Much more fun than this Vulcan stoicism? Star Trek Discovery gets a bit mixed up?#SaintsofImperfection #StarTrekDiscovery #episode5

Hmm. Episode 5 is called ‘Saints of Imperfection’ and, indeed, there’s a lot of imperfection going on. Imperfection that involves nothing but contradiction and incoherence. And the characters aren’t ‘saints’ at all, cos they’re part and parcel of all the imperfection going on. The fundamental problem that started in the previous episode is that Burnham’s character is now so inconsistent it’s ridiculous. Burnham was meant to be all ‘Vulcan’, logical and dispassionate (as per the upbringing of her formative years), but suddenly she’s the most empathic person on the damn ship – more human than the humans. She mopes about, looking doleful and pained. She gazes mournfully at Ash Tyler (her true love who is denied to her), she looks tragic about her disfunctional relationship with Spock (who isn’t even there) and, unprompted, she turns up at Tilly’s quarters to engage in a weepy sob. Trust us, Burnham, it’s painful for us too. What are the writers playing at? Well, that’s it: they’re playing about. They tell us so as well, cos Georgiu says: ‘It’s much more fun [like this] than [having] this Vulcan stoicism.’ The writers reckon they can wring more jokes out of proceedings by having everybody emotional and chaotic, like Tilly. It’s very lazy writing. The writers have lost direction and, once again, they verbalise it during Burnham’s narrator reverie and summary at the end of the show: ‘If I have a path, I’m still searching for it. We all are. I envy those who can believe there’s a greater hand writing our story.’ Burnham actually says that! How self-indulgent are these writers getting? They’ve put their hands up and admitted they’ve let it all slip. Oooooops.

Where does it leave us? Back to flaming square one. All the characters that have died up till this episode are back, and they’re all fit and healthy. Georgiu (the annoyingly cryptic and creepy Michelle Yeoh, whom the producers have clearly hired for another season but aren’t really sure what to do with) stalks around wearing black and trying to find a narrative for herself. Then Stamets (whose grief had made him so interesting) has his old love and life restored to him. Ash Tyler is back on board, and for some non-reason he gets to stay, cos Captain Pine supernaturally seems to know this will cause hi-jinks in future episodes. And… whatever. (By the way, we all know Lorca’s gonna reappear too, right?) We needn’t have watched anything at all before this episode then? Because nothing has had any real or actual consequence? What’s the point then? WHAT are you doing, writers? No wonder Saru has nothing to say throughout the entire episode (despite having had such a transformative moment in the previous episode). He’s shocked into a horrified silence, probably glad he’s wearing so much prosthetic make-up so that we don’t see him cringing and wincing.

It’s a shame, cos the first half of the episode, set in the Mycelial Network, presents us with an intriguing scenario of ‘there’s a monster in the woods killing us one by one’. It taps into ancestral memories and fairy tales. It’s powerful. And the Tilly-May relationship is compellingly strange – an incipient interspecies lesbian relationship. But that scenario gets phallocentrically overtaken very quickly (by the Stamets-Hugh relationship) and it’s all put to bed before we have to see any actual physical intimacy (that’s where Hollywood draws the line, of course). AND THEN, the rest of the episode becomes this bizarre talking-heads exposition in which Pine, the Admiral and the head of Section 31 (Star Trek’s black ops division) witter nonsense about the never-ending pursuit of Spock and try to set up a political love-hate triangle amongst themselves, trying to give themselves characters and tense character relationships. ‘Enough of this manlier-than-thou bullsh+t!’ the Admiral castigates the other two… except neither of them have been acting in such a fashion. The Admiral tries to explain their characters to them. It’s like a writer’s meeting. Indeed, that’s what the entire episode is – confused writers talking to themselves about themselves, darlings. It’s so self-indulgent it’s nauseating. They seem to have entirely forgotten the audience is there. And, maybe, the audience won’t be there for very much longer. Buck up your ideas, please!

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Saru gets his shirt off and Burnham almost breaks the fourth wall… Grumpy Guest Review, Star Trek Discovery #AnObolforCharon #StarTrekDiscovery #GrumpyGuestReview

Once again I find myself wondering what Mr Dalton has been smoking, because he quite liked episode 4. Sure, there were some “themes” and stuff, but other than that episode 4 really struggled.

The episode title is An Obol for Charon. Charon is, of course, a reference to the mythical ferryman who carries the dead across the river Styx to the afterlife, an obol being the small unit of ancient Greek currency that the dead give him in payment. Based on this title you might think we’re going to have a discussion about death, one’s journey through life towards it and one’s legacy. These things are mentioned, certainly, but the episode isn’t about any of that. Nope, it’s about the pointless pursuit of Spock. Again. Everything else happens in the few minutes that are not devoted to this endless quest. As a result, the scenes dealing with these enormous and worthy topics are rushed past our eyes so fast that if you blinked, you’d miss them, all so we can get back to The Quest for Spock.

You know Spock, right? He’s the guy this show is all about, but whom we have yet to actually meet! Instead of Spock we have met Spock’s dad, Spock’s mum, Spock’s retcon adopted sister, the Mary Sue engineer Jett Reno, the red shirt science officer Connolly, a blob of sentient fungus (!) and this week’s comic relief. The comic relief’s name is Linus, which rhymes with “sinus” because, you know, that’s funny. And he makes a point of telling us he has six nasal canals which, you know, makes the fact that he sneezed on Connolly in episode 1 funnier, right?

Right?

You didn’t laugh?

Cool. Neither did I.

So, basically, Linus is the kind of alien a five-year-old would invent. And it gets worse because in this episode he doesn’t even get any characterisation. He’s just a plot device whose purpose is to remind the viewer that there is a thing called the Universal Translator and that, occassionally, it gets something wrong and doesn’t translate him, correctly.

This primes us for when Discovery, in pursuit of Spock’s shuttle, crosses paths with an object referred to only as The Sphere. This is actually one of the better opportunities this show has created to demonstrate its credentials as Star Trek. Our intrepid crew encounters a mysterious and powerful alien presence in deep space. At first, it seems to be a strange natural phenomenon until our heroes realise it’s organic and reacting to their presence. They conclude that it’s hostile and are about to retaliate. But they realise that their own limited human perceptions are colouring their judgement and that, to truly understand the unknown they must embrace the possibility of intelligences and motives that are not human. And thus, they perceive the alien’s actions in a new light, deduce its motives, come to an understanding of themselves within the context of the universe, and gain a measure of enlightenment. End credits. Job done. Star Trek, in the bag. Grumpy review transformed into Glowing review! Hurrah!

But the moment passed because there’s no time for any of this Trek stuff. We’ve got to find Spock! (Imagine me saying that as a small child having a tantrum, bouncing up and down, waving my tiny fists and going red in the face.) Stop doing that interesting stuff! We’ve got to find Spock!

And thus, this Grumpy review was born, instead.

Anyway, having been flagged up by Linus as a dodgy piece of kit, the Universal Translator promptly malfunctions and starts translating everything everyone says, and everything displayed on screens, into random languages, 90% of which are recognisably human, with only one alien language…

Hmm, maybe the Federation has more in common with the Terran Empire than we first thought… but that’s the subject of another essay…

Meanwhile, the UT problem quickly renders the ship and crew helpless.

I like this idea; as far as I know, the UT has never failed quite so spectacularly on any other Star Trek show, before. Sure, there have been minor glitches, but in general this dictionary definition of the “plot device” has not received the attention it deserves, possibly until now. I especially liked the fact that the glitch affected all the computer displays in a very logical and believable extension of the UT’s function aboard the ship as a fundamentally important technology.

So, what’s the answer? Turn if off and on again, of course! But even as they do this, it turns out that Saru is dying. Quite quickly. In fact, he only started to feel symptoms that morning, but they’ve worsened now to the point where he’s convinced he’s suffering a terminal condition unique to his species, and one that is irreversible… Yeah, you know what’s coming. I won’t insult your intelligence by pointing it out.

Unlike Michael Burnham! There is hardly anything that happens in this episode that doesn’t get called out, pointed at and described in detail by Burnham for our benefit. For some reason, An Obol for Charon treats us like utter morons with no ability to recognise important moments or powerful emotions without Michael Burnham pointing at them and yelling into our faces that This Is Important, or You Should Feel Sad Now!

I swear, I was ready to push her out of an airlock.

If Discovery has one problem, it’s that it suffers from a phenomenon often observed in amateur authors who have yet to learn the subtleties of their craft. Amateur authors have a tendency to tell you, the reader, everything they think you need to know. It’s referred to as “author voice” because it’s like the author is leaning down over your shoulder and whispering into your ear as you read. “You should feel sad, now,” the author says, “because Saru is dying. That’s really sad. Be sad.”

What good authors do can be summarised fairly simply as show, don’t tell. Build a character by letting us watch him, struggle with him, cry with him, love with him, aspire with him. Then kill him. Do it simply. No fuss. We’ll bring the pain to the scene. You don’t need to tell us.

My god, the Discovery team really need to take this lesson on board. For example, Saru’s not-death scene could have been classy and respectable, but it was full of Burnham’s big puppy dog eyes (you know, for a kid raised on Vulcan, she’s very quick to tear up). And the moment the knife appeared I had a flashback to the TNG season 5 episode “Ethics” in which Worf, paralysed, asks Riker to help him commit suicide. That is one of the finest TNG episodes ever written, with a very good scene between Worf and Riker, one in which respect for the audience is not sacrificed on the altar of emotional sensationalism and badly directed over-acting. Unlike Saru’s not-death scene.

Show, don’t tell.

But Saru’s death scene did show me something I really liked. Saru’s quarters! Very cool. Especially the mossy mound he uses as a bed. It actually looks very comfortable.

Unfortunately, Saru with his shirt off looks exactly like an actor wearing a body prosthetic that looks exactly like what it is: a lump of latex. It also made Saru look  far more muscular than he normally appears in his uniform. My first thought was when did Saru get so buff?

Burnham isn’t the only one who lectures the audience. The Mary Sue engineer Jett Reno turns up in Stametz’s “greenhouse” to annoy Stametz. She provokes him into a proper nerd rant by dissing his pet fungus project, which results in a lengthy lecture on environmentalism and its fictional future history leading up to Discovery’s present day. Unfortunately, this is another example of Discovery laying it on thick: another “author voice” problem. Since season 1 the idea that the damage the spore drive does to the mycelial network is an analogy for the damage we, in the present day, are doing to Earth through our use of fossil fuels, has been made painfully obvious. And I mean painfully.

We get it. Thank you. Please tone it down. It’s interferring with the story telling!

But Reno’s arrival in the greenhouse did, ultimately, lead to one of the more amusing scenes, when the sentient fungus known as May (no, not Theresa, although you’d be forgiven for making that mistake) released some sort of hallucinogenic airborne dust that got Reno and Stametz high long enough for May to swallow, engulf, or otherwise bodysnatch Tilly. That was funny. And it was refreshing to see two professionals behaving professionally to solve problems, instead of getting fixated on Spock (looking at you, Pike) or growing big wet puppy dog eyes (Burnham, just grow up).

Right at the end, we finally return to some sort of discussion of the central theme of the episode that is referenced in the title, but was quickly side tracked; that of how we approach death and what legacy we leave behind. Saru contemplates the fact that he has lived through a life stage that his people have always assumed was terminal, and that he has now shed his ganglia, the physical incarnation of his fear. However, he does not conclude that his death cycle was artificially stimulated by the weird emissions of the Sphere (whose weird emissions also nearly wrecked the ship, so they were pretty powerful). No, instead he gets all metaphysical and concludes that the “central organising belief” of his people must be wrong.

Ok, now what is Saru smoking?

He claims that he no longer feels fear, and that as a result he feels liberated and at the same time, has come to the realisation that his people’s beliefs, which lead them to sacrifice themselves as food to more powerful beings, are wrong.

Say that you have an accident and lose your sense of smell. Now, being unable to perceive scent, you sit in your hospital bed and conclude that the idea of smell is all a lie, and that the rest of humanity are somehow being conned into believing they can smell things like food and flowers, so that they will buy pastries and bouquets from powerful beings called chefs and gardeners.

None of this makes sense, and it’s obvious why: because it doesn’t have to. You, the audience, are just required to go along with it so that the writers can execute their Big Plan for Saru.

What’s the plan? He’s going home to liberate his people. And the writers need to set him up with the power to do this, which involves divesting him of the physiological restraints that inhibit the rest of his race, and gifting him some sort of insight that will motivate him to lead the struggle for freedom from… whatever they’re called. I don’t know how to spell the name of these predators, as Saru describes them. Bow Uhl? I’m tempted to call them Bow Wows. With the waggy tails. Who like to nom on Kelp biscuits…

You see what I’m getting at. It’s all contrived. I’ve used that word several times to describe the plot lines we’ve seen so far in season 2. We can add contrived to author voice and show, don’t tell on the list of writing sins that Discovery commits. And at the top of this list is the biggest one. Story. You see, a good story tells itself. You just have to plug in a plot, which is just a sequence of related events, add a few characters, put a title on the page and do a spell check. There are two hard parts to writing: dreaming up a good story, and sitting down and making yourself write it out. Everything else is almost procedural, so long as you have a good story.

Good stories tell themselves. And this story doesn’t. We know this because the writers are forcing it, which results in all the flaws just described. And this episode is the very worst example yet… and we’re only four episodes in…

Put it this way: I’d pay Charon a million bloody obols to avoid having to watch this episode ever again.

Bonus material

And now, some really stupid things that happened, or were said, which made me stop and go WTF?

THE DOCTOR: upon examining Saru, “The pain would render the average humanoid unconscious.”

I don’t even know where to begin. This is one of the most unintelligent lines I’ve ever heard on Star Trek. If you want to say that Saru is suffering but that he’s really stoical about it, and is an all round ace dude who can deal with hard stuff with composure and dignity, well… you don’t have to! We know! We see it in his character and his actions! That’s the whole “show, don’t tell” thing! That’s why Saru is the most popular character on this show!

An adult human being wrote that line, and got paid for it. Jeez…

LOCATION: Sick bay. Two senior bridge officers (Burnham and Pike) are covered in fresh blood from a large open torso wound which they are ineffectually trying to bandage, whilst simultaneously debating the nature of the alien sphere. Meanwhile, the casualty writhes on the bed, apparently dying judging by the quantity of blood that is pouring out. As this happens, the doctor is waving a glowy thing over the casualty’s forehead. Over his forehead. Not his exploding chest wound. No, she leaves the sticky bit to the two unqualified officers, instead. And yet we have very clearly seen several other medical personnel in the background in the previous scene.

And if you think any of that makes sense, I want to know what you’re smoking, because dat’s some good shit!

LOCATION: A science lab, in which Burnham and Saru and examining sensor data from the Sphere. Burnham gets all frosty and tight-lipped. Saru notices, despite the fact that he’s in pain and dying. Yes, the dying man notices that Burnham is not happy. Poor Burnham. Poor healthy, not-dying Burnham.

SARU: “You are wondering why I kept this from you.”

(Why? Because he’s only known himself for a matter of minutes!)

BURNHAM: “You don’t have to bear it alone.”

(She says this as if he had known about it for years. He’s had a vague suspicion since breakfast, and only confirmed it at around lunch time!)

This strikes me as exactly what it is: contrived and artificial. Someone really wanted to write this kind of emotional dialogue between them, but the plot didn’t call for it. So what the hell, they stuck it in anyway!

BURNHAM emotes all the way through the episode, oozing like a wet sponge, telling us things which are obvious and do not need to be spelled out to us as though we were stupid.

BURNHAM to SARU, with big, wet puppy dog eyes: “You are the most empathic soul I have ever met.”

(No shit. He took time out from dying on his feet to notice that you were all tight-lipped and pissy that he didn’t spot his terminal condition ten seconds earlier and rush to tell you.)

BURNHAM to us, the AUDIENCE, after the Sphere finally explodes and dies, but somehow preserves the ship from the blast: “It’s final act was to save us so we could tell its story.”

(Duh! Kinda got that point from all the huge hints and clues and other statements of the obvious that preceded your statement of the obvious. This is just one level up from the doctor’s idiot remark in sickbay. Well done.)

It’s also a straight rip off from the TNG season 3 episode, Tin Man. Star Trek: Discovery, boldly re-discovering plot lines that Star Trek has used, before!

[The Grumpy Guest Review is always provided by Michael Victor Bowman, whom you may wish to check out, to abuse and amuse at www.lifedescribed.com. Or follow him on Twitter: @mvictorbowman.]

Infection, possession, mutation and evolution! Episode 4 of Star Trek Discovery #StarTrekDiscovery #AnObolforCharon

We continue to hunt for Spock – Captain Pike’s former Number One (who is gratuitously beautiful and flirtatious) giving us enough info to set us off in pursuit of Spock’s fleeing craft. En route to intercept Spock, however, the Enterprise is caught in a multiphasic stasis field by an ominous planetoid. Yay! It’s just like the scenario of an episode of the classic series.

The Enterprise’s systems are infected by some sort of virus, with hilarious universal-translator consequences… At the same time, the cold-virus that an alien member of Pike’s crew displayed two episodes ago infects other crew members, with some scary implications… And the bio-organism extracted from Tilly in the previous episode breaks free to take possession of people…

As you can see, this episode is layered. The themes of infection, possession, mutation and evolution are played out in various ways, all becoming metaphorically symbolic of a ‘bigger’ idea, a philosophical idea concerning birth, life, death and rebirth. It’s an intelligent way of presenting such themes without becoming dogmatic or expository. It makes episode 4 a very GOOD episode.

It was a pleasure watching this episode. It’s nuanced, tender and poignant. It offers some proper problem-solving that doesn’t rely on mummery and meaningless explanation: rather, the ‘problems’ are as emotional and moral as they are practical; so the problems are representative of personal challenges and the opportunity for genuine character growth. Heavens above! Genuine character development? Of characters we already care about? Whatever next? In all respects (technical, creative and metaphorical) then, this episode is a tour de force and a must-watch. Miss this one and there’ll be a real gap in your understanding in later episodes. Hurrah!

 

Grumpy Guest Review: Spock’s problem with Burnham is revealed, and does Ash Tyler have Klingon sperm? #StarTrekDiscovery #PointOfLight #episode3 #GrumpyGuestReview

‘Point of Light’ was an episode of two halves in which one half was compelling and very watchable and the other was, basically, a waste of time. I’ll get to the good bits, but first a brief rundown of the useless part.

We open with Burnham trying, once more, as she has tried in both episodes 1 and 2, to interest us in these red lights and in the connection between the red lights and Spock, and in the connection between Spock and Burnham, and how the connection between Spock and Burnham might be related to the red lights… oh God, please stop. We do not care about twinkly little red plot devices in the sky whose only purpose is to be an excuse for two things. These things are, one: to give Pike the authority to reactivate the Spore Drive despite the harm this does to Stametz, and two: to give Discovery an excuse to go places and do things when it gets there.

Really… so far, that’s all the red lights have been good for. Plot devices.

And Spock? Well, he’s just another plot device, and a really bad one, too.

But enough of that! Ash Tyler has a beard, and he’s L’Rell’s new Torch Bearer. He’s also up to his nostrils in a very Shakespearian story set within the halls of power at the top of Klingon society, where there is forbidden love, assassination, intrigue and heart-wrenching sacrifice. It’s all good stuff. It comprises most of the watchable and interesting scenes in this episode.

And we get to see a proper D7 cruiser! At last! An actual proper Klingon ship from Star Trek, not the eccentric collection of weird designs that we got in Season 1. Some of those looked like electric guitars that had been melted a bit. Compare that to the D7, which has bags of personality, most of which is staring down a barrel pointed right between your eyes. It’s a very welcome addition to the show.

As if all that wasn’t enough, we also got Emperor… sorry, Captain Georgiou who has become a Section 31 badass. This is almost a sour note in the Klingon half of the episode because Georgiou is almost too badass, too well-equipped and too powerful, easily defeating a gang of tooled-up, alert Klingons with some very fancy technology. But as that’s pretty much the only sour note in the Klingon half, it’s forgivable compared to the dross we get elsewhere.

And it means we get more Georgiou!

Not only does Tyler have a beard, he also has a little albino kid! Apparently Voq got L’Rell in the family way before he was modified into a human. But this doesn’t help us to resolve the essential problem with the Voq/Tyler character, which is trying to figure out if the individual in front of us was born Voq, or born Ash Tyler.

In other words, does the physical body in front of us have Klingon sperm or human sperm?

One suspects the writers of both seasons haven’t been able to make up their minds about what he really is. It looks like they’re just keeping it vague and rolling with it. And maybe they’re right: maybe it really doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s actually turned into a brilliant metaphor for the confusion Tyler feels about himself, because it seems as though he doesn’t know what his sperm looks like, either!

Overall, this half of the episode earns a wow. It’s disappointing that the albino child was so quickly written out of the show, being sent to a monastery from which he will never return. But other than that, we got Shakespearian plotting, a D7 cruiser and Georgiou. If ‘Point of Light’ was nothing else but this, it would get a big thumbs up right now and a Glowing review, instead of a Grumpy one. But alas, there’s the other half with its red lights and some dude called Spock and the increasingly illogical Burnham and… yes, sorry, we have to go there.

Spock. They evoke his name as though it’s somehow powerful, as though the enormous weight of canonical history that surrounds the character originally played by Leonard Nimoy will immediately cascade over us like an emotional waterfall and instantly infuse us with a burning fascination to learn more about what is happening to Spock!

But this is episode 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, a brand new iteration of the franchise and, in almost every respect, a retcon of the original timeline that Spock was popularised within. In this context, we’ve never known Spock. Actually, we already expect that we won’t because we know he’ll be younger and played by a different actor. He’s just an empty name. We don’t care about this character BECAUSE WE’VE NEVER MET HIM.

Contrast this with the continuing trials and tribulations of Ensign Tilly who, this week, is plagued by a hallucination that is apparently trying to ruin her career. We care about this, and we root for Tilly, willing her to find a solution to this problem. We give a damn about Tilly BECAUSE WE’VE MET HER. We’ve watched her strive and suffer and cry, and stand up against injustice, and risk her life for her friends and a mission she believes in. She’s real to us. Spock isn’t. We don’t care about Spock. We have no reason to.

And all Burnham does is constantly talk about how important Spock is. Well, if he’s so damn important, let’s meet him! And for a brief moment, episode 3 lets us think that we are about to finally see the man of mystery in the flesh!

But no. Instead we get his mother.

We get Amanda, human wife of Sarek, and finally some insight into Spock’s particular problem with his family. It appears to be two-fold. Amanda, conscious that Vulcan children were supposed to grow up as cold automatons, starved him of love and yet, equally conscious of Burnham’s traumatic past and the difficulties of being an emotional human child in a land of emotionless, super-intelligent space elves, lavished it on Burnham. Spock’s human-half saw his mother spoiling his unwanted step-sister and silently burned.

This all comes to light in a confession from Amanda who’s been carrying the burden of guilt for damaging her son’s human half. But she leaves the room angry at her daughter, instead, when Burnham admits to doing something to Spock so terrible that he essentially cut Burnham off for life.

Why did Burnham wound Spock? Well, bear with me because this makes no sense. Apparently, Burnham did this terrible thing to protect him from the attentions of so-called Logic Extremists. We’ve only heard of these people in passing remarks from Sarek, but we’re supposed to regard them as the Vulcan equivalent of Taliban. Apparently Spock would be a target for them if they knew he was close to his sister. But if he was estranged from Burnham, then apparently they wouldn’t regard him as a target. You know, not because it was Spock’s father Sarek who brought Burnham to Vulcan, or married a human. They wouldn’t target him because of Sarek, from whom Spock is not estranged. No, of course not… and anyway, how the hell did teenage Burnham know all this when Spock didn’t?

This makes so little sense that it is actually giving me a headache.

Anyway, Burnham basically hurt Spock’s feelings so that he would go away and stop emailing her, or whatever. And thus be safe from being targeted (whatever that actually means).

Here’s a thought: why couldn’t Burnham just talk to Spock at the time. Aren’t Vulcan kids supposed to be incredibly clever and rational, far more so than other species’ children of the same age? Why couldn’t Burnham and Spock secretly agree to behave in public like they hate each other, so as to fool the extremists? Why?

It’s all so horribly contrived. The writer may as well hold up signs saying “Care about this. It’s important, but don’t ask why. Just care, because otherwise my shitty writing won’t make sense.” But I don’t think it’s the writer’s fault, because the Klingon half was solid. I think the Spock and red lights story arc is, in fact, a constraint on the writers of this show; something that’s been imposed from above. There’s a wall full of post-it notes in the writers’ room and the post-it notes must be obeyed, and if they say thou shalt meet Amanda, not Spock, in episode 3, and get a load of tedious monologue as a result, then that’s what you’ll get. But if you do that you can write Klingons for the rest of the episode. First do your homework, then you can play.

The writer’s name is Andrew Colville, by the way. Because credit where it’s due, the Klingon stuff was cool. The director was Olatunde Osunsanmi whose work I don’t know, but I’m happy to report that he clearly doesn’t subscribe to the Alex Kurtzman school of cinematography, which is to say we got lots of story and were not blinded by mindless action and death (here’s to you, Science Officer Connolly).

Let’s finish on some good stuff.

Pike remains solid. He generally comes across as a perfectly safe pair of hands whom his crew can trust, and who has a brain and can use it. We have no reason to resent him for chair-blocking Saru. Pike is also able to accurately summarise the plot, which he does during a conversation, in a way that Burnham failed to during the intro, which begs the question: why is Pike easier to write for?

And then there’s Tilly, yay! (You’ve just go to say yay when you talk about Tilly). This part was quite good, too. Her hallucinations are brilliantly resolved within the context of the show’s established canon and by the end of the episode, we have an actual mystery that we can get our teeth into; one that know something about, that will have consequences for characters we already know and love (unlike Spock) and is a mystery we can speculate about based on past events and existing knowledge… none of which applies to twinkly red lights. Or Spock.

[The Grumpy Guest Review is always provided by Michael Victor Bowman, whom you may wish to check out, to abuse and amuse at www.lifedescribed.com. Or follow him on Twitter: @mvictorbowman.]

A short interview with yours truly #authorinterview #AJDalton

Interviewed by Falmouth University, init: https://falwriting.com/new-blog/2019/1/30/interview-a-j-dalton

How many split personalities do we actually need? Star Trek Discovery episode 3 #StarTrekDiscovery #PointOfLight

So, Tilly is seeing a dead friend from her school-days. Spock’s mum explains at length about Spock’s half-Vulcan/half-human psychological disorientation (stuff we all know very well). Ash, down on the Klingon homeworld, is going through his whole I’m Volk-the-Klingon in the body of the human Ash Tyler confusion. And Burnham is hallucinating red angels and crying about it – actually crying, even though we’ve seen her go through hell and highwater in season 1 without shedding a single tear! Okay, okay, we get the theme of duality and self-doubt already! Do you really need to belabour it so damn self-indulgently? Stop whining about your anxiety already.

The main problem though is that with so many split personalities needing ‘resolution’, the 50-min episode really doesn’t have time for us to go through the crisis and dramatic symbolic/psychological progression for each character. So what do we get instead? We get a big block of exposition or an immediate explanation and solution for the ‘problem’. The closest we get to an actual plot-line is down on the Klingon homeworld, where all sorts of politics are going on. Yet, we expect Ash to prove his worth and save the day… except that all gets fudged and we get an awful deus ex machina moment of salvation… with a character who’s already died at least twice and really shouldn’t exist anymore (except they’re a big star and the series doesn’t wanna waste them).

In summary, then, we only stay engaged because we have learnt to care about these characters in previous episodes. We give the episode leeway and tolerance. But, honestly, it’s a really duff episode (that’s me being polite). A critic friend of mine called it a ‘process episode’, which means it dumps a load of info on us so that we will understand/enjoy the drama and action of upcoming episodes. Fair enough. But it’s sooooooo clumsily done. Oh well. Onwards!

Grumpy Guest Review: the spirit of Gabriel Lorca lives on!: Star Trek Discovery episode 2 #NewEden #StarTrekDiscovery #GrumpyGuestReview

Well, I didn’t think it would happen this soon into Season 2 but Mr Dalton and I already agree on something! New Eden was a great episode of Star Trek. It was fun, engaging and thought-provoking. In fact, Episode 2, New Eden, is so different from Episode 1 that I could almost imagine they were two different shows! When Jonathan Frakes cropped up in the opening credits as director, I knew we were in good hands, and it was also written by a different and, arguably, better team of writers. I say better because this episode featured things like a story and a plot in the same episode (Alex Kurtzman, take note: this is how professionals do things).

Action sequences, yes there were some of those. Did they involve pod racers… sorry, landing pods? No! They did not! [SPOILERS] They involved the whopping great big spaceship doing something pretty cool, which was launching a dark matter asteroid out of its rear end and using its immense gravity to drag a cloud of dinosaur-killing asteroids away from a planet they were about to hit. That is proper treknology! Better yet, it’s the proper use of the central character in any Star Trek show which is, obviously, the ship itself! (Did you think the central character was one of the people? Nah!)

However, some basic problems remain. While New Eden steered clear of mindless action and death simply for the sake of it (Connolly, you will be remembered), it still shared several failings with its episode 1 step-brother. These include snappy dialogue and one-liners, which feel forced and unnatural (no, CBS, Star Trek is not the Marvel movie franchise and it never will be, so stop trying).

There is also the continuing problem of technobabble that is internally inconsistent. Basically, it makes no sense! And it may seem silly to complain that fictional science jargon makes no sense, but there are some simple rules that govern these things, and so far season 2 has ignored all of them. It feels like the writers are just throwing technobabble flash cards on the floor and then kicking them around until they form rough sentences. It’s just not good enough.

But these things don’t matter. Not really, not when the meat and bone of the episode was so good. Complaining about silly jokes and daft technobabble is the highest form of nit-picking. New Eden was a great episode of Trek, and I haven’t even got to the good stuff about the Prime Directive, Captain Pike and their cool away mission, yet!

And I’m not going to, because Mr Dalton already covered that part.

So I’ll get on with telling you why, in fact, this brilliant episode of Star Trek actually left me with some very dark feelings towards the crew of the Discovery. Why, in fact, this episode revealed them to be what they secretly are: ammoral hypocrits and worthy heirs to the legacy of that pragmatic bastard, Captain Lorca!

It begins with choices, and whether or not you believe individual human beings have a right to choose.

The episode opens with the crew discovering that the next red light on their list is so far away, it would take them 150 years to travel there by warp. But wait! We have this thing called a Spore Drive that can get us there instantaneously! Mr Stametz, report to engineering!

Wait a minute! Stop right there!

Now, we all knew the Spore Drive was coming back. Episode 1 even teased us with it, when Tilly had the idea she could use pieces of dark matter to build a navigation computer that could replace Stametz. And why do they need to replace Stametz? Because every time he hooks himself up to the Spore Drive he risks becoming a mental vegetable, because navigating the mycellial network is basically melting his brain. Also, there’s the small matter of him having traumatic visions of his dead boyfriend while he’s in there, which is ruining his mental health into the bargain.

This was the reason why Starfleet, an organisation renowned for its compassion, ethics and support for the rights of individuals, banned its use and why Tilly was so chuffed she might have found a way to use it without reducing Stametz to a gibbering wreck.

But that isn’t why we need to stop right there. We need to consider two things.

One: the fact that Pike is basically ordering Stametz back into a torture chamber with no good reason.

Was there ever a good reason? Hell, yes, an existential war with the Klingons during most of Season 1. Everyone onboard knew they might have to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure victory, and thus Stametz made the choice to continue piloting the Spore Drive, even when people like Saru, Tilly and Burnham expressed their qualms over the risk he was taking with his health.

Two: the casual manner in which Pike calmly asserts that this peace-time mission to investigate distant twinkly lights is important enough to ignore Starfleet and put Stametz’s health at risk.

So, what else is important enough? A sudden need to replenish the stock of espresso capsules? Oi, Stametz! Get your ass back in the mycellium torture chamber where your brain might melt, because Tilly’s gotta have her caffeine hit if she’s going to bounce all over the ship like a hyperactive 5 year old!

What makes this even worse is that in Episode 2 we find out Stametz has resigned his position aboard Discovery. He is simply waiting to get back to spacedock so he can take up his new, and safe, desk job. We get the distinct sense that he’s no longer considered an operational part of the crew. He is, for the duration, a passenger. This sense is reinforced when, later, he turns up on the bridge during a crisis and Saru expresses both surprise at his presence and gratitude for his assistance: gratitude, because Saru understands that Stametz is no longer expected to assist.

Yet Pike still thinks it’s okay to order him back into the mushroom pain booth. How very… Lorca, of him.

The rest of the episode returns to that favourite old Trek chestnut, the Prime Directive and the fun new way we can find to break it this week! Unsurprisingly, they break it. The fun comes from the story behind it and the intelligent ethical debate the characters have in the process. It’s so refreshing, after Kurtzman’s episode, for the audience to be treated with respect. Thank you, Mr Frakes.

On the planet of New Eden there is a chap called Jacob who possesses a camera that has information on it that the crew need. But Jacob’s society is pre-warp and peaceful, united by religious faith and dismissive of scientific explanations for their origin. Jacob and his family always believed in the science and theorised that there were other humans out there, but they lacked the proof. Now, in exchange for that proof (in the form of Pike beaming down to see him), Jacob is willing to hand over the camera. He tells Pike that merely knowing the answer to his question is satisfaction enough. But there is no guarantee that Jacob will keep his mouth shut. Why wouldn’t he tell his own descendants, or anyone else who’ll listen, that instead of living this dirty, dangerous, primitive lifestyle where toothache can kill you, they could have personal hygiene, build labour-saving gadgets and watch wide screen TVs?

Of course Jacob is going to talk! Good grief…

In New Eden the crew make two ruthlessly pragmatic choices that don’t say anything good about them as human beings, never mind as Starfleet officers.

One choice is to break the Prime Directive with Jacob in order to get the helmet camera. No, the damage is not going to be limited to Jacob alone. Whether or not he has surviving family members, he cannot be guaranteed not to tell anyone else about the greatest revelation of his life. Thus, depending on how many people believe him, he will either spread the contamination of knowledge of space faring humans, at least create a competing religion that could lead to conflict within an otherwise peaceful and harmonious society. Because competing religions have a long history of working out their differences peacefully, with absolutely no one getting killed.

This is exactly what the Prime Directive was designed to avoid!

The other choice is to deny Stametz his basic freedoms, including his basic right to health and well-being by forcing him to use the Spore Drive. Compare this with Season 1 when the crew experiences qualms over harming the tardigrade, a creature that may or may not have been sentient but which, in any case, was a living being in pain. Yet there are no such qualms over harming their shipmate in Season 2! (With the exception of Tilly, the walking, talking ship’s conscience.)

What’s the difference?

Jacob’s trade is undertaken willingly by Jacob and does him (as an individual) no harm (although it might well damage his community long term).

Stametz’s trade is forced on him by the autocratic military authority of Pike and does him measurable and well documented harm. This harm is even more egregious when you consider that Stametz was basically press-ganged by Starfleet who, as was revealed in Season 1, made his joining Starfleet a condition of allowing him to continue his own work on the spore drive. Basically, his option was join up, or sign up for unemployment benefit. And this was before the Klingon war even started!

There are two main themes explored in New Eden. These are the ethical basis of the Prime Directive, and whether there is such a thing as absolute truth or it’s all just a matter of perspective.

But there is a third, hidden theme that gets no attention from any of the characters, except perhaps Tilly: this third theme is Stametz’s freedom to choose verses the casual hypocrisy and callous disregard for his well-being exhibited by most of his shipmates.

Only Tilly seems worried for Stametz, and she nearly gets herself killed trying to build a thing to help him because, apparently, she couldn’t get any of her shipmates to assist her with this project. That’s probably because they were all too busy looking the other way while their new captain carried on where Lorca left off.

[The Grumpy Guest Review is always provided by Michael Victor Bowman, whom you may wish to check out, to abuse and amuse at www.lifedescribed.com. Or follow him on Twitter: @mvictorbowman.]