#die trying

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Highlights

Burn, baby, burn

Last season, we commended the show for leaving the constraints of prequels behind and embarking on a future where their storytelling options are unlimited. The season decides on a single, main mystery box (much easier to follow than season two’s mystery boxes within mystery boxes!): The Burn. The premise is a solid sci-fi concept that makes for an intriguing mystery to follow along with. A galaxy in which faster-than-light travel is greatly reduced automatically provides conflict between the Haves and the HaveNots. The pace of revealing more and more pieces of the mystery also progresses at a better clip than previous seasons (which isn’t actually saying much), even though you’ll see the final reveal fails to pay off.

A Not-So-United Federation of Planets

Speaking of the conflict that came with the introduction of The Burn, the status of the Federation in the 32nd century also intrigued us greatly (perhaps too much considering we wanted so much more of it than what we got). Having a fractured Federation, as we see in “Die Trying,” means all the individual worlds are on the defense, put into difficult positions that force them into a corner. We learn in “People of Earth” that our beloved home planet isn’t even a member anymore, which is appropriately disconcerting. Characters’ decisions are driven by desperation, which makes for dynamic television. The slate has been wiped clean and the new circumstances the Discovery crew find themselves in finally feel original. Discovery is literally looking forward because of this circumstance instead of backwards because of its prequel nature.

Mental health is important

The separation and isolation of everyone (literally everyone) this season also gives this season a unique depiction of trauma. Collective trauma, personal trauma, it’s just a lot of trauma. We found it frankly refreshing to see a show acknowledging the importance of working on mental health instead of ignoring it in an episode like “Forget Me Not.” It’s all the more significant due to the timing of when this season came out. Little did the showrunners know, the COVID-19 pandemic would put viewers into a similar brainspace as the characters—feeling alone, broken, unseen, and glitching out. One could surely relate. Which is why normalizing having complicated emotions and exploring them with safety and support served this season well.

Trans and non-binary representation

You finally caught up with the rest of television, Star Trek! While we can complain that Adira and Gray don’t have a ton to do this season, just having more present, realized LGBTQ characters in the series does wonders for embracing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, as we brought up in season one with the introduction of Stamets and Culber. For that matter, the same has been said about Uhura in TOS: she doesn’t do much, but having a person of color on the crew was groundbreaking. Discovery took some steps forward not only by casting Blu del Barrio—who performs with some fascinating levels of complexity and teen angst, especially in “Forget Me Not”—but in having Stamets immediately accept their gender identity in “The Sanctuary,” no questions asked.

Ni’Var finally reunites

It’s so nice to see Vulcans and Romulans getting along again… as much as they can get along at least. The story of Ni’Var in "Unification III” makes for a sweet little detail and also some decent world building. Because it’s something that’s been building since the 60s, their joining doesn’t feel like mere fanservice, but has been earned with time and effort. These are species we’ve known from the beginning, and somewhere in the intervening 900 years, their circumstances have changed at long last. We don’t get much of what it must be like on Ni’Var, but the eyebrow raising and small displays of disagreement give the impression of a process that is still ongoing after all these centuries. The fact that they think they started The Burn gives them a sense of guilt that plays well with their natural smugness and distrust. In many ways, it might have been more interesting if their experiments had been the cause of The Burn, but what’re you gonna do?

Take a look, it’s in a Book

The first new character we run into (quite literally) is Cleveland Booker. He’s roguishly charming and charmingly roguish, and his easy charisma makes him fun to watch. Having a non-Federation perspective also benefits the storytelling opportunities and the character dynamics. It doesn’t hurt that he’s an animal lover too, so the first impression he makes in “That Hope Is You, Part 1” when he saves the tranceworm is immediately a sympathetic one. Everyone on this podcast is a cat person, so Book’s devotion to his floofy queen Maine Coon makes him good people in our books. Further, Burnham and Book have chemistry like whoa; it was inevitable they’d get together and we were into it.

Saru gets the captain chair!

We’ve said in both other season wrap up posts that Saru might be the podcast’s favorite character overall, and we’re in good company in the Trekkie community in that regard. So we whooped for joy to see Saru get the captaincy of the Discovery for this season. His captaining style made sense for someone of his background—a naturally cautious demeanor that is thoughtful and empathetic. We see in “Far from Home” and “Die Trying” how much emphasis he puts on making a good first impression. We relished in seeing Doug Jones out from under all this Kelpien makeup in “Su’Kal” and “That Hope Is You, Part II” when he gets to make a personal connection with the frightened Su’Kal, using his natural compassion to establish trust. He’s so good that it’s kinda disheartening that he’s not still captain at the end of the season.

Tilly tones down

We griped last season that Sylvia Tilly was TOO MUCH all the time, but the writers definitely allowed her to be more of a person first and a kooky character only when relevant later. It was a breath of fresh air! Focusing more on her strengths and less on her quirks allowed Tilly to build to “Unification III” in which Saru chooses her to be first officer. Lots of fans found this undeserved and that’s probably just a side effect of there not actually being any other senior crewmembers who are main characters. We watched her hold her own in “Far from Home” and advise Saru in “Scavengers” to do the right thing when Burnham was defying orders all over the place. So when Tilly’s as competent and relatable as she was this season, we can see backing Saru’s choice.

From Badmiral to Dadmiral

Another new recurring character introduced this season is Admiral Charles Vance. After so many seasons of various Trek series watching high-ranking officers doing downright evil things (like in Jake’s first set of blogposts!), everyone and their grandmother were waiting for the shoe to drop and for Vance to turn antagonist. So when he never does, you start to see that he’s just a flag officer during desperate times. He’s naturally wary of the Discovery when they reach Federation headquarters in “Die Trying” for absolutely appropriate reasons: trust is not a common commodity in the world of The Burn, but the ideals of Starfleet types like Vance (or Aditya Sahil whom we meet in “That Hope Is You, Part I”!) can still inspire hope.

Mirror Michael Burnham goes for broke

We recently discussed the various mirror universe versions of characters and how cartoonish so many of them are, but a definite highlight is Mirror Burnham. Sonequa Martin-Green just nails the whole vibe of the mirror universe. Her simmering rage kept us in suspense, and her unbridled fury in “Terra Firma” thrilled us. While other characters’ flippy-flopped mirrorfolk are just more smirky with more side-eye and twice the mascara, Sonequa found a fresh madness at the heart of this parallel dimension. It’s not supposed to make sense, so go all out. It’s a thing of beauty.

Su’Kal finds his people

Before I say in the Lowlights section how anticlimactic I found Su’Kal being the cause of The Burn was, I’ve got plenty of nice things to say about the character Su’Kal. Bill Irwin nails that childlike naivete and vulnerability in a way plenty of adult actors would get wrong. Your heart really goes out to this Kelpien boy who has been alone with a radioactive ship full of increasingly broken holograms. What a mind-blowing concept. And I already mentioned how Doug Jones’s scenes with Irwin are touching and lovely, so when two Kelpiens are standing together in “That Hope Is You, Part II,” it really does feel like a triumph.

She’s a queen

Okay, we’re all suckers for a pretty cat on this podcast. Clearly, we’re under their spell, but we can’t help grinning whenever Grudge is onscreen. When she turns up in Book’s ship in “The Sanctuary” all by herself, we had a moment of just watching that beautiful floof chewing the scenery. I mean really, who doesn’t love a big Maine Coon cat like Grudge? She’s a queen.

—

Lowlights

The Burn really fizzled out

It’s quite the shame that such a great concept for a season had such a lackluster resolution. The payoff for the cause of The Burn just felt like resorting to some magical handwaving: a boy with a fantastical connection to dilithium AND subspace had a tantrum big enough to knock out all of the dilithium in use in the galaxy. There were hardly any foreshadowing moments that this was even possible before “Su’Kal,” making the whole thing seem random and unearned. And further, there was absolutely no reason why Burnham should rush to solve it. It’s been over a hundred years; where’s the fire, champ? It’s like she already knew what the resolution would be. Speaking of which…

Too much writing to the end

Too often, characters just did things because the writers needed them to, even though there was no reason they’d know to do them. There’s no reason why Michael should think learning the origin of The Burn will reunite the Federation, as she says in “The Sanctuary,” unless she somehow knows Su’Kal is on a planet made of dilithium. There’s no reason for Adira to go down to the Khi’eth in “Su’Kal” with radiation meds in their mouth unless they somehow know the landing party can’t use theirs. There’s no reason Osyraa should know where the Discovery is and how to invade it in “There Is a Tide…” There’s no reason for the bridge crew to infer that the DOTs that rescue them are full of sphere data unless Saru has told them, but we haven’t heard anything about the sphere data since “Forget Me Not.” In season one, we complained that the characters too frequently were doing things for stupid reasons. This season, it was more like they were doing them for no reason at all!

All trauma, all the time

I may have just praised the focus on dealing with trauma this season, but there’s also just so damn much of it, to the point that it just becomes trauma porn. While it’s valid and valuable to see how trauma can be explored, the theming becomes so diffuse and exhausting when it feels like every episode is yet another example of someone hurting. Especially when most of those don’t connect to the themes of isolation and connection. Just stringing together a wealth of instances of characters living with trauma—Burnham in “That Hope Is You, Part I,” Adira in “Forget Me Not,” Dr. Attis in “Die Trying,” Detmer all season long, Georgiou in “Terra Firma,” Su’Kal in “Su’Kal,” and the whole galaxy because of The Burn—doesn’t make a cohesive theme. For a season about making connections, they somehow struggled to connect their concepts in a way that made them whole.

Too little world building

Look, another instance in which I initially praised the concept of something in the Highlights section only to find the actual execution let us down here in the Lowlights section. This complex setting of a galaxy constrained by The Burn is a fascinating one… we just barely get to explore it. Every time we get a glimpse of what life is like in the post-Burn setting—isolationist Earth in “People of Earth,” extra racist Trill in “Forget Me Not,” guilt-ridden Ni’Var in “Unification III”—the show pivots to Michael’s mystery hunt or Georgiou’s dimensional nonsense. What I’d much more like to see is what’s the Federation actually up to? How are individual worlds suffering or thriving in their circumstances? It would all help to see the galactic status better so we can appreciate why it’s so important that Burnham solve The Burn.

Osyraa is a boring villain

The fuzzy world building contributes to how one-dimensional this season’s villain ended up seeming. Because it’s not clear how big the Emerald Chain’s reach is and how powerful Osyraa is within it, it’s hard to know what the stakes are at any time. Osyraa in particular fails to impress. She starts out as a typical mustache-twirling overactor in “The Sanctuary.” There were the germs of something interesting about her when she entered negotiations with Vance in “There Is a Tide…” but it’s hard to understand what her motivations are because her plans to deal with Vance come out of nowhere. And these plans also just seem stupid! There was no reason why she has to enter negotiations BEFORE they’ve cracked the spore drive. What’s the rush? Other than the thirteen-episode limit, of course.

Stop trying to redeem Space Hitler

You know what would have really helped fill out some of these questions? Not disrupting the season by spending two episodes in the mirror universe with that interdimensional menace Emperor Georgiou. No matter how much fun the mirror universe is, we absolutely didn’t need “Terra Firma” to be a two-parter. We didn’t even need it to be a one-parter! And what was it all for? To set up Georgiou for her Section 31 spinoff show that she sure as hell didn’t deserve. We talked in last season’s wrap up about how turning this genocidal fascist into a quip machine felt jarring, so imagine how we felt when suddenly the whole crew is giving this monster a heartfelt send off. Were we supposed to love this character this much? Because we didn’t.

What was your name again?

Commander Nhan was mainly a nonentity all through season two when she was introduced. She’s a Barzan. She pulled the plug on Airiam. She said “Yum yum.” That’s about it. She does even less before her exit episode “Die Trying” in season three, which is strange because the writers went out of their way to bring her to the future with the crew only to immediately write her out. And the way they wrote her out made us realize how little we got of her! I’d say it was Airiam all over again, but Airiam actually had a touching send off. Nhan just leaves for no reason after a couple scenes of building her up. I expect most viewers didn’t even know her name before this episode. And perhaps even after.

Post-Traumatic Stress Detmer

I’ve already talked about the general positives and negatives of focusing on trauma for this season, but the very specific character journey that Detmer goes on for a while just left me apathetic and a little discouraged. I’ll admit that it was a positive that Detmer’s condition wasn’t an alien possession or her tech malfunctioning like fans were theorizing, as the story seemed to have the goal of normalizing PTSD. But it started to feel repetitive and boring, with nowhere for this subplot to build and no consequences that Detmer sees. And then her PTSD is implied to be cured by flying Book’s ship manually in “The Sanctuary”? If Detmer were treated like an actual character, she’d have a real arc here, like Ortegas in the most recent season of Strange New Worlds or Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica.

I Was a Tweenage Were-Trill

Adira’s a cool character! A nonbinary prodigy with a Trill symbiont despite being human, and a dead boyfriend who literally haunts them? What’s not to love? I just don’t know why the show seemed to try so hard to infantilize them for the first few episodes despite Adira coming aboard the ship in a professional capacity. They were literally in some kind of place of authority in the Earth Defense Force, and then Discovery treats them like a baby. Now most of that comes from Stamets, who treats everyone like they’re beneath him. But when the music that accompanies Adira whenever they’re onscreen sounds condescending, especially in “People of Earth” and “Forget Me Not,” that just rubs one the wrong way. And then even worse, the show seems to forget that they and Gray are even characters after that! Rude!

Only Michael can save us

Last season, we mentioned that the writers were noticeably buffing Michael into Mary Sue territory. She’s the main character of the show, so we can expect a good amount of focus to be on her, but there are definitely times that you feel the prerogative was “whenever Michael’s not in the room, everyone should be asking ‘Where’s Michael?’” When for two episodes in a row, Culber gushes about how Michael is the only person for the job—once when he insists she go with Adira to Trill in “Forget Me Not,” and then when he insists she talk down Dr. Attis in “Die Trying”—you wonder why he’s not doing these things himself when he’s even more qualified. (The answer is because he’s not the protagonist of the show.) And by the end, even after she’s been demoted from first officer after “Scavengers,” somehow she’s still the one calling all the shots all the damn time. She gets the captaincy at the end of the season with heavy-handed praise from Vance that she was right all along. I need to insist: I like Michael. She really grew in season one and that was invigorating to watch. But she doesn’t have any room to grow anymore because now she’s simply perfect. And perfect isn’t interesting.

The universe is so small

Somehow, even though we’ve jumped nearly a millennium into the future, we’re still running into the same people over and over. It makes the galaxy seem miniscule. It was great to see Gabrielle Burnham in “Unification III,” but her appearance smacked of contrivance to the highest degree. And then Ni’Var doesn’t do a damn thing in the finale, so calling Mom doesn’t even pay off! Similarly, revealing Carl as the Guardian of Forever in “Terra Firma, Part 2” is solely for fanwank. Like the Talosians last season, he was there for two reasons: to magically solve the problem, and for the fans to recognize him. Hell, even when Zareh, whom we left for dead in “Far from Home,” inexplicably turns up in “There Is a Tide…”, it takes you out of the moment because he’s only here because we’ve already met him. Sigh.

This isn’t the mess hall

This season did improve in the humor department, with fewer truly cringe-worthy lines, less Georgiou quipping all over the place since she departed, and Tilly sounding more like a person and less like a neurosis. But there’s one area that stayed as obnoxious as always: Linus is still just a joke. His poorly timed transporting into random places in “Scavengers” wasn’t funny. It was annoying. SSHB host Caitlin does a better job of making the Linus joke in this year’s fanfic “Speak of this to no one.” Oh, and Saru’s captain’s catch phrase joke in “The Sanctuary” didn’t land either. Discovery, you’re not The Orville. Get over it.

—