Some Blundering About Star Trek: Discovery 3×02: Far From Home

Well that serves me right, doesn’t it? We actually get a properly nasty, even sadistic villain in Zareh, and start challenging my whole, “The universe bends toward utopia” thing.

But the reason I’m okay with it is that the climax reveals that, as it turns out, Zareh was never really as big of a threat as he was coded to be. A nasty piece of work, to be sure, but when it throws down, Georgiou just tanks a bunch of shots from his pointlessly nasty torturegun, and, hey, Saru is a seven-foot-tall apex predator who – I am glad they have not forgotten – can shoot fuck-off-murder-darts out of his skull (The fuck-off-murder-darts continue to not actually do all that much. Which is sad but makes sense given that they were, after all, evolved for hunting a race of frail, goo-covered, aquatic humanoids). Zareh is scary, but he’s the sort of penny-ante thug who’s only of any note because The Burn made space into a small pond. Saru was doing things the hard way because it was the right thing to do rather than throwing his weight around for expedience. And Tilly was there too.

And compared to last week, they do much more to sell the whole, “This is the future and it’s weird.” The exchange last time was a big futurey city and all, but we’ve seen that before. This unnamed planet has floating boulders and parasitic ice, because space is big and weird and that sort of stuff happens.

Also good:

• “You’ve got some Leland on your shoe.”
• I got a kick out of Oweosekun and Detmer competing to shout for everyone to brace for impact.
• I dig how everyone comes off a little shellshocked but is holding it together because they’re professionals.
• “Let’s go down to sickbay and get our lungs modified so we can breathe the air here,” is kind of an amazing offhand thing to do. I wonder if they did it just so that the VFX artists didn’t need to create a new CGI model for Saru wearing a respirator.
• Reuniting Michael with the others in the last scene is great, because separating them was a good way to give us two different angles on the new setting, but it would’ve been tedious to extend the quest to reunite into a longer plot arc.
• Once again everyone works out the fact that the Discovery crew are time travelers all on their own and takes it entirely in stride.
• The take on Discovery being out-of-time feels pretty fresh. Your “classic” Out-of-Time Space Opera setup has the heroes as being constrained by limited resources but possessing a ship full of The Uber-Technology-of-the-Old-Gods. Here, Discovery is at a disadvantage because their technology is out of date – they have to trade for things that anyone in this time would be able to build for themselves out of Programmable Matter, but transportation is very high-cost in this world, and Discovery has a massive stockpile of dilithium and the ability to travel without warp.
• Just like last week, instead of “this is a grimdark future where everyone’s out for number one and no one believes in unity and togetherness,” we encounter people who want to believe in the ideals of the Federation and are instantly on-board for being better people once they had a legitimate choice in the matter. Even to the point of the miners letting Zareh go with an uncertain chance at survival.

On the other hand:

• Something’s wrong with Detmer, and instead of talking about it with the people she cares about, she’s keeping it to herself even though it’s impacting her performance when they need her. I hate this bullshit, especially in my Star Trek. I also question the fact that her medical exam didn’t turn up what was wrong with her. I assume the implication is that it’s a problem with her cybernetics, but you’d think “Check her cybernetics” is part of a standard medical checkup.
• I’m glad Hugh and Stamets have patched things up, but it feels like their reconciliation skipped over a whole lot of tentative fumbling toward a new and stronger partnership while Stamets was in a medically induced coma, because they’re just all happy and comfortable and lovey-dovey now in a way that kind of disrespects the fact that they’ve been through a lot and Hugh should be still sorting through his existential crisis.
• Georgiou isn’t quite right this week. We get that she’s feeling maternal about Michael, but Georgiou is a hypercompetent psychopath, so in the early part of the episode, the fact that she seems largely unconcerned with getting the ship working feels too far out in the direction of, “She’s behaving irrationally in her desire to find and protect Michael.” Saru is right: they can’t help Michael with a broken starship, and even in full-Mama-Bear mode, Georgiou is the sort of Retired Evil Empress who should appreciate that.
• Tig Notaro is a joy in every single scene, but I do prefer it when they give her something to actually do rather than complaining about her back.
• I was just telling people how much I love Linus because his dialogue is always just mundane shit unrelated to him being a lizard man. And here they go having his one line of dialogue being about his visual spectrum. They never even elaborate on why Georgiou cares about it; it seems like it’s a setup for something – she wants him to help her find something or identify something, but all she does is give him the slip to go rescue Saru and Tilly.
• “Parasitic ice” is a cool concept and a good way to establish us as being in a Weird Future, but, like, what does that even mean? How does that even work? The floating boulders, I’m just like, “Okay, cool.” But I want some detail on what “parasitic ice” is.
• So I guess V’dreysh is just pidgin for “Federation” and not the proper name for some degenerate remnant of the Federation that has given in to their colonialist tendencies. Disappointing.