Lay down your load. We are only down the road. We have no gifts, but we are many – “All of You”, Encanto
Let’s get this out of the way first. I kind of broke down and wept like a baby at this bit.
You bastards, you made me empathize with Tarka. Fuck. Like, seriously, I recognize the weight of all the other emotional beats in this story, but nothing hit me as hard as Tarka – a character I absolutely loathe – breaking down and asking a cruel universe why the man he loved isn’t there to stop him. That is Encanto-levels of tear-inducing. And yes, I’d had a few, but no, I was not drunk.
Much like season 2, and to a lesser extent season 3, our fourth season finale sort of sorts itself out comparatively early in the episode to leave time for an extended coda which does nothing to set the stage for next season (Bryce’s disappearance a few weeks back to go work on Kovitch’s secret project is the only thing we’ve gotten which might be specifically setting up the future) but gives us some time to decompress and sort of come back down after spending so much of the episode clenched. In a season that has put so many characters through the ringer, it’s sort of fifteen minutes of aftercare to remind us that Star Trek still loves us and wants to take care of us. We get some pretty amazing stunt casting with Stacy Abrams as the president of United Earth. I didn’t really light up for it as much as some people will, but the knowledge that this would make the right people very angry warmed my bitter little heart. I never would have dreamed that Star Trek could have Ted Cruz and the National Review spitting in impotent rage that the scary dark-skinned lady was depicted in a position of power. Of course, one imagines that in 2028, the right is going to be presenting her as the scary dark-skinned lady who ceded United Earth’s sovereignty to the scary foreigners of the United Federation of Planets, but still.
Despite the enormous stakes in this episode, it’s an oddly toothless denouement. The peace and love doesn’t just win, but wins hard. Over and over, they set up these insurmountable dangers, and every time, it works out okay – there’s a great deal of sacrifice offered, but very little actually done. And… Okay? I mean, ever since Hugh came back from the dead, this has been a show that can straightforwardly just accept, “Actually not-dying is better than dying; let’s go with that one.”
In fact, let’s just go through how many times people don’t nobly sacrifice themselves. So, first pretty nice thing, General Ndoye immediately makes good. She surrenders even before she realizes that helping Book and Tarka was a terrible move: even thinking she was saving United Earth (I note and will follow suit in the fact that they are very consistent about referring to the polity as “United Earth” rather than just “Earth”), she was still willing to step up and own her complicity, then she offers herself up to go on the suicide mission to stop them in order to make things right. Which we are told is definitely a suicide mission… But just kind of isn’t, when they rescue her kind of anticlimactically.
But before any of that happens, there’s a hot minute where Michael announces that they’re gonna need someone to go out in a shuttle and sacrifice themselves and everyone looks at Detmer, because she’s the best pilot, and she’s very obviously rattled because of the whole “certain death” thing, but she also accepts it. But before she does, there’s this cut between her and Owo and… Are those two a couple? Because that was a very, “Please don’t send my girlfriend to certain death,” look out of Owo there.
Ndoye’s non-sacrifice is effectively the solution to the plot of the episode-qua-episode: she disables Book’s ship, rendering Tarka’s plan to blow up the hyperfield moot. But that kind of gets lost in how much is going on at the time and the fact that it’s shown from the perspective of Discovery’s bridge, and the fact that it does not really involve the regulars. This episode is pretty densely packed, and while not too much gets lost in the shuffle, this particular thing seems an odd one to downplay. It’s a strangely generous way to resolve the main conflict of the episode. Michael doesn’t need to shoot anyone; Book doesn’t need to throw anyone out of a turbolift; Owo doesn’t need to suffocate.
Between Ndoye’s confession and her attempt at heroic sacrifice, though, we have to get Discovery out of the 10-C’s goo-ball, and that involves the sacrifice of blowing out the spore drive (for the rest of the season; they’re careful to clarify that they can’t fix it without spacedock), which will force Discovery to take the decades-long slow road home. This is somewhat hard to understand, to my mind, because I don’t think they’ve been using the spore drive since the approach to the barrier, and it seems like conventional warp in the 32nd century is good enough to get you around the galaxy a lot faster than that – heck, Prodigy established that travel between quadrants was only “months” in the 2380s, even without a protodrive. Just showing Discovery magic mushroom on one of the past two episodes would have done a lot to justify this (It felt like they might have been claiming that the mycelial network does not extend outside the galaxy a few weeks back, but that feels wrong and dumb; if you assume that you can’t magic mushroom across the barrier, but the network still exists and indeed was needed to travel the rest of the distance, that would solve all of this). Also, pretty sure they’ve said they’re only, like 30 light years from the barrier. But it’s ultimately a non-issue, because the 10-C politely give Discovery a ride home once everything is sorted out, so that’s nice. Makes it easy.
We also have President T’rina risking her life to mind meld with the 10-C, but she recovers fine (Also, she agrees to pursue a relationship with Saru, but that has little impact on the story and is just a nice footnote). It’s… Not entirely clear what they got out of that. I mean, the story needs make some things clear, but the show doesn’t really connect the dots. The main thing we’re told that comes out of it is the understanding that the 10-C have no concept of individuality. This is a fairly small point for the plot: it really only justifies the difficulty our heroes have in explaining the concept that Tarka isn’t really “with” them. It feels like this should also link back to them being able to communicate more freely with the 10-C at the end: the last interaction they had was still limited to things they could explain in the form of a math problem. At the end, they’re still communicating with hydrocarbons and blinking lights, but they’re able to convey a full-on Aaron Sorkin West Wing speech. Maybe I missed a line somewhere about the 10-C sending them an improved lexicon after the mind-meld?
Back on the near side of the barrier, we get to see Federation HQ travel at warp to go aid in the evacuation of United Earth and Titan (“Titan” seems to be synecdoche for “Colonies in the outer solar system”, since they do namecheck Europa later. Synecdoche. Look it up.), and that is also kind of wonderful. As usual, we don’t get as much starship porn as you would hope: the overwhelming majority of ships we see are just nondescript, vaguely egg-shaped shuttles. But Federation HQ itself looks like a Christmas tree ornament, and it’s kind of goofy, yet it also has strong “Weird Crystal Spires Future” energy. I love it. And I love the very weird visual of individual decks of Federation HQ popping out like slices of a Costco bar cake. It does feel somewhat unbalanced that they’re only able to evacuate about half a million people from Earth. First real reminder that this is still a galaxy in recovery after the Burn.
On Federation HQ, we have another attempt at heroic sacrifice, with Adorably Professorial Lieutenant Tilly and Admiral Vance staying behind to buy the evacuation fleet a little more time, but of course, the BSTiS shuts down in the nick of time. Makes it easy!
I really like a lot of the details of the confrontation aboard Book’s ship. The little details of how Grudge’s collar has a holo-disruptor built in because the cat doesn’t like holograms. That’s cool. The fact that when Reno beams back to Discovery, she tells Michael exactly what Book said to tell her (She also, I assume, tells them the rest of Tarka’s backstory off-screen, because Michael is able to explain what Tarka’s deal was later in much more detail than she ought to have known). And of course the ultimate confrontation between Book and Tarka, where Tarka realizes that he wants to succeed less than he wants Othros to be there to stop him and now I’m crying again. He allows Book to take the last chance at escape, though even here, they pull their punch, since they leave open the possibility that Tarka’s dimensional transporter will work at the moment of impact. Book’s ship is the only real casualty here. Of course, it looks like Book didn’t make it, and holy shit, the restraint in not making Michael cry there, because she’s still got to handle negotiations with the 10-C. But they pull that punch too, because it turns out that the 10-C rescued him, and politely return him once they figure out what it all means.
The 10-C are a pretty good realization of an utterly alien race, within the constraint of having to keep the plot intelligible and not going all Solaris (I confess disappointment that they are less dragons and more jellyfish). That they lack the concept of individuality doesn’t add a lot to the story explicitly, but it feels thematic: you can sort of sense them struggling to grapple with the enormity of what they‘ve done when they realize that “You blew up my planet” actually means “Millions of individuals ceased to exist.” Usually, stories about aliens being really really alien focus on how hard it is for the humans to cope, but there’s a strong element here of how weird this must be for the 10-C. We know that the 10-C experience protectiveness toward their young and fear in the face of death, but for them, it’s a collective experience, when they ask, “Wait, how many of you are there?” there’s a real weight to it: the response “We are billions, but we are also one,” has got to be jaw-dropping for them. (Also, first direct reference to the Borg in the 32nd century. Not wanting to read too much into it, but I note that the Disco gang all understand the reference. Now, they’ve all been brought up to speed on the 900 years of history they missed. But the fact that they all catch the reference hints that the Borg are sufficiently important that a reference to them would be immediately understood by someone who only had a crash course in history, one focused on getting you up-to-speed for Starfleet active duty. What I’m saying is that the implication is that the Borg are still relevant whether or not they’re an active threat any more. Compare, say, to Captain America. By Endgame, you would expect Cap to be caught up enough to catch references to recent history, and you’d expect him to be broadly aware of the really big stuff. But he probably wouldn’t understand a reference to, say, Gilligan’s Island. Actually, I can imagine a fun exchange between Captain America and Star Lord, with the latter having a knowledge gap about recent pop culture from his time in space, while Cap was up to date on contemporary stuff but had a large gap for the ’70s and ’80s)
The 10-C are recognizable kind and compassionate, but only once they understand the ground rules. “Sorry about blowing up planets. We didn’t realize intelligent beings lived in the galaxy,” they say, and promise to only strip-mine uninhabited parts of space. And that would have been an okay place to stop, except that they, with the same tone as my daughter asking why I break down at the line, “Under the surface, I’m pretty sure I’m worthless if I can’t be of service,” ask why Michael is still sad, so she tells them about Book, and they’re like “Oh, yeah, we saved him. Did not realize you’d want him back. Here you go.” Makes it easy.
But yeah, Book surviving is better than Book dying. And more, it’s Book who puts his foot down and says, actually, no, strip-mining the galaxy with a powerful destructive swirly thing that poops subspace anomalies is not cool even if you avoid the bits with sentient species. Again, in a packed episode, this one thing gets a little less time than I would have liked, but Book uses his empath powers while explaining this, and while it’s not clear what he’s doing, I think he has to be helping the 10-C to understand the impact their operations have on the entire galactic ecosystem, beyond just the impact to intelligent life forms. Save the space whales. I reckoned Book’s empathy would come into play in the meeting with the 10-C, though I assumed it would be clearer what role it would play.
And just like that, without any argument or deliberation, the 10-C decide to give up on their fantastically powerful force field, and just live exposed out in intergalactic space. This is… Also kind of weird, because we have absolutely no idea what prompted them to build it in the first place, unless it’s just to protect themselves from the kind of natural disaster that destroyed their original homeworld? I mean, that hyperfield was a hell of an undertaking to just give up like that because Book tells them they need to get out more and not be weird shut-ins. But then, the 10-C are still reeling from the realization that they’ve committed mass-murder on an inconceivable scale, so maybe? This bit could have used a little more time to decompress, I think.
For our final Makes It Easies, Discovery is returned to known space just in time for United Earth to join the Federation – given that we had a whole episode about the political aspect of Ni’Var rejoining the Federation, this seemed a little quick. It’s allowable because we’re in the valedictory lap of the episode, but maybe dial it back just a little? Maybe, “We’re ready to open talks to rejoin” instead of leading off with, “Where do we sign?”
And of course, Book gets community service for his crimes. This is presented with a bittersweet tone – Michael laments that she doesn’t know when she’ll see him again. But… you’ve got a ship that can magic mushroom itself anywhere in the universe, even if you didn’t, travel to the Solar system is pretty quick and reliable, you know where he is, and you’ve got a job with a fair bit of down time. We took the effort to establish that Adira and Gray don’t have a problem doing an LDR, so why so glum over your boyfriend working the recovery efforts on Europa? Besides, there’s strong energy that this will be therapeutic for him.
You know what? It’s okay. It’s all okay. The resolution is a little bit toothless, but what, do I want to be in the position of rooting for death and destruction? It’s 2022 and I have very little appetite for “Well we just barely managed to squeak by, but at terrible cost, with many lives lost and our illusions about what unites us shattered forever.” I get enough of that from [insert something grimly comic here like “life” or “the news” or “my family”, but don’t go too depressing]. They learned the lesson from last season and dispensed with an obligatory “bad guy” in favor of antagonists who are simply operating at cross-purposes, the greater of which isn’t even aware how their actions affect the protagonists. This is all sort of maximum Star Trek, the vision of a world that is utopian not in the sense of having achieved a perfect world, but in the sense of everyone being on-board with the idea that my success is not your failure: that we can talk it out and find a way that everyone’s needs get met. And thus the real “threat” of the climax was never that the 10-C would go to war with the Federation or that Earth or Ni’Var would be destroyed: it’s what Michael says when explaining Book and Tarka to the 10-C: that in their pain and their grief, they broke away and became only their own individual “one”s, rather than being at once “one” and also “many”. And if this sounds a bit Borg-y, well why not? After all, what are the Borg but the dark mirror of the Federation: if Tarka and Book represent the dangers of losing sight of the value in communion, the Borg represent the dangers of losing sight of the value in individuality and freedom of choice.
But that’s for next time…
Huh guess ST:D has finally become Star Trek.