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Thanks to some improbable alien misunderstandings, Klingons and Starfleet came together in several ways in last night's new Star Trek Discovery, "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum", a Roman saying which translates to "If you want peace, prepare for war." One Klingon seems to espouse the likely meaning of the term in this entertaining episode--that is, conquer everyone and everyone who serves under you will be at peace. But the phrase took on new meaning by the end of this episode from Star Trek novelist Kirsten Beyer.

Spoilers after the screenshot



For those of you who missed it, here's a recap:



Though unlike "This Side of Paradise", it's not a child, foster or otherwise, of Sarek and Amanda who's treated to a new emotional state but Saru (Doug Jones) who discovers what it's like to live without fear for the first time, and he does it without the Partridge Family ambience of "This Side of Paradise" or the hokey faux Native American dressing in "The Paradise Syndrome". It's kind of a surprise the word "Paradise" isn't in the title of this episode.



Instead we have Na'vi-ish blue dots which look like not so distant cousins of the spores which power Discovery's drive. I've been waiting for an episode where Saru isn't just a pain in everyone's side but I guess this wasn't it. Except for saving Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and Voq (Shazad Latif) a few episodes back virtually everything Saru does hampers our heroes in some way.



Meanwhile, the no chemistry attraction between Voq and Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green) gets physical and she ends up kissing the mouth that ate Georgiou. Possibly it's her first kiss. Sometimes I think the writers really hate Michael.



But the big crystal transmitter spike was really pretty. I kind of liked the scenes where Admiral Cornwell (Jayne Brook) is in captivity. Her and L'Rell (Mary Chieffo) trying to read each other was pretty good. Does L'Rell really want to defect? What would that mean for Voq, still improbably undercover as Ash Tyler? It doesn't seem like either one of them would betray the memory of T'Kuvma but T'Kuvma's motivations for going to war with the Federation were never clear so who knows.



Twitter Sonnet #1051

The building shapes disperse in blacker clouds.
The edges soft and dark revert to dust.
But were the rounded fogs but heads in crowds?
A vapour bridge's whisper told in trust.
To-night the sun became but yellow drapes.
Descending flares forgoing dusk for noon.
A shimmered screen the boiled summer apes.
Organic scents've tickled this the moon.
A foil star careens around the tin.
Repeated metal echoes round the night.
An iron world reverts to endless spin.
Somewhere a clog permits but little light.
A silver necklace glimmers through the smoke.
By hollow rusting horns was silence broke.

I think Captain Lorca is my favourite character on Star Trek: Discovery now. In Sunday's new episode, "Lethe", he was the most solidly written character and damn if that Jason Isaacs doesn't have charisma.

Spoilers after the screenshot



I'm not sure about the thoroughness of his background check on Tyler (Shazad Latif), though. Seriously, is there anyone out there fooled by this, anyone thinking, "That poor Starfleet officer, captured by the Klingons, lucky he met Lorca! I wonder what's in store for him on board the Discovery!" CBS has gone to a lot of trouble to make things even more obvious by giving a completely made up name for the actor playing the albino Klingon, Voq. If you go to the imdb entry for "Javid Iqbal" you'll see that Star Trek: Discovery is his one and only screen credit and he has even less biography on record than Tyler. Did no-one ask Tyler what it was like reconnecting with family and friends who thought he was dead?



Actually I think there's a clue in Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green) being surprised that Lorca would "practically adopt" anyone, let alone Tyler. I suspect this is a case of Lorca wanting treat the obvious spy as an intel asset. But poor guileless Tilly (Mary Wiseman) buys the whole story and even thinks Tyler is "hot".



She's just so eager to be a captain and get the good grades and do everything right. It's like watching Wile E Coyote walk off a cliff. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong.



It seems Holodeck technology in the Discovery timeline is as advanced as it is in The Next Generation, which makes sense since all communications are by hologram in this universe. Maybe the reference to the Enterprise by Michael is meant to make us believe there's a Starfleet ship out there using viewscreens and everyone wears pastel coloured pullovers. Michael's so comfortable in her blue jacket she's even wearing it in her mind connect with Sarek when in the waking world she's wearing one of the snazzy Disco exercise shirts.



I guess no-one in the future remembers the term "Disco" having other connotations? I guess no-one remembers ABBA or the Bee-Gees? Maybe it's one of those things people just don't talk about, like the Vulcan "Hello".



How come they never do the "Peace and Long Life" part of the salute on Discovery? I checked Memory Alpha and saw that there are other instances of people just using the "Live Long and Prosper" part of the exchange so this isn't exactly a break with canon. Still, I feel bad for the people at Memory Alpha saddled with the headache of somehow trying to jam Disco in among everything else. I would advise them not to try. Why do we have to cross our eyes and pretend all this makes sense? Because Alex Kurtzmen says so? Context is for kings, suckers!



I still like Martin-Green as Michael but her character really has short shrift in this episode. Sarek (James Frain) lying about Michael failing the test is more about him than her. Did this push Michael to try harder? Did this set up a rivalry between her and Spock? What is her relationship like with Spock? I would like to know. I wonder if Michael's seeming erasure from history is going to be an allegory for how minorities and women have had their contributions erased throughout history. Which I suppose would be another nail in the coffin of Star Trek as hopeful vision of the future. I wouldn't say that the "logic extremist" idea of the Vulcan suicide bomber in this episode makes no sense--many of the most damaging ideas about race came from the 18th and early 19th century when supposed men of reason came up with a pseudo-scientific rationales for the inferiority of certain races. This would fit in with an overarching theme that it's sometimes better to throw out the rules and go with your gut.



Cornwell (Jayne Brook) is apparently a psychiatrist as well as an Admiral but judging from the way she attacks and threatens Lorca's career before finally getting around to mentioning his possible PTSD suggests to me she hasn't the best technique. Still, kudos to her for being the only one to acknowledge there's something suspicious about Tyler, though one would think she's in a better position to investigate Tyler on her own than Lorca is. Lorca drawing his phaser on her certainly suggests he is reacting based on trauma, which I think might be something interesting to play off Saru. His whole culture is based on the idea of reacting to perceived threat. But I wish there were more scenes between Lorca and Michael, I do like their chemistry. Certainly better than Michael's with Tyler. He seems to win her over by just describing her behaviour as "human". I don't know if he could be more obvious if he said, "Sounds like something one of you--I mean, we--humans would do. Yes, it's very humanitoid, as they say. Us humanly human humans, humaning all over the place, that's definitely us, oh yeah . . ."



Hey, I wonder why Voq wasn't in this episode.