Star Trek Discovery S5E67: Erigah
L’ak has not had a good couple of days. The swindler who’s been racing Discovery to find the powerful ancient MacGuffin at the center of this season was shot a few episodes ago, barely escaped with his partner Moll, was captured offscreen by another Federation ship last week, and is now dying in the care of Dr. Culber. Because the Breen, L’ak’s species, are so secretive, no one in Starfleet Medical knows how to treat him. And, for betraying his fellow Breen (and shooting a few of them), he has a death sentence (the “erigah” of the title), which the Breen are all too eager to carry out.
Keeping him in custody is Nhan, Disco’s no-nonsense former security chief, who’s a welcome familiar face. To her credit, the first thing she does is question Burnham on why Book — a civilian who committed fairly serious crimes last season — has the run of the ship. Burnham brushes her off, but it’s nice to see that Starfleet has some serious professionals outside of Discovery and, let’s face it, every other ship they’ve made a TV show about.
But that does at least mean Burnham’s willing to overstep protocol and speak her mind to Admiral Vance when he tells her the Breen are on their way to take custody of the prisoner. Vance wants Discovery to jump as far away as possible, so L’ak can’t tell them about the Progenitors or their MacGuffin, but Burnham objects. The Breen know the Federation have their guy, and hiding him is just going to make the warlike aliens angry. They’ll take that anger out on Federation HQ, and Discovery will end up having to reckon with them at some point anyway.
So why wait? Burnham convinced Vance to take a stand, in the hopes the Breen will think twice before taking on the whole of Starfleet. President T’Rina shows up for some exposition — the Breen are in the midst of a war of succession, with six factions vying for power, all of them looking for an advantage they can exploit. (She also offers up her fiancé’s help, as Captain Saru is on a mission near Breen space)
Rayner spends the meeting angrily saying variations on “can’t trust a dirty Breen” until Burnham has to ask him to leave, although it’s not clear why her disgraced first officer would be sitting in on a meeting with admirals and the President of Vulcan (sitting in for the absent President of the Federation), but it is at least a nice reversal to have someone else as the renegade who plays by their own rules and Burnham as the chief who has to keep them in line.
Burnham is also smart enough to suss out that the Breen wouldn’t risk war with the Federation over an erigah. There must be something else. She questions L’ak and Moll, and in a terrific scene, breaks the two of them down and gets her answer without either of them cooperating or even saying much. It’s been a while since we’ve seen this side of Michael — the brilliant Vulcan-raised intellectual — and it’s nice to have her back.
In fact, while this season has had some uneven episodes, this is a great one across the board. It fires on all cylinders, with a credible threat, no obvious solution, character moments that don’t feel rushed, and stakes that are more meaningful to us than simply finding another clue that leads to another clue. The inevitable standoff with the Breen is legitimately tense, and the show doubles down on the smart-people-solving-problems that’s the heart of Star Trek, as Burnham tries to figure out how to placate the Breen while the science staff feverishly tries to solve the final clue before the Breen catch wind of what they’re working on.
When Strange New Worlds debuted, it felt like a new-and-improved version of Discovery, as if the Trek braintrust had learned what did and didn’t work from their experience with Disco and perfected the formula. This is the first episode that feels like they applied what they’ve learned to Discovery itself, as while it’s the same old show, the plotting, dialogue, and acting all took a step up this week. It’s a shame the show is finding its groove again with four episodes to go, but there are worse things than building up to a big finish.
Stray tachyons:
• Tig Notaro is a delight in every single scene as Jett Reno. She dismisses the Breen’s “faceless helmet vibe” with, “Truncheons. Jackboots. Where’s the nuance?”
• We won’t spoil who, but someone gets shot point-blank with a phaser and then is perfectly fine in the next scene with no explanation. It wouldn’t have hurt to spend three seconds on “good thing it was set to stun!”
• Saru gets mentioned in this episode, but makes no appearance. Doug Jones doesn’t have anything big on his IMDB for 2024, so it’s not clear why the show would sideline its most interesting character as it approaches the finale.