Here be SPOILERS for Star Trek Discovery series 3 episode 2!
Last week we had what I felt was a TNG mixed with ST: Beyond episode. It was brilliant, and since I’ve watched it again I still like everything that went down. Now we get to the follow-up - last week was all Michael and what she was up to; this week is the crew of the Discovery’s turn.
We pick up where we left off; they made it through the wormhole but in a Farscape moment they’ve lost control and end up ploughing headlong through a couple of miniature moon-type bodies. Eventually they meet the planet below much faster and rougher than they’d like, and to all intents and purposes are dead in the water. They need tech stuff they don’t have to get their comms and pretty much everything back up and running - so here we go, let’s take an away team out to the nearby settlement and barter for what we need.
Saru is awesome the whole episode. He’s a real brick in this and I think a much better Captain than he ever thought possible. He’s commanding, confident, and downright fantastic. I’d vote for him.
Poor Detmer is somewhat shell-shocked. Or is it something deeper? She brought the ship in, she guided them down and her piloting skills are celebrated. But she’s not feeling it - or much of anything, it seems, apart from maybe horror at seeing how many people are currently in sickbay and either dead or nearly there due to what she must assume is a result of her flying.
Saru and Tilly’s bartering aside (some fantastic aliens new to me and Ensign Tilly being a good choice as a member of the First Contact team), shit hits the fan in a Farscape way when all you want is to do a trade so you can get the hell out of there. Again Saru is brilliant as a leader of people, and the locals on the planet realise he is the Starfleet that they thought extinct. Again we hear that “we knew you’d come back” - it seems since The Burn at least 120 years before, some people have harboured hope that the Federation wasn’t completely destroyed. Paul and Hugh seem to be working things out, and although Georgiou is aggressively attempting to get everything she needs personally and screw everyone else bar maybe Michael, at the moment her needs are aligning with that of the rest of the crew. Jett Reno is still a favourite with me due to her wit and deadpan delivery, even when she is giving people a pep talk that cuts through the grease. Even poor Ensign Gene HAZMAT who was left to shovel up what was left of Leland made me smile.
Slowly but surely, Saru and Tilly realise how far ahead some of the tech is around them, and the barter situation that was going so well turns into a newcomers-at-gunpoint situation. It seems our friend Book from episode 1 is not a typical courier at all (maybe he was pretending to be a courier at the Mercantile to cover his species-rescuing ways), as every other one we’ve met so far including this new Zareh is a complete arsehole. He’s also a smart one, who figures out they’ve travelled in time and are also basically helpless. Zareh proves just how much of a dick he is, and it looks like everything is about to go incredibly Pete Tong.
In other news, it seems the Tellerites are thriving as they control an exchange, which means along with the Orions and Andorians, we have an uneasy balance of power. And then Zareh calls Saru something interesting - a “V’draysh” Captain. Apparently this was the same word used in Short Treks (“Calypso”) - a word shortened from its original for ease, like “going to” ending up “gonna”. In this case it’s short for “Federation”.
Enter Georgiou with typical intent to throw a spanner in the works, and you have your action and adventure that ends up freeing the V’draysh types and emancipating the locals. All that remains is to get their newly fixed tech back to the ship before its eaten by the planet’s ravenous parasitic ice - and be totally shocked as they finally meet up with Michael.
I enjoyed this episode - a lot. It was a massive crew effort and it’s set up such possibilities that I can’t wait to see what’s coming next. We have new worlds, capacity for new or evolved alien races, new situations and what is beginning to feel like a sprawling universe of adventures to fall into.
At times it felt like a good old-fashioned Farscape episode, and that’s a complete surprise to me as Farscape was always the anti-Star Trek. However it works well here, and with a true Star Trek ending we know we’re in good hands.
That’s all the news that’s fit to print, I think.
Soopytwist, everyone.
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