setsuled

Begun, this back-pedalling has. Thursday's new episode of Star Trek: Discovery dove into reversing several of the creative changes the first season made to the Star Trek universe, tossing in vague allusions to explain them or to hand wave them away. The show continues to have some nice visuals and a story that's tolerable enough, possibly a little too violent for some.

Spoilers after the screenshot



I'm pretty jaded so L'Rell (Mary Chieffo) waving around a baby's severed head didn't bother me but it certainly seemed gratuitous and was probably a nasty surprise for some viewers I probably would have advised avoiding. And I don't even believe in trigger warnings.



At the same time, the makers of the show seem busy trying to make concessions to Trekkies. The most obvious being that Klingons have hair again, their hairlessness last season sort of explained by an off-hand remark from Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) about their hair growing now that they're no longer at war. I can sort of buy that all the Klingons decided to ritualistically shave themselves before going into battle, less natural is the fact that they've all decided to speak Federation Standard (which Ash [Shazad Latif] confirms is really English) most of the time. I remember some people complained about the Klingons always speaking Klingon in season 1--it didn't bother me, but I watch a lot of foreign films so I'm pretty used to subtitles. But in the older series I always assumed when Klingons seemed to be speaking English to each other we were hearing a translation. Which may be what happens in the scene later in the episode where L'Rell switches languages mid-sentence. I'm not sure why the episode would do both things, though.



It's kind of like how Ash's concept has never quite been settled between Ash being Voq in the body of a human or Voq's body having been transformed. The explanation seems to differ slightly depending on who's writing the episode.



Then there's course correcting that's a little more abrupt. Amanda (Mia Kirshner), Spock's mother and Michael's adoptive mother, is the first character on Discovery to directly mention the Vulcan philosophy of emotional suppression. She does so in reference to Sarek insisting Spock be raised this way. Is this the same Sarek who broke down in tears talking to Michael about the power of love last season? Maybe Vulcans decided to have emotions just for the war with the Klingons.

In a review last season, I wrote:

I thought the Vulcans being portrayed as open with their emotions was a result of sloppy writing but now I think it was a conscious creative decision. I don't recall any mention of the Vulcan philosophy of emotional suppression, or of how strong emotions once tore Vulcan apart before they came up with this way of life. Maybe the creators felt this didn't look good in the face of the popular pseudo-scientific metric of "emotional intelligence".

And then, in Thursday's new episode, one of the psychiatrists who was caring for Spock directly mentioned measuring Spock's "Emotional Intelligence". Emotional Intelligence as a field of study seems to have yielded only a little concrete value and whole lot of pseudoscience. But I guess the people currently in charge of Star Trek have faith in it. I suppose they're entitled to their religious beliefs. I just hope Star Trek doesn't turn into Battlefield Earth.



Meanwhile, Tilly (Mary Wiseman) is less cutely neurotic this episode and is now seemingly having a nervous breakdown for seeing the ghost of one of her classmates. This didn't work for me because I didn't feel bad for Tilly. She needs to display some moxy before I'll be ready to root for her. Why does she even want to be a captain?

I'm still digging Pike's (Anson Mount) ready room (I think I misidentified it as his quarters last time).

Star Trek: Discovery has been many things over the course of its 15 episode run. Finally becoming a stoner and sex comedy in last night's season finale, it really felt like the creative team got together and said, well, we might as well have a party. And it was fun.

Spoilers after the screenshot



This is more like the Klingons I know and love. Klingons having fun being fucking brutal. I even liked Ash (Shazad Latif) better when he was letting his hair down and speaking Klingon. Though, on that note, they really need to do something about the Klingons' hair, or lack thereof.



The Klingons get a big redesign but for some reason the Orions are still basically humans with green skin? Well, okay, it's fine. I just wish the camera had stayed on the strippers longer and there'd been more of an effort made to make them titillating. I know Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) would agree.



I don't care now that her being made captain doesn't make any sense, this lady is fun. She's almost Kirk. Well, Kirk was a lot more complex, which would've been nice for Mirror Georgiou. Her immediate attempt to control language on the Discovery bridge was interesting, though. The tactic is a classic one designed to reinforce hierarchy in war, to dehumanise the enemy to make it easier for them to kill. This is why Winston Churchill banned The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, because it portrayed Germans sympathetically despite it being unambiguously a pro-British film. It's a conversation worth having--does the population need to be sold on a simpler version of reality so they're more comfortable with killing?



Context is for kings, Lorca told us early in the season--Lorca, who only gets a brief mention in this episode, and only from Mirror Georgiou. This flies in the face of the idea that the Federation is a perfectly functioning socialist utopia. So this naturally leads to Burnham (Soneque Martin-Green) confronting Cornwell (Jayne Brook) in full view of the bridge crew. Was this meant to be the moment where Burnham shows she's finally learned the lesson that Lorca was wrong, that someone taking matters into her own hands is always the wrong thing to do? Her calling on support from the bridge crew would seem to support this idea. "A year ago, I stood alone," Burnham says, "I believed that our survival was more important than our principles. I was wrong." Ah, case closed, guess context is for everyone, not just for kings so--

"Do we need a mutiny to-day? To prove who we are?"

Oh. So don't take matters into your own hands, unless you really want to. I guess it's a bit like "Only a Sith speaks in absolutes" being in itself an absolute.



Later, the soft hearted Sarek (James Frain) gets emotional talking about how he'd given into the idea that destroying the Klingon homeworld was the only way. I thought the Vulcans being portrayed as open with their emotions was a result of sloppy writing but now I think it was a conscious creative decision. I don't recall any mention of the Vulcan philosophy of emotional suppression, or of how strong emotions once tore Vulcan apart before they came up with this way of life. Maybe the creators felt this didn't look good in the face of the popular pseudo-scientific metric of "emotional intelligence".



In all the discussion of what Burnham did wrong back at the beginning of the series, though, no-one mentions that she was following Sarek's advice, that apparently the Vulcans kept the peace with Klingons by always firing on Klingons first, the so called "Vulcan hello". In other words, what Burnham was ultimately trying to do by getting the Shenzhou to fire on the Klingons was to keep the peace in a language the Klingons understand. Which makes what she did at the end of the series . . . pretty much exactly like what she did at the beginning of the series. So it looks like Lorca was right, it's just that Burnham is more suited to a leadership role than Cornwell. Context really is for kings.



It really is odd how we don't have any reactions to Lorca's absence. This crew had served under him for some time. We saw him save at least one planet under attack by Klingons and Burnham seemed really pleased when he praised her decision making in "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad". Shouldn't we see some people dealing with the fact that this man they respected and served is dead and gone? Aren't they upset at all? I would have thought dealing with these kinds of issues would've been the whole point of having him being secretly from the mirror universe. It really feels like the makers of the show somehow didn't realise he was the best character on it.



Meanwhile, Tilly (Mary Wiseman) encounters Clint Howard who seems to be playing Cheech Marin in this episode. Wiseman is really funny getting high off volcano vapour.



Twitter Sonnet #1083

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An eager recipe ignites the stove.
Electric glass compels the brain to rove.

Last night we may have seen the point where the writers just completely stopped trying to tell a coherent story on Star Trek: Discovery. Abruptly swerving into a clumsy political allegory, characters that fly completely off any semblance of tracks, and with some awkward action sequences, "Past is Prologue" did have some nice performances, some kind of nice call backs to Star Trek II to remind us Nicholas Meyer was working on this show, and the show finally introduced a few of Star Trek's best qualities that'd been lacking on Discovery so far.

Spoilers after the screenshot



It was nice to see the rest of the bridge crew finally being able to make substantial contributions to the conversation. They all looked pretty intriguing, I don't see why Tilly (Mary Wiseman) had to be doing a one woman show on the ship for the past few episodes. Maybe we'll get to know that cool looking cyborg lady better.



Meanwhile, on the Charon, a story that probably needed at least five episodes is crammed into one. Lorca (Jason Isaacs), who, as was established last week, has been Mirror Lorca all along, sets loose a small army of his followers who were conveniently stashed in nearby Agoniser booths. He assumes somehow that Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) has already figured out he's Mirror Lorca and that she's chosen to side with Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) despite the fact that this Georgiou eats people and wanted to have Burnham killed.



Was anyone else hoping to hear Georgiou play Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" on her pipe organ throne?

I hate allegory (for the reasons J.R.R. Tolkien has eloquently given) but I can't deny it's a classic Trek thing to do. But the hasty measures taken to turn Lorca into Donald Trump were exceedingly unwieldy. For one thing, I don't think Trump has the mental dexterity to pass as a Starfleet officer for so long. But his argument that Georgiou is allowing aliens to flood over the border--how does this argument gain traction in even the most delusionally racist minds? This is the Georgiou we saw recently slaughter a group of alien rebels.

I have to say, though, if aliens are trying that hard to get into the Terran Empire the alternative must be pretty horrific. Maybe they're running from the Cardassian-Klingon alliance that eventually took over the Terran Empire on Deep Space Nine?



I'm glad to have Michelle Yeoh back on the show but I would've liked more development of Mirror Georgiou's relationship with Burnham. Maybe instead of a Burnham who seems instantly absolutely certain of everything really fast, we could've had a period where she was studying Mirror Georgiou to find some hint of humanity, with moments where Burnham's preconceptions about human nature were challenged as she gradually was forced to admit she still feels a connexion with this woman. Though, since that's also probably the story that needed to happen with Tyler, there may be too many ingredients in this soup to leave any room for base.



Why does Burnham side with Georgiou instead of Lorca? All she knows about Mirror Lorca at this point is that she had a pretty good working relationship with him before she knew he was Mirror Lorca and that before that he was trying to overthrow Mirror Georgiou, the racist mass murderer. It's uncertain whether she figured out that Lorca had deliberately brought Discovery to the Mirror Universe but he would still seem a better ally than Georgiou. I'm forced to conclude she's fighting him entirely because he had a relationship with Mirror Burnham that went from parental to sexual. Which might be creepy though we know very little about it. He still seems a better bet than the Emperor who wanted to kill Burnham, the Emperor who thinks Saru (Doug Jones) is an entrée--Lorca, meanwhile, seems to have genuine respect for Saru. Maybe if, over a series of episodes, a rift had been established between Burnham and Mirror Lorca, maybe one were his sexual attraction to her was related to some patronising sense of superiority, this would have all played out more coherently. As it is, all we have is the memory of him complementing her ingenuity and courage when they first met. When he said "Context is for kings" he was clearly including Burnham in the "Kings" column.



Lorca kind of reminds me of when Derek Jacobi played the Master for an episode of Doctor Who. Up until the newest incarnation of the Master, Missy, he was one of my least favourite aspect of Doctor Who because he was such a two dimensional villain (though I have come to appreciate the complexity suggested by some of the hints at friendship between Roger Delgado and Jon Pertwee). But Jacobi had some layers to work with due to the Master's lose of memory and it was genuinely intriguing watching the cracks starting to show as the old personality started to assert itself over the decent man he thought he was. Then John Simm took over and he was just the boring old Master again. Jason Isaac's performance on Star Trek: Discovery has been similarly intriguing, forcing you to watch him to try to figure out what his motives really are, the ambiguity hitting just the right note to seem like a genuinely mysterious character. The flat character he abruptly becomes in "Past is Prologue" is inevitably a let down. I am hoping we'll get to meet Prime Lorca, though.

It is nice to see everyone seems to be using viewscreens now instead of holograms.



Twitter Sonnet #1079

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The river brings the brains to party shops.
The fractured marble surface clouds the stops.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, everyone. It seems appropriate to talk about Star Trek since it's well known that King was a fan--even better that Star Trek Discovery has a black lead. It's only a shame last night's episode, "Bad Wolf"--I mean, "The Wolf Inside"--kind of sucked.

Spoilers after the screenshot



At least Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) had some kind of sexy lingerie though this is perhaps the only area where Discovery is technologically behind the Original Series, at least in the mirror universe.



Meanwhile, back on the Discovery, Saru (Doug Jones) and Tilly (Mary Wiseman) are dealing with the aftermath of Culber's murder, doing a brain analysis of Stamets (Anthony Rapp) for some reason without assistance from the doctor Lorca (Jason Isaacs) had assigned to him in the previous episode.



Tilly really does seem to be doing everything now. She insists she, and she alone, should try her spore drive solution on Stamets because of her experience with the spores. The Discovery medical staff must be notoriously meddlesome jerks, I guess.



Burnham, on the Shenzhou, is trying to figure out how to save a "coalition of hope", a team of rebels to the Terran Empire, while still seeming like she's a perfectly decent psychopath. I did kind of like her internal monologue about having to pretend she's something she's not. Lorca insists she and Tyler (Shazad Latif) beam down to the planet without any mirror universe away team to complicate things.



Oh, look, quarry. Classic.

After being cleared thanks to a mind meld from mirror universe Sarek (James Frain)--who apparently doesn't learn everything about the prime universe the way mirror Spock did when he mind melded with McCoy--Burnham's allowed to ask the rebel leader, Voq (Shazad Latif), how he manages to lead such a diverse group of people. Unfortunately, Burnham turns into Joe Scarborough and turns her question into a really long speech so Voq barely has time to say something vague about honour in response.



I'm not sure what Burnham expected. Being the targets of a murderous Empire seems like it might have a unifying influence on a diverse group. I'm also not sure what Burnham was trying to do in complimenting the stereotypes of every race present. Nice to see the Andorians haven't been changed too much for Discovery though it makes the hairlessness of the Klingons stand out even more.



I guess when Voq was changed into Tyler facial hair was implanted in the process? What was that discussion like? "I want to be a little scruffy. Not a full, thick beard, but like one of those humans who doesn't shave very often, you know what I mean."



And, oh, yeah, Tyler is Voq. What a shock. It's a Voq Shock!



It was nice to see Michelle Yeoh back at the end and I look forward to some hopefully juicy scenes between her and Burnham. She's the Emperor, it seems. Not the Empress? I'd have never thought the Terran Empire would be so politically correct.

A very nice Star Trek Discovery last night. It made absolutely no sense and yet it felt like the most coherent episode of the season. Maybe this is where Nicholas Meyer started exerting his influence after the previous episodes burned off the remains of Bryan Fuller's ideas because the excitement, action, and violation all put me in mind of Star Trek II.

Spoilers after the screenshot



So the Klingons are on their way to destroy that organic trasmiter along with the whole blue will-o'-the-wisp civilisation from last week and Lorca (Jason Isaacs) does the heroic thing and disobeys Starfleet orders to stick around and save them. Lorca seems like an old fashioned Star Trek captain at this point, even Kirk seemed more Hawkish in Star Trek VI. Trillions of lives being at stake does seem like a good reason for Stamets (Anthony Rapp) to risk all those spore drive jumps, though it's weird the straw that broke the Stamets back was the one they apparently took for no reason at the end.



I saw on the io9 review that Stamets had to use the spore drive instead of just warping because there was some talk about a Klingon fleet following them back to Federation space if they just warped. But since the Federation and the Klingons are at war anyway wouldn't the Klingons be doing that regardless of whether the Discovery was around?



But I liked Lorca in this episode and I liked him before. Jason Isaacs hits it out of the park. I didn't mind the fact that Lorca had been gathering scientific data on the spore jumps and Stamets doesn't ask why it'd been a secret--not to mention it doesn't make sense that Stamets himself wouldn't be gathering the same data. But the relationship between Stamets and Culber (Wilson Cruz) is nice despite the fact that every beat of it made clear exactly what was going to happen. The actors pulled it off really well and the balancing of private life with professional life Stamets had set up in his confession to Tilly (Mary Wiseman) is a nicely handled thread on an otherwise inconsistent show. Though Tilly blurting out Stamets' secret seemed awkward and unnatural even by 80s daytime sitcom standards.



The final battle between Kol (Kenneth Mitchell) and Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) was nice though woodenly choreographed to allow for Kol's cumbersome costume, the actors' evident lack of training, and the fact that tiny Burnham looks ridiculously outmatched. But that Klingon bridge set is gorgeous.



The scene allowed Kol to reiterate the perplexing motive for the Klingon's going to war, something about the Federation robbing them of their identity. Maybe the Klingons in this are meant to be an allegory for anti-immigration rednecks or Brexiters or something but the circumstances are too vastly different for that to work. But if that was the idea it would explain the incoherence of it.



Voq (Shazad Latif) is still masquerading as human Starfleet officer Ash Tyler though incredibly this episode doesn't give us the "reveal". I mean, it's so damned obvious I don't even know why people are calling it speculation or a theory anymore. One guy accuses George Takei of sexual assault and we're supposed to believe it on no evidence but somehow Voq and Ash being the same person is just speculation. Maybe the more severe the theory, the more we're supposed to take it as true?



This episode dealt with sexual assault, sort of, with Voq remembering what he seems to think was essentially non-consensual sex with L'Rell (Mary Chieffo). I think it's in this episode they decided Voq in his Ash persona has had his memory manipulated so that he really believes he's human until he's presumably "activated" at some point. He always seemed really douchy before this episode, like he was well aware of a joke he was playing on the crew of Discovery, now he seems like he means what he says. I suspect his and Burnham's relationship is going to end up being something like the 1946 movie Black Angel. Which would be cool, it'd be the closest to noir that Star Trek's ever come and with the appearance of Klingon breasts in this episode, after the use of the word "fuck" in a few episodes previous, this is clearly not designed to be a family show. Though I guess the gruesomeness of Voq's surgery flashbacks are no worse than Khan putting those mind eating worms in people's ears.

I guess they figure there's no way kids would be into Star Trek now. I wonder if that comes from cynicism? There are some examples of children's literature that are way beyond most kids to-day, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, for example. And maybe instilling optimism in kids, something Star Trek was once known for, is kind of a bad idea since we're all very likely doomed. Still, I somehow wish there were more smart people who believed we weren't.

So I guess disco does live on in the Federation imagination--this week's new Star Trek Discovery, "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad", featured "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees in the form of a sample in a song by Funkmaster. So maybe they just don't know it used to belong to a genre called disco? Maybe they don't even know what they're hearing in the Funkmaster song is a sample. The future just gets more and more pessimistic by the second. In any case, this was an entertaining episode. Throwing aside logic for a feeling of lower stakes allowed writers Aron Eli Coleite and Jesse Alexander to concentrate on a story about romance without any sense of the urgency one might otherwise expect from a story set in a temporal crisis during a war.

Spoilers after the screenshot



It seems making himself part tardigrade has allowed Stamets (Anthony Rapp) to retain memories of alternate timelines. I liked how, even before interference from anyone who remembers the other timelines, each iteration was already slightly different--in one case it's Saru (Doug Jones) who notes the endangered status of the space whale immediately, in the first case Michael (Sonnequa Martin-Green) has to point it out when Lorca (Jason Isaacs) has decided to move on. Could it be Saru retains some subconscious memory of the previous timeline? In any case, it means that repeating the thirty minutes isn't like Groundhog Day--it's not actually the same thirty minutes over and over.



Stamets, we learn, has also been experiencing some emotional imbalances, which would explain why he prefers to indulge in Michael's romantic troubles with Voq (Shazad Latif) instead of hurrying to convey information and find solutions. But Michael, too, seems to feel fine dancing with Voq before springing into action. One can just accept this as the writers preferring to concentrate on the doomed romance between Michael and the Klingon leader than on the story at hand but if we wanted to rationalise it we could also say that at this point in Starfleet history officers had a lot of trouble trusting each other. That would explain why we don't see Stamets trying to explain things to Lorca. We see that the crew of a Federation ship is not necessarily a happy and well oiled machine, possibly this is reflected too in the frat house ambience of the party.



Poor Michael--she still thinks Voq is a Starfleet officer named Ash Tyler. It's not clear why she likes him, especially since he seems really douchy, though a big part of the episode's underlying idea was that people who act like they hate each other actually really love each other. Maybe she's attracted to him because on some unconscious level she finds him repulsive? Can we hope for some outright S&M in this series? Time will tell. Certainly Michael's love interest having eaten her beloved mentor is a start on that route if it's not wildly misogynistic.



It was nice how Mudd's (Rainn Wilson) reunion with his wife, Stella (Katherine Barrell), neatly punctuated the themes of the episode. Here's two people who act like they love each other but we know at least one of them feels nothing but contempt.

I would have liked to've seen the show Star Trek Discovery was meant to be before Bryan Fuller was forced to leave over creative differences with CBS. Last night's new episode, "Choose Your Pain", gave me what felt like a glimpse into the themes he had outlined for the show. But the show demonstrates the risk in putting the cart before the horse in this way--if you have a number of cooks in the kitchen who disagree, then their adherence to the outline can lead to incoherence. The show continues to be a visual splendour, though, and Fuller pushing for Martin-Green's casting continues to feel justified, even if her character development is in limbo.

Spoilers after the screenshot



I liked the scenes in the Klingon brig a lot, and Lorca (Jason Isaacs) resisting torture and trying to suss out information was nice. Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd was fun, especially with his little animal friend and long coat, which, with his speaking mannerisms, made his character feel like the Treasure Island or other pirate fantasy homage the character in the original series was meant to be. And he's the one who delivers the insight into what the show has been aiming at all this time in its muddled way (no pun intended).



With the famous quote, to "boldy go where no one has gone before", Mudd chastises the Federation in the person of Lorca for the arrogance of going out into the universe and not thinking about the little guy who was already there, like the Klingons. Which would be a nice idea to explore, if we were talking about the Galactic Empire, but we still haven't seen this Imperial arrogance demonstrated by Starfleet. Nor have we seen how this motivates the Klingons in going to war. Maybe the tardigrade's plot was meant to develop this idea but to get that point you have to ignore how inconsistently the creature has been written and how inconsistent reactions have been to him.



Every episode seems to have one piece of dialogue that is so spectacularly bad it's difficult to believe it got past any editor or producer. Somehow it often seems to be dialogue between Saru (Doug Jones) and Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green), in this case it involved him accusing her of predatory, ruthless behaviour for, as he puts it, "saving the tardigrade." That's right, she clearly has the killer instinct because she's trying to prevent possible discomfort to a possibly sentient creature.



Later, Saru admits to not being so much afraid of Michael as jealous (despite what his threat ganglia indicated in the previous episode) of the relationship she had with Georgiou. It's then that Michael has the wonderful idea of showing Saru the precious heirloom Georgiou bequeathed to only her, the antique telescope, and then passing it on to Saru. So I guess he'll always have a reminder of how Georgiou liked Michael better? Good thinking, Michael.



It was nice to see Michael, Stamets (Anthony Rapp), and Tilly (Mary Wiseman) working together as a team and Stamets sacrificing himself for the tardigrade was an effective piece of melodrama. It seems at least a few people are acting like this is really the Federation for once.

Twitter Sonnet #1044

In passing nods the watchful suits dissolve.
Fluorescent skies pervade a flattened store.
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In cakey gel persimmon sourced the soul.
The twenty layers bakers now contrived.
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In posing buds a plant obtained the bee.
The entry stub contained a door implied.
In glowing strands the stranded swing to dusk.
A row of suns contain the candy husk.

The Discovery finally debuted on Star Trek: Discovery on Sunday, making an impressive entrance. It's also the first episode to be directed by Akiva Goldsman, director of the underrated Winter's Tale. The teleplay by 90210 and Pushing Daisies writers Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts (along with Craig Sweeny) continues to show that writing is by far the show's weak point but the visual beauty and wonderful performances, particularly from Sonequa Martin-Green, still make it well worth watching.

Spoilers after the screenshot



Guilty of the high crime of insubordination in her effort to stop the now devastating war with the Klingons using a secret Vulcan technique of shooting first, Michael (Martin-Green) has become the most hard-bitten criminal in a group of convicts being transported to a mysterious location. A cool scene involving some space fungus resolves with the timely rescue from the Discovery. Soon she's on board, facing suspicion and hatred for her crime of mutiny.



I'm starting to wonder if Vulcans only exist in Michael's mind in this universe. We haven't seen any Vulcans interact with anyone else in Starfleet and at one point Sarek appeared in Michael's mind to lend moral support. This would explain why no-one else has heard of the "Vulcan hello". It's not until the end of this third episode that Martin-Green finally meets someone who recognises her actions made sense, or at least didn't amount to murder. The very good Jason Isaacs plays Captain Lorca of the Discovery and he delivers the line that gives the episode its title, "Context is for Kings".



The idea is that only certain people have the kind of mind necessary to cut through protocol and bullshit to see what needs to be done. Either this eventually is going to come back around and bite him or the show's going to end up having a message opposite to the TNG episode "The Drumhead". In any case, it's a worthy concept not especially well executed. If I could really believe everyone would be as suspicious as they are of Michael for what she did, the story would make more sense. Context doesn't seem so much for kings but for the credibly written.



Of course, Michael does make one friend, her anachronistic roommate Tilly (Mary Wiseman). This chipper young lady seems like she wandered in from Gilmore Girls. Ten bucks says she gets killed in a pointed message about the harshness of wartime realities and how sometimes the most innocent among us fall victim while people who can make the hard choices carry on.



Otherwise, there's a lot more of the peculiarly catty dialogue, especially from the science officer who never seems to stop being ornery about having the perfectly well behaved and obviously talented Michael working for him.

The episode's best parts are on the Discovery's sister ship where things start to feel a lot like Alien. Martin-Green is allowed to shine in a way she never was able to on Walking Dead, delivering an amusing "Shit, that worked" when she tries to draw the attention of the beast. It was odd hearing her rattle off lines from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the Jeffries Tube but as a hardcore fan of those books I almost always appreciate a gratuitous reference to them, as I did here.