery's crew continues their mission to steal the technological data necessary to make their way back to the so-called "prime" universe without falling afoul of their evil counterparts. To that end, Michael Burnham makes contact with something she calls a "coalition of hope," the assembled Mirror Klingons, Andorians, Tellarites and Vulcans who stand in opposition to the evil Terran Empire, the our peaceful Federation's dark counterpart. 

As in last week's episode, the creators manage to create a palpable sense of jeopardy for our heroes, trapped in a dark reflection of their own reality; "Even the light is different," Burnham remarks. First Officer Saru's Mirror counterpart serves as slave labour in this reality, denied even a name. And we continue to be shown the duplicitous and savage nature of the human beings in this universe, who show not the smallest fraction of the humanity and compassion displayed by the alien rebels. If nothing else, this storyline comes at an opportune time, as people in our reality are reminded once again that we are often our own worst enemies. 

There's a bit of derring-do bait-and-switch action in this episode that fooled me in a delightful way at a pivotal moment, and the final reveal was, if somewhat predictable, still powerful - and puzzling, given Captain Lorca's sinister, smiling reaction to seeing the face of power in the Mirror Universe. One gets the impression that Lorca has been planning this journey all along...

There's one more note of mystery as we see the internal voyage of coma-ridden Stamets, who meets with a duplicate - perhaps from the Mirror Universe, perhaps not - in a hallucinatory alien forest. What wonders might unfold here? 

While not as strong as the previous pair of outings, "The Wolf Inside" remains solid, if uneven, entertainment. There's certainly a lot to unpack in each episode of Discovery, so much so that it may take until the end of the first season to see if it all hangs together in a coherent and satisfying way. 

Enjoying "Despite Yourself" Despite Myself

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S

"DESPITE YOURSELF" 

Star Trek: Discovery returned this week by paying off two of the worst-kept secrets about the show: Ash Tyler's reveal as a Klingon Manchurian Candidate, and the appearance of the infamous Mirror Universe. One of these developments was handled with great panache; the other presents viewers with some troublesome subtext. 

First, the good. Following the events of "Into the Forest We Go," the Discovery finds herself lost in space, jumping not to Starbase 46 as intended, but into a field of starship debris. Captain Lorca orders Ash Tyler to retrieve a data core from one of the stricken ships, and the intelligence in the core reveals that they've jumped to a parallel universe, specifically one longtime viewers are familiar with: the dreaded Mirror Universe, home to the fascistic Terran Empire. Realizing their peril, Lorca and company react with commendable logic, reskinning the ship and manufacturing uniforms to make themselves indistinguishable from the I.S.S. Discovery they have inadvertently displaced (into the prime Star Trek universe, they theorize; who knows what mischief that crew will perpetrate in "our" universe?) 

My highest commendation goes to the costuming department this time around - the Mirror Universe uniforms are amazing, with a corruptive allure that it's difficult (but necessary) to resist. It's also fun to see Sylvia Tilly being forced to act against her nature by playing the Discovery's captain, as she apparently is in this universe, having backstabbed her way up the chain of command. The dreaded agony booths of the original "Mirror, Mirror" also appear in this episode, and they are genuinely terrifying. 

I was surprised and delighted most, though, by the reference to the U.S.S. Defiant, which as Star Trek: Enterprise viewers will remember, was captured by the evil versions of Jonathan Archer and Hoshi Sato in that series' fourth (and best) season. Naturally the ship's appearance confuses Lorca, Burnham, and company, since from their perspective the Defiant is currently still on normal duty back in their home universe. They don't know what the audience knows, namely that the Defiant was thrown back in time and into the Mirror Universe some dozen years in the future (from their perspective). These are the kind of wacky hijinks that are only possible in science fiction, and only then in long-form storytelling like this. At this point, Star Trek has become a period piece, in a sense, a setting with a reasonably consistent history, look, and feel. Continuity callbacks are important because they acknowledge the established reality of the setting, and respecting continuity gives writers the obstacles and complications that are often necessary to create good material. Yes, it's also shameless fan service, but it works for me here. 

As for Ash Tyler's story, I'm somewhat disappointed because the reveal does, in my mind, undercut the PTSD storyline that was so essential to his character. Now, given that we still don't know the exact nature of Tyler/Voq's...existence...perhaps this reveal can still remain thematically satisfying. It really depends on how the writers develop the character from this point forward. It appears as though Tyler/Voq's body is Klingon, surgically altered to appear human, with Ash Tyler's memory engrams/personality/soul overlaid on top of the original Voq personality. Depending on your spiritual point of view, you could argue that this person is really the Klingon Voq, with a ghost imprinted on his brain; or, you could argue that Tyler is, in a sense, still alive, only living in Voq's altered body. 

If Voq is written as the real person, then Tyler's story becomes even more tragic, since we never really met him. On the other hand, if Tyler's engrams/personality/soul/whatever are presented as "real," then Tyler's story...becomes even more tragic, since he suffered all that torture and was also ripped from his physical body and stuck in a Klingon. 

I imagine the two personalities will fight over who gets to keep the physical meatspace, but philosophically this is a hugely complicated mess, to put it mildly. But again, this is the sort of story that science fiction was designed to handle. 

Sadly, when Dr. Culber realizes something is up, Tyler promptly snaps his neck - a surprising shock moment, to be sure, but one that brings to an abrupt end the notion of whether or not his relationship with Stamets can be sensitively handled in a satisfying way. 

Or does it? I immediately thought of the "kill your gays" trope when Culber died, but according to actor Wilson Cruz and writer Aaroc Harberts, there's more to Culber's death than meets the eye, and Harberts and Cruz, both gay men themselves, were quick to say that this isn't what's happening, and furthermore, that Cruz will return. They're not going to replace Culber with a Mirror Culber, so maybe he's not dead and his neck is just broken? Hmmm. 

This is the first episode of Discovery to be directed by Jonathan Frakes, AKA Will Riker, who started directing episodes way back during the days of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Frakes has a reputation for adding a dark sort of flair to his episodes, and he was clearly well-suited to "Despite Yourself." The episode manages to be campy fun and loomingly creepy at the same time - no mean feat. 

So, despite my reservations, I feel like this was another surprisingly solid outing for Star Trek: Discovery. If the Empress of the Terran Empire turns out to be a descendant of evil Hoshi Sato, well, I'll be pretty darn impressed. 

Parallel Enterprises