After an intriguing two-episode prologue that did a good job establishing series protagonist Michael Burnham, and a less good job establishing the muddled Klingon mythology, Discovery shifts into a new gear, finally introducing us to the titular starship and most of the main cast. My first reaction…
Well, That Was Dark
Previous Star Trek pilots have emphasized the camaraderie among the crew. Even Deep Space Nine’s “Emissary,” for all its grittiness, basically showed a family coming together. “Context is for Kings,” however, starts aboard a prison shuttle where convicts make sexual innuendo about Andorians… and gets darker from there. The pilot gets unceremoniously sucked into space (did the Discovery rescue her? It’s unclear.). The prisoners, including the disgraced Burnham, get taken aboard the Discovery, where tough-as-nails Security Chief Landry makes a very un-Starfleet comment about “unloading all kinds of garbage.” Burnham finds herself aboard a ship where everyone hates her, blaming her for triggering the ongoing war between Starfleet and the Klingons.
It’s an interesting twist for Star Trek, making our main character a pariah, but it gives the episode’s middle sections a grim tone that I found off-putting. Burnham is besieged from all sides; Landry gives her attitude, Stamets gives her attitude, Tilly holds her at arm’s length, and to top it off, we have a starship full of horribly mutilated people and a terrifying monster. Not exactly what I was hoping for when the Discovery writers claimed they were getting back to “the wonder of exploration.” The episode did eventually draw me back in, but first…
New Characters
The episode introduces three major cast members, and the results are mixed.
- Cadet Sylvia Tilly. OK. I like Wesley Crusher. I like Rom. I like Neelix. I even kind of like Jar Jar Binks (sorry, wrong universe). So believe me when I say that it takes a lot for a character to annoy me. But Tilly really strained my patience. Barclay, for all his social ineptness, was endearing. He wasn’t aggressively awkward, just shy. Tilly has an in-your-face attitude that is just grating, and gives me cringe-inducing flashbacks to some horribly awkward co-workers I’ve had: the type who are completely oblivious to how off-putting they are. Perhaps it’s Mary Wiseman’s jittery, caffeinated performance, which nails this type a little too closely. The episode hints at a mentor / mentee relationship between her and Burnham that could improve the character. I really hope so.
- Astromycologist aka space fungus expert Lieutenant Paul Stamets. Much like his beloved fungus, Stamets grew on me (sorry, couldn’t resist). He doesn’t make the best first impression, coldly snapping at Burnham and shoving her in the corner to do busy work. But the later scene in the shuttle clarifies his attitude, which finally helped me to connect with him. Stamets signed on to Starfleet to expand the frontiers of science, and is horrified that his research is being co-opted for military purposes. He even calls Captain Lorca a “warmonger.” Anthony Rapp is always watchable, and hopefully we’ll see different facets of Stamets going forward.
- Captain Gabriel Lorca, whose introduction is by far the most successful. I was thrilled to see Jason Isaacs cast in a Star Trek series. He’s a magnetic actor with exactly the gravitas required to fill the captains’ shoes. His low, gravelly voice with a hint of a country accent gives Lorca an air of mystery. The episode finds fun, idiosyncratic ways to characterize him; how do you read a character that keeps a tribble and a bowl of fortune cookies on his desk? In the closing scene, we learn that Lorca is hiding a dark science lab where he apparently conducts experiments on a menagerie of alien corpses. Creepy. Lorca obviously has some secrets to reveal.
The episode also does good work with our established characters, Burnham and Saru. We learn that Burnham wasn’t just Sarek’s protégé, but his foster daughter. She pulls out a physical copy of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and reveals that her foster mother Amanda used to read it to her, to teach her that not everything in life conforms to logic. As fascinating as this is, I’m getting impatient to learn more about Burnham’s upbringing. Surely Spock has to get mentioned at some point?
We also get some nice, grounded scenes between Burnham and Saru. Since so many of our other characters are mysterious (Lorca) or unlikeable, deliberately or otherwise (Stamets, Tilly), Saru is refreshingly down-to-earth and straightforward. He and Burnham have a relationship that would be a close friendship, if Burnham hadn’t betrayed Georgieu. There’s a great moment where Saru gets choked up revealing his respect for Burnham: “If only you hadn’t…” Also, when the prison shuttle warps away, we see Saru watching from the mess hall, the fins at the back of his head pricking up. Perhaps he once again senses the presence of death?
Mission of Discovery
The Discovery crew investigates the fate of their sister ship the Glenn. Both ships were working on the same mysterious research project involving Stamets’ fungus, and a landing party discovers that the spores on the Glenn got loose and killed the crew. Around here is where the episode hits peak darkness, with truly gruesome makeup effects and a chase through darkened corridors with a terrifying monster. But in a final scene between Burnham and Lorca, the episode does a 180 and tries to reintroduce a tone of wonder. Lorca reveals that the fungus research project is not a bioweapon, but a means of instantaneous transportation. It can be used for war, yes, but it also opens up new avenues of exploration. Lorca demonstrates this by apparently teleporting Burnham to various locations around the galaxy, which doesn’t make much sense (doesn’t that mean the fungus already works?), but makes for an arresting visual sequence. Burnham signs on to the Discovery crew at Lorca’s invitation, only agreeing to work on the fungus project for its exploratory value.
So while inconsistent, “Context is for Kings” gives us a lot to chew on, and more questions to keep us intrigued. Why is Lorca keeping the monster from the Glenn in his dark science lab? Is the fungus project really a weapon, a means of transportation, or even a red herring? Will Tilly be less annoying? Tune in to the next, hopefully not as dark, episode of Star Trek: Discovery.
Miscellaneous Notes
- The scene where Burnham blinks from planet to planet contains several fun Easter eggs for fans of the Original Series. I only caught one without help from Memory Alpha: a Preserver obelisk from “The Paradise Syndrome.” There’s also the Janus VI mining colony from “The Devil in the Dark” and Starbase 11 from “The Menagerie.”
- “Is that a book?” Tilly enthuses when Burnham shows her Through the Looking Glass. We’ve seen plenty of Star Trek characters reading physical books. Is this an awkward line reading or are books rare in Discovery’s universe?
- There’s a moment of WTF humor when the landing party encounters a Klingon aboard the Glenn who gestures for them to be quiet. “Is he shushing you?” Landry says. Funny, if jarringly contemporary.
- At last year’s Comic Con, the producers premiered a rough VFX sequence showing the design of the starship Discovery. When I was a kid, I had a Star Trek art book that I loved to death, so I instantly recognized that the design was based on a mid-70s Ralph McQuarrie sketch for the unproduced Star Trek film Planet of the Titans. McQuarrie is best known for his iconic designs for the original Star Wars trilogy, and in fact, he worked on Star Trek and Star Wars at the same time. The Discovery design has also grown on me; I like the retro, boxy, angular look, even though it won’t be winning any beauty contests. My gold standard for starship design is still the movie version of the original Enterprise.
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Next episode: “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry”