The DMA is hours away from chewing up and spitting out Earth, Ni’Var, and billions of innocent lives, so of course this is the perfect opportunity for Discovery to putter around on a planet, lose all its urgency, and talk about feelings.
While it may seem like I’m trashing this entire episode right out of the gate, I assure you, that’s only because I am.
The USS Discovery, outside of the galaxy and on its way to confront and hopefully negotiate with Species 10C, goes on a xenoanthropological side mission to a dead world that the 10C used to live on to gather clues about how to communicate with them. While there, the crew goes on unintentional acid trips, tries to give Detmer some long overdue, yet very awkward characterization, and learns something that honestly could have been revealed in the opening teaser.
Meanwhile, Book and Tarka — the subplot that no one likes — has journeyed outside the galaxy as well because, apparently, even though it’s a dangerous thing to do and Discovery was very lucky to do it, they were too. They’ve decided that they need to get onto Discovery, though why I have to admit I have completely forgotten about, so they use sci-fi nonsense to sneak on board, make everyone on the ship look like idiots, and continue a mission that, after they threw gas on the fire last time, they should have just abandoned all together.
So, in the end, everyone looks stupid.
This last batch of episodes have really dialed up the frustration factor with this season as Discovery has seemingly — and almost methodically, I would add – lost all of their momentum for no discernable reason. I would have rather this season be shorter than have it running around in circles wasting time.
The result is probably Discovery‘s worst episode in a long, long time. It doesn’t even have the decency to be bad, it just aims for boring and hits the proverbial bullseye dead in the center with an accuracy that would make Robin Hood green with envy.
Jason Gaston 