Star Trek: Discovery 2.02

[selenak]

In which Discovery tackles several Star Trek tropes at once.



To wit: Prime Directive, Science vs Religion, A Planet Just Like Earth. Any of these can result in both blunders and actually good episodes, so I was a bit nervous. As it turns out, I liked the result. (Mind you, I can still nitpick – this combination of five different human religions backstory might sound good in theory, but in practice, how did that work? Which dogmas were jettisoned, because some had to be to make said religions compatible, and how did the original believers accept this? Because they had to be pretty central ones. Jesus is either the Messiah and Son of God (Christianity), or the last Prophet before Mohammed (Islam), declared by the Qu’ran explicitly NOT to be the son of God, you can’t have it both ways, to name but two.) It was a good outing for our gang, and a continuation of this season’s apparant mission to individualize and flesh out the bridge crew beyond our main regulars some more.

I also appreciated that Michael, who last season was justly incensed about Tyler not telling her about his terrible mental state until it was too late, wasn’t portrayed as a hypocrite in this regard but by the end of the episode told Pike what she’d seen. It was also worth noting that while she did disagree with Pike re: whether or not they should reveal themselves, she didn’t disobey his orders. Conversely, Pike listened to her arguments and in the end told Jacob, aka the one person who really wanted to know. This strikes civilian me as a good commander-officer relationship. Speaking of Jacob, since I had watched the short webisode about Saru’s origin, I was grumbling what the difference between Saru and Jacob was in terms of a Prime Directive situation. (If you haven’t watched it, basically: Saru comes from a society which hasn’t developed warp drive of its own yet, but he used abandoned tech from space ships to send out a contact request to alien-to-him life, which is how Georgiou found him and took him with her.) But while the episode didn’t point that out since Saru was in another plot line, Pike thankfully came to the conclusion he owed Jacob the truth anyway. Oh, and thanks, show, or not letting our lot just steal the surveillance footage but let Pike ask Jacob for it.

I figured Tilly’s pal Maya (Maeve?) had to be either a hallucination visualizing her inner voice or an avatar of the Red Angel entity, so the reveal at the end was completely unsurprising. (This BSG watcher knows head!people if she sees them.) Since Stamets brought up having seen Culber when he was in the Mycellium network, and having taken this first as the network just using Culber’s image but now having doubts, I assume this is how the show will bring Hugh back. Though given Discovery wasn’t in the network when Hugh was killed, I’m not clear of how that is supposed to work.

Michael's continuing Vulcan family drama: you know, Spock responding to having repeated visions by putting himself into a mental institution for check-up hadn't occured to me, and yet it's actually the logical thing to do if you hail from a culture that prides itself on its rationality.

Lastly: yay for inner Trek continuity and not jettisoning World War III. Yes, events have overtaken etc., but it’s pretty central to the ST timeline.

Comments

[hypertwink]

This is the most Star Trek-y, Discovery has ever been, and that's probably why I like it so much. The actor playing Jacob was great, and he's the reason why I almost teared up at the end.

I find it wonderful that STD and The Orville explored First Contact in the same week, resulting in two different outcomes.

[selenak]

Agreed about the actor playing Jacob. I'm so glad the episode didn't patronize the character but left him dignity and agency, both on a Watsonian and Doylist level!

[lynnenne]

I also appreciated that Michael, who last season was justly incensed about Tyler not telling her about his terrible mental state until it was too late, wasn’t portrayed as a hypocrite in this regard but by the end of the episode told Pike what she’d seen.

Oh, I hadn't even thought of that. Good point.

the reveal at the end was completely unsurprising. (This BSG watcher knows head!people if she sees them.)

Heeeeeeee, same.

[selenak]

To be fair to Tyler, while he hadn't told Michael how bad his supposed PTSD had gotten, he did the right thing - consulting a doctor and telling said doctor all he knew about his state. And he got the correct diagnosis. That his inner Voq would then take over and kill the doctor was not something Tyler could have foreseen Happening. Anyway, while we the audience know Michael seeing a red angel wasn't a signal of mental instability, Michael has no way of knowing that, and after the events of last episode, guessing that there is a non-supernatural connection to the mysterious signals makes sense, so it's really good she came clean to Pike. As Lorca would have said, context is for kings. :)

[jainas]

I really enjoyed this episode, and also the fact that it took the time to let the crew shine a little more than usual!
Haha, I love the BSG comparison regarding head!people, it was really obvious.

I keep hearing about the short webisodes, I really must find them.
But it means that if Saru was the one to initiate first contact, then it means that in the mirror-verse he was probably the reason his people were discovered… and turned into a delicacy. That’s truly an horrifying thought, made even worst by the fact that the Emperor chose not to eat *him* and kept him around just for kicks.

[selenak]

That would truly be horrible. And given MirrorSaru serves MirrorMichael on board the Shenzou, would fit with the Emperor's character - i.e. giving him to her daughter as a present. Otoh, what the webisode implies is that other Kelpiens were getting abducted by parties unknown on a regular basis, which they explained religiously. It's just Saru who refuses the "it is what it is, and that's our fate as prey" explanation, draws the correct conclusion from the occasional tech debris and uses it to look for whoever is out there. (Which is how in the Primeverse a young Georgiou finds him.) Presumably that means in the Mirrorverse, Kelpiens might have been discovered by third parties before Saru's attempts to make contact as well, and MirrorSaru would not have to bear that guilt.


...then again, in the Mirrorverse, Terrans might have wiped out whoever in the Primeverse messes with the Kelpians already, and it would be the most twisted counterpart to Primeverse's Saru's realtionship with Primeverse Georgiou imaginable.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

This was a great episode for Burnham and Pike and sold me on their relationship and character development, but I was really irritated by the "religion is for losers with blind faith who don't believe in science" message. I can't tell you how much I long for stories that acknowledge that for most people on this planet, science and religion are compatible systems for handling entirely different sets of questions.

I was also irritated by the idea that a culture that combined all religions into one would code so aggressively as specific subset of Christianity, using figural stained glass windows and other images. (I get that the back story justified the church building, but not the rest of it.) And the image of a big crucifixion scene with small decals symbolizing other faiths was bizarre and Imo offensive.

That said, the actor playing Jacob was great, and he and Burnham did so much with a few exchanged glances. And I really like this format that fits more episodic and Star-Trek-feeling stories into the current Disco long arc. It feels like the show becoming more aware of its strengths.

[selenak]

I hear you on both the way the supposed Religion-mix came across as really Christianity and some tiny nods. I didn't have the impression the message was to be "faith is for losers"; if any ST episode has that one, I'd go for "Who watches the Watchers", or however the episode in which Picard accidentally becomes a god to the Mintakans was called. If anything, I had the impression this episode sold science short not just by juxtaposing it to religion - which as you say isn't true for a great many scientists throughout history -, but by making Jacob the sole embodiment solely due to his heritage. Didn't in 200 years any other research- and invention-minded folk exist? Curiosity and practicality should have produced far more of them.

Mind you, it's entirely possible that the context in which we watch the episode makes all the difference. I mean, it took me over a decade to realise that the DS9 episode in which Winn first appears, where she organizes a protest against Keiko teaching about the Prophets as Aliens in the School, was a sci fi take on the US still having trouble with evangelicals vs Darwin. (Then, and today it's climate change deniers and anti-vaccine people, I suppose) The reason why I was missing this context was because arguments about evolution theory in school just didn't happen in Germany of the early 90s. (Now, arguments about cruxifices in school, otoh… But seriously, the most Catholic and the most Protestant of schools would not have had a problem with teaching about Neanderthals. Not least because the actual Neanderthal near Düsseldorf is a tourist attraction today.)

Burnham & Pike: agreed.