Star Trek Discovery 1x14 - Don’t Care Was Made to Care

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for Star Trek Discovery series 1 episode 14!

Let us climb down from the heady heights of episode 13 for just a moment: Mirror!Lorca is dead, Cornwell is convinced Prime!Lorca was probably killed shortly after ending up in the Mirror Universe, and Emperor Pippa has been kidnapped and taken to the Prime Universe. In what is basically Farscape levels of holy shit how are we not dead?-ness, the Discovery is intact, most of her crew are too, and they’ve got intel needed to help defeat cloaked klingon ships. The fact that they’re 9 months late getting back and most of Starfleet has been decimated is like that moment when you think Monday is over and then a catastrophe happens and abruptly - and rather rudely - you can see yourself putting in 6 hours of messy, horrible overtime just to avoid Tuesday being your worst nightmare.

First off, what are we grateful for? Tilly. Tilly continues to be awesome. She’s doing her job and is very good at it, while at the same time spreading peace, love and understanding wherever she goes. She’s still the awkward, shy person who talks too much, but now she’s listened to. Because people know she’s awesome. Can she finally have a field commission to Ensign now?

We’re also grateful that Emperor Pippa has crossed over - oh yes. Who else to command a ship to go to war? I can see the fact that Admiral Cornwell has lied to everyone - blatantly - by introducing her as Prime!Georgiou is infuriating to both Acting Captain Saru (does he go back to being Number One now?) and Specialist Burnham - the only two who know her real identity apart from Cornwell and the random cool-haired dude running the transporter room. Emperor Pippa is devious, must have an ulterior motive, and ready to shiv the first person who says no to her - what’s not to like? Weyoun is alive and well in the writer’s room and it makes me smile.

Ash Tyler. Hmm. Not really feeling it. He’s a bit of a non-entity to me and especially now as he’s trying to find if he actually is anyone because Voq’s ‘gone’. Do we believe he’s really gone? I’m 50% sure that I’m not sure on that one. The thing is, I don’t care to try to trust Tyler because I just don’t find the character compelling. Sorry, Tyler fans. He should be epic - first an MIA officer who busted out of a klingon prison with a random Captain, then a spy, then a really deep undercover spy and love interest… But something in me just Does Not Care. I don’t know why.

Species re-assignment surgery - how do we feel about that? It was described as voluntary, but the ‘re-assignment’ word makes my skin crawl. I don’t know why - maybe it’s politicians in our world going on about re-assignment to ‘help’ people be something less than they are, like not gay or not needing to transition to another gender. I think that’s the connotation I place on it - something meted out by the dictatorship of an all-powerful, closed-minded government. The way the klingons seem to use it is different though - there’s a lot to be said for them mentioning it was ‘voluntary’. It wasn’t made out to sound particularly pretty, and it certainly didn’t seem it. Tyler talking about some of the procedures done to ‘him’ as Voq were harrowing, but it makes me wish Voq had survived, not Tyler. I know the sci-fi ‘what is the measure of a man? thing with human-looking Tyler actually being an ex-klingon in a human meatsuit is exciting and can be milked for a lot of metaphors. However part of me really wants Voq to re-emerge and assert control, only to find in the end that he’s better off biding his time and then taking the klingon houses by storm, conquering all of them and becoming the Chancellor in charge at last. And when it comes down to it, he won’t destroy the Discovery and everyone aboard because it was where he was able to execute his plans - and he has the humans to thank for his shelter as he worked on his top secret plot with L’Rell.

I do agree with Burnham saying she can’t forget how he tried to kill her - no matter who was ‘in there’ when he was trying it. I also liked Stamets’ face as he confronted Tyler in the corridor. I thought Stamets took Culber’s death too easily, but I see now he’s just being very professional. However, I would not leave those two in a locked turbolift for any length of time. I get the feeling Stamets would start talking until Tyler just leapt out of a window. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing.

Poor L’Rell in confinement is still getting over losing Voq, it seems - or is she? She learns that klingons have pretty much floored the Federation and she gloats for a little, but how much does she want a disordered, competitive bunch of scrapper clans warring it out instead of a mighty Empire? She’s already proven she will go to great lengths to get what she wants, so how will she spin this to get free and somehow influence what the klingons around her will do? It seems she doesn’t care either way what happens to herself as long as the humans see her laughing as the puny things die - but is that really how she feels?

I like that Admiral Cornwell gets to stand on the bridge and say FIRE, but it’s to launch terraforming pods that will trigger a spore bloom, not to destroy anything. I think Picard would have enjoyed being there. For her, I guess, it’s a reversal of the past 9 months - something is being created instead of destroyed. As she’s the only one, bar Emperor Pippa, who has had recent and harrowing dealings with full-blown war, it must be something of a life preserver to see something being created at last. After 9 months of fighting and blood and losing ships and starbases, here's something she can care about - new spores in a lovely shade of victorious science.

I like the teamwork we’re getting now that Lorca is gone; it’s like his my way or the high way style of command has gone out of the window - or should I say through the floor - with him. Saru’s style of asking and thinking about it, of co-ordinating the team instead of keeping people in the dark - it’s much more Starfleet. I like the dynamics of the ship now - (Vice) Admiral Cornwell, Specialist Burnham, Acting Captain Saru, Lieutenant Stamets, Lieutenant Keyla Detmar, Lieutenant Rhys, Lieutenant Commander Airiam, Lieutenant Owosekun, “random communications officer man” Bryce - find me a straight white dude in there. I’ll wait. Oh look what they did! They made people interested in the story, in the characters, without needing more than 1 of them! I’m not saying get rid of them like they’re a bad thing, I’m just saying it makes a nice change to look around a bridge and see people who are not straight white dudes. I haven’t seen such a divergence from the Kirk-Spock-Bones, Picard-Riker-Data triumvirate since the Sisko-Kira-Dax of DS9.

But I digress. Now we have a battle plan with a possibly double-crossing Mirror Universe Terran as the Federation’s last hope to either win the war with the klingons or at least bring it to a stalemate. To be honest, I like Emperor Pippa’s chances; she’s ruthless, she’s in it to win, and she knows how to beat down a bigger opponent. She has little wiggle room here - but, lest we forget, though she be but ‘little’, she is fierce. I’m not mad about Cornwell going off the res by parading her as Prime!Georgiou, but Needs Must - something she may be learning from Emperor Pippa herself.

Quick shout-out before we go - I like the statement that Captain Archer and the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise were the last Starfleet people to see Qo’noS a hundred years before Discovery. Like it a lot.

If only the next Star Trek film could sway the timeline back to its original path (“Time has an elastic quality, after all” - as Harvey/Scorpius once said) so we can then bring in something of DS9, that would be epic.

I think that’s all I’ve got, so I’ll love you and leave you.

Peach and lube, people. Peach and frelling lube.