Some Blundering About Star Trek: Discovery 5×09: Lagrange Point

We edge ever closer to inevitable disappointment.

This is a good, strong episode, don’t get me wrong. After a few clinkers where they tried to do a puzzle box episode and failed, it occurred to Discovery to play to their strengths, and do a nice straightforward heist. It’s nice and straightforward. The inevitable disappointment comes from the fact that it just seems so obvious that this is going to end with Michael deciding that humanity can’t be trusted with the Power of the Gods. Probably going to shove it into one of those convenient black holes.

Anyway, the main thing I love about this episode is that the entire heist basically hinges on the fact that the Breen are absolute jerks, all the time. So you can fairly trivially infiltrate a Breen warship by putting on a Breen costume and just yelling at anyone who challenges you. How fucked up is it that the Breen keep the environment in their own ships at a temperature that is comfortable for most other races, but not themselves? This seems insane, but, little though we know about the Breen, it does come off as plausible that they are just the kind of assholes who would do that sort of thing. Remember, Breen can survive at normal temperatures, but they have to switch from gooey to non-gooey, which is deeply shameful. So instead, they maintain their low-temperature goo form, but wear face-concealing refrigerated suits all the time. Because they are just jerks like that. It is profoundly stupid, but in an enjoyable way.

I notice President Rillak is back. I had assumed that T’rina was taking point in the Breen negotiations a couple of weeks ago because they hadn’t hired Chelah Horsdal back on for this season. But it’s got me wondering whether Saru’s subplot here was actually added later, after they found out they weren’t getting renewed. Even though it ties back to Rayner – the Breen primarch who is racing to join the fight is the same one who conquered his planet – that subplot is completely isolated from everything else. It seems pretty obvious that they wouldn’t introduce Primarch Ta’al here unless it was to lead to a showdown between her and Rayner. So if that doesn’t happen, I’d take that as evidence that this sideplot exists purely because Doug Jones would’ve otherwise unceremoniously disappeared from the series weeks ago. And if that’s the case, it’s even possible they might kill him off. Though that would be a bit of a bummer. In any case, every scene with Saru and T’rina is an absolute gift. #RelationshipGoals. At least we’ll get to see the pathway drive in action. I hope it’s something super cool and/or weird.

Adira gets to really come into their own on a big important away mission, and it feels very earned that Stamets freaks out a little but ultimately makes his peace with them going. And I guess they were really pushing for Rhys to become a main character, because he’s there too and doesn’t even die or anything.

I need to momentarily drop my conceit of calling them Chiana and D’argo to make a joke about Mol having a La’ak-et in her pocket. Another cool bit of It’s The Future’s Future that I wish had just been a constant background element of this show: personal transporters means everyone can carry around their own personal hammerspace. Maybe that’s where they get their phasers from, though I’m pretty sure they’re slightly more mundanely origami’d up their sleeves.

Another negative point for having to sit through the whole episode with the sense of inevitability from the fact that we all knew the second the barrel opened up to reveal a mysterious portal that the episode was gonna end with Michael jumping into it. I’m interested about the setup, though. We’ve got a pair of Breen, and Chiana with Hammerspace D’Argo, and Michael. I assume next week Book’s going to go in after her, in order that we can set up something with pairs of lovers. The secret last clue did say something about many becoming one. Orgy time?

And then there’s the real centerpiece of the episode: Rayner having them tuck Discovery’s nacelles in and whang itself through the Dreadnought’s shuttle bay in order to blow everyone out into space. It is indeed cool. I’m disappointed we actually get to see the full extent of the Dreadnought on-screen all at once, but still very cool. (This show is bad at scale. The Dreadnought dwarfed Federation HQ, but Discovery seems to be just a bit smaller than the hangar bay that spans 3/4 of the width of the ship. Similarly, there’s very few shots of the Federation fleet that reflect the fact that Discovery really ought to be much smaller than a 32nd century capital ship.

Our final plot complication of the episode is that the barrel containing the Progenitor Technology bursts open leaving what appears to be a Twilight Portal from Zelda in space.

This I assume will complicate things.