Chose Your Pain – After 3 weeks with their new navigator.The Discovery and her Spore Drive have been Star Fleet’s secret weapon against the Klingons. This leads The Klingons to abduct Captain Lorca for its secrets and leaves Saru in an uneasy command while Burnham is concerned about the welfare of Ripper.
This is very much a character and cast-expanding episode as new faces join the show and old ones take different directions. Starting with the new: we finally meet Lt. Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif – Penny Deadful’s Jekyll & Hyde), the last core character to be revealed. He initially comes across as very likeable while bonding with the captured Lorca, and given the war setting of the show, I like the idea of making him an ex-POW to explore his PTSD throughout future missions. Then we have a full=on blast from the past as Discovery gives us an older version of original Trek series character; Harry Mudd. It’s a good reincarnation of the classic character as he schemes for his survival. If his parting, “you haven’t seen the last meeeee” remarks didn’t make it obvious, Mudd will be back at least once more this season for his revenge, which is poised for a great story setup. He’s already shown collaboration with the Klingons this episode so he could even be used towards the main Klingon story in helping Kor capture the Discovery. Whether it was in con character or not, Mudd’s anti-federation notions of, “your war” ruining the lives of ordinary people was a nice piece of real world commentary.
As for the existing Discovery crew, there’s a lot of nice little developments across the episode. After pitting them again in conflict, I particularly enjoyed the reconciliation between Burnham and Saru. Having the Kelpien explain why he holds a grudge against her not only humanized him but it made clear sense. Saru was poised to become Captain Georgiou’s new First Officer when Burnham left to command her own ship but her actions denied him the chance to learn from such a decorated Star Fleet officer. I also loved the message behind his requested competency analysis; “I know what I did”, that recognizing your own mistakes is more important than being told them. While it may have been confined to some ominous final moments, the prospect of Stamets developing a bit of a Dr Manhattan complex after a spot of spore-bonding is quite an interesting one. This is backed up well by pledging Doctor Culber (Wilson Cruz – 13 Reasons Why) as Stamets romantic interest ready to pull him back towards solid ground when the existence of life becomes a highly overrated concept. We even get a little insight into the origins of Captain’s Lorca’s “student of war” state of mind by learning the fate of his prior command. It’s all excellent gradual character development and it makes up for the more shallow impressions of the initial episodes. The crew were intentionally presented to us as blank slates to be filled in each episode across the season.
While the captured Captain aspect of the story was good (an ever dependable classic), the main story of the episode had a bit too much repetition from last week. For the second week in a row, the logistics of the Spore Drive and the Ripper creature were in heavy debate with morality angles over the treatment of the creature. While this was still okay, I’m starting to feel like the show is spending too much time with the Spore Drive and not doing enough encounter-based adventures. If Stamets is going to be Mr Wizard with that tech, let it stay stable and established for the next third of the season to allow the show some more variety. There’s also a worrying sign that Discovery doesn’t quite know how to be more post-watershed thzn past Trek shows. Tilly and Stamets drop very pointless F-bombs, seemingly just because they can. There’s nothing wrong with using harsh language for emphasis or exclamation but this completely kills the scene’s tone and will leave many fans wondering if some Lucas Hounds have hacked their comms system. However, on the double-negative side, the Klingon scenes were much better this episode. The featured female captain came across better with her dialogue to make Lorca’s torture scene work. Plus the prison setup encouraged less talking and more violence works in its favour.
It’s another good episode to mark the one third mark of the season. Some fun Easter Eggs like a familiar names from the original series on the list of most decorated Captains. The show still looks great and it’s building up its cast skilfully. Let’s hope it holds that course.