Discovering the ol' bait and switch

I believe it's called "the old bait and switch": tempt someone with something they would really like, then at the last moment change it for something else.

I didn't read all the pre-premiere hype about Star Trek: Discovery. I read only enough to be led to believe that the new show would have both a female captain and a female first officer. Furthermore, I understood that both of these senior officers would be members of racialised communities. Awesome, I thought. Another leap forward.

In a word, I was baited. Not just to watch Discovery, but to love it even before it premiered.

And now, with the third episode, "Context is for Kings", which aired Sunday, I witness the switch -- Discovery has an apparently white male captain (the "mysterious Captain Lorca") and an apparently male first officer, Saru. The female captain from the first two episodes is dead and the female first officer has been court-martialed for mutiny and her career now hangs by a thread.

And the new, apparently white male captain (the "mysterious Captain Lorca") holds the other end of the thread from which she hangs.

"Context" begins cooly enough, with our fallen heroine, Michael Burnham, riding along in a prison shuttle, on her way to a new prison world. Her fellow passengers are hardened criminals and six months have passed since her court martial hearing. Burnham is now infamous for being Star Fleet's first mutineer and the cause of the war with the Klingons.

After the writers blithely dispatch with the shuttle pilot (she makes a space walk to remove dangerous bugs from the ship's hull and then, for no apparent reason, gets detached from the shuttle and tossed into deep space), Discovery shows up in what is really quite an awesome entrance to save the day.

What is troubling is that it later becomes clear that the mysterious Captain Lorca engineered the encounter between his ship and the prison shuttle in order to prise Burnham from the grips of the prison system and back into active duty. As a result, Lorca should be held responsible for the death of the shuttle pilot -- unless, of course, Discovery beamed her aboard as she tumbled past, in time to save her life. But that is never mentioned.

Onboard Discovery, Burnham discovers the depth of the contempt and loathing with which she is viewed by other members of Star Fleet and the mysterious Captain Lorca discovers the depth of Burnham's brilliance and of her commitment to the values of Star Fleet that so many people feel she abandoned at the start of the war.

Burnham also discovers several old friends on Discovery, including her former subordinate Saru, now first officer on the ship. Saru develops into a fairly balanced supporter of Burnham as she makes her place on the new ship -- he tells her he considers her extremely dangerous in light of her mutiny but also the finest, most intelligent Star Fleet officer he has ever encountered. Note, of the mysterious Captain Lorca, the remarkably wise Saru says something to the tune of "He is not afraid of things most people would be afraid of." Hmmm.... how deep.

Throughout the course of the episode, Burnham proves herself worthy to the mysterious Captain Lorca. The mysterious Captain Lorca eventually admits that he engineered the whole situation to bring Burnham aboard and plans to integrate her into his crew so that she can contribute to its important scientific research that could shorten the way significantly.

Part morality play, part hammer horror film, "Context" is a strong episode that sets a powerful emotional, psychological and social foundation for future shows. Burnham is interesting but will need to maintain that fine edge between straightlaced moral superiority and looming rashness that marks her through the first three shows.

I am not happy to find yet another apparently white male captain in the centre seat and I can't say I like how Cadet Tilly has been introduced. Presented as uncertain, socially awkward and frankly silly, Burnham's new roommate may develop into something more -- a mirror, a foil, a stalwart friend -- but that will require a great deal of work.

From a Star Trek standpoint, "Context" offers a number of contradictions with the canonical ST timeline:

1. That tribble on the mysterious Captain Lorca's desk would have produced at least five generations of new tribbles over the duration of the episode -- ten years in the future, Kirk and his crew have never heard of tribbles and don't know how to stop it from reproducing (remember, tribbles are born pregnant) -- how has the mysterious Captain Lorca managed to figure it all out?
2. The mysterious Captain Lorca initiates an intra-ship beaming from his ready room, taking himself and Burnham directly past the security measures surrounding the top-secret research projects. This is problematic for two reasons: 1) ten years later, in Kirk's time, that kind of use of the (more advanced) transporter mechanism (beaming people from one place to another inside the ship) is considered extremely dangerous and only to be used in emergencies and 2) no transporter should ever be able to circumvent security protocols like that;
3. In Kirk's time, it is made clear that the human race had advanced past the need for prisons and prison planets -- in "Whom Gods Destroy", we learn that only a small number of criminals have proven beyond redemption and must be kept on a single prison planet; in Discovery's time, there appear to be many prison planets and prisoners are required to work in dangerous conditions, a remarkably barbaric practice that does not fit with the Federation's principles nor with Star Trek's canon; and
4. Discovery's shuttle is warp-capable -- the shuttles on Kirk's Enterprise had only impulse power and were, thus, not capable of faster-than-light speeds.

One final note, in my earlier post, I wondered about Burnham's position in Sarek's family. In a nice touch near the end of "Context", Burnham mentions to Tilly that her human adoptive mother read Alice in Wonderland to her and her adoptive brother while she was growing up on Vulcan. Her mother's name: Amanda. That makes her brother Spock.

A thrilling Discovery

I knew Star Trek: Discovery was going to be really, really good once the opening credits had come to an end, as much because of what wasn't there as what was...

No Brannon Braga.

No Michael Berman.

Thank god! I firmly believe that you can trace everything that has been wrong with recent iterations of Star Trek -- the later seasons of Voyager, the later TNG movies... the godawful Enterprise -- to these two. With their adolescent approach to story telling, the sexism, the racism, their "good ol' boys in space" narrative voice-- they undermined everything that Star Trek striven to be.

And then, right near the end of the credits, up popped a name I never thought I would see associated with Star Trek again -- Nicholas Meyer. The man who almost singlehandedly saved the Star Trek franchise when, as an unproven director, he helmed the stunningly good, remarkably true-to-its-roots Wrath of Khan and rescued Roddenberry's universe from the oblivion of The Motion Picture. Meyer later wrote and directed the final, fabulous TOS film, The Undiscovered Country, cementing his place in the Star Trek pantheon forever.

No Braga, No Berman, the surprise return of Meyer. Discovery was just destined to be good.

And it was. No, it wasn't just good. It was great.

A rich, diverse crew, led by two strong, very different women, with an intelligent, layered script, plenty of philosophy, plenty of action. An exploration of right and wrong, honour, bravery, loyalty. 

Well paced, beautifully acted. A remarkably strong beginning to what I hope will be a long run for this new crew and their ship, whatever ship they might end up serving abroad.

So where does it go now? After that very powerful beginning -- the Klingons finding unity against a common enemy, in the shadow of a flawed martyr; our main character, Michael Burnham, sentenced to life in prison for mutiny, the captain dead, the ship destroyed, the crew dispersed -- where does Star Trek: Discovery go?

I can't wait to find out.

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Did you hear all the names of the Federation ships taking part in the battle? Awesome references both to Star Trek history and to earth history.

And I love the hand phasers, the reference to the phase cannons (from Enterprise), to so many Star Trek races. Even the reboot of the Klingons (now in their third physical iteration -- I wonder how they will explain that!) seems well thought out and interesting.

I was also quite delighted with how Discovery continues the tried-and-true Trek trope of having at least one character looking in on humanity from the outside. We had Spock (half human, half Vulcan), Data (android wishing to be human), Odo (Shapeshifter), Seven of Nine (Borg), Saavik (half Vulcan, half Romulan), T'Pol (Vulcan on a human ship) and now we have Burnham, a human raised from her childhood by that most Vulcan of Vulcans, Sarek. Burnham is a fascinating character and I am looking forward to seeing how she develops and how her interactions with humans and the other races on her ship get worked out.

Speaking of Sarek, I wonder how his relationship with Burnham works into his family life with Amanda, Spock and, to a lesser extent, Sybok. By the time Burnham arrives on the scene (I'm guessing it was about 20 years before Discovery), Spock would have already been at Starfleet Academy (or even serving aboard Enterprise under Captain Pike). Would Spock consider Burnham a step-sibling or was Sarek's relationship with her completely separate from the rest of the family?

One challenge the producers/writers face is the fact that the show is set about a decade before Kirk and therefore should have slightly inferior technology when compared to TOS. But... in the 50 years since the original adventures aired, our present-day technology has in many ways caught up to the "advanced" tech presented in the 1966-69 series and, in some ways, surpassed it. How can Discovery remain consistent with TOS and yet still seem advanced? Burnham's space suit, for example, is significantly more advanced than the ones seen in The Wrath of Khan and yet did not seem that much far ahead of our own 21st Century tech.

From where I sat, I thought they got the balance right. Sure, you could quibble about the space suits and stuff like that but, all in all, I thought Discovery fit nicely between the now (2017) and then then (the 19602 version of the 23rd century).

Speaking of quibbles, there are always problems in these kinds of shows and I just love to point them out:

1. I don't get the plot device that the Klingons lured the Starfleet crew out to the borders by damaging the communications relay when the Klingons didn't seem to want to reveal themselves until threatened;

2. Klingons don't have cloaking devices. At least not at this point in ST history, ten years before the events of the Original Series -- Kirk and crew are stunned to discover that the Romulans have cloaking technology in the early TOS episode "Balance of Terror" and go to great lengths to steal it in "The Enterprise Incident". The Klingons of that era show no signs of having cloaking technology. So it's just wrong here.

3. If the U.S.S. Shenzhou is indeed patrolling the furthest borders of the Federation, then there is no way Captain Georgiou could simply dial up the Admiral back at Star Fleet HQ. Ten years later, when Kirk is that far out, subspace communications take days if not weeks to pass between the Enterprise and Star Fleet. That fact is one of the things that makes TOS so fun -- Kirk and crew are on their own and must make decisions for themselves, without guidance from HQ.

4. Further, if the Shenzhou encounters T'Kuvma and his ship at the border, there is no way that all those Klingon ships and a good portion of Star Fleet are all only two hours away.

When Janeway met Sulu and Tribbles ruled

The arrival of a new 4K UHD TV in our den provided me with ample inspiration to dive deep into my Star Trek collection once again.

In this case, after baptising the new screen by watching The Martian with my partner, I decided I wanted to enjoy Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in all its Blu-Ray glory. I was especially excited to see that amazing scene where Kronos 1 and the Enterprise cruise side-by-side through space before all hell breaks loose. What a gorgeous image to see on the new big screen, even if it's only at 1080p!

For some reason, I then got a hankering to watch the two episodes from later ST series in which the characters actually revisit the crew from TOS. I'm talking about, of course, Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations" and Voyager's "Flashback".

The DS9 epsiode has always enthralled me. When I first recorded it (on VHS, dontchaknow) I actually set up a portable DVD player beside my TV and watched the matching scenes from the TOS episode and the DS9 episode at the same time to marvel at the amazing CGI work done in the newer show.

The writing of the new episode impressed me when I watched it again on the big screen. I think it takes a special kind of talent to weave a new story into an already existing one and to create a new, exciting and well-paced combined story.

I hadn't watched the Voyager episode half as much and I have to admit I thought it was accomplished through CGI as well. But it wasn't. TV producers brought back the film cast and their sets and actually re-created the scenes from the original movie that had been worked into the script to allow the TV actors to enter the story. Amazing work. It must have been fun for George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney and the others to have the chance to return to their Star Trek roles for this one.

Once again, a very clever plot permitted the interaction between the old and the new. Unlike "Trials and Tribble-ations", however, "Flashback" doesn't really weave the original story into the new but merely uses the movie scenes as the setting for the new TV plot.

My favourite part of the Voyager episode is the scene were Captain Janeway wistfully describes the freedom enjoyed by starship captains of earlier generations. The first time I heard that, I got a tingle. It's true, of course, and one of my main complaints about TNG especially -- instead of being explorers, Picard and his crew are corporate stiffs, administering on behalf of the Federation rather than exploring strange new worlds for Star Fleet.