Star Trek: Recovery

Begun, this back-pedalling has. Thursday's new episode of Star Trek: Discovery dove into reversing several of the creative changes the first season made to the Star Trek universe, tossing in vague allusions to explain them or to hand wave them away. The show continues to have some nice visuals and a story that's tolerable enough, possibly a little too violent for some.

Spoilers after the screenshot

I'm pretty jaded so L'Rell (Mary Chieffo) waving around a baby's severed head didn't bother me but it certainly seemed gratuitous and was probably a nasty surprise for some viewers I probably would have advised avoiding. And I don't even believe in trigger warnings.

At the same time, the makers of the show seem busy trying to make concessions to Trekkies. The most obvious being that Klingons have hair again, their hairlessness last season sort of explained by an off-hand remark from Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) about their hair growing now that they're no longer at war. I can sort of buy that all the Klingons decided to ritualistically shave themselves before going into battle, less natural is the fact that they've all decided to speak Federation Standard (which Ash [Shazad Latif] confirms is really English) most of the time. I remember some people complained about the Klingons always speaking Klingon in season 1--it didn't bother me, but I watch a lot of foreign films so I'm pretty used to subtitles. But in the older series I always assumed when Klingons seemed to be speaking English to each other we were hearing a translation. Which may be what happens in the scene later in the episode where L'Rell switches languages mid-sentence. I'm not sure why the episode would do both things, though.

It's kind of like how Ash's concept has never quite been settled between Ash being Voq in the body of a human or Voq's body having been transformed. The explanation seems to differ slightly depending on who's writing the episode.

Then there's course correcting that's a little more abrupt. Amanda (Mia Kirshner), Spock's mother and Michael's adoptive mother, is the first character on Discovery to directly mention the Vulcan philosophy of emotional suppression. She does so in reference to Sarek insisting Spock be raised this way. Is this the same Sarek who broke down in tears talking to Michael about the power of love last season? Maybe Vulcans decided to have emotions just for the war with the Klingons.

In a review last season, I wrote:

I thought the Vulcans being portrayed as open with their emotions was a result of sloppy writing but now I think it was a conscious creative decision. I don't recall any mention of the Vulcan philosophy of emotional suppression, or of how strong emotions once tore Vulcan apart before they came up with this way of life. Maybe the creators felt this didn't look good in the face of the popular pseudo-scientific metric of "emotional intelligence".

And then, in Thursday's new episode, one of the psychiatrists who was caring for Spock directly mentioned measuring Spock's "Emotional Intelligence". Emotional Intelligence as a field of study seems to have yielded only a little concrete value and whole lot of pseudoscience. But I guess the people currently in charge of Star Trek have faith in it. I suppose they're entitled to their religious beliefs. I just hope Star Trek doesn't turn into Battlefield Earth.

Meanwhile, Tilly (Mary Wiseman) is less cutely neurotic this episode and is now seemingly having a nervous breakdown for seeing the ghost of one of her classmates. This didn't work for me because I didn't feel bad for Tilly. She needs to display some moxy before I'll be ready to root for her. Why does she even want to be a captain?

I'm still digging Pike's (Anson Mount) ready room (I think I misidentified it as his quarters last time).

Pike and the Kids

Thursday's new episode of Star Trek: Discovery was a pleasant surprise after the season première. A solid episode directed by Jonathan Frakes, it continued the series' tendency to introduce issues without actually exploring them, in this case a conflict between faith and science, but with this episode the second season's effort to bring the intriguing background characters more into the foreground really started to bear fruit. Though the episode, called "New Eden", might've been even better if it had this song:

Spoilers after the video

Yes, the supporting characters are not only bearing fruit, they're throwing away the rind.

For a show widely considered to wear modern progressive politics on its sleeve, the crew dynamic this season surprisingly seems to be that of a level headed patriarch surrounded by childlike, adorable women. I find it amusing more than anything else, only the continued infantilisation of Tilly (Mary Wiseman) really annoyed me.

Miss Butterfingers is the one dissecting the unstable dark matter asteroid with a powerful laser? Alone? Why not get Inspector Clouseau while you're at it? The idea that she's going to be a captain one day just seems more and more absurd. But she is cute.

So's her ghost friend (Bahia Watson) and the young women on the bridge. There's a marked difference in how the men are played compared to the women, though Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) generally seems calm, thanks to her Vulcan upbringing, as does the intriguing cyborg lady we still don't know anything about, Airiam--though maybe we'll learn more this season as apparently she's changed actress from the first season, where she was played by the unknown actress Sara Mitich. Now she's played by Hannah Cheesman, who has a much longer filmography, including a prominent role in the Guillermo del Toro produced 2013 film Mama (she played a different version of a character also played by Doug Jones). Mitich has been demoted to playing a human background character. I have this info via Memory Alpha which also has a collection of contradictory quotes from production crew about Airiam's background.

Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) also generally seems to keep her head and I thought we were going to learn more about her in this episode since she accompanies the away team specifically because she grew up in a "Luddite collective". What? Sounds like she really might have something to say about the strange community of humans on an alien planet with inexplicably antiquated technology. Sadly, she never gets the chance.

We learn that Pike (Anson Mount) might be a bit religious and his disagreement with the more secular Burnham forms the centre of the dramatic conflict that almost happens in this episode. But I guess there's no reason it should really come to a head when The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and the original series have already done this kind of plot several times. "New Eden" felt like an ode to those episodes, an ode that didn't have the impulse to actually build on the discussion. But why should it? Maybe the fact that the show knows its place is commendable. Especially since the conflict was basically part of the backbone of the series concept for Deep Space Nine, the ideological conflict alongside professional respect between Sisko and Kira leading to several nice episodes. Maybe the best way to look at Discovery is a televised Star Trek Experience; something primarily designed to augment the sensation of the Star Trek universe rather than creating genuinely new stories in it. It sure is pretty. I like the colour scheme in Pike's new quarters.

Twitter Sonnet 1199

A box of roads were used in careful chunks.
On jumbled paths the molecules'll walk.
The matching pods were lined along the bunks.
A giant stone begins to slowly talk.
As rungs appeared the lines a ladder made.
For model stripes were nothing like a cage.
In human form the morning made the grade.
To sleep to make a dream beyond the age.
A brush's bristles turned to arms of sleep.
Across the bed a glory waits in grammes.
Fatales were queued to cut the glitter heap.
Detectives claimed the cold and bundled hams.
The metal unexplained remained aboard.
A flute was more than finger tapping chord.

Pikes, Asteroids, and Spocks

One thing's for sure, Star Trek: Discovery's visual design is still top notch. The Alex Kurtzman directed season two première definitely wore its massive budget on its sleeve in an attempt to make up for a incredibly thin teleplay. Much like Kurtzman's Transformers films, I was forced to wonder if the makers of the show have ever met and interacted with human beings.

Spoilers after the screenshot

But I'll concentrate on the positives first. My favourite bit was the landing on that asteroid and the approach to the wrecked Federation ship. The sound of the malfunctioning computer voice echoing through the wreckage was wonderfully eerie and helped create a real sense of a hazardous situation.

Anson Mount seems more like Jeffrey Hunter as Christopher Pike than Bruce Greenwood did in the 2009 film, though he has a weaker screen presence than either actor. I almost wondered if this was intentional to help keep the focus on Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green).

This episode featured Burnham frustrated in her attempts to see Spock on the disabled Enterprise. Did anyone ever mention why or how the Enterprise was disabled? If so I didn't catch it. If the writers just forgot to have the characters discuss it it would be par for the course in an episode that featured excruciatingly awkward attempts to write the characters as more down-to-earth.

This seems obviously in response to the fact that The Orville was vastly more successful in its première season than Discovery, proving that audiences still had a taste for the old fashioned Star Trek after all. But if the people behind Discovery got the point that Orville's success hinged largely on building characters, it's hard to say because this first episode of the second season mainly seems to be course correcting in the form of cheap gags.

I thought Tilly (Mary Wiseman) was charming in her first few episodes of the first season but in this première I found her intensely annoying. The moment where she keeps talking on the bridge after accidentally talking too loud was clearly meant to be cute, her awkwardly overcompensating, but it was just excruciatingly unnatural in execution with the bridge crew inexplicably stopping what they're doing to stare at her in consternation. I suppose her arc is still to become captain one day but it almost feels like a parody of such an arc now, like "Weird Al" Yankovic's "That Boy can Dance".

Meanwhile, the show seems to be sticking to their revamped, emotional Vulcans. I haven't really seen other people complain about this so maybe it only bothers me but I watched the "The Menagerie" parts 1 and 2 again this morning and the part at the end where Kirk teases Spock for possibly exhibiting "emotionalism" reminded me what an important part of the show it once was. You can also see the difference in Leonard Nimoy's performance between the footage from "The Cage" (the original pilot that was recut to fit into the plot of "The Menagerie") and the era with Kirk in command. Spock even grins when examining some alien plant-life in the older footage and it's clear the Vulcan practice of emotional repression hadn't been thought of or developed yet. Maybe Kurtzman would argue Discovery's canon hews closer to "The Cage" than "The Menagerie". Maybe people behind the scenes felt it was dangerous to convey emotional repression as a potentially positive alternative lifestyle. Of course, in removing it from the show they make it difficult for the characters to debate the subject, but I suppose there's not much room for that sort of thing with all the elaborate action and disaster sequences.