Star Trek Discovery S5E2: Under the Twin Moons
Star Trek: The Next Generation was made in a different era of television. Fans couldn’t pull up old episodes on demand, so there was very little continuity from week to week. In one episode, Picard and crew learned that warp engines were destroying the very fabric of spacetime, everyone looked very concerned, and by the next week they were merrily galvanting about the galaxy at warp speed and the problem was never mentioned again.
Yet the Paramount+ iteration of Star Trek has still been able to build on those older stories, giving context and continuity that 90s broadcast television simply couldn’t. As a result, we got Lower Deck’s building on TNG in the stellar “The Inner Fight,” and some old villains looking for closure on the final season of Picard. And we get this season of Discovery, which uses as its foundation the Next Generation episode “The Chase,” in which the Enterprise learns of an alien civilization that died out billions of years earlier, but who seeded the galaxy with the origins of life as we know it. It was the kind of fun space-archaeology adventure that TNG liked to send Picard on occasionally, but it also provided a nifty in-show explanation to why so many alien species had evolved to look like humans with some latex prosthetics on their faces.
It also provided a “we’re not so different after all” moment, as the Enterprise reaches the archaeological site at the same time as their Klingon and Romulan adversaries, who take a moment to put their differences aside when they learn of their shared origins.
Now, 800 years further into the future, we learn one of those Romulans continued to study the ancient progenitors, discovered some unspeakably powerful technology of theirs, and then died before he could tell anyone. His ship drifted along for centuries, until Starfleet discovered it and sent Discovery to investigate. Last week began a season-long chase with the Romulan scientist’s notes being stolen by pirates, and Burnham trying and failing to get them back.
So this week we continue the chase, but at a much slower pace. Captain Rayner, Burnham’s brash counterpart from last week’s episode, is being held to account for his actions last week. Saru is preparing to leave Discovery to become a diplomat and settle down with his Vulcan paramour T’Rina. Burnham gets a chance to flirt with Book.
Generally, these kind of character moments add a lot to a show, and add weight and depth in between the action scenes. But Disco has never been great at them. Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones have a few lovely moments together as Burnham and Saru get ready to say their good-byes — overly-mannered Saru and reckless Michael have always been a great pairing, but in expressing their deep respect for each other, it’s clear how much the characters have grown over four seasons and change.
The other characters, not so much. One of the criticisms of the show is that it sidelines the ensemble, and that’s not entirely fair — shows are allowed to have a main character, and not every Trek series has to have the same ensemble dynamic. But the moments we get with Stamets, Culver, Tilly, and Adira are brief, and therefore feel like a lot of shorthand instead of legitimate character development. Tilly, who left last season to become an instructor at Starfleet Academy (and possibly a character on the forthcoming Starfleet Academy spinoff), gushes for a moment about loving teaching, but it’s just a reminder that her exit from the regular cast was abrupt, and her love of education came out of nowhere to justify that move. It’s all very slapdash.
We do also keep the main story moving, as Burnham and Saru go down to an uninhabited planet to look for the next clue. (Why two Captains go without any backup is a mystery) They do some bonding, avoid some murderous drones, and find the next clue. Last week gave us an actual mystery box; this week gives us a literal piece of a puzzle. With four or five more pieces to find, that sets the template for the next few episodes. We have no doubt Burnham and crew will solve the riddles and unlock the galaxy’s greatest mystery. We do have doubts as to how compelling that’s going to be.
We know the stakes of this season-long mission are high, mostly because the characters keep telling us that. But it doesn’t feel that way. Stakes don’t matter to the audience unless they matter to the characters. Season one’s Klingon War and mirror universe stories worked because they were really about Burnham proving herself after getting her mentor killed. Season two’s Red Angel storyline was built around her long-lost mother and her adoptive brother Spock. This season so far is about finding a bunch of MacGuffins that lead to a bigger MacGuffin, and that’s not enough to hang a season on. No one’s favorite part of Wrath of Khan is the Genesis device. We need to care about the characters, and for that, we need a reason for the characters to care about what they’re doing beyond that it’s their job.
It’s still early in the season. We could still right the ship, so to speak.
Stray tachyons:
• Book does manage to track down pirates L’ak and Moll and speak to them via hologram, although they almost immediately realize he’s a cop. But there’s something about Moll that Book can’t shake. In a too-convenient coincidence, she turns out to be the daughter of his mentor, also named Cleveland Booker. We know we just talked about giving the characters personal stakes, but this feels a little contrived.
• This was ostensibly Saru’s last mission on Discovery, but we feel like there’s no way we won’t be seeing him again this season. It’d be a shame if we didn’t; Doug Jones has always been the standout of this cast.
• We do get a nice resolution between Burnham and Rayner, and it looks like he’ll be sticking around.
• The Indiana Jones movies often get criticized because Indy destroys basically every site he walks into. Burnham and Saru are far more careful on the burial planet… except its self-defense systems seem designed to damage as much of its own sacred architecture as possible while trying to blow the two up.
