So it’s appropriate that today I have a new piece on Television Heaven, about that greatest of Doctor Who serial, City of Death.
“Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite.”
INCLUDES SPOILERS
It's surprising that Discovery's latest season has pushed ahead so quickly. I had fully expected a year of tracking down Starfleet and the Federation, yet here we are, at episode five and already we've met the Commander-in-Chief. You've got to wonder exactly what Saru and Burnham thought they were going to find when they got to Starfleet Command. Given free reign to fly around the galaxy on whatever mission they see fit, they seek out a command structure and then act all surprised when they're given orders. They even object to the Discovery being retrofit, which isn't a bad idea seeing that their technology is 900 years out of date.
The episode gets off to a gorgeous start as Discovery enters a sort of warp bubble in space, inside which is the new Starfleet Command and a gigantic shipyard. It's five minutes of pure fan-pleasing geekery, with the bridge crew geeking out just as much as the viewers. After four episodes on the fringes of society and on self-isolated planets (albeit with bits of hyper-advanced tech), it's pleasing to see the series embrace the futuristic in a big way. The new shipyard is an immense playground of starships both recognisably Starfleet and truly out there, up to and including a self-enclosed rainforest. There are plenty of references for fans, too, (more on them below).
Of course, we can't hang around looking at pretty ships forever, so on with the plot. Starfleet Command is just as futuristic as the outside would suggest, with artificial intelligences everywhere (including an umpteenth generation EMH) working alongside the organic officers. There's a fine line between making it impressively futuristic and recognisably Starfleet, and they get it pretty spot on here. Allegedly the civilian government of the Federation is here too, but we don't see any evidence of that. Starfleet and the Federation have often been presented as interchangeable and it's always uncomfortable when they are. More than ever it looks like the UFP is under military aegis here (seemingly backed up by a line from Saru), but that makes sense in an era where everything has been knocked back by a massive catastrophe.
Oded Fehr - so often a shifty villain - is very good as the C-in-C, Admiral Vance. Thankfully, the writers have avoided the cliched "badmiral" route and given us a commanding officer who isn't cuddly and trusting but isn't a villain either. Vance, although a bit of a dick when he's dealing with the Disconauts, is right not to trust them from the off, having only their word for their identity and origins. Amusingly, the super-secrecy around Discovery and the spore drive comes back to bite them, since there are no records whatsoever of their mission to the future and the ship is listed as destroyed. (Not that we should necessarily expect any records on them to have survived from over nine centuries earlier, however good the tech is.)
The resulting debrief is one of the most entertaining parts of the episode, with each crewmember giving a rundown of their highly improbable adventures (Hugh's recount of his murder and Reno's whole so-what? approach being highlights). Surprisingly, though, it's Georgiou who turns out to have the most interesting part of this story. After owning the various holograms with some ingenious low-tech hacking, she finds herself face-to-face with a mysterious individual in big glasses who's played by none other than David ruddy Cronenberg. It's a wonderful sequence, with Cronenberg's character voicing the legitimate question of what the hell Georgiou is even doing here in the future on Discovery. We get no answers, beyond the already obvious "because of Michael," but it's worth it just to see the Emperor rattled. Cronenberg (I don't care what his character's name is, I'm inevitably going to call him Cronenberg anyway) reveals to her that the Empire fell (which, as DS9 viewers, we already knew) and that the two universes have drifted so far apart that no contact has been made between the two in five hundred years. It's hard to tell, but there's a hint that he's speaking from personal knowledge rather than reeling off historical data. It's very intriguing. It ends with Georgiou completely unsettled, possibly even controlled, although it's impossible to say for sure what's going on with her yet. (She's not wearing the big glasses, which poo-poo'd our theory that they were the controlling intelligence.)
Alongside all this is Burnham's mission to prove that a) Discovery and the Disconauts still have a place in Starfleet in 3189 and b) she's actually capable of showing respect to her seniors occasionally. Permitted to take Dsicovery on a voyage to find a cure to a prion plague that's killing a bunch of Kili refugees (a pleasantly retro grey-type alien), she's joined by Lt. Nhan and Dr. Culber on a mission to the USS Tikhov (now known forever as the USS Teacup because we weren't listening properly to begin with), an ancient seed bank now run by members of Nhan's own race, the Barzans. 32nd century officer Lt. Willa (Audrey Jackson) is along to keep an eye on things, coming round quickly to the Disco way of doing things and blatantly being set up as a new recurring character.
But there are a lot of characters now, and it's getting very heavy, so to make room, someone has to go... and they write out Nhan. Gorgeous, bad-ass, mysterious Nhan, after three episodes as a main character, gets dumped before we really get a chance to know her. Thankfully, this episode goes a long way to fleshing out her character, allowing Rachael Ancheril the chance to show off her acting chops a bit before she stays behind to look after the seed bank, but still, it seems a waste. She keeps mentioning Airiam, and that just drives home that the writers are doing the same thing: giving us a strong episode for a character we've been waiting to see more of before writing them out. At least Nhan can (and probably will) show up again.
Naturally, the Disconauts show this futuristic fleet the Starfleet way of doing things, with compassion, risk-taking and teamwork. It's cheesy but it works, and Discovery is assured of its place in the 32nd century (a quick retrofit might help though, guys - remember how your shields were knocked out in one shot a couple of episodes ago?) Saru gets a nice speech about the Renaissance (the artist he talks about, Giotto di Bondone, died in 1337, which amusingly makes him ten years closer to Discovery's own time than their new home). Plus, he knocks Burnham down for shooting her mouth off every chance she gets and seriously jeopardising their relationship with Starfleet, which is harsh but very, very fair.
It's a good, solid episode, leaving us with two mysteries: the cause of the Burn, and the nature of this piece of music which has Burnham so bothered as it follows her around. It's quite Doctor Who-y. Hopefully they don't drag the mystery out too long...
Starship porn:
The shipyard includes starships with organic hulls and entirely projected holo-ships (please call one the Enlightenment - one of you guys must be a Red Dwarf fan). Among the ships we see are a new USS Constitution and the USS Voyager NCC-74656-J, which looks like an updated Intrepid-class design. Tilly says that makes it tenth generation, but is corrected to say it's eleventh, presumably having forgotten the original letter-less one, but I dispute that - most registration systems wouldn't include the letter I because it's easily mistaken for the number 1.
The best of all is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it USS Nog, a huge ship named for the first Ferengi in Starfleet, confirmed behind-the-scenes as an Eisenberg-class vessel, in honour of the late Aron Eisenberg. I could cry.
A tenner says we'll see a new USS Enterprise by the end of the season.
Future history:
Vance points out that since the Federation spent the 30th century fighting to uphold the Temporal Accords, and that time travel is now outlawed, the Discovery crew's presence is a crime. Which just shows how futile and illogical it would be to outlaw time travel once it's been developed, since people will inevitably arrive from before it was banned.
Barzan joined the Federation in the 25th century; Kaminar at a point unknown. We don't know if they're still members in 3189. At its height, the UFP had 350 member worlds (up from around 150 in 2373, and speaking of full members, not the undoubtedly thousands of colonies). It's now down to thirty-eight.
The Burn is confirmed as having occurred 120 years previously, so c. 3069.
The Andorian-Orion alliance is called the Emrald Chain and is a major threat to the Federation. It's just annexed Sigma Draconis (home to three inhabited planets in the Trekverse and uncomfortably close to Earth at a mere nineteen light years away).
Crew roster:
Detmer's debrief shows she's in no shape to be on active duty yet she's still sent to pilot Discovery to the Tikhov and then straight out again on the new mission. Give the poor woman a week off.
Tal gets taken to Command with Saru and Burnham... and then completely disappears for the remainder of the episode.
Discovery continues to explore the far future of the Trek universe, seeing familiar worlds and races portrayed in new ways. At the same time, the core characters are not only expanding but becoming deeper, with some real and believable focus paid to their development and their relationships with each other. Although nothing as monumental as reaching Earth happens in this episode, it's easily as important as the previous three instalments to the ongoing story of the Starship Discovery and its mismatched crew.
First; the interplanetary stuf.. It's our first visit to the planet Trill since the third season DS9 episode "Equilibrium," and it's beautiful. We didn't see much more of it than the Caves of Mak'ala on DS9 - which look essentially the same, albeit bigger, more expensive and with some fairy lights up - but this time we get to see a truly stunning rendition of a green and pleasant alien world. This series is particularly stunning in its third season, and notably it looks like the Federation's main member planets have weathered leaving the union pretty well, whereas the far flung colonies have collapsed after having been abandoned. Which is pretty much what you'd expect, given that the colonies would be dependent on support from the homeworlds to function. Trill, like Earth, has become insular, although to begin with the Trill are far more welcoming than the Terran authorities.
This doesn't last long, however, when the Trill elders discover that Adira, the new host to the Tal symbiont, is human. When the word "abomination" gets thrown around, trouble isn't far behind. Again, we've been having some debate in the household about how much of the trans allegory with the Trill was deliberate on DS9, but it's very clearly deliberate here, and while there's no clear parallel (the Trill are more species-ist than anything, so it's more a racism parallel) the choice of language is important. After all, the showrunners have made the conscious decision to feature two trans actors in the Trill storyline, and they'll both have heard this word applied to them, either directly or towards their community as a whole.
Pretty big SPOILERS from hereon out, so proceed with caution if you haven't caught the episode yet.
A very enjoyable, straightforward episode, once you get over the strange way into the set-up. It's an interesting decision to leave Burnham out of the loop for a year and then catch up with her, giving her the job of filling in the crew on the exposition for the future history. I can't escape the feeling that there's a lot more fun to be had with Burnham's adventures as a 32nd century courier - her turning up saying "I've changed" is effective, but not half as effective as actually following her and seeing her change. Still, I suspect we'll get a few flashbacks still, and there's plenty of scope for quick adventures in future Short Treks installments. It's fun to see that she and Book have developed a strong relationship, but have spent the last year pretending they don't have a thing for each other. He won't be out of the picture long, we can be sure of that.
So, we're off to Earth, surprisingly early in the season. This is actually very effective, with life on Earth not being the be all and end all of the series. This isn't Voyager, where getting home to Earth was the whole point (even for the third of the crew or so who weren't even from there). Earth turns out to be a false hope and the stopover, although allowing for some emotional scenes, is ultimately a brief one. There's more important stuff to do, more necessary places to go.
The crux of this being that the mission for this season is to save the Federation, whatever's left of it, and that is no longer synonymous with Earth. The mother planet has Brexited out of the UFP, turning in on itself and becoming xenophobic even to its own colonies. There's a wall around the Earth, and although this one's made of orbital battle satellites rather than bricks and barbed wire, it's hard not to see a parallel with the USA's position in the world. As a Brit, though, it plays more like the UK's increasingly inward-looking attitude and the rampant propaganda against our nearest neighbours. We've not got the stage where we'll shoot down refugee boats coming asking for help, but we are prepared to push them back out to sea, and the parallels are clear.
In practice, "People of Earth," for all its foundation-shattering isolation of the homeworld, is about as pure and old-fashioned an episode of Trek as we've had in a while. The original series was full of episodes where the Enterprise turned up at a world with a generations-long social problem, then sorted it out in fifty minutes. Many of the episodes had an alien world that reflected a real life contemporary social problem, magnified for the story. These tropes are both happening here, only this time, the strange new world in question is the Earth.
The revelation that the raider Wen is not an alien but a human in a fancy helmet is about the most obvious twist imaginable (I believe I actually said, "Ooh, a new alien! Oh no, it's just a bloke in a hat," as soon as he appeared onscreen), but it sets up a lot more of the future climate than it at first appears. We've already seen (probable) humans living distantly from the Earth, abandoned by their civilisation, and humans who work to uphold the ideals of the Federation. We know that sometime in the future, the "V'draysh" will be fighting against human factions. Having Earth turn its back on its colonies and end up in unknowing conflict with Titan is another example of how humanity is splintering in the far future.
It's a strong episode for the characters, too. The more open Burnham is much better company than the pseudo-Vulcan, guilt-ridden version we've lived with so far, and Martin-Green really brings her to life. It's absolutely right that she immediately hands over the captaincy of Discovery to Saru - making him the first alien command lead for the franchise - but she almost immediately undermines him. However much she says she's changed, Burnham is just the same in this regard, going against the captain's wishes as soon as she thinks she knows better. At least it's consistent. Her plan to trick Wen into lowering his shields is a brilliant (albeit very risky) one, but did she not think it would work better if she let Saru know what was going on?
Tilly is a joy in this episode, as ever, with her sibling-like relationship with Stamets holding together the fun scenes where new recruit Adira runs rings round them. It's interesting to hear Adira referred to as "she," when all publicity so far has indicated that they'd be non-binary like the actor playing them, Blu del Barrio. There's been some speculation about this, but Blu themself gave a fascinating interview on the subject here. The reveal that Adira is carrying a Trill symbiont, and is therefore the mysterious Admiral Tal the crew are looking for, adds a whole other level to their character. Adira could become one of the most complex characters we've ever had in terms of gender and identity. My partner and I have been rewatching DS9 lately and talking about Dax's character, wondering how much of the Trill's allegory for trans people was deliberate. It's good to see that, inarguably, Discovery's writers are using the concept to explore gender identity now. As for Adira themself, so far they're a bit inscrutable, but I enjoyed del Barrio's performance and look forward to getting to know the character better.
There's less focus on the rest of the cast this week, although even the lesser crewmen get their moment. It's good to see Detmer's response to the trauma of the journey through time hasn't been forgotten, even if Saru seems blind to how well some of his crew are coping. Even Georgiou is pretty good in this episode, toned down a bit from last week. Among the guest cast, Christopher Heyderdahl is sympathetic as the desperate Wen, while Phumzile Sitole is impressive as Captain Ndoye of the United Earth Defence Force. (Apparently Sitole was disillusioned with acting when she auditioned for the role, and thought it would be her last. Glad to read that it's been a positive experience for her and she plans to continue acting.)
Regarding the future Earth, some elements work, some don't. I love the idea of the crew gathering around the now-enormous tree they once sat under at the Academy. Notably the Golden Gate Bridge has been repaired in the centuries since the Breen attack. Having the United Earth Defence Force look so similar to Starfleet was perhaps a mistake, since they're supposed to be a breakaway from the Federation. That said, Starfleet originated with United Earth, predating the Federation, so perhaps they're holding onto the retro, 22nd century look. It still beggars belief that the spore drive is so utterly advanced that it's beyond anything in the 32nd century, but at least the rest of the technology is way beyond Discovery's: the UEDF can beam straight through the ship's shields, and knock them out with one torpedo. Still, it's pretty mad that a) the Earth's super-advanced long range sensors couldn't pick up that Wen's ships came from Titan, which in space terms is down the road and round the corner; and b) that Wen couldn't have just radio'd them. Also notable is that, although the Earth is now isolationist, they have no problem employing aliens in their ranks.
Far future quibbles aside, this was a very enjoyable episode that colours in some of the new world we've found ourselves in. Onto Trill.
Continuity spots:
The stardate is 865211.3, which is suitably far off from the 24th century shows.
Book and Burnham went to the Donatu system, and Burnham refers to Earth as being in a new quadrant, so while she didn't land at Terralysium, she did make it to the Beta Quadrant. She was certainly close enough to communicate with Terralysium.
We're starting to piece together the future history here, and Book's explanation previously was a bit broad. Around the 2950s the dilithium supplies began to dry up (overmining resources, another contemporary allegory). Experiments into alternatives weren't successful (did no one remember the Romulans' quantum singularity drives?) Sometime between the 3060s and 3080s, the Burn happened, in which all dilithium spontaneously became inert, causing every active warp drive to lose containment and detonate. Millions dead, Federation in tatters. Not long after that, about a century before 3189, Earth dropped out of the Federation, and the Federation and Starfleet headquarters were relocated.
Some of this is hard to tie up with the super-duper advanced Federation of the 31st century briefly witnessed in Enterprise, but the dates are vague enough to make it work. In fact, while the ban on time travel kind of covers it, there's no reason to be certain that this is the same timeline we saw in Enterprise's future. Burnham and co. have already altered future history once by defeating Control, and the Temporal War saw multiple changes in history in Enterprise, so it's actually quite unlikely that this is exactly the same future Daniels came from.
Stamets confirms that they left from 2258, which means the end of Disco season two is set at the same time most of the 2009 Star Trek movie is set, in different timelines.
Book has never been to Earth, even though his first name is Cleveland. (I was going to comment that my name's Daniel and I've never been in a lion's den, but then I remembered that I have.)
Museums are cool.
