TREK REVIEW: PIC 2.8 - "Mercy"

 

2-8 Mercy

“Mercy” is the first episode of the season that doesn't really work. There's something to be said for a straightforward adventure, but this side-step into the FBI's least wanted is so unnecessary to the main plot, while also being not terribly interesting in itself.

It's a fun bit of trolling on the part of the showrunners to cast Jay Karnes in this episode. After having so many actors reappear either as their popular characters or someone related to them, casting Karnes in a time travel story immediately makes us think he's reprising his role as 29^th century time traveller Ducane. They even name his character Agent Wells, not only suggesting H.G. Wells, father of time travel fiction, but the Wells-class USS Relativity on which he served. (Apparently this all actually a reference to his role in Matalas's Twelve Monkeys series.)

So it's funny when it turns out he's just a regular 21^st century agent after all. Unfortunately, having him as nothing more than a Fox Mulder rip-off makes him a fairly uninteresting character, in spite of a decent performance by Karnes. It's a nice touch that he's spent decades looking for aliens after freaking out due to a brief contact with some Vulcans in his childhood, but it's still not enough to make this diversion worthwhile.

The best material this episode is between Guinan and Q, here meeting for the first time from Guinan's perspective (I love time travel). Aghayere is excellent here, occasionally sounding astonishingly like Goldberg but mostly creating a new version of Guinan. She's terribly creepy when projecting herself to Picard, another previously unseen El-Aurian power. De Lancie gives an amazing performance as Q, now facing the end of his life and waning powers. We've never seen Q so vulnerable before. (It's hilarious to think of Q, unable to teleport, having to make his way to Guinan on the bus.)

Meanwhile, Agnes is going around eating battery acid (I wonder if her stepmother is an alien?) while Seven and Raffi sort out their problems. There are some nice moments between Ryan and Hurd, and Alison Pill looks incredible stomping about LA in her ballgown, assimilating nasty blokes. Eventually, the new Queen joins forces with Soong, who's own life is falling apart thanks to Q deciding to help Kore. Quite how Soong thinks his destiny as saviour of the Earth is going to come about when the Queen wants to conquer humanity is anyone's guess, but baddies gotta be bad, right?

Bits and bobs:

Judging by his age, Wells probably met the Vulcans in around the 1970s. We know from ENT: “Carbon Creek” that they were observing Earth as early as the fifties and there was another one due in about twenty years.

Do the Vulcans even have transporter technology that early? Doesn't seem to quite line up with Enterprise, but then, Enterprise didn't quite line up with what came before either.

Jurati's ballgown-and-boots look brings to mind Harley Quinn in The Suicide Squad, by far her best live action look.

TREK REVIEW: DIS 4-2 & 4-3

ANOMALY

CHOOSE TO LIVE

 

This season of Discovery has gotten off to a very serialised start, with "Anomaly" essentially acting as a coda for the opener and "Choose to Live" continuing the themes and plotlines. Not that there's not plenty else going on, but it seems season four will be a strongly serialised narrative. Both episodes revolve heavily around the mystery of the gravitational anomaly, as we might expect, but also around Book's emotional fallout from the loss of his homeworld. It's the latter that makes for the better television, not least because of David Ajala's excellent performance as the traumatised traveller. 

 

Book suffers from a very understandable survivor's guilt, not least because he could have saved his brother and nephew - had he only known that they were in such terrible danger in the first place. "Anomaly" sees him clearly unable to make rational decisions in the wake of his loss, but Burnham still okays him for a mission into the anomaly that destroyed his world to gather essential telemetry. A little later, Michael steps back from being captain for a brief moment to act as his partner first and foremost, but the person who makes the most impact on him, surprisingly, is Stamets.

 

Beamed into Book's ship as a sophisticated hologram, Stamets isn't the natural choice to team up with Book, but their wildly different personalities actually get the better of one another and they force each other to open up. For his part, Stamets owns up about his feelings of being made redundant as the one-and-only spore drive operator, while also feeling a sort of guilt for not being the one to save his family at the end of the previous season. Rapp and Ajala have a wonderfully awkward but ultimately respectful rapport on the screen, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of this unlikely team.

 

Ultimately, though, very little actually happens in "Anomaly," plot-wise. Stamets's initial theory that the anomaly (blimey, that word is getting irritating now) is a pair of colliding black holes is rapidly thrown out when the data comes in. This isn't a bad thing, given that, as David McIntee points out in his own (better) review, this would lead to a gamma ray burst that would kill even more people than the anomaly's gravitational effects. As also points out, it does look rather like a big evil eye. By the time of the next episode, the new data has the scientist referring to it as a Dark Matter Anomaly or DMA, even though that's definitely a poor description and he becomes convinced it's a wormhole except that it doesn't fit that model either. 

 

We also get two Culber-oriented subplots through the two episodes. Tilly, who is dealing with a time-displacement malaise and seems to be working towards being written out, basically appoints him as her personal counsellor. He seems to have taken on this role by default, but he's easily the best counsellor the franchise has ever had (sorry Troi, sorry Ezri, sorry red from Star Trek Continues), with Wilson Cruz emenating a calming presence at all times. 

 

His second storyline is more immediately impactful, seeing him mastermind the work to grant Gray a new body in the here-and-now. Like the Qowat Milat space nuns who also makes up a significant part of "Choose to Live," this plotline follows on from Star Trek: Picard, with the technology used to make Gray corporeal again being an adaptation of the golem tech that allowed Picard to survive death. It's a strange thing to have the very end of the TNG era be a distant history in Discovery's new setting, but it's helps tie everything together as parts of a greater whole. Given the tech in Picard could and should revolutionised life in the galaxy, it's both frustrating and understandable that we learn that virtually no one has ever gotten it to work in the eight hundred years since.

 

The use of the zhian'tara ritual is a clever way of making this work, as in DS9 this was used to allow Dax's former hosts live again through borrowed bodies. Again, it ties it all together nicely, although we might suppose from this former example that now Gray is incorporated his memories and experiences are lost from Adira's mind. It's nice to see Xi, the nice man from Trill, come back as well.

 

A further ongoing element is the reintroduction of Saru to the ship, settling in as Mr. Saru, the first officer. It's not unheard of for a captain to act as first officer in the franchise, but it's odd considering that Saru has seniority over Burnham. Still, he seems happy, and it suits the character better to be doling out the old man wisdom than be giving out the orders. He's relatively underused in these episodes though.

 

"Choose to Live" has a lot more plot going for it than "Anomaly," with three separate story threads jostling for the A-plot role. As well as Gray's re-embodiment, we've got Burnham being arbitrarily teamed-up with her own mother to hunt down a rogue space nun who's turned to piracy, and a trip to the Planet-Formerly-Known-as-Vulcan for new best buds Book and Stamets. The latter plotline is the most satisfying, again even though there's relatively little actual plot, giving Book the opportunity to heal through the embracing of his emotions and memories. Distinctly forward-thinking stuff from the more Romulan-influenced Vulcans of the 32nd century, who can, it's clear, still perform the classic mindmeld. It's great to finally see Ni'Var in the dusty, red reality at last, super-futuristic with its hovering platforms far above its iconic deserts. The Vulcans are the same as ever in some ways though, granting their visitors no consideration or niceties and putting themselves into meditative trances in order to think about scientific problems.

 

Burnham's hectic Qowat Milat storyline has a lot more going on, but is somehow the least involving of the lot. I enjoyed the fun space adventure, from the "That's no moon!" moment of the gigantic space ark reveal to the Abronians themselves - proper aliens with big, hulking semi-insectoid bodies. The idea of a race of aliens whose bodies are prized for containing latinum is a new and chilling one, as is the idea of grave-snatchers raiding stasis pods. Still, for all the fighting and derring-do, this threa failed to grab me in the same way as the quieter moments of the episode. 

 

In the end, of course, we're still no closer to knowing what that nasty anomaly is all about.

 

New worlds: The Abronian ark is a huge, hollowed-out asteroid, not unlike Yonada in the classic episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky."

 

New civilisations: Ni'Var remains separate from the Federation, and getting the world to rejoin seems to be the President's top priority. As we hear it's coming out of isolation, it seems clear that Kaminar is not currently a member either.

 

Old titles: This is the second Trek episode called "Anomaly." Enterprise S3 E2 shared the title. This is the first time an episode title has been recycled in the franchise, although there have been several close calls in the past.

 

Old jokes: And, for Mr. McIntee, a Star Dwarf meme:

 

TREK REVIEW: DIS 3-7 - "Unification III"

This was the episode I was most excited about when the titles were announced. "Unification" and "Unification II" made up a major two-part episode of The Next Generation, bringing Spock into the series and beginning his (and by extension, Picard's) involvement in Romulan society and the beginnings of reunification between Vulcan and Romulus. It was almost inevitable that Vulcan and Romulus would be united in the far future, especially after Romulus itself was destroyed. I was also looking to the inevitable scene when Michael found out what her brother got up to after she left him, and the look of shock when she found out what a legend he was didn't disappoint. 

There's a few moments that take the biscuit when it comes to believability. With the knowledge that the Federation has lost most of its members, wouldn't Saru and Burnham have looked up the situation and seen who was still involved? Equally, I can't believe that no one thought to mention the SB-19 experiment and how Vulcan was convinced it was the cause of the Burn. I know that Starfleet have dismissed the idea, but surely it was worth pointing out to the woman who had made it her personal mission to solve the crisis? 

Still, accepting all this, I love some of the details. Of course, Saru and Burnham aren't aware that the Romulans and Vulcans are related, and still distrust the Romulans. I love that Burnham is convinced that the Romulans are the ones who forced the Vulcans to leave the Federation, when actually it was their idea. All of this ties back to TNG, where we first encountered not only the reunification movement but also Vulcan separatists. It's not all blatant stuff like a clip of Spock from "Reunification II" and Michael's mum turning up (more on that in a minute); all the elements of the episode act to tie disparate parts of the franchise together, in a remarkably fluid and non-fanwanky way.

The journey to Ni'Var, the planet formerly known as Vulcan, is an exciting prospect, so it's tremendously disappointing that we never set foot there and this is left as a bottle episode set on Discovery itself. We get to see different factions of Romulans, Vulcans, and Romulo-Vulcans (mixed race people, I guess) at the logical talk-off the t'kal-in-tet, but there's never a real sense of place. Bringing in the Qowat Milat, the truth-speaking ninja space nuns from Star Trek: Picard, is another nice touch. 

Again, it stretches belief when, not only are the Vulcans impressed that Burnham is there (how the hell do they even know who she is? I know she's the most important person in the galaxy but that was meant to be kept on the downlow), but her mum is now part of the Qowat Milat. It leads to a very nice scene where Mama Burnham uses her powers of absolute candour to put Michael on the spot and actually admit what's driving her these days, but it's still an absolutely ridiculous coincidence. Then again, adventure fiction is full of such contrivances.

The other major element of the episode is Tilly being made Acting First Officer, which is also absurd but works dramatically. Of course it has to be Tilly, who is the heart of the series and the crew. It's ridiculous in realistic terms, since she's the lowest ranking member of the crew, but then, we do know that Saru is a big fan of Captain Pike (he did promote Kirk to Acting First Officer in the other timeline, and that was straight from cadet). It's silly, but it works in terms of the series, although I would like it if Admiral Vance has a word or two with Saru. 

There has been some comment that, for all the talk of exploring a bold new future, there's been a lot of time spent on reworking the franchise's familiar elements. We've seen 32nd century Earth, Trill, the Andorians and Orions, and now the Vulcans and Romulans, so this is a fair criticism, but there's good reason to explore how the major elements of Star Trek's "present" have changed over the centuries. After this, we've only really got the Klingons to go as a major culture to explore (although there's mileage in the Ferengi, Cardassians, Borg and Dominion as well), but it's important to the overall story. Nonetheless, after 900 years, having a minor or completely unknown race in a major position of power would be more satisfying. 

Regardless, Vulcan's future is an essential part of the Star Trek story. As long as you can accept the absurd level of contrivance, this is a satisfying episode, even though very little actually happens in it. It fills in another vital element of the new future, with a powerful emotional story along the way.

Observations:

The name Ni'Var is an astonishingly deep cut bit of fanlore. News to me but a really clever callback. It had previously been used as a Vulcan ship name on Enterprise as well. 

With this episode, the Romulans join the Vulcans as one of only two alien races to appear in every Star Trek series (unless you count Short Treks as a series, in which case the Romulans and Klingons are joint with a series each to go).

No one mentions the Romulan supernova, nor that Spock tried to stop it (and is presumably recorded as having died in the nova). Even on Picard no one mentioned Spock's involvement in the supernova crisis; presumably there's a rights issue regarding the material from the reboot films.

Why were the Vulcans experimenting with a dilithium replacement when the Romulans have been using quantum singularity technology for centuries?

If the t'kal-in-tet has been used since the time of Surak, that puts it at around 2800 years old.

There's a moment when Tilly points out space is three-dimensional. Characters in Trek seem to need reminding of this surprisingly often.

It's impossible to use a microscopically small time variance to triangulate events when dealing with astronomical distances. Time isn't constant, and over light years the variance could be enormous. But then, if we think along those lines, warp travel causes all kinds of problems of causality.

After the USS Nog two episodes ago, this week we hear of the USS Yelchin, named for the late Anton Yelchin. My emotions can only take so much.

Other starships mentioned include the USS Giacconi, presumably named for Riccardo Giacconi the astrophysicist, and the Gav'nor, which sounds likes a Klingon ship (or possibly cockney). 

TREK REVIEW: Discovery 2-13 & 2-14: "Such Sweet Sorrow"

Discovery is a funny beast. Kurtzmann and co. spend an entire season dealing with heavy continuity and bringing back classic characters in order to send the core cast far into the future where they can't interact with established events, and then pretend that they never existed at all.

I'd often said that if I'd brought back Star Trek I'd have set it hundreds of years further into the future than the TNG era, far enough so that it wouldn't matter which timeline we were following and that high technology could be shown without clashing with the look of the older series. I'm absolutely in favour of the new direction, and can't wait to see where the series goes upon its return. It's just a very strange way of going about it. If anything, this season has shown how well a prequel series can work with both new and old characters. If anything, the final episode plays out less like a second pilot for Discovery and more like a launching point for a new series about Pike and Spock. I'd absolutely watch this, since Mount and Peck have been two of the best things about this series, but it's funny to hear fans who have been bitching about the prequels and the continuity clashes so far, clamouring for another prequel series that would no doubt create even more clashes.

As a send off for the Mike and Pike show, this two part finale works pretty well, although it has to be said it does drag on a little. With a first episode that sets up the emotional stakes and a second part that delivers on them while ramping up the action, it's structured well, but there's only so long I can watch a space battle or a corridor fight, no matter how spectacular, before I get bored. And don't get me wrong, this was spectacular, but there's only so long these can go on before the plot actually has to move forward.

All in all, though, this settles the ongoing mystery of the season and the fate of the Discovery pretty well, as long as you don't think too hard about. The ship and everyone on it flies into the future to escape Control, defeating the AI and happily taking all that terribly advanced tech with it. While I can imagine that much of this is classified as Spock suggests, it's a hell of a leap to assume that no one ever leaks the concept of the spore drive or the time suit in the next 150 years or so. Even if we can believe it of Starfleet and the family Sarek, can we really believe the Klingons agreed to keep schtum abut the time crystals and never utilise them again? And I was perfectly happy to believe that Spock simply never mentioned Michael in the original series and its successors because he just doesn't like to talk about his family, not that he's decided to pretend she never existed.

Still, Michael's story comes to a great conclusion, as he closes the time loop of her mission by becoming the second Red Angel and creating the very mystery that she began this season investigating. In the process, she repairs her relationship with Spock, accepts she can never be with Tyler and gets to make one last awesome space dive. The emotional stakes are high, although some of it is pretty artificial. There's some practical reasons for most of the main cast – and the peripheral regulars – to all go with Michael to the far future, but really it's so that there can be both moving goodbye scenes and a follow-up “all-for-one” reconciliation. It works, but it's carefully calculated to work. Equally, Cornwell's sacrifice rings hollow, not least because she otherwise does sod all in the last couple of episodes and because she was pretty unlikeable as it is. (To be honest, she worked better against Lorca.)

I'm still not sold on Evil Georgiou's redemption. Yeoh is very impressive in this episode, seriously kicking ass and staying on just the right side of over-the-top vengeance quest, but her move from the side of the devils to the angels just doesn't ring true. I'd kind of hoped she'd be killed off, since I struggle to see how she's going to work on the Discovery in the future. I'm glad Nhan is sticking around, because she's pretty awesome (and gorgeous, which doesn't hurt), and also that Saru gets to, presumably, finally become captain. I'll be very unhappy if Stamets kicks it, but it looks like he, Hugh and Tilly will be able to annoy each other for centuries to come. I'm a bit baffled by Jet Reno sticking around – I like her a lot, but why is she so devoted to Michael? Also, there's a big build-up to her connecting with the time crystal, but no follow up.

Other elements I loved? The design of the Enterprise: nothing like the original in any iteration, but still a lovely evocation of the retro Trek feel. Number One finally getting some real screen time (and her name is Una, as established in recent books, although Netflix subtitled it as “Noona,” which was apparently a cock-up). Bringing back Po, Queen of Xahea, partly because it made that silly one-off Short Treks episode more relevant, but mainly because it was a joy seeing her and Tilly together again (“Um, I know the Queen!”)

The Klingons turning up to help in the battle (in an impressive new gigantic battleship) worked nicely, as did the Kelpiens in their fighters stolen from the Ba'ul, although this was pretty hard to swallow. Maybe if someone had stuck around to keep an eye on what was happening on Kaminar Saru wouldn't have been so surprised. When Michael began talking about the final two signals, and how they'd help them to win this battle, I had a silly hope that she'd retroactively arrange for some more reinforcements; how cool would it have been if the Cardassians and the Andorians, say, had turned up to aid the fight?

For me, the best part of the episode was Michael's final voyage through the wormhole towards the far, far future, towing the Discovery behind her. Truly astonishing visuals, mind-bending and evocative of the stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Oddysey. In fact, it also brought to mind the visuals of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, an element of Trek's history that is so rarely referred to (that reminds me, where was Linus the Saurian?) The San Francisco scenes reminded me of TMP as well.

“Such Sweet Sorrow” was a perfectly fitting finale to a season that worked very well in many ways, but dropped the ball occasionally and failed to make as much sense as it needed to. Whatever the showrunners' reasons for blasting Michael and her crew into the distant future, I can't wait to see what they find.

Answer me this:

• Why, once Control has been destroyed, does Burnham still need to drag the Discovery to the future? It would make more sense if the Leland avatar of Control was merely a focal point and that Control was still coming, but since all the drones abruptly switch off once he's been destroyed it doesn't really seem necessary. Still, there's always a risk Control backed itself up somewhere or will be reactivated, and at least this way the AI can't complete its own causal loop.
• Except, can we be sure it can't? Control, or the bits left of it, is still on the Discovery, having jetted into a future that is presumably very technologically sophisticated, and with the Sphere data still onboard ship.
• Is Gabrielle dead or not? Potentially Michael will find her in season three, but she also apparently died at the hands of the Klingons on Doktari Alpha. Michael heard her die and Leland apparently saw the body. Is she destined to get bounced back to the point of her death at some point, or has this been snipped from history?
• I'm still not clear why an entirely new Angel suit needs to be slaved to Burnham's DNA.
• Who the hell builds a blast door with a great big window in it?
• If Michael was able to send a seventh signal back in time to be seen by Spock and their family, why wasn't she able to use the wormhole to bring herself back? I thought the entire point was that the effort of dragging the Discovery through the wormhole would burn out the time crystal.
• How the fuck are they going to do a Section 31 series starring Yeoh if Georgiou is stuck in the far future with Michael?
• Everyone keeps banging on about the thirty-third century, but if Michael is travelling 930 years into the future (following her mum going 950 years ahead, twenty years earlier) the Discovery will arrive in 3187, which is the thirty-second century.
• We don't know how they're going to approach the new future of Discovery season three, but we do know a few bits and pieces of the Federation's future already. With the caveat that time travel can twist these things up, we know that Starfleet has time travelling starships by the 29^th century (as seen on Voyager) and that there's a powerful civilian time agency by the 31^st century (as seen in Enterprise). So there could well be a time active force in the 32^nd century who could be keen on getting the Discovery home, or alternatively keeping them in the future.
• The only thing we've seen beyond the new Disco era is the Short Treks episode “Calypso.” It seems clear that the this is tied into the Discovery has been abandoned by then, and presumably the Sphere data that has wormed its way into the Disco computer leads to the AI that becomes known as Zora.

TREK REVIEW: Discovery 2-7 - "Light and Shadows"

The search for Spock is over... almost. Ethan Peck makes his debut appearance as Trek's most celebrated character, but spends the bulk of his time wandering about in a fret, muttering numbers and strange phrases to himself as if he was Barry Allen after a sojourn in the Speed Force.

There are two strands to this fairly brief episode, one dealing with Micheal and her family on Vulcan, the other on the Discovery following up the mysteries of the Red Angel. There's a lot to enjoy in both of them, although neither one quite manages to be more than a bridge between this episode and the next.

Michael returns to Vulcan (which is absolutely beautifully realised in some of the best shots of the series) to have it out with Amanda, who she correctly deduces is hiding Spock. In spite of Spock's limited agency in this episode, this strand is all about him, with the conflicting attitudes of Sarek, Amanda and Michael threatening to tear their family apart. They all have Spock's interests at heart, but differ vehemently on how to help him. In the end, Michael and Sarek win out and take him to Starfleet – well, Section 31 – only for Michael to realise how stupid she's being and break him out before they use a mind-sifter on him. Once again, Georgiou helps Michael, doing the right thing for perhaps the wrong reasons. Her motivation is so opaque so far that it's hard to say what she's up to.

It's revealed that Spock suffers from a specific learning difficulty named l'tak terai, which is compared to dyslexia but, as a spatial awareness disorder, seems to be closer to a Vulcan equivalent of dyspraxia (the two conditions are closely related, though). Not only do we have a dyspraxic character in Doctor Who, now it's revealed that one of the most intelligent and remarkable characters in Star Trek also experiences the condition. This is brilliant, although there's never been anything to suggest that Spock has such difficulties in the past, but it shows that a disability doesn't have to hold someone back from doing great things. Sarek's unsurprisingly shitty attitude is a powerful element as well – basically dismissing it as being cured by superior Vulcan teaching, which is, of course, ridiculous. Even in the 23^rd century, you don't cure dyspraxia, you learn to work with it. Moreover, though, one feels terribly sorry for Spock, who torn between his mother's and father's expectations as a child.

Back on the Disco, the investigation into the Red Angel continues in orbit of Kaminar. I'm not quite convinced that the Red Angel must be from the future just because there are tachyon traces (which have already been identified as being a result of cloaking devices as well as time travel) and because its technology is more advanced than what Starfleet has now (which could just mean it's alien). Nonetheless, this seems to be the answer to its origins, at least partly. I love the shuttle trip into the time rift, though, which is classic Trek adventure and makes what would otherwise be a very talky episode into something more action-packed. The time pockets add some bizarre elements to the peril, which gets particularly exciting when the Discovery's probe comes back from the future, augmented by superior technology into something like one of those be-tentacled killer robots from The Matrix.

The trip is an excuse to put Tyler and Pike in a small space together and force them to come to an understanding. Frankly, I'm on Pike's side; Tyler is a known murderer who killed a crewman, and whose defence is that at the time he was under the control of a split personality, but that he's just fine now. Is it any wonder Pike doesn't trust him? For his part, Tyler sees through Pike and realises he's thrill-seeking due to his sitting out the war, which actually fits Pike's character rather well; back in “The Cage,” he fantasised about living it up on the Orion Colonies dealing in slave girls because he was feeling guilty about his actions in Starfleet. Basically, he's a cocky test pilot who deals with his guilt with adrenaline. However, while Tyler proves he can be trusted to put his captain and his mission ahead of personal feelings, he's still a massive liability and Pike's chumminess with him after this is a bit unbelievable.

Still, the plot thickens when Airiam gets infected by some kind of influence that makes her eyes go red and evil-looking. There's a definite link between, not only the “probe” and the Red Angel, but also the intelligent red sphere from episode three. It's an intriguing episode that mostly serves to further the overall plot, but has a lot of solid content in itself.

Best line:

“Everything's cooler with 'time' in front of it.”

General observations:

• So, assuming the probe was picked up after drifting for five hundred years and arriving in the native time of the agency that sent it back... there's someone or something active in the 28^th century involved in the whole Red Angel fiasco. It doesn't necessarily follow, of course, that the Angel is from this time. More than anything, this brings to mind Enterprise and it's time war, with factions acting from different points in history with different levels of knowledge and technology. If there is something acting from the 28^th century, then this is a period we know very little about, although it might be noted that Enterprise's mysterious Future Guy called this era home.
• Almost any continuity issues could be resolved by utilising the time travel aspects of this plot. On the other hand, I almost want them to go all out and use it to pull Discovery into another timeline altogether, thereby saving them from having to fit in with existing continuity, something that's been pretty hit-and-miss so far.
• For instance, there's a bit of a clash here with the original series, which has Spock and Sarek estranged for years beforehand and not even having seen each other since years Spock joined Starfleet. Feasibly, though, neither one counts this as a meeting, given that Sarek barely interacts with Spock and Spock is off his head.
• Leland is responsible for the deaths of Michael's parents. Because of course he is. Does everything have to be related to Michael and Spock's childhoods?

TREK REVIEW: Discovery 2-8 - "If Memory Serves"

Now that was just lovely. Opening with a montage of scenes from “The Cage,” the very first episode of Star Trek recorded, “If Memory Serves” embraces the history of the franchise while molding it to its own vision. Star Trek frequently references its own past, but has rarely incorporated past footage like this. The only time something similar has happened is during the thirtieth anniversary celebration – itself over twenty years ago now – when footage from the original series was incorporated into Deep Space Nine and scenes from Star Trek VI recreated for Voyager. In that case, though, the material was treated with reverence, with the creators going to effort to make sure everything fit with the original look of the show.

“If Memory Serves” is different. The clips from “The Cage” are shown in a highly stylised, almost storybook fashion, highlighting and celebrating the visual and stylistic differences between the original series and Discovery. This is more like Doctor Who's method of celebrating its past, when clips of William Hartnell were used in both the twentieth anniversary special and the 2017 Christmas special, before brazenly introducing a new actor playing the first Doctor, with a new interpretation of the character. It's a way of saying, “This isn't the same show it was back in the 60s, but we love that original take and we're indebted to it. Let's celebrate it, and pay tribute to it.” And that's rather beautiful.

After all, every character from “The Cage” is played by a different actor here. Almost every actor from that original episode has died (the only survivor is Laurel Goodwin who played Yeoman Colt) and many of the Discovery cast hadn't even been born when the original was filmed. As remarkable as the resemblance between Jeffrey Hunter and Anson Mount is in some shots, it would be foolish to try to pretend that we were watching the same people. Equally, Discovery has a very different style to the original series, and even where it has paid homage to the old designs – the Enterprise uniforms, for instance, or the phaser designs – they've been a tribute rather than an recreation. Some fans don't like this, but we're watching productions made fifty years apart. Television and technology are different now – I mean, I watched this episode by streaming it onto a device smaller than the communicators the original cast used to speak to each other. If there's too much of a conflict for you, pick one style and decide that that's the way it “really” looks, and the other one is a mere TV recreation.

For all that, though, the Discovery version of Talos IV is a nigh-on perfect reproduction of the original, only shot on actual location instead of in a stuffy studio lot. Don't get me wrong, what the original crew managed with such meagre resources was remarkable, but seeing Talos like this was wonderful (you can't beat a good, old sci-fi quarry). Discovery's creators have reproduced the strange alien sounds of Talos, down to the singing plants. The Talosians themselves were a decent update of the originals, although I kind of love the old-fashioned bumheads and would take them any day over the more sophisticated make-up we see here. Nonetheless, they were a fine example of taking an old design and updating it to work with the modern series' style. However, it was a poor decision to use a fairly well-built man to play the lead Talosian. The original production used slightly-built women but dubbed over with deep male voices, which was a simple but effective way of making them appear alien. The new Talosians have obvious genders, and it just doesn't work as well.

They're still creepy bastards, though, who have little concept of consent and get off on reliving other people's visceral experiences. Michael is understandably disgusted by them, and I really like that she clearly doesn't trust Vina. Melissa George is brilliant in what was a pretty peculiar role in the first place. Her chemistry with Mount sells the attraction and connection between Vina and Pike far better than Susan Oliver and Jeffrey Hunter did (although, in fairness, theirs was a very different style of acting altogether). She's almost as creepy as the Talosians, though, and although she's upfront with Michael about how horrible their punishments can be, she's very apologetic for them. Definitely some Stockholm Syndrome there, which is no big surprise.

The big one, though, is Spock. After his introduction last week, we finally get to see Ethan Peck's take on Spock properly, as he's allowed some characterisation beyond lunatic obsession. I actually love the scene where he, still unspeaking and seemingly only partially aware of his surroundings, takes control of the shuttle and pilots it directly into the illusory black hole. However, he gets to truly show his stuff once on Talos when his mind has been reordered by the Talosians (not that I'd trust them to tinker with my brain). Peck is a very different Spock to either Nimoy or Quinto. He has an intensity and and unnerving quality to him, understandably considering his psychological trauma, but also a vulnerability. He has the drive of Nimoy's Spock and the sardonic quality of Quinto's, but he's very much his own version of the character, yet I have no problem accepting him as the “real” Spock, beard and all.

I'm of two minds about the schism between Michael and Spock, however. While our experiences in our youth do mold our adult selves, it just seems childish that Spock would be harbouring so much anger for one vicious exchange when they were kids. Supposedly Michael's actions on that fateful night on Vulcan set Spock down the path of rejecting his humanity and embracing his Vulcan side, and I can buy that. The poor kid was being forced to choose between two clashing lifestyles by his parents and a traumatic display of emotion could absolutely have been the deciding factor for him. But in essence he's been holding a grudge against Michael because she was mean to him when they were little, which is both emotional and irrational, so if he has dedicated himself to suppressing his emotions he's done a very poor job of it. He even accepts that her actions then were a logical way to protect him. Michael continues to apologise for something that she did as a child, when she's risked her life and career to save Spock after his psychotic break, and he refuses to accept her apology. I just feel Spock should be more mature than this.

What I do like is the nature of his madness. Having been in communication with the Red Angel – now unequivocably accepted as a time traveller – his sense of the passage of time has been skewed. This would be disorienting for anyone, but for Spock, who views cause and effect as the underpinning of logic, it is unbearable. We learn that the Angel has been interfering in his life directly since his childhood, directing him to save Michael when she ran away and nearly got eaten by a monster. (Hell, Vulcan is dangerous!) I'd lay a fiver on the Angel being someone we will recognise, possibly Michael herself (although that would make her life one massive paradox). Peck and Martin-Green share some strong chemistry though, and there's a hint of that in Peck's brief interaction with Mount.

Away from the Talos Star Group, events are getting tense on both the Discovery and Leland's ship, the NCIA-93. We finally get some real focus on Culber and Stamets, who are dealing poorly with the former's resurrection. It's hugely satisfying that we see that Culber's death, his survival in the mycelium, and his resurrection have had hugely traumatic consequences for him. Star Trek has a bad habit of killing characters and bringing them back, or transforming them into alien forms and back again, with virtually no physical or psychological after-effects. (In fact, the only person to die and come back with any real difficulty before was Spock.) Culber is suffering from dissociation after being, you know, killed and then put back together by mushroom people, which is quite understandable. Stamets just wants to pick things up where they left off, which is simply impossible for someone after they've been through that level of trauma. Also, Pike's not exactly being a genius here by letting Tyler roam around the ship wherever he likes, even stationing his quarters on the same deck as Culber's. Culber has to see the man who killed him every day. In fact, it's Saru who has the best understanding of Culber and Tyler's problems here – perhaps because he's gone through a major transition himself lately – letting them physically fight it out while they come to terms with each other's existence.

Wilson Cruz and Anthony Rapp are exceptionally good in their scenes together. Their break-up is heartbreaking. But my god, no wonder they started thinking about putting a counsellor onboard ship later on – both Culber and Stamets are in desperate need of help and support. Given the number of psychologically damaged individuals on the Discovery, Pike should really think about getting one assigned.

The Section 31 storyline continues, to no more or better effect than before. Mirror Georgiou continues to show that maybe she's OK if you just give her a chance, you know? Oh, hang on, she just casually dropped in how she exterminated the population of Talos IV in her own universe. I honestly don't understand how we're supposed to feel about Georgiou. Is she supposed to be an entertainingly heartless villain or on a path to redemption? I do like how the four creepy admirals defer to her over Leland – presuming they think she's the prime Georgiou, she's a decorated officer and probably has seniority over him. I don't understand how Leland is able to just give orders to Pike – his being in Intelligence doesn't mean he automatically outranks the other captain. 

Sub-X-Files conspiracy stuff aside, this is a pretty damned brilliant episode. My misgivings over Spock's personality may go away considering we're going to be getting a lot more exploration of his character, and in any case, we don't need our heroes to be perfect. The episode works wonderfully as a tribute to Star Trek's beginnings and is pretty solid in its own right.

Best lines:

Culber: “I don't even know who I am anymore!”

Tyler: “Who do you think you're talking to?”

General observations:

• Vulcan's Forge is home to huge predatory monsters, just miles from the main city, but this is keeping with the perils Spock faced in his home country in the animated episode “Yesteryear.” The only really odd thing about this sequence is that the Forge has forests here, when it's been portrayed as a desert in all previous appearances (the aforementioned “Yesteryear,” and the Enterprise Vulcan trilogy). We might even want to tie in the huge nasty monsters seen on “Delta Vega” in the 2009 movie – maybe in this timeline they got relocated to a sister planet to make Vulcan safer?
• I like how there's one admiral for each of the founding races – human, Vulcan, Andorian and Tellarite, and the human doesn't even get to talk.
• There's a Vulcan medical facility on Quillam, in the Beta Quadrant. More evidence that Vulcan itself lies in that quadrant.
• We finally get to see who cleans the starships - there are little drones that pick up the mess.
• “The Menagerie” established that General Order 7 prohibited access to Talos IV on pain of death. Here, it's out of bounds but there's no mention of the death penalty. Maybe General Order 7 hasn't been applied to it yet, or perhaps the writers are just glossing over the death penalty aspect, which always seemed out of step with the Federation's ideals.
• Why the hell is there a Starbase only two light years from Talos when the Talosians can extend their mental powers across space? Unless the Talosians made someone in Starfleet locate a base there...

TREK REVIEW: Discovery 2-1 -"Brother"

Here begins the much anticipated second season of Discovery, touted as taking the series back to the ideals of Star Trek. We're hoping for more hope, optimism, futurism and exploration after a year of warfare. In line with this, Discovery is folding the original Star Trek into its storyline, or at least, the original pilot. "Brothers," leading directly from the cliffhanger end to season one, sees Captain Pike leave the Enterprise (gutted by a cosmic event) and take command of the USS Discovery.

Does this episode manage its goal of bringing Star Trek back on track? Well, yes and no. There's definitely a feeling of wonder that the first season of Discovery did display, but that was too often lost amongst all the grim, gritty darkness. Space is still a dangerous place, but it's also a remarkable place, and although the mystery of the red bursts is described as a threat, it's also clearly a scientific wonder. (After all, seven events going off simultaneously at different points of the galaxy is certainly impossible.)

In some ways, this is very much Star Trek in the traditional style, with long meetings on the bridge, technobabble and all. In others, it's still very much informed by the Abramsverse movies, particularly the asteroid journey sequence which combines the space fall of the 2009 film and the breach of the Vengeance from Star Trek Into Darkness, right down to the cocky dickhead who gets himself killed. The introduction of Tig Notaro's character, Reno, on the wreck of the Hiawatha, also strongly recalls the way Scotty was introduced in the 2099 movie.

Notaro's hugely likeable Reno is the sole new character to be introduced in the episode, save for a couple of barely there Enterprise crewmembers (including the commander who appears to be a Barzan, which seems unlikely in the 23rd century but is corroborated by Memory Alpha). Like Pegg's Scotty she's a remarkable engineer who's become overly blunt due to time spent alone, but brilliantly she's been doing everything she can to keep her comatose fellow crew alive, forced to use her engineering skills to act as mechanic on the human machine.

Anson Mount is excellent as Pike, who is perhaps my favourite of the Trek captains, even on a par with Picard. He isn't the Pike of the movies, but has some of the same charismatic presence as Bruce Greenwood, but at the same time isn't quite the same man as Jeffrey Hunters original version. He's a good deal more open, casually friendly and carefree than either version of Pike we've seen before, although it's not too hard to reconcile Mount's and Hunter's. After all, the original Pike was more dour and downcast, but he'd just been through a gruelling mission, and was on the verge of quitting Starfleet. This is two years later and his enthusiasm has clearly returned. He stills displays a down-to-earth lack of pretentiousness that reflects the old Pike. Plus, he failed astrophysics, so we have something in common.

The established cast get less time in the spotlight, although there are some beautiful moments between Tilly and Stamets. Saru, though, and oddly enough, Michael, seem to get short shrift. Michael actually gets a lot of screentime and is nominally the focus of the episode, but is strangely underserved. Part of the problem is the huge, Spock-shaped hole in the episode. The narrative deforms around his absence, teasing us with glimpses of him as a child in such a way that he dominates Michael's own storyline. This season is clearly going to revolve around the red angels/starbursts and Spock's disappearance, and he's pulling the narrative off course.

For an opening episode, "Brother" is lacking something. In spite of the mystery, the combination of talk and action, and the promising new characters, it lacks oomph. The story didn't grip me in the way the beginning of a mystery should. Still, there's potential there, and I look forward to seeing where the series is going.

Cinematic Enterprise 3: Re - Genesis

THE FACTS:
STAR TREK III : THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
Directed by Leonard Nimoy
Written by Harve Bennett
Released: 1st June 1984
Set: c.2285
Starships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701,
USS Grissom NCC-638, USS Excelsior NX-2000
Klingon Bird-of-Prey, Merchantman
Planets visited: Earth, Vulcan and Genesis

The third Trek movie formed the middle part of a linked trilogy that charted the lengths that Kirk and Spock would go for each other. While it's considered the weak link in the trilogy by some - suffering from the supposed curse of the odd numbers - to my mind it's a fine adventure with real heart.

The Wrath of Khan had been a hit with the fans and critics alike, and naturally Paramount wanted a sequel. The first and most important part was getting the stars back on board, and Leonard Nimoy's involvement was, well, paramount. Fortunately, Nimoy's feelings on Trek had been revitalised by the success of Khan, but there was one proviso: he wanted to direct the film. The previous director Nicholas Meyer had cut his ties with the franchise over disagreements concerning the scripts, so the position was open. Producer Harve Bennet began writing the script with Nimoy's input, crafting a story about the resurrection of Spock on the Genesis planet. The story would involve Kirk going to any lengths to retrieve Spock's renewed body, stealing the Enterprise from Starfleet in order to travel to the quarantined planet. In a more metaphysical element of the story, Spock's soul would be carried by McCoy, who had been melded with by Spock moments before his death (leading to some intense moments from DeForest Kelley as the addled McCoy).

Nimoy brought in Industrial Light and Magic much earlier on this film than previously, working closely with them during the storyboarding and design process. The result is a visual richness that surpasses Khan, but works in a very different way to the ethereal, hyperspace visuals of The Motion Picture. The result is a more lived-in, workspace kind of universe, a little bit Star Wars in its rough-edged realism. Roger Ebert called the film a compromise between the tones of the first and second, and that's exactly right. It feels more like a true follow-up to the TV series, and also looks forwards to the upcoming The Next Generation, only three years away at this point. While the uniforms are straight from Khan, we get to see the main characters in their casual, off duty wear, and they wear clothes that people might actually go outside in. I love the mix of the grimy, used alien ships and the shinier, more majestic Starfleet facilities, but even then, there's a realism to it. The Spacedock prop, which would turn up several times as different space stations in TNG, is filmed brilliantly, making it appear absolutely gigantic, the Enterprise a bug against it. Inside, starships are lined up, building on this tremendous sense of scale. Then McCoy goes to the bar on the Spacedock, a seedy joint not that far from the Mos Eisley Cantina, with bizarre alien patrons, and tries to charter a ship off a shrill, big-eared extraterrestrial who looks almost like a prototype Ferengi.

Even the Enterprise is looking a bit worn out by this stage, overshadowed by the newer, sleeker USS Excelsior, designed as a plausible design evolution from the familiar ship. The Excelsior prop would become the mainstay of Starfleet, appearing again and again in TNG and even DS9, an old workhorse of the 24th century - part of the old guard, but not that old. Then there are the alien ships: the battered kitbash Merchantman, with its mixed crew of humans and a sexy female Klingon captain; and of course, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey. While this is another new ship, it's Klingon through-and-through (in spite of early scripts having it a stolen Romulan vessel, hence the name). It looks like it was made old, a functional and threatening beast of a ship. While again, its reuse throughout TNG and DS9 was partly due to having a well-made prop that could be reused, it's such a perfect ship for the Klingons that it becomes iconic in short order.

The Klingons themselves are designed better here than in The Motion Picture, refined from their brief appearance there since they need to function as actual characters, rather than V'Ger fodder. Early plans were for the Romulans to be the primary antagonists, but Nimoy wanted the Klingons, who he felt were more theatrical (the studio was in agreement, considering them a better selling point). His casting of Christopher Lloyd makes that plain. Lloyd, a year away from Back to the Future, is brilliant here, hammy as anything but genuinely threatening. Commander Kruge is just an absolute bastard, through and through. His obsession with controlling the secret of Genesis is a feasible goal; he's not wrong when he states that it's the greatest weapon ever created. (I assume Starfleet thoroughly buried the technology after this, for the sake of keeping the peace.) The Genesis planet itself is at once both wondrous and hellish, with wormlike bacteria creatures that try to eat the Klingons (Kruge kills one straight away, just to show how hard he is).

The Search for Spock reinforces the status of the Enterprise crew as a family, in spite, or indeed because, of Spock's effective absence for much of the runtime. Sulu was given command of the Excelsior in early drafts, an element that would be held back until the sixth film. In the event, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and Scotty all help Kirk and McCoy pinch the Enterprise. The film continues on from Khan with the inclusion of David Marcus and Saavik, working together to explore Genesis as part of the USS Grissom crew. There are hints of romance there between them, but this plotline never really gets anywhere. The link back to the previous film is weakened somewhat by the recasting of Saavik; with Kirstie Alley declining to return, Robin Curtis took on the role, giving a little more humanity to the character. The inclusion of Mark Lenard as Sarek linked the film back to the original series, and cemented the family theme; Spock's father and Kirk's son are both major parts of the film.

There was a real risk, when developing this film, that bringing Spock back would invalidate his sacrifice in Khan's climax. Retrieving Spock would have to come at a price. The cost of Kirk regaining his friend would be the loss of son - killed by the Klingons in a moment of pure cruelty - and the Enterprise itself. The ship is as much a character as any of the actual cast, and while destroying the Enterprise is par for the course in Trek films now (happening again in Generations, Into Darkness and Beyond) back in 1984 it must have packed on hell of a punch. I can't imagine many viewers were that upset by Merritt Buttrick getting stabbed up, but I bet a few fans cried when the Enterprise was destroyed. Beyond that, Spock, when Nimoy finally appears in the closing scenes on Vulcan, is not the man he was.

Some fans tend to skip The Search for Spock, but it's an essential part of the ongoing story of Star Trek and a film with a lot to offer.

CAPTAIN'S BLOG: DIS 1-14/1-15 & REVIEW

1-14) "The War Within, the War Without"
&
1-15) "Will You Take My Hand?"

Date: 2257, nine months since Discovery vanished into the Mirror Universe.

The Mission: Save the Federation from the Klingon hordes by blowing up their homeworld. How utopian.

Planets visited: 

Kronos: The Klingon homeworld is comprised of a network of huge volcanic caverns, "a planet of cave." Rather implausibly, some of these caverns are big enough to hide a starship in. The dense, green upper atmosphere prevents long-range scans of the surface. There's an area of the planet that has been given to the Orions as a sort of embassy, but it's more of a downtown slum for offworlders, built on top of ancient shrines to the tyrant Molor, which access the volcanic channels beneath the surface. Humans can pass there, although it doesn't go unremarked upon. Food available on the streets includes barbecued Ceti eels and gormangander flesh. The currency on the planet is the darsek.

Delta 2: A desolate, uninhabited class-4 moon in the Veda system. The Disco crew terraform it (very rapidly) using mycelial spores, to help power their spore drive.

Earth: Spacedock is currently in construction in orbit. The Federation president is based in Paris (as in the 24th century). A ragtag Klingon fleet is headed to Earth with conquest or extermination on its agenda.

Future History: No human has visited Kronos since Archer and the Enterprise NX-01 "almost a hundred years ago." (ENT: "Broken Bow" was actually 106 years earlier, so either this is a small inaccuracy or Archer took his ship there again during the Romulan War period).

In the time since Discovery went missing, the Klingons have conquered 20% of Federation space. They wiped out Kelfor 6 by igniting its atmosphere, destroyed Starbases 9 and 12 and the USS Saratoga and then took out a third of the fleet. Planets they've attacked include Nervala, Septra and Iridon, all of which were decimated.

All knowledge of the Mirror Universe is classified, on pain of charges of treason. This explains why Kirk didn't know anything about before being zapped there ten years later. (Obviously it is declassified some time between then and Deep Space Nine over a century later.) The idea of a parallel universe where those lost in the war might still survive is considered too dangerous to allow to spread. (It probably wouldn't be good for Federation unity if the existence of a dominating human empire got out, either.)

Taking the Michael: She's good at giving speeches. She can think of several reasons to rationalise saving the Emperor, but admits that she just couldn't watch Georgiou die again. Understandably, she finds it hard to see Tyler again after he tried to kill her. Possibly she distrusts him because, in Tyler's words, "Klingons killed (her) parents and then (she) fell in love with one," but really, it's hard to see how she could trust him after that. In time, she learns to see him for who he is and comes to terms with what's happened between them. She's still reclaiming her life after the Battle of the Binary Stars and can't handle even more heartache. She's still guilty for making her parents stay at Doctari Alpha to see a supernova, and the details of what the Klingons did to them are pretty horrific. The sound of Klingons laughing takes her right back there and she has to get out. However, seeing people just living their lives on Kronos stops her hating the Klingons. She gives the bomb to L'Rell to prevent a genocide and give the Klingons another way to end the war. For ending the war without compromising Federation ideals, she receives a pardon from the president and regains her rank of commander.

Space Cow: He's acting captain of the Discovery in the absence of a more senior officer. He's not happy about Burnham lying to him about the presence of Kelpiens in the Mirror Universe, but he gets that she didn't want to upset him by telling him that Terrans like to eat his people. He has regained his respect of Burnham. He recognises that Tyler is not Voq and allows him to walk free. He's got the balls to square up to Georgiou when she's practically threatening to kill and eat him. He's the first Kelpien to receive the Starfleet Medal of Honour.

Half Man, Half Klingon: Tyler is now fully Tyler after some emergency neurological surgery, but he still remembers being Voq and everything from his life, which comes in handy. In all respects, he gets off pretty lightly after his actions as Voq/Tyler, and is accepted back by most of the crew very quickly. He is obviously an asset on the Klingon homeworld, being able to speak Klingon (which the natives find funny) and hold his own in a game called "Obliterate Them." He says that Burnham's love saved his life, and says that he chose humanity over the Klingons because they can feel compassion and sympathy for their enemies. Once they've completed the mission he leaves with L'Rell to bridge the gap between the Federation and the Empire.

Vulcan Dad: Worryingly ready to advocate Klingon genocide. On the other hand, he thinks no one should regret loving someone, which is about as soppy and sentimental as a Vulcan gets.He also says he never gets tired of seeing his home planet.

Starfleet's Best? Cornwell takes the Discovery, flanked by Andorian and Tellarite guards, expecting some kind of Klingon trap. She takes command immediately and is quick to agree to take the fight to the Klingons. She interrogates L'Rell and comes away with the conclusion that the only way forward is to take the Klingons out, to the point where she advocates genocide. She's also severely pissed at Lorca's true identity. She's also pretty damned stupid if she thinks she can trust Georgiou to do anything she says.

We love Tilly: Breaks the ice by going to eat with Tyler, which helps other crewmen come round. She helps Burnham come to terms with things and go speak to Tyler. She wasn't expecting a wartime career, and considers her Mirror self's actions pretty horrifying, which makes her all the more determined to do right by people in this universe. She's starstruck by Georgiou until she realises she's the evil version. On Kronos she's able to play the hardass part pretty well until she's too out of her element, and gets high on volcanic fumes. After the success of the mission, she is accepted into teh command programme. She's never been to Vulcan before.

Captain Killy: Tilly's evil Mirror counterpart subjugated the Betazoids and wiped out the people of Mintaka III (q.v. TNG: "Who Watches the Watchers") which is pretty harsh, considering they only have hoes to defend themselves with.

Spores, Molds and Fungi: Unsurprisingly, Stamets is coldly furious when he meets Tyler. When he asks if the guilt of Culber's murder is tearing him up, he is pleased, saying "Maybe you're still human after all." He can navigate the spore drive so well by now that he can easily tell the difference between solid rock and a cave just from the feel of it and can jump the ship right into a cavern.

Evil Philippa: Spends a fair bit of time bitching with Sarek over whose version of Burnham is best. After initially demanding to go back to her own universe, she takes her place as captain of Discovery, pretending to be MIA Captain Georgiou who isn't dead at all, honest, no siree. She is completely incapable of pretending to be a balanced Federation captain, gets angry when Detmer calls Kronos the Klingon homeworld (because animals apparently don't have homes) and looks about ready to stab anyone who questions her. She beats the crap out of a bound L'Rell, mostly just for the fun of it. She was born and raised on Pulau Langkawi in Malaysia (Michelle Yeoh is from Ipoh, inland and further south, but Ipoh's a bit of a dump to be frank). Burnham lets her go, and she is later approached by Section 31 (in an extra scene).

Alien Life Forms: 

Klingons: Yes, it's true: Klingons have two dicks. They also have higher muscular density and mitochondrial activity than humans. The Species Reassignment Protocol that was tested on Voq involved flaying his skin, cracking his bones, cutting up his heart and sanding down his fingertips, all while conscious, because Klingons. (So Arne Darvin is much harder than we ever thought.)

L'Rell admires human courage after her interactions with Cornwell and the Discovery crew but is still fully in support of a powerful unified Klingon Empire. She is saddened by the fact that the Houses have broken apart again. She uses the threat of the hydrobomb to blackmail the Houses to reunifying the Empire, leaving her as ruler and potentially having huge consequences down the line.

In the Mirror Universe, Kronos was annihilated by Starfleet and the Klingons reduced to scattered exclaves.

Orions: A whole bunch of them live in the "embassy" area on Kronos, doing the usual Orion criminal activities. Some of them are surprisingly up on ancient Klingon cults and their stomping grounds. Refreshingly, after the big redesign of the Klingons and the lesser redesigns of the Andorians and Tellarites, the Orions are portrayed by people painted green. More of a pale fern green than the usual bold leaf green.

Trill: There are Trills in the Orion town on Kronos (although at least one of them is a fake).

Starships and Space Stations: 

USS Discovery NCC-1031: The first thing the crew do when back in the Prime Universe, even before starting repairs, is repaint the ship to Federation standards. The ship swapped places with its Mirror equivalent, which was destroyed by Klingons almost immediately. The Discovery's cloak-breaking algorithm is distributed to the fleet as soon as Cornwell takes command but it's probably too late to make a difference.

USS Enterprise NCC-1701: Shows up at the end of the final episode, transmitting a distress signal and under the command of Captain Pike. It looks rather different to how we remember it - still the same general shape, but redesigned to fit in with Star Trek: Discovery's aesthetic. I actually really like it.

Starbase 1: In Earth's backyard, Starbase 1 is home to dozens of starships and thousands of Federation personnel. Now it boasts only a few hundred Klingon life signs, and has been tagged by House D'Kor.

Future Treknology: The drone carries a hydrobomb which causes an enormous buildup of steam when dropped into the volcanic network, which will explode out through the crust of the planet annihilating the atmosphere and rendering it uninhabitable. Lorca collected some Nausicaan disruptors which the away team use to start a trade with the Orions.

Trek Stars: Clint Howard, who plays the creepy old Orion bastard in the final episode, has the distinction of being the actor with the longest Star Trek career. His initial appearance, as creepy young child-alien Balok in TOS: "The Corbomite Maneuver" was in 1966, a whole 51 years before this episode. Howard also appeared as a human in 1995 (DS9: "Past Tense"), and a Ferengi in 2002 (ENT: "Acquisition").

Sexy Trek: Like all evil parallel universe women, Emperor Georgiou is bisexual, and gets it on with a pair of Orion prostitutes. There's a lot more skin on display than we're used to in Trek, most of it green. Did I mention that Klingons have two dicks? No wonder Worf was so popular with the ladies.

Space bilge: Starbase 1 is 100 AU from Earth and is now under Klingon control. This would put the Starbase at the fringes of our solar system - this should mean the Earth is under imminent threat from the Klingons, rather than being treated as a distant outpost. It's also shown as being in orbit of a class-M planet, and there's definitely nothing of the sort that close to Earth. The Starbase is also described as being over a light year away from the Discovery, which makes it extremely close in starship terms and by no means a chore to warp to.

L'Rell is very easily able to convince the Klingon Houses that she can destroy the planet with what appears to be a generic remote control and no way to back up her claim that it's linked to a massive bomb.

Quote, Unquote: "Logic dictates that each farewell may be our last." True of all times, not just war.

The Review: A very satisfying end to an uneven but exciting first season. The first half drags a little but gives way to a second part that ups the ante, although it does end rather quickly and neatly. It's entirely reasonable to see the Federation's leaders get desperate enough to resort to genocide against the Klingons - they are potentially facing the same themselves - but it's also tremendously disappointing. Thankfully, the script doesn't for one moment side with this idea and makes it clear that there has to be another way. Burnham has developed into a more comfortable, more confident character, back to the self-assurance she had in the opening episodes. Rather than a complete reversal of her decision to square up to the Klingons there, her decision to use the bomb to force the Houses' to end the war is using the Klingon ethos of "might is right" in a mindful way. (Albeit via L'Rell, which could come back to bite her.) It's also wonderful that, after the script going out of its way to remind us just how bloody awful the Klingons are in this series, Burnham manages to look past her experiences and recognise that most of the Klingons are just people living their lives. It's even better that she sees this after spending an evening surrounded by crims and gamblers, instead of the best of society.

Tyler's story comes to a satisfying conclusion, although it will still be fascinating to see how he develops in the coming season. Saru and Culber get good moments but are a little overlooked, yet it's hard to complain when we get so much quality Tilly time.

The appearance of the Enterprise at the end was an obvious way to round out the series, but what else could they do? It was inevitable, but it was nicely staged and personally I love the redesigned version of the iconic ship, certainly more than the recent movie version. Ending the episode on the classic theme was a nice touch as well. On the other hand, it's becoming increasingly hard to reconcile this wartorn 23rd century with the timeline we know. I'm intrigued to see how the events here develop in the second season.

TREK REVIEW: Discovery - Desperate Hours by David Mack

Desperate Hours is the first novel under the Star Trek: Discovery imprint, and sees the reliable Trek author David Mack with the unenviable task of tying the backstory of Discovery with the elaborate Star Trek novel continuity. From the get go, this was going to be a difficult task, and to his credit, Mack, under direction from Bryan Fuller, goes straight in there by setting this story at the exact intersection of the origins of Trek and its newest iteration.

Desperate Hours (perhaps the most generic title an adventure story could have) is set in 2255, one year before the fateful events of “The Vulcan Hello,” and one year after the very events written for Star Trek, those of the first pilot episode, “The Cage.” In spite of being set only two years apart, “The Cage” and “The Vulcan Hello” are worlds apart in content, style and tone, the franchise having developed in such ways that the two episodes are scarcely recognisable as being part of the same universe. Nonetheless, if any medium can make this work, it's prose, as the very distinct visual styles of these two eras of Star Trek can be glossed over, and the business of story focussed on.

There's a clear opportunity to combine and contrast characters here, with Starfleet crews from different ends of the franchise coming into collision. A crisis on the breakaway colony of Sirsa III brings both the starships Shenzhou and Enterprise into orbit to deal with the problem. An ancient alien Juggernaut is discovered beneath the surface of the planet, bristling with weaponry and capable of wiping out not only Sirsa but any planet it local space. While Captain Georgiou seeks a solution to both the alien threat and the political ramifications of Starfleet intervention on the planet, Captain Pike is called in to make carry out Starfleet's orders. With the Juggernaut potentially posing a gigantic and uncontainable danger to the Federation, Starfleet order's Pike to lay waste to the planet should no other way of stopping it become apparent.

While it's fascinating to see two captains of very different stripes at loggerheads – Georgiou is methodical and restrained, Pike more bullish and masculine – I struggle to believe that Pike, who was so memorably weighed down with the lives lost under his command in “The Cage,” would so readily accept genocidal orders from Starfleet. It's a major failing of characterisation in my opinion, and makes for a significant flaw in the novel.

More successful is the clash between Burnham and Spock. At present there seems to be no plan to bring Spock to the screen in Discovery, in spite of Burnham's relationship with Sarek and her presumed presence during Spock's childhood. Desperate Hours explores Burnham's background, clarifying some confusing elements, including the two traumatic attacks she experienced on Doctari Alpha and Vulcan, and also explores something of her upbringing, with Burnham describing herself as “culturally Vulcan.” The similarities between a human, brought up as Vulcan, and a Vulcan-human hybrid, both from the same family, would suggest that Burnham and Spock have a great deal in common and a special bond. So why do Burnham and Spock have so little to do with each other?

To put it bluntly, they can't stand each other. Their ongoing rivalry, competing in youth for the respect of Sarek and the love of Amanda, both trying to prove themselves in a stoic society, has only been exacerbated by Spock's decision to join Starfleet and his resulting schism with his father. Nonetheless, as much as they have a personal dislike for each other, there's a clear and mutual respect between Burnham and Spock, one which sees the upcoming first officer of the Shenzhou call on the junior science officer of the Enterprise for help in this extremely difficult situation. A large chunk of the book is taken up with Spock and Burnham working within the Juggernaut itself, facing a series of deadly tasks. While this leads to some fascinating interaction and sees the two learn more about each other, and so themselves, I have limited patience for narrative that takes the form of a series of puzzles, however life-threatening. Nonetheless, the exploration of both Burnham and Spock brings new depth to both their backgrounds.

The less expected interaction is between Lt. Saru and Pike's Number One, here, in line with other recent novels, given the rather obvious Una. There is further exploration of Saru's background on Kelpia, which explores his nature as a prey animal with less bluntness than the TV episodes, but the surprising part is the deep respect, and indeed attraction, to Number One. The two make an unusual but effective pairing, and their scenes together are some of the most successful in the book.

There is some exploration of the rest of the Shenzhou's bridge crew, giving a richness and realness that was missing in Discovery's pilot story. On the whole, the storyline is an enjoyable adventure, as much about human conflict as alien threat. It's quite a straightforward tale, but one with plenty of action and excitement, and in spite of the supposed danger of the Juggernaut, provides a surprisingly low-key series of events for the first Discovery novel. Then again, not every Starfleet intervention leads to interstellar war, thankfully. This time, Shenzhou and Enterprise come together and chalk this one up as a win for Starfleet. They should probably make the most of it.

CAPTAIN'S BLOG DIS 1-1 & 1-2 & REVIEW

I was originally going to wait until more episodes had been released before reviewing or analysing Discovery, but people are asking me my opinions and every fan on the internet is throwing in theirs. So here it is. A Captain's Blog going through the minutiae followed by my review of the opening two-parter. SPOILERS abound here, so I'd suggest not reading any further if you haven't yet watched the episodes.

DIS 1-1) The Vulcan Hello
and
DIS 1-2) Battle at the Binary Stars

Date: May 11th, 2256. Stardate 1207.3

The Mission: Fix water supply on Crepusculan homeworld; Investigate damage to interstellar relay in a binary system at the edge of Federation space.

Planets visited: The Crepusculan homeworld, a planet sporting a desert region. The wells have dried up following irradiation after a meteoroid mining accident.

Future History: It's ten years before the first season of The Original Series, and a touch over a hundred years since the end of Enterprise.

There has been no formal contact with the Klingon Empire in a century, which is compatible with Enterprise (the novels push this back by a few years, but it still fits with a bit of rounding off). There have been occasional skirmishes and raids, however, including an attack on Doctari Alpha in the 2240s. Dialogue from TOS 3-11 "Day of the Dove" suggests first contact between the Federation and the Empire occurred around 2218, although the Enterprise pilot "Broken Bow" has already brought that forward to 2151 (strictly speaking human, rather than Federation, contact). Possibly the 2218 contact represented a brief but disastrous renewal of contact between the powers.

T'Kuvma refers to the Battle of Donatu V, a major skirmish between Starfleet and Klingon forces that has been references several times in

First contact between the Vulcans and Klingons occurred at H'atoria around 240 years prior to the episode (i.e. in 2016, when the episode was in pre-production). The Klingons immediately fired on the Vulcan ship, and from then on, the Vulcans fired first at all encounters, gradually earning the warrior people's respect. H'atoria will later be the site of a Klingon colony (in at least one possible future, Worf will be its governor).

Taking the Michael: Lt. Cmdr Michael Burnham was orphaned when the Klingons killed her parents at Doctari Alpha, and unsurprisingly has a grudge against the Empire. She was raised by Sarek and is the first Vulcan to attend the Vulcan Learning Centre and the Vulcan Science Academy. When she joins the Shenzhou she's initially logical (and aloof) like a Vulcan. After seven years among humans, she's more openly emotional, although still restrained unless under pressure. She maintains that emotion informs her logic, and still goes to Sarek for advice. She's a xenoanthropologist, and thinks she can ingratiate herself with a very alien culture. She can even perform the Vulcan nerve pinch, although not particularly well - Georgiou's up and about again a few moments later.

She's generally optimistic, until she encounters Klingons. She remains absolutely convinced that firing on the Klingons first is the only way to gain their respect, even when overruled by her captain. She's on the path to her own command, before mutinying against the captain in a desperate attempt to avert a war. This gets her a court martial and life imprisonment (and they still insist Starfleet isn't a military organisation).

Captain Cut Short: Captain Philippa Georgiou is an Asian woman who captains the starship Shenzhou. (Michelle Yeoh keeps her natural Malaysian accent which is a nice touch among the usually Americanised Federation.) She's very cool in a crisis but has a strong sense of humour, not without a little sarcasm. She sticks firmly to Starfleet's "we do not shoot first" ethos. When talking to Burnham about what she'd do if they got stuck on a planet for 89 years, she simply says, "I'd escape." She managed to grab her ship's attention by making a huge Starfleet emblem in the sand with her footprints. She'd actually really Doctorish in the planet scenes.

Space Cow: Lt. Saru is the only Kelpien in Starfleet. He's timid, sees malicious intent everywhere, but will stand up for himself when he sees it as necessary for his, or the crew's, safety. Little fronds poke out of his head when he's scared. It's hard to hear Doug Jones play Saru without thinking of Abe Sapien, except for one or two occasions when he sounds like Kryten from Red Dwarf.

Vulcan Dad: Sarek takes the young Michael under his wing and raises her like a daughter. Yes, I know it seems odd that Spock never mentioned having an adopted human sister, but then, it took him twenty years to tell his best friends that he had a half-brother, and he didn't do that until the guy had turned up and stolen the Enterprise. Vulcans are not exactly forthcoming about these things. Sarek is still an unforgiving dick to humans when they're emotional.

Angry Space Villain: T'Kuvma leads a shamed Klingon house aboard a gigantic flagship, originally his fathers and then abandoned for years. He sees himself as a modern Kahless, "T'Kuvma the Unforgettable." T'Kuvma wants to unite the Empire against the Federation. He hates their claim that they "Come in peace," calling it "their lie." He has no problem with outcasts like Voq (so, even if he is a warmongering maniac, he's got less of a problem with skintone than several fans). He was shunned and beaten as a child due to his house's ostracising, so has more time for outcasts than other Klingons and says that his "house is open to all." On the other hand, he's obsessed with the purity of the Klingon Empire, hating the mixing of races that the Federation encourages. He's not particularly honorable, attacking the Starfleet flagship after accepting a ceasefire. Burnham is concerned that killing him will make him a martyr and rally the houses to his cause. Then she goes and kills him and proves herself right.

Redshirt: Crewman Connor is one unlucky guy. He gets burnt and concussed on the bridge, gets lost on the way to sickbay and then sucked out into space when the Klingons blast a hole in the hull.

Stellar Cartography: The binary star system is located three light years from the outpost at Eagle-12, and six light years from the Andorian colony at Gamma Hydrae. The USS Enterprise later visits Gamma Hydrae in TOS 2-11 "The Deadly Years," which also places it near the Romulan neutral zone. The radiation in the system's rings can cause humanoid DNA to "unspool like noodles."

Alien life forms:

Klingons: They look a bit different to how they used to. These guys are like Klingon-plus, with pronounced brow ridges that extend back over their elongated skulls, completely visible because they are all bald. They display broad lips and noses and jagged teeth. Their ears are pointed and flat against their skulls, their fingers end in claws. Were it not for the baldness, they wouldn't actually look too different to the TNG-era Klingons, but rather more exaggerated. They speak Klingon amongst themselves, naturally. Their blood is pinkish-purple, not unlike in The Undiscovered Country. Their skin tones range from brown to grey to a bluish tint, except for Voq, who is an albino (but not the Albino).

There are twenty-four Klingon houses, which have been at each other's throats for the last hundred years. They each send one battleship to the binary system. The Klingons mourn their dead by roaring into the afterlife, and unusually, T'Kuvma's caste keep the bodies of their honoured dead in ornate coffins. (Klingons generally don't place much value on a body once it's dead.) T'Kuvma's house wear extremely elaborate, pretty impractical armour.

Vulcans: Remain as logical as ever. They maintain joint research projects with humans. They teach their children in hemispherical lecture pods, just like in the 2009 Star Trek movie. They can be very aggressive to other species when considering it a logical response (the Vulcans were going through an expansionist phase during the pre-Enterprise era, in any case, so their violent policy with the Klingons isn't that surprising). A Vulcan mind meld can links katra and allow telepathic communication over interstellar distances, although it is physically draining.

Kelpiens: Humanoid but with digitigrade feet, broadly spaced nostrils and thick, ridged skin, Lt. Saru's people evolved as a prey species. They have evolved a refined sense of impending death and danger, but this does make them predisposed to be overly cautious.

Crepusculans: Non-humanoid life forms, sort of insectoid-reptilians with six limbs and mandibles. They were clothes and are sophisticated to build wells. They have apparently been on their homeworld for a thousand years. Assuming this doesn't mean refer just to this area of the planet, they must have been brought their by someone else, because they're strictly protected by General Order One.

Others: The Shenzhou bridge crew includes a turquoise skinned humanoid with a skin pattern or tattoo on his face, and a partly mechanical crewmember who flashes up red alert signs on its face panels!

Starships:

USS Shenzou NCC-1227: A Walker-class ship. It's an old ship by the time Burnham joins in 2249 (to compare, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is already four years old at this point). The class looks like a clear development of the Enterprise NX-01 and the USS Franklin NX-326 style ships. It's capable of landing on a planet's surface, which is probably rather early considering that Voyager was the first time we saw this, although I don't think it was ever said that was a new development in dialogue. The Shenzhou is named for the 20th & 21st century Chinese spacecraft programme. The ship is virtually destroyed and left for dead in the binary system.

USS Europa NCC-1648: Admiral Anderson's flagship. Destroyed when rammed by a cloaked Klingon ship before committing self-destruct.

Other Starfleet ships that join the battle include the USS Shran (named for the Andorian captain from Enterprise?), the USS T'Plana-Hath (sharing its name for the Vulcan ship that made first contact with Earth in Star Trek: First Contact), the USS Clarke, the USS Yeager, the USS Kerala, the USS Edison, the USS Earhart and the USS Sue.

Klingon ships: The Klingons maintain a "sacred beacon" which takes the form of a huge, ornate object, carved in stone and metal, hanging in orbit around the binary star. T'Kuvma's ship is huge, bristling with weapons, and is studded with sarcophagi containing the bodies of fallen warriors dating back centuries.

Future Treknology: The Klingons have cloaking technology, which is a bit early, although it does come as a surprise to Starfleet. T'Kuvma apparently invented it.

The Shenzhou has outdated "lateral vector transporters," which use huge dishes situated behind the transportee, and use a lot of power. They're outdated way before the episode takes place. (We never saw anything like that in Enterprise, so they must have come in afterwards, then been superseded. The Rise of the Federation novels suggest early transporters caused genetic damage through long term use; perhaps this development was an initial method to overcome the pattern errors?)

Instead of vidscreens and viewers, people speak to each other across light years using holographic projections. The Klingon ones look particularly Star Wars-y.

Sexy Trek: Sonequa Martin-Green is absolutely stunning.

Space Bilge: The Starfleet emblem as visual beacon looks very cool, but how did they see it through the heavy cloud layer? How are the two commanding officers, two very fit and well-trained women who are nonetheless quite small humans, able to fight off two massive Klingon warriors who have trained their whole life for battle? OK, Georgiou doesn't last but she still holds her own for a long while. Why does Burnham, who so resolutely sticks to her logical choice even if it means mutiny, change her mind so easily about everything else? And why do Starfleet hold their tribunals in the dark?

The Review: I enjoyed this opening two-parter greatly, although it's not without its frustrations. This is a very different take on Star Trek than we've had before, although clearly inspired by earlier iterations of a franchise that has changed a great deal over the last fifty-one years. I'm not quite sure how it will develop as a series, and that's actually a great place to be. The last thing I want is something safe and predictable. This opener is cinematic, exciting and visually stunning. The binary star system is astonishing to look at - this looks like a huge science fiction movie, not a regular TV series. Burnham's spacesuited mission through the debris ring is obviously influenced by the skydiving sequence in the 2009 movie and the infiltration of the Vengeance in Star Trek Into Darkness, but is portrayed as something of wonder, rather than a death-defying stunt. Still, there's a real sense that space, though wondrous, is a dangerous place to be, with Michael left scarred by radiation that will be fatal if she doesn't sit through immediate treatment.

Burnham is, for the most part, a great character. She has real horror in her past that she tries, not always successfully, to rise above. Her escape from the brig by logically talking the computer round to agreeing to releasing is a brilliant character moment for someone who is both human and Vulcan. She puts her convictions above her commitment to Starfleet principles. Sonequa Martin-Green's performance is excellent, she's a charismatic and interesting lead. It's just a shame that, in many ways, her character is so inconsistently written. She sticks to her convictions when it comes to firing first but changes her mind easily when it comes to everything else.

Both Michelle Yeoh and Doug Jones are excellent secondary leads, making a wonderful trio that has hints of the old Kirk-Spock-McCoy relationship without being a slavish recreation, like Archer-T'Pol-Trip often was. Burnham is the logical voice in most respects, but also the more aggressive, with Saru being the cautious McCoy-like one, and Georgiou being the noble commander in the centre. There's an interesting backstory being hinted at for both Saru and Georgiou; unfortunately, we don't get to learn about the Captain's past before she's killed off. Although this is being billed as a prelude to the main series, there's a lot of time invested in establishing a relationship that is then cut short. There's also some very clunky expositionary dialogue early on that I really hoped we'd heard the last of by now.

Trailers for the upcoming episode suggest that Starfleet blame Burnham for starting the war, and Georgiou certainly does, but it's hard to see why that's the case. Yes, she killed the Torchbearer on the Beacon, but that was in self-defense and she had no way of knowing he would be there. Her insistence on shooting first looks like it would have been the right choice - Georgiou's "We come in peace" hail is what triggers T'Kuvma into opening fire - although it's hard to see how the outcome would have been different if the Shenzhou had fired first, as the Klingons were there for a fight regardless. In any case, blaming the war on Burnham's mutiny makes no sense as she was stopped before she could put her plans into action, and so her decision made no material difference to what happened.

I have no problem with the changes to the Klingons, the retroactive changes to the series' history, or the mixed bag visuals for this version of Starfleet. If it works for the story and it looks effective, that's fine. I'm happy to accept a revisionist 23rd century - it's not as if the Original Series was consistent in its own backstory - although, given the clear influence of the new films, I wonder why the producers and writers didn't simply set it in the new cinema timeline, thereby freeing themselves up a good deal more. It's hard to see exactly who this series is aimed at. It's quite right that they shouldn't slavishly stick to established canon or try to appeal solely to hardcore fans. On the other hand, one surefire way of alienating new and casual viewers is starting with five minutes of guys in latex, speaking Klingon with subtitles. Surely you'd want to hook viewers with amazing visuals first, and only later bring in the high geekery?

I'm very interested to see where this series will go. There's an interesting clash on display between the peaceful explorers that Starfleet claim to be, and the military organisation that they look, sound and act like. If the series explores this dichotomy, it could be very interesting indeed. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing more of Michael Burnham and seeing how her character develops as the series goes on.