Spore drive now.
Full spoilers follow for this episode. Click here if you want to learn how to watch Star Trek: Discovery.
It’s another strong outing for Star Trek: Discovery with episode 4, the floridly titled "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry," which delved deeper into the ins and outs of the Mushroom Mission (TM) spore drive while also offering a better sense of how this show will work on a weekly basis.
When the mining colony Corvan 2 comes under attack by the Klingons, the Discovery’s jump capabilities are sorely needed. To that end, Captain Lorca will push his crew even harder than he apparently already does, judging by the combat simulation at the start of the episode where he is openly disappointed and perhaps even pissed off at his bridge crew by their poor showing. (Also, Burnham uses the term “pissed off” in this episode, which is surely a Star Trek first.)
That opening is pretty great, and you gotta love how the unsavory edges of Lorca help to round out his character. He’s front and center on his bridge, barking commands before everything goes to hell and he tells the crew that it would be “hard to do worse” than they just did. Go team!
Speaking of unsavory, Lorca introduces Burnham to his Menagerie right away, as he wants her to weaponize the extremely durable and dangerous creature from last week’s episode, who Security Chief Landry dubs Ripper. Oh, and it’s not a bad name, for while Burnham is working the science of it all to determine that the thing is basically a giant tardigrade, Ripper still manages to, ahem, rip Landry apart. Does lasting two episodes qualify you for Red Shirt status?
So while Burnham’s bleeding heart and sciencey science is determining that Ripper is actually a peaceful sucker who is at one with the mushroom spores like a hippie at Woodstock -- or something (I’m a little vague on this part) -- Lorca is pushing Lt. Stamets hard to get them to Corvan 2 now! I liked Stamets more this week, as his obnoxious edge has faded a bit and we see that he’s willing to work with Lorca not just because Starfleet basically owns him and his research now, but also because he wants to help the people who are under attack too. That Lorca, working every angle…
Oh, and we finally have met Wilson Cruz here as Dr. Hugh Culber, who fixes Stamets’ seriously messed up nose injury. It’s funny how Discovery is teasing out its cast so slowly, but it works (Ash Tyler, played by Shazad Latif, won’t show up until episode five next week, and he’s been pushed as a main character by CBS).
Meanwhile, we get to see what the disciples of T’Kuvma are up to after a break from them last week. And it turns out that Voq and L’Rell have been stuck for the six months since the war started, adrift and slowly starving with their crew. They even ate Captain Georgiou’s body! This appears to be partly out of desperation, and partly out of revenge. Man.
So a few things about Voq and L’Rell. They haven’t even been participating in the war they started? And when Fancy Pants Klingon Kol shows up, they still feel the need to go salvage the Shenzhou’s warp drive tech? Kol can’t hook a brother up? Either way, the simmering… romance, I guess, between the two is pretty compelling, and it was genuinely disturbing when it seemed L’Rell had betrayed Voq. It should be interesting to see how they deal with Kol next.
It all culminates in a pretty cool action scene where the crew doesn’t screw up, the spore drive works (and looks really, really awesome in use), and Burnham gains the confidence of the team even more. Plus, her compassion for Ripper (it will need a new name now) is perfectly Star Trek. I hope by season’s end it’ll be wearing a Starfleet uniform too (apparently the creature was originally designed to be a part of the crew when Bryan Fuller was still onboard as showrunner).
In the end, Burnham is finally able to bring herself to play Georgiou’s will, which is surely a bittersweet moment for her as the captain once again expresses her confidence in Burnham’s ability to command, even while Michael remains at such a low point, not even deemed worthy of wearing the Starfleet insignia. But that’s what this show is about, now we know -- finding out how Michael Burnham redeems herself.
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- “You can tell your threat ganglia to relax,” Burnham says to Saru. “My ganglia remain unconvinced,” he responds. These two are so great together.
- Corvan 2 was a planet mentioned in the TNG episode “New Ground.”
- How the heck did they salvage Georgiou’s telescope?
- Speaking of which, those shots of Voq on the decompressed bridge of the Shenzhou were just fantastic.
- Captain Lorca has his own version of “engage.” A simple “go.” Perfect.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Discovery is settling into a rhythm now of single-story dramatics that feed into the bigger season arcs involving the spore drive and Klingon War. We got more details on both of those fronts this week, while Burnham, Lorca, Stamets and the Klingons were all fleshed out a bit more in satisfying ways. And then it all climaxed with an exciting action scene were stuff got blown up!
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