Once again I find myself at the disadvantage of having been pretty drunk when I watched this episode. I’m going through some stuff right now. It’s fine.
Anyway, this episode has some ups and downs. It has a more solid “Science Fiction” plot than we’ve gotten out of Discovery in a while, but correspondingly less of the Discovery goodness that I’ve come to like. We spend a bit more time with Book and Tarka than I want, and honestly they aren’t doing great at justifying their part of the plot. I could’ve done with some more time for “character” stuff.
We don’t really learn a lot about the 10-C despite that being what the episode is ostensibly about. It’s called “Rosetta” because they’re meant to be discovering the key to communicating, and they probably do, but it’s going to involve one more ass-pull to get there (Betcha it’s Book. Book is, after all, an empath. Also, proper emotional catharsis requires Book, the face of having been hurt by the 10-C, be the one to heal the divide by connecting at an emotional level with those he holds responsible) because where they are right now is basically that they have discovered that the 10-C, despite possibly being GIANT FREAKING SPACE DRAGONS WHO LIVED INSIDE A GAS GIANT experience emotions that are entirely recognizable to galactic humanoids: fear of death; the desire to protect their young; self-sacrifice. Okay, cool, fine start. But we still need a little treknobabble to take the last step from there to communication. Which is plausible, since the key technical aspect of this discovery is that the remains of ancient 10-C impregnated their environment with hydrocarbons that can transmit their emotions to other lifeforms that touch them.
This is fairly close, on a technical level, to imagining one could relive the memories of a dinosaur by touching crude oil. It is quite mad and quite wonderful, and well outside the sort of thing “respectable” Trek tends to do, but is actually fairly in-line with some of the wild things I’ve seen in expanded universe novels, and in Doctor Who. But that said, “Aha! They have emotions!” isn’t on the surface as big a revelation as its weight in the story merits.
Meanwhile, Tarka and Book sneak aboard Discovery so that they can find a way to piggyback when it goes to visit the 10-C in their new home. We still haven’t gotten a really plausible explanation for what Tarka means to do now – he doesn’t have another isolytic weapon, and I see no evidence of him having an alternative plan for capturing the power source. Unless he just wants to sneak up to it and plug is interdimensional transporter into it. And I see even less why Book is going along with him: if Tarka had a plan to disable the power source, maybe. But given that Tarka doesn’t have a concrete plan and Michael does, why isn’t he just turning himself in and asking if he can do anything to help? Also, as much of a dick as Tarka is, I noticed that he made a point of referring to Zora by name. He unquestioningly and naturally accepts her for who and what she is despite the two never having directly interacted. This is a nice change from the expected cliche of, “Communicate that the character is a dick by having him refuse to use the sentient ship’s actual name.” It is possible that they really do mean for us to see Tarka as another “broken” character rather than the total dick they portrayed him as.
And then they accidentally kidnap Reno. Cool. Reno being snarky at Tarka will certainly make the next episode more fun.
“I’m going through some stuff right now. It’s fine.”
Hugs?
Much appreciated