We reach the halfway point of the final season with a strong episode that gets away with being the second bottle episode in a row by keeping things interesting with character moments, lore revelations, new questions and some effective action sequences. Yes, it's a bottle episode but it doesn't feel like it, partly due to cleverly pinching the sets from another series. There will, however, be a couple of big spoilers below the cut.
Time travel episodes are always fun, and "Face the Strange" is no disappointment there. Even though this is very clearly a bottle episode designed to recoup some of the money spent on the big flashy openers (and no doubt even bigger, flashier series end), it uses its limitations well. Given that Trek has done a lot of time travel episodes before, including a number that saw a central character jump back and forth through their timeline, there was inevitably a sense having seen this before. However, the episode embraced that, referencing a number of the time travel episodes from the past, but in a natural way. There's a bunch of references in this episode that make the die-hard fans go "aha!" but just sound like extra colour to the less obsessed viewer, which is exactly how it should work.
In the past, when we've had a character thrown back and forward through time, it's generally just been them alone, struggling to convince the rest of the crew of what's going on: Picard in TNG "All Good Things;" Kes in VOY "Before and After;" and Chakotay in "Shattered." The last of these is perhaps the most similar to this, as there the ship had been thrown into different points in its timeline, while here, Discovery itself is being thrown back and forth, along with its crew. The difference here is that we have two characters working together, able to rely on each other, with Burnham and Rayner unaffected thanks to being mid-transport at the very moment the time bug activated. (I love that: time bug. Such a simple, silly sci-fi idea, and such a simple name. On Voyager they'd have called it a "chronometrically disaffected ambulatory arthropod" or something.)
As much as the central idea of shifting everyone else along the timeline doesn't quite make sense (where do all the crew in the future when they're dead? Where does Airiam come from when it goes back to the past?) it's a fun conceit. It's also a good opportunity to finally have Rayner work closely with Burnham and adjust to her way of doing things; had he carried on being an immovable object much longer, he would have become tiresome.
The episode is focused on the theme of change, and it works so well as a final season instalment it's surprising it was written before they knew the series was ending. Like "All Good Things," this works well because the series has changed so much since its first series. Having Rayner there, who wasn't present for the earlier episodes, underlines this, as he can act as an external observer to remark on this. In this regard, it works better than Voyager's "Shattered" or the quite similar-in-approach "Relativity" (down to the scene on the ship pre-launch), where, in spite of characters coming and going, the series still felt much the same throughout.
It's gratifying that the writers remembered that Stamets exists slightly outside of time, calling back to the previous (and somewhat better) season one time loop episode "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad." This allows a third character to take part in the time-jumping proceedings, but in a different way, affected by the jumps but aware of them. (Really, what the hell happened to him while they were all dead?) It was nice to have Hannah Cheeseman back as Airiam one last time, and frankly they should never have killed off a character with such potential. Ultimately, the time jumping was worth it to see today's more measured Captain Burnham face off against her angry, chip-on-her-shoulder mutinous younger self. (A touch of the Captain America fighting himself there; she could do this all day, I bet.)
Other bits to like: breaking the warp bubble, with a (fairly solid) conception of what suddenly falling out of warp would do to time relative to the ship's frame of reference when back in normal space; a fun, gruesome intro that shows us just how much Moll and L'ak aren't to be messed with (and that L'ak seems to be the more timid and weary of the two); the jump forward to a ruined Federation being genuinely eerie and foreboding. The only disappointment there was that it really looked like we were getting a glimpse at what led to the situation from the Short Trek "Calypso," when Discovery has been abandoned and Zora has continued to evolve into a sophisticated but lonely being. While clearly that scene was meant to evoke the mini-episode, it can't be related, showing instead a different future that, presumably, Burnham and crew will avert.
A fun, standalone adventure then, but it'll be good to get moving with the main storyline again after treading water for an hour.
Looks back and forward:
After a cracking start to the season, the third episode of Discovery is a middling affair that suffers from trying to do too much at once. There are four main plotlines running through this, which is perfectly fine for a serialised story, but as Discovery is trying to manage that middle ground between serial and episodic adventures, none of it really gets the time it needs to thrive.
The core story, the quest for the galactic puzzle pieces, brings us to Trill, a planet we were bound to go back to if only to resolve Adira and Gray's story. There's some deep Trill lore on offer here, with the zhian'tara ritual performed again - Jadzia Dax manifested all her past hosts using this on DS9, with Ezri using it to manifest her murderous past host Joran in the final season. Those weren't portrayed in the same way, and what we have here is closer to the original, with Jinaal, the first host of the Bix symbiont, taking control of Culber's body, while the rickety old lady its currently inhabiting just waits for permission to die.
Thanks to Wilson Cruz, this is by far the most successful part of the episode. He gives a great performance as Jinaal, tweaking everything about his persona: his vocal delivery, his walk, his overall demeanour all change, without ever being over the top. Jinaal is a lot of fun to be around, thoroughly enjoying the chance to go for a walk in the wilds after centuries of being a quiet voice in a succession of heads. This section of the quest really is contrived: those old scientists expected someone to find the previous clue, decipher it, find the right Trill who by rights was expected to be dead by now, seek out their new host, and then go on a perlious journey, survive a monster encounter and still be around for when said Trill reveals the next piece still, luckily, hiding under a rock.
Still, it's fun, with Michael and Book making a good team as usual, always more enjoyable to be with when they're out causing trouble and getting into scrapes. It's always strangely reassuring to be back in a quarry standing in for an alien planet, and while the big, bug-like monsters are a little generic, watching the adventurers work out how to deal with them while trying to not get killed is entertaining.
Meanwhile, Adira and Gray have an awkward but mature conversation about their relationship, which basically means they break up. This is the least interesting part of the episode, in spite of Blu del Barrio's attempt to keep things engaging. Even the chemistry they shared with Ian Alexander isn't present anymore. Frankly, now that Gray's got his body back and isn't haunting his ex, he's not a very interesting character. Gray and Adira were once two parts of the same being, which was fascinating and gave the actors something to work. Now they're in a long-distance relationship and it's not working for them or the story.
Back on the ship, some more engaging relationship antics are going on with Saru and T'Rina, who have their first, very mild-mannered argument, when the Kelpien does the man thing and tries to protect his fiance's interests in the political arena. This rather overshadows his first assignment as ambassador, but Doug Jones and Tara Rosling keep the scenes working. T'Rina is proving to be a quietly awesome character; she should end up president of the whole Federation. I suspect we'll see something of the Vulcan purist threat in future (a 32nd century follow-up to the "logic extremists" of the 23rd, I suppose).
Finally, a fun but throwaway run of difficult introductions for the backbenchers and job-doers as new Number One, demoted Commander Rayner does the worst breaking-the-ice in workplace history. There are some entertaining titbits in the crew's 20-word party pieces, but mostly this is here to expand upon the friction between Rayner and Tilly. It works, but feels unnecessary to the story, using up time that might be more valuably spent elsewhere.
That kind of sums up the episode. It all works, just about, but the balance is off, and while it's a perfectly watchable instalment, it's a bit of a disappointment after two such strong opening episodes.
Nods, winks, promises and revelations:
