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:
- 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?
- 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;
- 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
- 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.
