So here we are. “An Obol For Charon” is where the season arc really starts settling down and making itself into something with a direction to it. It also revisits a major plot from an old and incredibly thematically-messy TNG episode, and while it turns out in a similar sort of way, it avoids that episode’s bullshit moral conundrums and is far more respectful to its characters and its moral dimension.
Enterprise’s XO, Number One, makes a brief visit to give us a not-really-satisfying explanation about Enterprise’s complete breakdown and also to give Pike the warp signature for the shuttle Spock stole when escaping the hospital, so they set out to find him. Unfortunately (or not) this puts them in the path of MYSTERIOUS SPACE SPHERE, which snares the ship and makes everyone start speaking in tongues. Since he speaks all the languages, Saru is called up to the bridge to fix the universal translator, despite the fact that he’s got a bad head cold that’s making bits of his brain pop out of the sides of his head. He collapses right after fixing it, and in sickbay, admits that what he’s got isn’t a cold, but vahar’ai, the physical signal that it’s time for him to ritually sacrifice himself to be eaten by the Ba’ul, and if he doesn’t, he’ll eventually be driven mad by the brain inflammation. All the same, he helps Michael work on an antivirus to reverse the sphere’s corruption of the computer. Down in the mushroom kingdom, Stamets and Lovably Grumpy Engineer Reno (Yeah, turns out she’s still aboard) exchange fun grumpy banter where Reno plays the proxy for angry fanboys complaining that powering a starship on magic mushrooms just sounds dumb, while Stamets basically just calls her stupid and talks about pollution (This being a century before TNG, he’s talking about the ecological damage done by dilithium mining rather than proposing that warp drive itself pollutes space). The computer issues start making the ship’s power grid blow up in places (Discovery has not backed away from Star Trek‘s tradition of computer malfunctions causing consoles to explode), which locks the two of them in Engineering with Adorably Goofy Ensign Tilly and May the interdimensional fungus monster. They try to ground the power surges out through the door frame to avoid setting the air on fire, but this knocks everyone down and turns off the lights briefly, and May, the sentient fungus from last week, takes the opportunity to escape and attach itself to Tilly’s arm. Tilly warms to the idea of being infected with an interdimensional fungus, but that’s probably just the hallucinogens talking. Stamets and Reno end up drilling a hole in Tilly’s head with an actual literal power drill (They’re locked in engineering and have to make do) to give her an implant that lets them talk to May. May rather angrily explains that Stamets mucking around with mushroom space has endangered her people. Stamets, to his credit, immediately offers to help, but May is kind of belligerent and engulfs Tilly. Seeing Reno and Stamets try to let May communicate through Tilly gives Michael the idea that the MYSTERIOUS SPACE SPHERE is also trying to communicate through the medium of breaking Discovery’s translator, blowing up its power grid, and inducing Kelpien puberty. Saru gets the same idea from patterns in the flashes of ultraviolet light he’s been seeing since he got sick. The sphere starts getting hot and Pike makes plans to have a go at blowing it up, but Saru and Michael convince him to drop the shields and route all the power to communications because they reckon the MYSTERIOUS SPACE SPHERE is dying and just wants to tell its story before it goes. Discovery downloads the sphere’s parting message and is pushed clear just before it explodes. Michael helps Saru back to his room, where he asks her to cut off his fear ganglia, killing him peacefully before vahar’ai drives him mad, but they shrivel up and fall off all on their own just as she starts, leading to his immediate recovery and the loss of his Kelpien hyperdeveloped sense of fear. Discovery lost track of Spock’s shuttle while trapped, but it turns out that the sphere recorded its location right before it died, giving Pike a fresh lead. Downstairs, Stamets cuts Tilly out of the fungus and prepares to permanently cut Discovery off from mushroom space, but he and Reno start tripping from psilocybin, and they come down too late to stop May from swallowing Tilly again. When Stamets cuts the cocoon open this time, Tilly is gone.
This is more like it. Last week was a let-down, but this one delivers. And it delivers at being a high-stakes fast-paced episode without becoming too frenetic or chaotic – the “action scenes” are sort of low-key, and they don’t over-indulge in shakey-cam. In more detail:
- Minor continuity nod: the lizard guy (I think his name is Linus, which is great) mentions having had a cold recently when Saru shows up to a meeting sick.
- Our second brush with the Prime Directive: Saru can never go home because Starfleet considers the Prime Directive to apply to his people. He agreed to that when he met Georgiou. But once he realizes that vahar’ai really a transition phase in the Kelpien life cycle, that means that the Ba’ul have been deliberately suppressing the natural development of his species. that, in turn, makes him question whether his oath still applies.
- The interactions between Reno and Stamets are great. Except maybe when they’re high as balls and start talking about each other’s auras and it looks for a minute like they’re about to make out despite the fact that neither one of them is the other’s preferred gender and they don’t like each other.
- I like that Stamets makes ecological arguments in defense of the spore drive, likening the results of dilithium mining to the damage done by fossil fuels on our Earth. And then when May indicates that the spore drive is causing some kind of ecological damage to the mycelial network, he is immediately on-board for fixing it.
- There’s also some strong hinting that the development of dilithium recrystalization – invented by Po in this time period and seemingly taken mainstream some time between Star Trek IV and TNG – prompted Starfleet to back off on developing alternatives to warp drive.
- The notion that the sphere’s vibrations triggered Saru’s metamorphosis is reminiscent of an episode of Voyager where a Weird Space Thingy causes Kes to go into her species’s fertile cycle early. But, standard for Disco, not as ham-fisted and awful.
- MYSTERIOUS SPACE SPHERE is one of the coolest “big scifi concept” things Trek has done. It’s more than a little Stanislaw Lem; a strange, utterly alien consciousness which wants to share its story with Discovery, but communication is hampered by its utter alienness to the point that the attempt is dangerous for them. Its greater significance isn’t indicated yet; it’ll spend a few weeks basically doling out plot tokens from time to time before the reveal that it’s the big MacGuffin for the season. And, of course, the whole aspect of “It seems like a deadly threat but really it just wants to be friends with is,” is a very classically Star Trek sort of thing to have happen. There are even shades of V’ger in the story of a strange old thing from space that is full of ALL THE MYSTERIOUS KNOWLEDGE OF SPACE which very forcefully wants to tell you everything it’s learned, but, y’know, not all lame and boring.
- Discovery is, of course, the first Star Trek to have been informed by modern Doctor Who. This is probably most obvious in Discovery‘s willingness to throw its hands up and go, “Yeah, space is big and full of weird stuff,” to an extent that only TOS had previously come close to. ’90s Trek would have had a hard time showing us concepts like, “Big sentient space-sphere with a hundred thousand years of space knowledge,” or “The multiverse is connected by interdimensional mushrooms.” Another way is the sense in which is it as important, or even more important for the resolution to a story to be correct for the characters as it is for the resolution to be consistent with rigorous plot logic.
- This episode has the most straightforward A-plot/B-plot analogue, where Michael realizes that the sphere is trying to communicate by analogy to the way Stamets and Reno try to give May the ability to communicate. The other big parallel this week is with a wider context than this episode. Namely, the relationship between Michael and Saru is analogous to the relationship between Michael and Spock. I haven’t really seen Saru and Michael as close, possibly because I didn’t watch season 1, but I do gather that a big part of their character journeys last season had to do with healing rift between them. Michael, Saru, and Detmer all served together on the Shenzhou under Georgiou before it was destroyed. Detmer and Saru very reasonably blamed Michael for that, with Detmer being pretty bitter over having lost an eye and Saru resenting the fact that he never got the chance to replace Michael as Georgiou’s first officer. I don’t know to what extent Detmer and Michael patched things up, but there was a symbolic scene last season where Michael gave Saru Georgiou’s telescope. By now, Saru views Michael as a a sister, replacing the one he would never see again on Kaminar. All this is to set up the next part of Michael’s character arc, which started last week with revelations about her rift with Spock. Indeed, at the beginning of the episode, Michael asks to be taken off the Spock case because of the bad blood between them, but recants at the end after talking to Saru.
- The big central Thing in this episode is that Saru believes he is dying, and asks Michael to euthanize him. And here, we need to look back in time a quarter-century. There’s a late season TNG episode, “Ethics”, in which Worf breaks his spine in a cargo-loading accident and is faced with the likelihood of permanent paralysis. He’s ultimately saved thanks to an ambitious doctor performing a dangerous procedure (This is the episode’s other Big Moral thing; apparently she’s bad for doing this because the procedure is so dangerous and untested and she hasn’t taken the time to perfect it and it only ends up working because of a Kahless-ex-Machina, and so she shouldn’t have even brought it up and given Worf the choice in the first place), but for much of the episode, it looks like he’ll be lucky to regain more than the tiniest bit of mobility, so he asks Riker to help him commit ritual suicide in keeping with traditions of his people. And because it’s the ’90s, Worf’s cultural values are wrong and Riker spends his part of the episode trying to weasel out of it and eventually says that, okay, he doesn’t like this, but it’s important to his friend so he would do it… But loophole! Turns out that under Klingon tradition, it’s actually Worf’s 4-year-old son who is supposed to do it, thus forcing Worf to give up his dreams of honorable sacrifice in accordance with thousands of years of Klingon tradition because gosh darn it, he can’t bring himself to ask Brian Bonsall to cut his heart out and eat it. By hook or by crook,right? The important thing is that Riker shamed Worf out of killing himself, because western human cultural values are right, when alien cultural values differ from those, they are wrong. Sure, both scenarios end up with a deus ex machina rendering the matter of ritual suicide moot, but Discovery is so much more respectful here; Michael doesn’t try to weasel out of it or try to convince Saru to hope against hope for a miracle or try to tough it out or minimize the fact that he’s facing pain, insanity, and ultimately an undignified death. No; she doesn’t like doing it, but she respects her friend’s wishes. She respects them all the way to actually pressing the knife against his ganglia; if it hadn’t chosen that moment to fall off, she’d have gone through with it. Television in general, and science fiction television especially, and Star Trek in particular has a long history of accepting and at times even embracing the idea that sometimes, people don’t know what’s best for themselves, and it’s okay to override their own self-determination in those cases for their own good. But Discovery chose to step away from that: in this moment, Michael doesn’t try to impose her superior human morality or her superior Vulcan logic or her superior is-the-main-character viewpoint on Saru. She is just there for him, in the way that he needs her to be, and she trusts his judgment about his own body. And she is right to trust him even though he turns out to be mistaken. I think it’s a powerful refutation of Riker’s self-congratulatory rules-lawyering, and in that sense, the scene of Michael and Saru in his quarters is a better Prime Directive episode than Star Trek has ever had, even the one two weeks ago which was pretty good.
- When Reno gets cold-cocked by an energy discharge, she wakes up mentioning a dream about playing drums for Prince. To calm Adorably Trepanned Ensign Tilly, everyone sings the first verse of “Space Oddity”. The may be the most post-1950 real-world cultural references in a single episode anywhere in the franchise.
- Saru spends act four shirtless. We don’t usually get to see what aliens’ torsos look like, whether they have nipples and belly buttons and bumpy bits to match the foreheads (Kelpiens have all three). Way to go the extra mile.
- I like that this episode seems to have nothing at all to do with the red angel. There’s a meeting in the opening where they talk about it, but they don’t draw any conclusions and they don’t learn anything in this episode. No connection between the red angel and the sphere becomes apparent until much later in the season.
- During the Red Angel meeting, Detmer is the one who suggests that just because it’s a winged creature, that doesn’t necessarily mean it comes from a winged species; it could be a unique individual. I like that she’s the one to say this, because obviously she’s imagining that the wings might be cybernetic, which of course she’d be the first to think of, being a cyborg herself.
- We get reinforcement of Pike’s goal-driven nature when he is conflicted about accepting the sphere data less on the grounds of him not being fully convinced of its benign intent and more that doing so will delay them when Spock’s shuttle is almost out of sensor range.
As with the best episodes, there’s little to complain about here that doesn’t fall under “I wish they’d spent a little more time on…” To wit:
- I guess we’re just going with “Travel is a free action in the teaser.” Number One shows up on Discovery in the teaser basically out of nowhere to have coffee with Pike, then leaves again, seemingly just a few minutes before Discovery encounters the sphere. Actually, the pattern of “Guest star shows up in the teaser, having effortlessly crossed half the galaxy despite a major space war and/or omnicidal computer in the way,” is how at least half of these episodes begin.
- I should clarify that I don’t really mind people being able to arrange themselves conveniently in the null-space between episodes, except when it appears in tandem with a story element that relies on the difficulty of travel logistics. Having Cornwall or Number One show up in person at one end or the other of an episode is fine, but when it’s something like Sarek showing up for a heart-to-heart with Michael while we’re using “Discovery can’t contact Starfleet” as a major plot point, that’s a problem. Sarek’s an ambassador. Sure, it’s beneath his pay grade, but, like, Cornwall could just write a letter to the fleet telling them to come to Xahea and help out and have him hand-carry it.
- Also, Tyler has time to go get L’Rell to round up a fleet to help, but he couldn’t go back to Earth and tell Starfleet instead?
- Speaking of, I’m of two minds about Rebecca Romijn’s Number One. She’s good, don’t get me wrong. But she’s clearly being written as “The cold and analytical character who is willing to open up and show her softer side to Pike on account of their long history and close bond with one another.” And the problem is that they only ever really show us the “who is willing to open up and show her softer side to Pike” part, never the “Cold and analytical character” part. We get to see it basically once, for the space of about two lines of dialogue, in the debriefing scene at the end of the finale. Without that contrast, the softer side of Number One isn’t nearly so meaningful. We really would benefit from seeing her interact with other characters.
- This is the second consecutive episode whose opening scene is “Guest star beams aboard Discovery to deliver secret Starfleet Information about Spock that they stole.” I don’t know if this is Discovery being clever with its parallel plot structures, or just weirdly repetitive.
- Having Pike say, of offscreen-character Chief Louvier, “I don’t think the Enterprise will ever have a chief engineer more in love with his ship,” is way too cutesy.
- As I said before, blaming Enterprise’s malfunction on the holographic screens is unsatisfying.
- And it could’ve been so much better. Even leaving aside the possibility of Gabrielle Burnham sabotaging Enterprise to get Pike on Discovery, you could stick with “It’s a problem with the holographic screens,” but elevate it to something more meaningful: the first major element of Control’s machinations we learn about is that it uses holograms to trick people. So maybe Enterprise’s crash was the result of a failed early attempt by Control to take over the ship. Even better, if the holographic viewscreens are the vector for Control, that could be the reason Enterprise and Discovery have to make their final stand without Starfleet. Enterprise has had its holographic screens removed, and Discovery inoculates itself somehow (Sphere data?), but they can’t risk involving any other ships because Control can take them over. That gets us out of all the issues I mentioned above stemming from relying on travel logistics to keep the fleet out of the final battle.
- The sphere has no backstory, no personality, and no motivation beyond wanting to pass on its knowledge. When the sphere data somehow develops the ability to defend itself later in the season, it recasts the sphere’s behavior in this episode as a lot more mercenary. I wish some of the study of the sphere data were a bit more introspective, telling us something about where it came from or what it was all about. We do see a hint of them just glancing over the sphere’s data for the purpose of pure, undirected research, at the end of this episode, and I wish we’d get more of that as the season went on, but the pacing picks up quite a bit in two weeks so it doesn’t have a chance to come up.
- That whole thing about Discovery posing a threat to the mycelial plane? It doesn’t mean what it sounds like. There’s no ecological catastrophe being caused by using the magic mushroom drive. I’m not even sure they meant for us to think that there was; I think May’s explanation is just confusing, and possibly even Stamets’s later attempt to cut Discovery off from the network didn’t mean what it sounded like: he was just lashing out because between the visions of his dead husband and Tilly getting eaten by an interdimensional fungus, he’s decided mushroom space is more trouble than it’s worth. I’m not the only person who was confused by this; apparently some Word of God had to be handed down after next week’s episode to explain that the problem in Mushroom Space is in fact completely solved and it’s perfectly safe for Discovery to keep using it. (I’m not sure if there’s any lingering issues with it giving Stamets interdimensional seizures or stuff like happened last season)
- We learn later that Gabrielle Burnham was responsible for Discovery getting the sphere data. But there’s nothing in this episode that hints at an opening for her to do that. It seems like Discovery was chasing Spock and just happened to pass within the sphere’s range. Was she able to move the sphere somehow to put it along Discovery’s course? That seems the most straightforward literal interpretation of what she says, but how could she do that, and why wouldn’t the sphere have just tried to offload its information to her instead? (We never get a direct answer why Burnham never tried to take the sphere data herself, but from her reactions, it seems like the answer might be as straightforward as her not having thought of it. Or possibly she couldn’t communicate with the sphere because she was unstuck in time).
- Easy fix: Have Number One lead off by saying, “Sorry it took me so long to get here; I had to go around a weird swirly thing in space,” implying that Discovery would otherwise have caught up to Spock sooner, and thus missed the sphere.
- We can alternatively imagine a timeline where it’s Enterprise rather than Discovery which encounters the sphere, and is unable to protect the data as it lacks a spore drive.
- There’s no indication how Control would’ve gotten the sphere data had Discovery not been there to collect it in the first place. There’s no mention of other ships in the area, so wouldn’t the sphere have just died alone, its knowledge lost, had Discovery not been there? Or are we meant to assume that the sphere could’ve “held out” longer, possibly years longer, waiting for someone to come along? The sphere is in its final death throes in act 3, but maybe it was a case where it was the effort of snagging Discovery and trying to communicate with it that triggered the final stage of its death.
- Saru’s vahar’ai was triggered by the sound of the sphere. At one point, they suggest that getting away from the sphere might stop it. This doesn’t come up once the sphere explodes. There’s no scene of them hoping Saru will recover only for him to sadly say that it’s progressed too far. He doesn’t even go down to sickbay to have them check and see if he’s improving. He just declares that it’s time for him to go off and die a few seconds after the sphere does.
- Speaking of, look, “An Obol for Charon” is a fine name. But how the hell did this episode in which there is a MYSTERIOUS SPACE SPHERE which emits a haunting sound and flashing lights that are explicitly likened to music not get titled, “Music of the Spheres”?
Now that Discovery has the MacGuffin, we’ve still got some more board-arranging to do before the season kicks into high gear. The second half of the season is going to be a much more linear progression through a plotline toward a conclusion, and it’s going to rub a bit with some of the setup done in this half. Over the course of the next few episodes, I think we’re going to see the transition where the original concept for this season is reworked into the plot we’ll follow forward. Next week’s main plot is pretty simple and largely disconnected from the broader arc. But damn if it isn’t the prettiest episode we’ve had so far.
Also, you know, it bugs me that even though we’re told that even with his miracle cure, Worf is only going to get about 80% of his mobility back, but there is never any sign later that Worf has any sort of persistent disability. He never even mentions chronic pain, which, sure, okay, maybe as a Klingon he just wouldn’t talk about it, but come on, all those hand-to-hand combat scenes during the Dominion War, and he never throws his back out or needs a cane for the bad days? They outright say it’s going to take Worf a ton of physical therapy to even be able to walk properly, but we get one scene of that at the end of the episode, and then, like, he’s off getting backhanded across the bridge to demonstrate how dangerous the monster of the week is and winning Bat’leth tournaments again.