Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 3 Episode 12 (There Is a Tide…)

I’m still not sure what to make of Star Trek: Discovery.  I miss the good old days when most episodes had a distinct storyline.  Some contributed more to the overall story, but most could stand on their own.  Then, came CBS All Access.  Discovery and Picard seemed to go the route of a serialized narrative.  We progressed a little more each week, but there was usually little new stuff.

I think this episode typifies that.  The Emerald Chain has taken over Discovery and infiltrated Starfleet/Federation headquarters.  The assumption would be that they’re attacking, but Osyraa wants to negotiate.  She has an idea to fold The Emerald Chain back into The Federation.

They left Captain Saru, Doctor Culber and Adira back in the radiation-laden nebula to take care of Su’Kal.  We’ll have to wait to see what becomes of them.  The point is that she honestly wants peace.  She knows the game is up.  The Emerald Chain has scientific prowess and The Federation has the spore drive.  Put those together and they could go places.  The only real holdup is that Osyraa would have to answer for her crimes.  She’s not really keen on this, so it’s unclear of any such merger will actually happen.

Part of me feels like this was an unnecessary episode.  You could have cut it out and it would have had little effect on the overall storyline.  It occurs to me that it’s really the opposite problem.  Discovery has a 13-episode arc this season.  That’s half of what I was used to with The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

There were so many wasted opportunities.  We never really got a good look at what had become of Earth, Vulcan or Trill.  We know so little about The Emerald Chain.  In fact, I know that it’s made up of Andoria and Orion.  I think there are other planets, but I’m not sure.  I think Osyraa is the leader, but I’m not clear on that.  I think she mentioned something about others in positions of authority.  A little background information could have gone a long way.

For that matter, we know so little of what happened to The Federation at large.  At least three  founding members are no longer members.  How many more fragments are there?  How vast is the known galaxy?  There are so many questions.  It would have been nice for the series to take a break and explore the 32^nd Century a little more.

Maybe we’ll get that chance next season.  We’ll have to see what happens tomorrow.  We could see the Federation return to normal.  Maybe not.  I’ll grant you that nine centuries is a lot of ground to cover.  What we’re given is a feeble attempt, though.  I really think Discovery can do so much better.

That’s part of the problem with doing a serialize season like this.  It’s too long of an episode and too short of a season.  It reminds me of a joke, wherein a guy goes to a restaurant.  After eating the meal, the waiter asks how the food was.  The man says, “I have two complaints:  First, the food was horrible.  Second, there wasn’t enough of it.”  I want more and I want better.  Is that too much to ask?

 

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 3 Episode 8 (The Sanctuary)

Things aren’t good in the 32^nd Century.  The Federation is a shell of its former self.  The bad guy is The Emerald Chain, who seems to be made up of former Federation members.  Dilithium is scares and everyone is hurting, causing everyone to hurt others.  In The Sanctuary, that hurt comes to Booker’s home world, Kwejian.

Ryn, an Andorian who has gone against The Emerald Chain, is onboard The Discovery, as is Booker.  Osyraa wants Ryn back.  She correctly assumes that if she puts pressure on Kwejian, Booker will be the first person they call for help and that he (and, by extension, Discovery and Ryn) will eventually show up.

Saru is given explicit orders not to engage in battle.  Starfleet is stretched pretty thin as it is.  Another engagement wouldn’t make anything better.  Instead, offer up some diplomatic solution to the problem at hand.  If you know anything about the season so far, you know that’s not going to happen.

Osyraa really wants Ryn and she has Kwejian under her boot.  (They have a locust problem and she has a repellant.)  Saru is new as a captain.  In fact, he’s looking for some sort of catchphrase.  It comes across as goofy and unnecessary, but is probably more of a metaphor for the fact that he’s still finding himself.  Either way, he comes to realize that battle may be the best option.  It’s simply a question of how to go about it.

Everyone in this future is caught between two bad options.  Kwejian can’t tolerate insects that eat their food, but the solution is to put themselves at the mercy of a sort of protection racket.  Starfleet doesn’t want a battle, but that means implicitly allowing all manner of bad situations to continue.  Granted, Kwejian isn’t really their problem, but Starfleet used to mean something.  Starfleet used to do the right thing.

The Burn has really set thing back a long way.  Warp drive isn’t really a thing anymore and no one knows what caused it.  Fortunately, we now at least know where it may have begun.  In the previous episode, a location was pinpointed and a distress call was found coming from there.  No additional progress is made in this episode, which is frustrating.

However, we do know that there is something seriously wrong with Georgiou.  We even get one scene where her face acts like programmable matter.  It’s still not clear exactly what happened.  Georgiou doesn’t offer up any clues and the doctors are at a total loss, as well.

I’m curious to see how all of this comes together.  If someone did that to Georgiou, there would presumably be a reason.  I’m also curious to see what this distress call is.  Also, we find out a little bit about where a Booker got a human name.  Why is his cat called Grudge, though?  And is Grudge even really a cat?  Anyone that’s seen Captain Marvel knows that cat-shaped creatures aren’t always what they seem to be.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 3 Episode 6 (Scavengers)

I remember not liking Lwaxana Troi during the initial run of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  She was that annoying comic relief that just kept coming back.  Over the seasons, she began to get a back story and seemed less one-dimensional.  She was sympathetic, even if just a little.

I bring this up because I see a similar story arc for the Mirror Universe’s Georgiou.  I have noticed that Georgiou is written as overly aggressive and not much else.  She serves to antagonize at least one character per episode, not unlike Troi.  I’m thinking this might be a pivotal episode for the former emperor in that the writers might have more in mind for her.

The episode starts with various captains receiving their respective missions.  Saru, as captain of the Discovery, is told to wait around headquarters.  Since they have a spore drive and aren’t limited by The Burn, they can pop in on potentially volatile diplomatic talks if the need arises.

It’s an inconvenient time for Cleveland Booker’s ship to pop in, minus Booker.  When his cat hails Discovery, they know something’s up.  This puts Michael Burnham in a tough spot.  Admiral Vance gave Saru orders to stick around, so Discovery can’t go off to save him.  However, he was looking for black boxes from Starfleet vessels, which might contain valuable information on how The Burn played out.  Thus, Burnham and Georgiou take Book’s ship back to the planet where he’s being held.

She saves Book, gets the black box and makes it back to Discovery without incident.  This isn’t to say there won’t be consequences, though.  Saru reports the incident to Vance, who reprimands Burnham.  Since she saved lives and got valuable information, she won’t be put in the brig, but it doesn’t make Saru look good.

My major complaint with the episode is the obvious one, in that Discovery has a problem which prevents them from addressing another problem, which would further the story line.  Burnham, as first officer, shouldn’t have gone.  That much is true.  But there’s no reason another officer couldn’t have gone.  Vance even points out that Saru should have passed the importance of the information up the chain of command.  He may have authorized such a mission.  He might have even dispatched an actual Starfleet ship to deal with it.

That aspect of the episode seems forced to me.  Even having Burnham removed as first officer is more a reminder that she really shouldn’t have been made first officer in the first place.  It would make more sense for her to just be the science officer or, simply, the one who gets sent on such a mission when it arises.

You might be wondering what Georgiou has to do with any of this.  During the mission, she blacks out.  She even falls to the floor at a crucial moment.  We get to see flashes of memory, but not enough to really tell what’s going on.  This could be major.  It could be nothing.  I would hope that we’ll at least find out why Georgiou is the way she is.  (It’s also suspicious that this started right after she met with Kovach.)

It will be interesting to see who replaces Burnham as first officer.  I don’t see it being Tilly.  Yes, she’s on the command track.  She’ll be captain one day, but I don’t think it will happen just yet.  Given that she’s giving sound advice to the captain would indicate that it will happen one day.

For that matter, I don’t see it being any of the main characters.  I think everyone is where they need to be.  Reno, maybe?  I don’t think anyone had her in mind for XO when she was rescued, although it could happen.  I’m putting my money on Linus.  He basically spent the entire episode popping up in odd places, so I suppose anything is possible.

 

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