This review contains spoilers.
1.4 The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not For The Lamb’s Cry
What a title this episode has. If Discovery has done nothing else, it’s brought back the spirit of the original series’ episode titles, which were essentially “how grandiose and Shakespearean can we be in fewer than 10 words”. Turns out: very.
Of course, it’s not completely without meaning. There are lots of butcher’s knives in this episode, and lots of lambs crying. Metaphorically, of course. The most Star Trek thing about this episode was Burnham’s insistence that science and compassion prevail over, like, randomly shooting stuff in the face. Which it did. So good work everyone!
Except, that is, for Commander Landry, who made the kind of mistake so dumb it kind of needed a second draft to make it even remotely likely to have happened on screen. You know in Red Dwarf where Lister loses his fear and his plan to take out the Polymorph is “Let’s get out there and twat it”? Well, that’s essentially what she tried to do. No wonder if didn’t end well.
But that’s my only real nitpick in the episode. The rest of it was great. I enjoyed the solution to the mystery of the Tardigrade, and the expansion of Lorca, who despite being a borderline warmonger turns out to be a fairly effective captain even if he’s nothing like the captains we’ve previously seen on the show. He did, after all, get his crew to save Corvan II at ridiculously short order.
Tech-wise, I liked the holographic mirror and the replicator intro, and Discovery’s quantum mushroom drive (are we pretending this isn’t ridiculous even for Star Trek? Has anyone made the “To Mouldly Go” joke yet?) looked really cool in action. I wasn’t sure about the Discovery’s design when they first showed it, but after a couple of episodes I’m super excited every time we see the ship on screen.
I do find myself wondering what Burnham’s arc is going to be. It seems inevitable that she’ll end up in conflict with Lorca eventually, wondering whether to once again mutiny having fought her way back from the brink, but will she ever have a chance of ending up as captain of Discovery? Right now it seems insurmountable. She’s clearly competent and useful, but if she isn’t going to regain her rank and/or commission, what else is left for her?
I feel like I should note that it seems Georgiou really IS dead, even though I was sure she’d come back alive using some kind of genre TV backdoor. Leaving her recently-deceased corpse in the hands of the enemies gives you some options to bring her back, but once you’ve had two characters discuss eating the body, it’s probably over.
Speaking of which, I’m a big fan of the Klingons getting developed a little. I definitely ship Voq and L’Rell, to the extent that one can ship fanatical alien fundamentalists who are clearly going to be dead before the series is out. And Kol is clearly a dick even by Klingon standards. Can’t wait to see how this war-within-a-war plays out.
So all in all, another great episode. Honestly, with the concession that it’s adhering to the heavily arc-based structure of modern TV series, I can’t fault Discovery as being a version of Star Trek. It’s a modern, arguably less utopian version, but a version nonetheless. I’m still baffled as to why it’s a prequel when it’d take only minor retooling to set it in some time after the TNG-DS9-VOY era, but right now the time frame isn’t proving too distracting because the characters and plot and visuals are more than enough to keep me engaged. Er, no pun intended.
Geeky spots:
Kol reveals that he’s from the House of Kor. That, presumably, is the same house as Kor, first seen in TOS 1×27: Errand Of Mercy, and later reprised in DS9 2×02, Blood Oath, 4×09, The Sword Of Kahless, and 7×07, Once More Unto The Breach.
I forgot to write it up it last episode, but there’s a Gorn skeleton in the room of death where Burnham is investigating the space-Tardigrade. The Gorn are, at the time Discovery is set, officially unknown to the Federation, though the skeleton’s presence here indicates that Lorca, at least, is aware that they’re a deadly species. They were first properly encountered in TOS 1×19: Arena.
Also in the lab? A Horta, as famously seen in TOS episode 1×26, The Devil In The Dark, and a couple of Cardassian Voles.They turn up all over DS9 and at least one episode of Enterprise, but after being mentioned multiple times I think they first appeared on screen in DS9 2×17: Playing God.
Corvan II, the home of the Dilithium mines, was previously mentioned in TNG episode 5×10: New Ground, as the home of the Corvan gilvo, an endangered species of which the Enterprise D was transporting a breeding pair.
One of the miners killed on Corvan II was called Zaphod and, if you check the subtitles, that IS how it’s spelt. Was he the two-headed President of the Galaxy from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Or was it just a guy named after him? Considering that the USS Discovery has its own version of an improbability drive, you have to assume this was a deliberate nod.
Zefram Cochrane is, of course, the crazy hippy who invented warp technology, at least so far as humans are concerned. The story of this is told in the movie Star Trek: First Contact. That said, he first appeared in TOS 2×02: Metamorphosis where the ungrateful tool has become “bored” of everlasting youth and immortality. Jesus wept.
DIS WTF: I mean, this episode’s award has to go to the late Commander Landry for releasing a monster with six legs that, for all we know, is murderous and invincible then trying to fight it on her own.
DIS LOL: Stamets talks about wishing he could talk to his mushrooms, which I guess establishes him as Star Trek: Discovery’s resident fun guy.
Time to meeting: I suspect this section isn’t going to get a lot of action moving forward unless I seriously expand the definition of what I consider to be a meeting. This is supposed to be a super-advanced science vessel, where the hell’s the meeting room!?
Who’s That Face: Admiral Cornwell is Jayne Brook, who has been in tonnes of stuff, but I’m amused to see she was in Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, my favourite Den of Geek article ever.
Read James’ review of the previous episode, Context Is For Kings, here.