Weekend Trek “Context Is For Kings”

As far as the two-part pilot for Star Trek Discovery went, it was, well, fine.  I don’t know that I would have kept going, but here we are.

I did mention before Ryan loved this series, and when I mentioned I was starting Discovery, he said the show was awesome.  So, is it?

Actually, this episode, picking up with Burnham on a prison transport that goes dead in space, the pilot ejected into the void and soon rescued by an unknown Starfleet ship, the Discovery.  Burnham’s never heard of it, but she’s soon put to work in Engineering alongside Lt. Stamets, a man with degrees in physics and microbiology.  She’s not told what she’s working on, which is fine as most of the crew blames her for the start of the Klingon War.  The closest she comes to friendly people on the ship is Saru, her old shipmate, here the First Officer, and he’s not so much nice as regretful, and Cadet Tilly, the bubbliest character to ever appear on any incarnation of Star Trek, and Burnham’s roommate before Tilly figures out who Burnham is, and even then, she’s apologetic later.

But then there’s Captain Lorca, as played by perennial villain Jason Isaacs.  Is Lorca a villain here?  I have no idea.  He’s a captain on a Star Trek series, so he normally would be, but he’s also not the main protagonist.  That’s Burnham, and her role on the ship at episode’s end is rather vague.  Lorca wants her, Lorca convinces her to stay, showing Burnham that the research they are pursuing, something Burnham thought was a bioweapon, is actually a form of fuel that could, theoretically, be used to travel very long distances very quickly.

Wait, a space-based microbe might be used to create ships that can travel beyond known distances at high rates of speed?  Is it called “astrophage”?

However, Lorca also has a secret lab, where he ends the episode looking at this very hostile thing that Burnham, Stamets, and some other members of the Discovery crew found on their sister-ship the Glenn.  That was after the Starfleet crew was heavily distorted by…something, and the thing had essentially wiped out a squad of Klingon warriors by itself.

Nice comedic beat when the lone surviving Klingon shushes them, a Starfleet character asked if he just shushed them, and then the monster basically eats the Klingon.  Yes, he was shushing them.

So, what do I make of the captain who is clearly up to something, actually sees value in Burnham because context is king, meaning he is aware Burnham committed mutiny, but she had a reason to do so that could have saved a lot of lives.  That may be something to keep in mind before I find out what Lorca is doing in that lab.  Or, for that matter, how his pet tribble hasn’t multiplied yet.

As for Burnham, she still isn’t doing much for me.  The character of a human raised (mostly) by Vulcans is an intriguing idea, and to the show’s credit, she isn’t some Mary Sue character.  She’s flawed.  She is full of guilt.  She snaps at Tilly for dropping Georgiou’s title when referring to the dead captain.  She is willing to accept punishment.  But she also wants to explore, and that’s basically what Star Trek, at is best, often is.

So, yes, this is an improvement over the two-part pilot.