So we continue the watch with The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not For the Lamb’s Cry (Star Trek‘s second longest title, aftet 1968’s For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky).
We start getting a very close up of what a uniform being replicated looks like on a microscopic level (or synthesis, if that’s a different thing) as Burnham puts on her new uniform and examines herself in a ‘mirror’ – which turns out to actually just be a live holographic projection of herself (notably, after the previous holograms are portrayed as being fuzzy, and obvious, this was high-res).
 |
| I suppose it is a logical use for holograms … |
BreathOfFeshAir Tilly comes into the room carrying a package, which turns out to be the contents of Georgiou’s will. Burnham immediately stuffs is under her bed instead of opening – which is rational, but the package seems to constantly beep until it’s opened and I’ve only had to cope with hearing it on-screen for less than ten seconds and it’s bothering me so Idk how the couriers and Tilly are gonna cope …
Burnham is called to the bridge and curiously isn’t given a Starfleet insignia on her uniform (btw, I was thinking about this last night – this is chronologically the first time we’ve seen the insignia as a Starfleet one, right? What people don’t realise is that in TOS, different ships had different insignia, much how like modern ships have different assignment patches (which was the intent of Roddenberry) – so does that mean the insignia started off as Starfleet wide, then was confined to just the Enterprise and the Defiant before being reverted to Starfleet wide. A curious move …) – it’s not clear why atm. The insignia in this series is where the ranks are indicated, and Burnahm currently has no rank (which again, I mean – surely she is at least a crewman? No rank implies a civilian operative, but she is clearly still Starfleet … like ships rely on a hierarchy and I have no idea where she falls in it), but surely she should still have the insignia, being in Starfleet, if just a blank one …
Burnham bumps into Saru, who was until this moment unaware that Burnham was still on-board (Lorca hadn’t told him) and they arrive at the bridge, which is at Red Alert – it quickly turns out to be a drill (expanding why the rest of the ship hadn’t shown any indications of this) as a Bird of Prey fires a torpedo that ‘destroys’ the ship. It’s a nice familiar scene of frantic bridge operations, although it edges more towards (as does the series as a whole) the Kelvin films’ tendency to have multiple people speaking at the same time than the previous TV series’ more polite one at a time setup.
Lorca introduces Burnham to his menagerie, and reintroduces her to the creature from the USS Glen. Lorca waxes about the creature’s attributes that make it an ideal weapon, and he wants Burnham to make it into one.
We then get the series’ lackluster opening title sequence. After watching the last three episodes, I watched the show’s companion series After Trek, and it’s opening title music is considerably more engaging than the main show’s.
We’re back to the Klingons, playing around with holograms. Having not seen them for a while, if I hadn’t already been told these were Klingons from previous episodes, I would not have realised that these were, such is the difference between their appearance here and their appearance in the other TV series.
Voq is trying to find a Klingon ship to repair the one he and his crew are stranded and starving on, but refuses to go to the Shenzou as their crew are responsible for killing T’Kuvman. Another Klingon points at that it would be no different to when they ate Georgiou (mentioning how they picked the meet from her skull .. ewwww … I wonder if Burnham knew that’s how the Klingons treated their enemy’s corpses … then again, Georgiou put a bomb on a dead Klingon so …), and that he needs to do what’s right for his people.
Burnham and Landry examine the creature, which Landry calls Ripper, but Burnham points out is related to the tardigrade (also known as water bears and are one of my favourite microscopic life forms! They’re known for being immortal).
 |
| If you’re surprised I have a favourite microscopic life form do you even know me. |
Landry asks how it can be controlled as a weapon, but Burnham gets all Star Trek (oh wait, this is Star Trek– eh nevermind) and points out that it’s an unknown alien race, and an innocent animal. Landry dismisses her ‘Vulcan proverb’ and points out that Lorca doesn’t care about anyone’s past, but about what they can do for him.
Lorca receives orders to go rescue a mining station under attack after assuring command that the ship is ready to do a jump. Cue heroic music and then a Gilligan cut to Staments telling him they absolutely cannot make that jump. Lorca orders him to work out the solution, while Kol arrives at Voq’s ship to talk about their cloaking technology.
The Discovery prepares to go to jump. The outer disc on the hull begins to spin and Ripper becomes agitated. The ship jumps almost into a star, as the jump fails early. Burnham calls Landry down to explain that the spore drive affects Ripper, but Landy points out that it’s not their mission to discern the creature’s behaviour, it’s to work out how to weaponise it (to which Burnham should have pointed out that any and all information, in particular as to why the usually benign creature because aggressive, is useful to that end).
Staments gets his nose fixed in medbay as Lorca berates him for the failed jump. Staments retorts that science takes time, and he isn’t a soldier trying to fight a war. When Lorca retorts telling him to get off, Statments says that if he did, he’d take his research with him. Lorca says he can’t because it belongs to Starfleet – which is fair but does also miss the big fact that Staments is the leading mind of spore research, so it’s not clear how far they’d get without him either. Also Lorca mentioned Elon Musk in a list of pioneers, which I suppose could go either way when this episode is watched in the near future.
Lorca plays the dying screams of the people on the mining colony to motivate his crew to work harder to get there, while Landry decides to sedate Ripper and cut off its claws for Burnham to inspect, against her recommendations, which ends up getting Landry killed and put down in history as the most useless Chief Security Officer in Star Trek history.
Meanwhile Kol arrives on the Shenzou, Voq and T’Rell discuss Voq’s accession as their leader, a character moment not normally seen in ‘enemy characters’. Burnham asks Saru to come to the menagerie, where after apologising for acting unfair to him on the Shenzou (this doesn’t fit in with how they were portrayed together in the prelude episodes, so this is a very ‘tell, instead of showing’ moment), she comments that his threat ganglia aren’t extended, confirming her suspicions that Ripper isn’t an aggressive predator. Saru, feeling like Burnham’s apology was insincere (I’m not sure why he feels that), leaves after saying Burnham will get along nicely with Lorca (again, I’m not sure why he feels like that). Tilly brings Burnham some spores, wanting to feel helpful. Burnham tests a theory by opening the containment pen and releasing spores into it. Ripper shows they’re appreciation by nuzzling Burnham.
Burnham explains to an impressed Staments that she believes the tardigrade is able to travel across the mycellia network, and that the Glenn was using it as their ‘supercomputer’ to travel further and more accurately. They transport Ripper into their forest and they start talking to the mushrooms.
Meanwhile, while Koq and T’Rell were scavenging from the Shenzhou, Kor brought food from his ship and bought the loyalty of his crew, including, it seems T’Rell,
On the Discovery, they beam the tardigrade into chamber and use it to navigate to the colony, before jumping out, leaving some torpedoes behind to blow up the Klingon shops (which seems overly showy). Meanwhile Koq is exiled to the Shenzhou. T’Rell teleports on, revealing that her betrayal was a way to save his life, and that as he has lost his crew, he must scheme on a grander scale and win the war.
Ripper is moaning from his experience as Burnham comes to feed him spores, before returning to her bunk. Where the package is STILL PINGING!
 |
| DOES IT NOT HAVE A SNOOZE? |
Tilly arrives and points out what Burnham had done, saving the colonists, has spread across the ship, earning her a new reputation. Tilly tries to encourage Burnham to open the package (which I’d be doing if it KEPT BEEPING AT ME) and after she leaves, Burnham does so (THANK GOD IMAGINE A FULL SERIES OF THAT BEEPING). A hologram (strangely one that looks the same from the front and the back but not the side which is confusing) of Georgiou appears who sings praises of Burnham, and calls her her own daughter, before saying she left her most prized possession to her, her telescope.
And so that’s the fourth episode of Discovery. It’s hard to really make an assessment of the show, because on the one hand you want to compare it as a Star Trek show and you should – but it’s so different in format, as its serialised (even the serialised parts of DS9 could still work as independent episodes), so the most important part of Star Trek, its story, isn’t complete enough to talk about. Ladry died and she is a completely forgettable character. We still don’t really understand much about what each character’s motivation is, although we know a bit – which I guess makes it a bit more interesting as a Star Trek series, in comparison to previous shows where we understood the motivation of each character entirely (was there even a Log entry in this episode?), but makes it further harder to compare.
We’ll just have to see where the future episodes go.
The Star Trek franchise is copyright of CBS. Most screen caps are thus owned by them and are used in this blog under Fair Use.
