Star Trek should be better than this. Star Trek is better than this.
By way of a recap: last episode, we learned that the USS Discovery and her sister ship were working on (and this is not a typo) a fungus-based propulsion system that would allow starships to instantaneously teleport anywhere in the galaxy. An accident occurs aboard Discovery’s sister ship, and Discovery is sent to investigate. The boarding party discovers a derelict vessel filled with many dead humans, a few dead Klingons, and a creature that appears to be a cross between a hippopotamus and a beetle. Shenanigans that look remarkably like “Alien” ensue, but, somehow, the landing party (minus one red shirt) manages to survive and return to Discovery. The final scene reveals that Captain Lorca has ordered his somehow-even-creepier-than-he-is security chief to beam the hippopotabeetle into a containment cell in what appears to be his own personal Menagerie of Death. There might also be some pontificating by chief engineer Stamets about how he just wanted to do science and not fight a war. I can’t quite remember. Cut to black.
In this episode, Captain Lorca invites Specialist* Burnham into the Menagerie of Death (which is actually a museum containing “the deadliest weapons in the galaxy”). He wants her to figure out how the hippoptabeetle’s skin is “hard enough to deflect Bat’Leths” and why its claws can “tear through a starship’s hull.” He wants her to weaponize these abilities. Burnham does some science and, in the truest tradition of Star Trek, discovers that the hippopotabeetle isn’t a predator, but an herbivore with a very good defense mechanism. In fact, the hippopotabeetle is the key to making the fungus drive work. She convinces Chief Engineer Stamets to connect his engines to the hippopotabeetle and, whammo! my prediction that fungal-based teleportation will not work because Captain Kirk doesn’t do it is proven incorrect (new prediction: Captain Kirk doesn’tt use fungal teleportation because doing so appears to inflict pain on the hippopotabeetle and this is Star Trek and inflicting needless pain on beetles is wrong).
*Michael Burnham has been stripped of rank. I will call her a “specialist” until I am told to do otherwise, though I believe that word actually does mean something specific in the military.
None of this is objectionable. It is, in fact, the bare minimum of pseudo-science and pseudo-ethical conundrums one needs to fall in the “is Star Trek” circle on the Venn diagram in my mind. What is objectionable is the wtf-ex-machina used to inject drama into this plotline. Turns out, creepy-as-f@#$& security chief is a soldier and she doesn’t buy any of Burnham’s Vulcan space ethics nonsense. She is going to stun the hippopotabeetle and cut off one of its claws because that is how you win wars. The flaw in her plan (besides the fact that it is cruel) is that the hippopotabeetle cannot be stunned and its claws can still rip through starship hulls. Creepy-as-f@#$& security chief does not survive the encounter. This is good because, as you can tell, she was annoyingly one-dimensional. This is bad because she was the only other named woman in the cast who was not white (not that I bothered to learn her name because, as I already mentioned, she was annoyingly one dimensional). I get that sometimes you write characters just to kill them. This is, after all, the franchise that gave “red shirt” a meaning outside of college football. However, it is just common courtesy to respect your audience’s intelligence enough not to telegraph that this is a throw away character by making her so unbelievable that we want her to die so that we can go on trying to enjoy your television show.
Meanwhile, back in the wreckage of the space-battle from the pilot episode, we discover that T’Kuvma’s ship is still crippled, his followers are still on board, and both the Federation and the Klingons left every ship that was destroyed or crippled in the battle just sort of drifting there. We know this latter fact because T’Kuvma’s appointed successor, Voq, has been scavenging the derelicts for parts to fix his crippled vessel before his/T’Kuvma’s followers all starve to death. Did I mention that T’Kuvma’s ship, the one that the Klingons left behind for anyone to find, is apparently the only one with a cloaking device? During World War 2, the allies went to great effort to make sure the Germans did not know that they had captured a functioning enigma device. The Klingons just left their only enigma device (okay, bad metaphor) drifting in space for anyone to find. It’s okay, though. Voq and another Klingon manage to fix T’Kuvma’s ship through a combination of eye-fornicating and scavenging parts off of the Shenzhou, Michelle Yeoh’s ship, which the Federation left behind for anyone to find. I once got in a debate about whether or not Starfleet was a military organization. My argument was “no.” The man I was debating with thought I was making the “Starfleet’s missions has always been one of peace" argument. I wasn’t. I was making the “Starfleet is terrible at behaving like a military” argument. Turns out, I was right.
Eventually, a member of one of the other Klingon great houses (one who ostentatiously refused to follow T’Kuvma in the pilot) realizes that the Klingons left their single greatest weapon just drifting in space and comes back to claim it, buying off T’Kuvma’s starving followers with food. There’s some palace intrigue between this newcomer (I think his name was Kor*), Voq, and Voq’s eye-lover (I know I should learn her name, but I am not rewatching this episode; not for any amount of money). It ends with a promise to the viewers that Voq is going to go find some Klingon nuns who will teach him how to truly unite the Klingon empire. This plot is actually fine. It’s fun to see an alien culture in flux, but I have the same worry I have expressed from the beginning that I don’t see how these Klingons become Kang, Koloth, and Korr in just eight years and I don’t know why these Klingons couldn’t represent a nationalist revanchement several decades after Martok.
*Oh, wow, if this ends up being Korr from “Errand of Mercy,” I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it might involve impolite words.
Reading these words, it seems like I am giving this episode a passing grade. I am not. I did not enjoy it. The nonsense with the security chief dragged on too long, keeping me in mortal terror that I was going to be stuck with this character and her total lack of believable motivations for many episodes to come. There was a subplot involving an attack on a Federation dilithium mine which served only to provide pressure on the “what is the hippopotabeetle?” plot and to set up an overwrought argument between Captain Lorca and his chief engineer about whether they were scientists or soldiers. In summary: this episode had all of the pretentiousness of Star Trek with none of the levity. My wife reminds me that, at this point in Star Trek: the Next Generation (my first great geek love), we still had “Code of Honor” to look forward to, so, I guess, as long as we can avoid adding “explicitly racist” to the list of invectives I hurl at any given episode, we’re ahead of the curve. I like to think, though, that we have learned things about storytelling in the last 30 years and that I am justified in holding this show to a slightly higher standard. Or maybe I am just stodgy.
One other red flag that went up for me: in the course of getting caught up on what has happened in the six months of story time since the pilot, we learn that Voq and his crew ate Michelle Yeoh’s body. I am going to go with the generous interpretation that they were starving. If Klingons now eat other sentient beings for fun or ritual, that would be a bridge too far in the direction of the “Klingons as ‘savages’” direction for me. I have a haunting feeling that the Klingons are going to be stand-ins for one or more of the peoples on the receiving end of Manifest Destiny (remember, this is still Roddenberry’s “wagon train to the stars”). I’m not sure I yet trust Star Trek to tell that story respectfully.
By way of a recap: last episode, we learned that the USS Discovery and her sister ship were working on (and this is not a typo) a fungus-based propulsion system that would allow starships to instantaneously teleport anywhere in the galaxy. An accident occurs aboard Discovery’s sister ship, and Discovery is sent to investigate. The boarding party discovers a derelict vessel filled with many dead humans, a few dead Klingons, and a creature that appears to be a cross between a hippopotamus and a beetle. Shenanigans that look remarkably like “Alien” ensue, but, somehow, the landing party (minus one red shirt) manages to survive and return to Discovery. The final scene reveals that Captain Lorca has ordered his somehow-even-creepier-than-he-is security chief to beam the hippopotabeetle into a containment cell in what appears to be his own personal Menagerie of Death. There might also be some pontificating by chief engineer Stamets about how he just wanted to do science and not fight a war. I can’t quite remember. Cut to black.
In this episode, Captain Lorca invites Specialist* Burnham into the Menagerie of Death (which is actually a museum containing “the deadliest weapons in the galaxy”). He wants her to figure out how the hippoptabeetle’s skin is “hard enough to deflect Bat’Leths” and why its claws can “tear through a starship’s hull.” He wants her to weaponize these abilities. Burnham does some science and, in the truest tradition of Star Trek, discovers that the hippopotabeetle isn’t a predator, but an herbivore with a very good defense mechanism. In fact, the hippopotabeetle is the key to making the fungus drive work. She convinces Chief Engineer Stamets to connect his engines to the hippopotabeetle and, whammo! my prediction that fungal-based teleportation will not work because Captain Kirk doesn’t do it is proven incorrect (new prediction: Captain Kirk doesn’tt use fungal teleportation because doing so appears to inflict pain on the hippopotabeetle and this is Star Trek and inflicting needless pain on beetles is wrong).
*Michael Burnham has been stripped of rank. I will call her a “specialist” until I am told to do otherwise, though I believe that word actually does mean something specific in the military.
None of this is objectionable. It is, in fact, the bare minimum of pseudo-science and pseudo-ethical conundrums one needs to fall in the “is Star Trek” circle on the Venn diagram in my mind. What is objectionable is the wtf-ex-machina used to inject drama into this plotline. Turns out, creepy-as-f@#$& security chief is a soldier and she doesn’t buy any of Burnham’s Vulcan space ethics nonsense. She is going to stun the hippopotabeetle and cut off one of its claws because that is how you win wars. The flaw in her plan (besides the fact that it is cruel) is that the hippopotabeetle cannot be stunned and its claws can still rip through starship hulls. Creepy-as-f@#$& security chief does not survive the encounter. This is good because, as you can tell, she was annoyingly one-dimensional. This is bad because she was the only other named woman in the cast who was not white (not that I bothered to learn her name because, as I already mentioned, she was annoyingly one dimensional). I get that sometimes you write characters just to kill them. This is, after all, the franchise that gave “red shirt” a meaning outside of college football. However, it is just common courtesy to respect your audience’s intelligence enough not to telegraph that this is a throw away character by making her so unbelievable that we want her to die so that we can go on trying to enjoy your television show.
Meanwhile, back in the wreckage of the space-battle from the pilot episode, we discover that T’Kuvma’s ship is still crippled, his followers are still on board, and both the Federation and the Klingons left every ship that was destroyed or crippled in the battle just sort of drifting there. We know this latter fact because T’Kuvma’s appointed successor, Voq, has been scavenging the derelicts for parts to fix his crippled vessel before his/T’Kuvma’s followers all starve to death. Did I mention that T’Kuvma’s ship, the one that the Klingons left behind for anyone to find, is apparently the only one with a cloaking device? During World War 2, the allies went to great effort to make sure the Germans did not know that they had captured a functioning enigma device. The Klingons just left their only enigma device (okay, bad metaphor) drifting in space for anyone to find. It’s okay, though. Voq and another Klingon manage to fix T’Kuvma’s ship through a combination of eye-fornicating and scavenging parts off of the Shenzhou, Michelle Yeoh’s ship, which the Federation left behind for anyone to find. I once got in a debate about whether or not Starfleet was a military organization. My argument was “no.” The man I was debating with thought I was making the “Starfleet’s missions has always been one of peace" argument. I wasn’t. I was making the “Starfleet is terrible at behaving like a military” argument. Turns out, I was right.
Eventually, a member of one of the other Klingon great houses (one who ostentatiously refused to follow T’Kuvma in the pilot) realizes that the Klingons left their single greatest weapon just drifting in space and comes back to claim it, buying off T’Kuvma’s starving followers with food. There’s some palace intrigue between this newcomer (I think his name was Kor*), Voq, and Voq’s eye-lover (I know I should learn her name, but I am not rewatching this episode; not for any amount of money). It ends with a promise to the viewers that Voq is going to go find some Klingon nuns who will teach him how to truly unite the Klingon empire. This plot is actually fine. It’s fun to see an alien culture in flux, but I have the same worry I have expressed from the beginning that I don’t see how these Klingons become Kang, Koloth, and Korr in just eight years and I don’t know why these Klingons couldn’t represent a nationalist revanchement several decades after Martok.
*Oh, wow, if this ends up being Korr from “Errand of Mercy,” I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it might involve impolite words.
Reading these words, it seems like I am giving this episode a passing grade. I am not. I did not enjoy it. The nonsense with the security chief dragged on too long, keeping me in mortal terror that I was going to be stuck with this character and her total lack of believable motivations for many episodes to come. There was a subplot involving an attack on a Federation dilithium mine which served only to provide pressure on the “what is the hippopotabeetle?” plot and to set up an overwrought argument between Captain Lorca and his chief engineer about whether they were scientists or soldiers. In summary: this episode had all of the pretentiousness of Star Trek with none of the levity. My wife reminds me that, at this point in Star Trek: the Next Generation (my first great geek love), we still had “Code of Honor” to look forward to, so, I guess, as long as we can avoid adding “explicitly racist” to the list of invectives I hurl at any given episode, we’re ahead of the curve. I like to think, though, that we have learned things about storytelling in the last 30 years and that I am justified in holding this show to a slightly higher standard. Or maybe I am just stodgy.
One other red flag that went up for me: in the course of getting caught up on what has happened in the six months of story time since the pilot, we learn that Voq and his crew ate Michelle Yeoh’s body. I am going to go with the generous interpretation that they were starving. If Klingons now eat other sentient beings for fun or ritual, that would be a bridge too far in the direction of the “Klingons as ‘savages’” direction for me. I have a haunting feeling that the Klingons are going to be stand-ins for one or more of the peoples on the receiving end of Manifest Destiny (remember, this is still Roddenberry’s “wagon train to the stars”). I’m not sure I yet trust Star Trek to tell that story respectfully.
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