Star Trek Discovery Season 1 Review: Episodes 3-4

It’s odd to have such a dark, warlike tone on a show with such an uplifting main-theme. It’s weirdly contradictory.

On the positive side, the show has managed to open up its cast a little more in the past couple episodes and it’s starting to feel like a more traditional “crew.” We met the ship’s doctor finally, though he’s not given much to work with. A few of the bridge officers are given lines and reaction shots, though we don’t learn any of their names. It no longer feels like a ship solely comprised of evil-doers; chief-engineer Stamets is humanized a bit more and even becomes mildly sympathetic, though his character’s dialogue was far too blunt in this week’s episode.

There’s no depth to any of the cast outside the core trio of Michael, Cpt. Lorca and Commander. Saru, but I suppose that’s in the tradition of “Kirk/Spock/McCoy” taking up the lion’s share of the TOS screentime. On the other hand, there was a clear co-dependence to the TOS trio that gave that show its identity: Kirk was the human being pulled by McCoy’s fiery passion on one side and Spock’s cold logic on the other; Spock and McCoy individually with Kirk offered their own magical scenes, while their own scenes together were a different sort of treat. You don’t get that dynamic with “Michael/Lorca/Saru,” in fact the trio haven’t even had a single substantial scene together. So they’re not a trio so much as just three separate characters who are going to receive the majority of the screen-time. That feels like a missed opportunity.

On the other hand, who knows how long any of them will live. Just when it seemed like Commander Landry was going to go on a season-long character arc—from cold-hearted to contemplative—she gets offed in the most ludicrous way possible, and leaves the series (or at least seems to) in a most undignified manner. More on that in a bit.

The Klingons are back, thankfully, but I’m struggling to see the value in their storyline. I suppose the idea is to humanize the villains, but I wonder if it won’t backfire. I spent half the episode thinking of Voq (the Klingon disciple of T’Kuvma) as a sympathetic character, if not a protagonist, while Lorca, the captain of the titular ship, was positioned as the baddie. Black is white; up is down.

We found out at the end of the previous episode that the big secret project on Discovery is not a new weapon but a new warp drive. “Ohhhh!” all the Trekkies said, “so it was a headfake; they’re not developing a weapon at all! How un-Trek would that have been ha ha ha.”

It’s just a new warp drive that allows them to get the jump on enemies and kill them faster.

Oh. That’s…better?

Wouldn’t it be something if this new warp drive could be used to explore? How silly would that be; just exploring the galaxy, landing on planets filled with allegorical morals of the week and occasional bad guys to skirmish with. But I guess the point of the show is to avoid doing the traditional Trekkian thing. I guess the point is that the captain is supposed to be bad. But am I supposed to like it? Am I supposed to enjoy it? Lorca’s villainy may be intentional, but is it also intentional that I’m rooting for the albino Klingon? That can’t be intended.

What cripples this episode and what makes me worry for the rest of the season is the poor writing across the board. Not just the dialogue, but the plotting is really lacking, especially in the common-sense department. Case in point is the needless (in-story) death of Commander Landry. I think I understand the end-game the writers were hoping to achieve: They wanted to get us to the point where Michael would risk her life to prove the creature is harmless unless it’s provoked. Having the creature kill Landry raises the stakes when Michael herself approaches it later. I understand the thought-process but it’s still reaching an end through very bad means. Lorca even says to Michael “don’t let her death be in vain.” Uh, her death was in vain.  She was an over-aggressive moron who let a monster out of its cage in order to cut off its big toe. What did she think was going to happen? Of course it attacked her and promptly ripped her to shreds.

Remember when Tasha Yar died by the oil slick monster and it was sudden and arbitrary? That at least was used to express a point about the universe: Sometimes evil just kills without care or purpose. It was a senseless death in-story, but it taught a lesson to the audience. That’s good science fiction.

This was just an idiot doing something idiotic and dying because of it.

The show is trying to tell a story about understanding a monstrous looking alien instead of judging it by its looks. It’s trying to tell a story about how it’s wrong to torture an innocent creature (warp drive by way of nipple twisting!) in order to placate “the greater good.” You can see the “want-to” all over the episode, but it stumbles because of shoddy writing, plain and simple.

But at least the visuals are still cool.

7/10