Star Trek Discovery S5E6: Whistlespeak
The problem with setting up an elaborate series of clues is that it’s so incredibly unlikely that anyone would be able to find them all, much less solve them all, especially when they’ve all been lying around for centuries. Your prize is effectively off-limits unless a very unlikely series of events happens, and one treasure-seeker gets stuck on one clue, then no one ever solves the mystery.
That’s where we star this episode, with last week’s clue, which turns out to be a vial of ordinary distilled water. Stamets and Tilly have done every scan they can think of, and it’s just water. Burnham suggests they look for some cultural context — was there a planet where distilled water had some significance? Special Black Ops Guest Star David Cronenberg also pops up to suggest knowing more about the scientists who made the clues might help unravel them.
Turns out, those hunches are correct. They lead Discovery to a desert planet with only one habitable area — made so by a tower that collects and distributes distilled water. The catch is, it’s home to a pre-technological civilization, and Starfleet is sworn not to interfere. (The scientist who made both the tower and the clue seems to have broken the rules in order to help the planet.)
Usually, this kind of mission involves elaborate disguises or invisibility, but Burnham and Tilly just beam down with hooded cloaks. Turns out, the aliens look exactly like humans. Obviously the early iterations of Trek went to that well often, but it feels like a lazy choice here.
Before beaming down, Burnham takes a little time to study up on the locals’ culture, and their language, which involves whistling across great distances (hence the episode title, although after an initial scene on the planet, this never comes up again.) The locals she meets don’t blink at the two aliens in their midst, and give some useful exposition — the tower (disguised as a mountain) is a sacred space, and one can only enter by competing a grueling race as a show of devotion.
To further complicate things, Adira discovers there were once five towers. Four of them broke down over time and the settlements around each were wiped out. The last remaining one is also breaking down, unless Burnham and Tilly can fix it without arousing suspicion from the locals. (The idea that the clue might be in one of the other towers never comes up)
The race puts both Burnham and Tilly in the position to choose between getting the clue and doing the right thing. Burnham drops out to repair the decaying tower, and Tilly is left to win the race but doesn’t want to show up an eager young acolyte who’s determined to win. (Given the catastrophic stakes of the mission, it seems like a low priority) The end of the race is no surprise but there’s a nice twist immediately afterwards.
Overall, this one feels like a classic Next Generation “planet with a central mystery and a moral conundrum” episode, and on that level it works fine. But it also has the classic Discovery problem of trying to wedge some character moments in the margins (see note below), which works less well.
Stray tachyons:
• Tilly left Discovery to go teach at Starfleet Academy, then came back, then left again, and now she’s back again, with no real explanation. Why bother to write her off the show at all? Unless Mary Wiseman had scheduling conflicts, but IMDB only had her in one short film in 2023, so it seems to just be part of Disco’s scattershot approach to its supporting characters. (See also: writing Saru off the series with only a handful of episodes to go, and sending Detmer and Oyo on an off-camera side mission, although we suspect they’ll all be back in time for the finale.)
• In the middle of all this, we check in on Dr. Culber. He had a weirdly abrupt scene last week where he mentions to Tilly he’s feeling unsettled. We get more follow-up here, as he confesses that he was deeply affected by the Trill taking over his body a few episodes ago.
But it does give us a bit of his relationship with Stamets, as Culber asks his husband to do a neurological scan. It makes for a cute role reversal, as usually-empathetic Culber won’t open up about his feelings and insists he’s just trying to collect data, and closed-off scientist Stamets is full of concern and empathy. Trek rarely lets us see the long-term psychological effect a mission has on one of the crew, so it’s an interesting idea, but it doesn’t really lead anywhere, so it feels more like “let’s give Wilson Cruz something to do.”
• We seem to be following a pattern, in which Burnham gets paired up with a different character each week. Tilly this week, Rayner last, Saru before that, Book in the season opener. Although in thinking about who might be next, we realize that Burnham doesn’t have much of a dynamic with Stamets, Culber, or Adira.