Star Trek: Discovery 2.04

[selenak]

Aka Discovery does its most unabashed hurt/comfort fanfiction yet. Also, there's David Bowie.



Also an unabashed Trek dose of optimism and, for lack of a more fitting term, humanism (alienism?). The sphere wanting to preserve and share all the knowledge it gained through the centuries and wanted to reach out to others so it would not die alone was the kind of story element decried as cheesy by some, but to me it’s a big part of what I love Star Trek for. Also, unlike episodes which shall remain The Inner Light, this one doesn’t make the imparting of knowledge/experience/memories involuntary on the part of the recipient but explains first (well, tries to, and Saru figuring out just what the sphere was trying to communicate just in the nick of time would make Jean-Luc Picard a great admirer).

The episode’s two storylines both offer characters who started out very differently from each other but who went on to form a strong relationship in life threatening situations, trying to reach an understanding. If I have one complaint, it’s that this was the second week in a row Tilly was in peril. Then again, „Mae“ seems to be a more long term character than I had first thought, and the space fungus having plans beyond telling Stamets they don’t want him using the spore drive as this feels invasive (btw: how is this news? I thought that was realized over in the Mirrorverse, which btw is where this particular fungus settled on Tilly) hopefully amounts to me than continued on/off possession. However: the Stamets & Tilly scenes continue to be to die for (and when Jet Reno joined them, they became hilarious – Stamets-Reno snark for the win, and all that), with the scene where Stamets gets her to sing and joins her in singing to distract her from the pain being exquisite. (And of course Tilly would love a David Bowie song!)

Meanwhile, Saru and Michael basically and literally declared their (family) love for each other. Incidentally, I told myself through two thirds of the episode, „Saru is a regular and one the nascent fandom is fond of, they won’t kill Saru“, and then they really had me despite the fact I should have known better through decades of experience. Still, as someone invested in this relationship I could not help but relish this particular execution of a popular fanfiction trope. Stoic character A dying (until a last minute rescue) while working with stoic character B to save the day, with the two admitting how deeply they care for each in extremis, and then B also has to perform euthanasia on A (or would have had, save for the last moment recovery) to spare A more horrible pain – yep, checking all the boxes here. Mind you, I also expect that Saru being newly freed from his biological imperative of fear and newly determined to bring the revolution to the Kelpians might end up in (some) conflict between and Michael later on, and definitely between him and Pike. We’ll see.

Speaking of Pike, seeing the lengths to which he’ll go to help Spock here provides some good emotional background for, not The Cage but The Menagerie, aka the one where Spock commits mutiny and hijacks the Enterprise to help Pike. Though I also like that Pike when it comes down to it prioritizes saving all those millennia of knowledge over tracking Spock, not least because that makes him a good captain. Oh, and hooray for Number One making her first appearance on this show! (Complete with explanation in dialogue as to why the Enterprise doesn’t have Discovery‘s nifty holo communication in the TOS era.) For the record, my current assumption is that the Section 31 plot and Spock’s plot are interconnected, i.e. Spock probably found out something about Section 31 while in the psych ward in addition to whatever is up with the red angel, and that’s why he’s on the run without trying to communicate with anyone from the Enterprise or his estranged family, why everything is classified and why he’s supposedly responsible for several deaths.

Lastly: am v.v. glad to see Jet Reno again, and to learn she and Stamets will continue to work with and snark at each other, did I mention that?

Comments

[felis]

v.v. glad to see Jet Reno

Right there with you! I expected her to be a one-off when she didn't reappear in the second episode, so I cheered when she unceremoniously showed up in this one. Curious to see if she'll stay a more static character for delivering snark and competence along the way or if she'll get some development.

space fungus having plans beyond telling Stamets they don’t want him using the spore drive as this feels invasive (btw: how is this news? I thought that was realized over in the Mirrorverse

I thought that it was only the Mirrorverse way of using the network that was exploitative and invasive and corrupting everything, actively pulling energy from it, whereas Discovery was only "riding along" as Stamets put it back then. I certainly didn't get the impression that the Spore Drive was harmful for the network until now. I guess they are building some more arguments for why it doesn't show up later on.

Otherwise, all the Michael-Saru feels! Which is exactly what they wanted me to have and damn, they were Not Subtle about it either, but I'll forgive them for making everything so very explicit because the actors are wonderful and because I love both characters and their relationship so much. And I do appreciate that they are this open with each other.

(That said, I don't know if it's the show's reaction to criticism of the first season or what, but I feel like it is being less subtle this season in general, spelling things out in capital letters.)

Also, quite the interesting turn of events for Saru - here we were, talking about fear as one of his defining character traits, and now this! It's certainly an interesting ethical dilemma for him when it comes to his species, and we'll see how the change is going to affect his character. Oh, but speaking of him, I loved that he kind of saved the day because he knew so many different languages!

Stamets and Tilly were love as well, as was them singing Bowie together, but I feel like they could have done a better job with the whole Mae storyline, especially last week. It's all kind of clumsy and meandering, what with - Tilly is free - oh, no, captured again - yay, free - oh, no, captured again. IDK. They could have asked Mae what she wanted last week already, when they still had a simple and painless way of communicating with her. Once Tilly knew she wasn't having a mental breakdown, she'd have been the first to want to know more.

[lynnenne]

they were Not Subtle about it either, but I'll forgive them for making everything so very explicit because the actors are wonderful and because I love both characters and their relationship so much. And I do appreciate that they are this open with each other.

The acting in this show really is first-rate, and beautiful to watch.

That said, I don't know if it's the show's reaction to criticism of the first season or what, but I feel like it is being less subtle this season in general, spelling things out in capital letters.

Yeah, I'm a little disappointed about that because I appreciate subtly and subtext. I'm not sure why anyone would criticize them for that, but maybe my expectations of sci-fi audiences are too high.

[kalypso]

I thought that it was only the Mirrorverse way of using the network that was exploitative and invasive and corrupting everything, actively pulling energy from it, whereas Discovery was only "riding along" as Stamets put it back then. I certainly didn't get the impression that the Spore Drive was harmful for the network until now. I guess they are building some more arguments for why it doesn't show up later on.

I agree this is part of a necessary explanation of "why did the Federation abandon Spore Drive", but I suspect May's species don't distinguish between Federationverse humans and Mirrorverse humans - if I understand rightly, they live in the mycelial network which can reach both universes? Which is not to say that there isn't a problem with Discovery's use of the network - May's remarks about the "captain" last week made it clear she saw Stamets as a Bad Thing, and I don't think she was confusing him with his double, because she pointed out the place from which he plugs into the network. So I think she latched on to him as the person chiefly associated with the invasive behaviour, but it's possible that previous encounters with the Mirrorverse Stamets mean that her species assume any damage is wilfully performed.

[selenak]

I guess they are building some more arguments for why it doesn't show up later on.

Indeed, though they need to be even firmer in order to explain why Janeway, say, didn't consider damaging the mycelium network one more time in order to get her crew home. (Maybe Stamets will end up erasing all traces of the technology so it can't get replicated in the future?)

(That said, I don't know if it's the show's reaction to criticism of the first season or what, but I feel like it is being less subtle this season in general, spelling things out in capital letters.)

Could be. I mean, it bewildered me every time I read a complaint that no one liked each other on Discovery and everything was grimdark - did anyone saying that watch beyond 1.03? But I could see that resulting in network demands to make it really really clear that yes, Saru and Michael care deeply, etc.

It's certainly an interesting ethical dilemma for him when it comes to his species, and we'll see how the change is going to affect his character.

reverancepavange below has an intriguing theory about Kelpian biology, so it might be more complicated than "it was all a lie". But either way, how to deal with this seems to be Saru's big arc of the season.

I hear you on the Mae storyline. That should have been material for just one episode, not several. (With the Bowie singing included, of course.)

[lynnenne]

the Stamets & Tilly scenes continue to be to die for (and when Jet Reno joined them, they became hilarious – Stamets-Reno snark for the win, and all that)

That was the best!

I also expect that Saru being newly freed from his biological imperative of fear and newly determined to bring the revolution to the Kelpians might end up in (some) conflict between and Michael later on, and definitely between him and Pike.

Agreed! I'm kind of looking forward to it. It will be interesting to a different side to Saru.

hooray for Number One making her first appearance on this show!

Yay! I was excited to see her, too. Wasn't she played by Majel Barrett in TOS? I haven't seen it in years so I forget.

Michael bawling her eyes out over Saru had me bawling my eyes out, too. STOP MAKING ME CRY, STUPID CHARACTERS THAT I LOVE.

[selenak]

Yes, Number One was played by Majel Barrett. As there's absolutely no screen canon as to what became of her post Cage, Disco Writers can surprise us any way they want.

[reverancepavane]

Personally I wonder if the predator species on Saru's planet are in fact post-change Kelpians. I can easily see the freedom from fear from the natural change providing an impetus for change to a predator mode (especially if driven by hunger/need for something their bodies can no longer naturally produce). [Easily solved by Federation synthesis/replicators.]

Thus the change would in fact represent the death of the Kelpian, and the premature intervention would probably be a religious ritual to prevent the full change from happening naturally (since damaging the ganglia before they fall out naturally kills the Kelpian apparently), and prevent the assumption of the next phase of the Kelpian life-cycle. Especially since it is now apparent the Kelpians are actually a primitive race and not members of the Federation. [In pre-civilised times the increased ganglia activity would mean they were helpless prey for the predator phase, and probably ripe with the material they no longer produce. In order to be viable in nature very few would have to undergo the full transition; else the Kelgian race would die out quite easy (there have been lots of studies on how vampires must drive themselves to extinction, for example).]

I can see that the true secret of the full Kelpian life-cycle would be something anyone who knew the truth would generally hide from their children out of fear and shame, which are very Kelpian attributes.

Whilst not the strangest sort of life cycle in our current knowledge, I also suspect this may be actually be too out-there for Trek. But it would be an interesting dilemma.

[selenak]

It would be, and your theory would also explain why we never saw a member of the predator species in The Brightest Star. Not to mention that it would provide Saru with a more long term dilemma than just go home and expose the truth...

[goodbyebird]

Oh this I like! Very interesting indeed.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting theory. I immediately assumed that the Kelpian-with-ganglia are in an immature phase, with the losing of the ganglia being like a tadpole losing its tail, and that the Baul who prey on them have somehow domesticated them and kept them artificially immature.

But the idea that the post-change Kelpian become the predators is really interesting, and would muddy the moral waters a lot. I don't quite see how Kelpians would make the transition, however, given how much Saru is presented as being completely exceptional for his species.

Also I think there are some metaphorical uses of Kelpians which wouldn't quite work with them (literally) eating their own; the way the Mirrorverse eating of Kelpians was used to signal evil and my general sense that this is headed for a humanistic Star Trek story about not being kept terrorized by your leaders/society both work better, I think, if predators and prey are separate. (Then again, maybe not...)

But I am excited that this sets Saru up for a more complex plot. Maybe we'll see his sister again! Hopefully he won't be preying on her or any of the rest of his kin....

[kalypso]

One thing that's been nagging me since the previous week: we keep being reminded that Stamets saw Hugh (who is dead) in the mycelial network, and Tilly saw May (who is dead) after being infected by spores from the network. On the one hand, this seems unlikely to be quite the same phenomenon - for a start, if Hugh was actually one of May's species, he could have asked Stamets to stop using the Spore Drive after helping them to get back to their own universe. And the use of May as an interface for the alien to communicate with Tilly has been explained. But I think we are due an explanation of Hugh-in-the-network too.

[selenak]

We certainly are. I mean, both Hugh and Mae could simply have been taken from the memories of Stamets and Tilly respectively, but the Hugh in the Mycelium Network displayed knowledge "Mae" did not have - who both PrimeStamets and MirrorStamets were, for starters. And who everyone else was.

My current guess is that when Tyler/Voq killed Hugh Culber, Stamets, who after all was present but whose mind was only half in his body and half still in the Mycellium network, pushed Hugh's soul/mind/Consciousness/term of choice into the network to save him without knowing or understanding what he was doing, just acting on instinct (and being mushroom-high).

I mean, considering the Vulan katra sharing/transferring is a big thing in ST canon ever since it was used as a way to resurrect Spock (whose body certainly died a surely as Culber's), there is certainly ST precedent.

[kalypso]

Stamets, who after all was present but whose mind was only half in his body and half still in the Mycellium network, pushed Hugh's soul/mind/Consciousness/term of choice into the network to save him without knowing or understanding what he was doing, just acting on instinct (and being mushroom-high).

Ta-da!

[andraste]

You were not the only one fooled by Saru's deathbed scene - I was pre-emptively upset that they had killed my fave! Not that I don't love Michael and Tilly and Stamets and, well, every dork on that entire dorky ship.

But no. And now he knows that his people back home are being eaten for no reason - and who could know that and not do something about it? This is definitely going to be a test of the Prime Directive for more than one character. (My guess is that the whole ecosystem will turn out to be more complicated than Saru currently thinks it is, but I will be interested to see where the story goes.)

[selenak]

I like another commenter's speculation about the Kelpian biology as voiced above, but even if it's not true, yes, I suspect it will turn out a bit more complicated than a justifiably indignant Saru now assumes.

And yes, I was mentally composing an distressed "how could you?" lament - good to know I wasn't alone. :)

[andraste]

I like that theory! Another one: it's not that the Kelpians need to die, it's that the Ba'ul need to eat them because otherwise they'll die of alien scurvy. Which is a problem that could probably be solved with a replicator, but unfortunately sending them one with a note that says 'pls use this instead of eating the other sentients' is definitely violating Order One.

In hindsight, I cannot believe they got me, but it went on so long and Michael cried and the whole bridge crew watched him go and I completely believed it.

[vilakins]

I was sure they were going to kill Saru off (perhaps because the actor hated the mask and makeup, like Virginia Hey as Zhaan in Farscape), and now I can't help but wonder if he's now going to go back to his people. Surely many in the past have gone through the change because they were alone and couldn't cut their own ganglia off, but the explanation above might cover that. A future ep?

I cheered when Jet Reno appeared as I'd pretty much given up hope that she'd joined the crew. I love her so much. Also joy at Number One as she was an awesome character in the TOS pilot that I've always regretted was dumped. As you say, the writers are free to do what they like. Maybe she'll join the Discovery as Saru's replacement if he goes back to his planet, though I'd miss Saru.

I love the characters so much in this show. Tilly, Burnham, Saru, Reno, Stamets, Pike... I'm hoping we'll get to know some of the other crew better.

[selenak]

Surely many in the past have gone through the change because they were alone and couldn't cut their own ganglia off, but the explanation above might cover that. A future ep?

I'm sure we haven't seen the last of the Kelpians, and that we'll visit their home planet within this season.

Re: other crew - I think the episodes so far have begun to flesh out the "minor" crew members, like Detmer, or in this episode Linus, and am expecting this will continue.

[likeadeuce]

I just watched through 2-4 and ran over here to see what you'd had to say.

Loving the different kinds of storytelling the show is playing with, and glad to know that the Kelpien story is more explained in the mini episodes, which I'd skipped, because it sounded quite fascinating.

I am ready for a 'Tilly Has a Good Day' fic, though, because she's far too lovable to spend so much time in peril!

[likeadeuce]

Also, thrilled to see Jet back and sharing screen time with Stamets. . .

Tig Notaro is mostly known as a comedian, and I had thought her first episode appearance might have been done as a cameo because she happened to be a Trek fan -- but even if that was the case originally, the show clearly realized they had something with her character and brought her back, hopefully to stay. . .

[selenak]

One mini episode is about Tilly having a good day, in the sense of her having an adventure and saving the day. :) As for fanfiction, the latest ones seem to pair her up with Pike, which is a bit bewildering to me because there's been hardly any interaction and her emotional beats are all with other characters, but hey, whatever floats the writers' boats.

[likeadeuce]

Yay, excited to catch up!

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

I love that you loved the sentient sphere wanting to communicate its life history as much as I did. It really is one of my favorite and most moving Star Trek tropes, to the point that I was actually quite upset with Pike for being so fixated on Spock's shuttle. ("You can find the shuttle later! The sphere is 100,000 years old!" someone might have yelled in my living room.)

I spent the whole episode convinced they could not kill Saru, but I really started to doubt my conviction in the tearful deathbed scene. Very glad that they didn't!

Jet Reno was fantastic, and I hope she says around, and the scene in which everyone had to speak different languages was really fund in a classic Star Trek was. I flashed back to both the DS9 episode "Babel" and the TNG "Disaster" at different points.

I like a lot of what is happening in the May plot, but something feels very off about the pacing, almost like the story was intended for two episodes and has been stretched over three. I feel like spending the whole episode worrying about Saru dying and then having Tilly endangered instead should have landed with more power than it did, and your comment on Tilly being damseled again explains why.

[selenak]

Well, to be fair, Pike doesn't know what the audience knows re: Spock's guaranteed survival and general welfare. :) But yes, if he'd made the wrong call, I'd have been very displeased.

It occurs to me that a show celebrating love of learning and Knowledge (pointedly knowledge of other people, not just your own) is needed in our present more than ever.