Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad

DVD, Discovery S1 (Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad)

I suppose this is the first actual sci-fi story the series has attempted, and also the first relatively standalone episode, too. Like 'DS9' it connects to what is going on 'outside' of the episode, with characters or the general arc of the season there, but it's what is going on here that is of immediate consequence. In that regard it was, with the possible exception of the opening episode, the one to feel most Trekky so far, which is a point in its favour. On the downside, any time they use Harry Mudd negates the positives so it was both step forward and step backward, but I can't deny that it was much more like a familiar Trek outing than has been demonstrated so far. That's largely due to it being more than familiar: it's a story that was done way back in 'TNG,' right down to the short time loop always ending in the destruction of the ship! If you're going to steal, steal from the best, isn't that the rule? And 'Cause and Effect' is certainly one of the best time travel stories Trek has done in its many stabs at this peculiarly fascinating sub-genre in the Trek oeuvre. It doesn't pull it off as effectively, of course, but I suspect viewers new to Trek's storytelling would have been impressed with it no end, though as an inferior copy of the earlier title it's water under the bridge for veteran Trekkers. As ever with time travel there are always little nitpicks (or big nitpicks, depending on your point of view), but I came away from the episode feeling like I had actually watched a Trek episode from beginning to end, something that had resolution and completeness, which is not the experience I've had on the series to this point, and for that it was a refreshing change.

However… It had to come: my issues with it. I don't have issues with the story, but the problem is that if you don't care for the characters on a series then it doesn't matter how good a story or ingenious a plot device, you aren't going to really like it, and that's how I felt. It didn't upset me (well, not much), but I don't care if these people die in whatever manner Mudd sees fit to inflict upon them, because I haven't bonded with them as I did with the other series' crews. It's still early days and it sounds like Season 2's trying to redress the balance of Trekkiness that has been missing, but it's the people, and the age group demographic that is definitely skewed to the teens, which serves to put me off from embracing things, as much as the canon ignorance (or blatant disregard), that's been evident throughout. I don't like them using Harry, the actor doesn't have the size of both personality and girth that marked out the conman as worthy of a second visit to the Enterprise in 'TOS,' and at this stage of his life he just comes across as a cruel murderer, which I never saw in him before. Perhaps his enforced time with Stella 'cures' him of this depth of depravity so that by the time he was encountered by Kirk's crew he'd reformed into 'merely' a conniving, if charming, boor rather than a merciless killer. I'm hoping this will be the last we see of him as that would be a fine way to leave the character for 'TOS,' having achieved the return of a famous character with a 'DSC' makeover, but temperate doesn't strike me as the way of this series or its writers, so I expect any good feeling at the end to be undone by another appearance at some point.

My faith in the writers is clearly very low, but I will give them the satisfaction of admitting they did get a key part of his character right: when he was talking about his loss of Stella and how that was his motivation, I was thinking how wrong that was compared with the man we later knew whose greatest punishment was eventually to be trapped on a planet with innumerable android replicas of his fussy, scolding wife, forever to be at the mercy of her wagging finger, furrowed brow and shrieking voice! So where, I wondered, did this young 'love' come from, and the baser instincts of revenge for wrongs committed that it apparently engendered. The truth is that Harry's a sham, and what he says isn't to be trusted, and I had an inkling of that, so it was a fitting end that Stella and her heretofore unseen Father show up (eccentrically attired in a way that synchs with the manner of dress later Mudd would enjoy), at the end to reclaim the escapee, making it very much in the vein of a 'TOS' ending - all that was left was for Lorca and the others to sit around on the Bridge bursting into laughter at Saru's inability to understand a joke the Captain had made, and it would have almost fit perfectly! Not that I can imagine Lorca encouraging levity on his Bridge, nor do the crew seem the kind that would spontaneously break out in group expression of amusement (the minor characters still remain but faces with barely a name between them), but I felt the actual ending where Burnham reflects on something positive to close out the final scene, was as true of later, 24th Century Trek that had a feel-good outro of some kind to leave you optimistic and happy.

What kept the episode down was, as I said, an inability to so far really bond with the characters, in the same way that Burnham finds herself apparently accepted as part of the crew, but isn't yet comfortable with the social side of it. It could be argued, on a smaller scale, that as people complained the Maquis in 'Voyager' too quickly integrated, then her acceptance as more than just The Mutineer Michael Burnham hasn't been properly explored and she's gotten through things a little too easily thanks to Lorca's hand over things, quite differently to how her integration looked like it would proceed in the first couple of episodes aboard Discovery. That's where things become a bit sci-fi soap opera, and I half believed I was watching 'Smallville' when that pumping music signified the party she reluctantly attends. It's a statement, the kind of music and attitudes that are on display, and where we used to see an older demographic of high-minded classical music to show that the things that most likely stood the test of time down through the centuries were the purist forms of entertainment, they've specifically chosen to aim younger for their audience and make them feel at home. It's all feeling very 'Battlestar Galactica' reboot to me in both its soldierly impression and its off-duty touches. If the party was weirdly contemporary (and uncomfortably alike to a similar scene in 'Star Trek XI'), they then make the connection that the old, balding villain of the piece is the one to force classical music into the ears of the crew he's torturing, so we've gone full circle from the high-minded pursuits being considered unsuitable for our characters, to actively portraying it with negative connotations, an inverse snobbishness and inability to connect to nobler emotion!

That's an incredibly modern approach for Trek to take, and while every Trek is a product of its time, it managed to also exist outside of it and be real as a future era by the choices it made to hold onto the classier things. They do throw in a little ballroom dancing between Stamets and Burnham, but it's more of an off the wall moment than the seriously fun, letting the hair down, guzzling what we assume is alcohol, mood of the party. Burnham and Tyler's deepening friendship comes into things significantly, and while we've seen such things before, it serves ever more to remind me that Trek is aimed at the teenagers, just as most TV shows and films are, and that I'm increasingly distant from such an age group and its mores, especially in the world today. So it's another aspect that pushes me further out of the picture when Trek was more multi-generational in previous series' and I grew up with an understanding of the need for all these periods in a person's life. So it's strange to find myself in a time when I'm more interested in seeing those middle-aged characters that tended to populate Trek, than the younger ones, something that has set Trek apart in this century as opposed to the approach and style seen in 20th Century produced Trek, beginning with 'Enterprise,' moving to the younger versions of famous characters in the Kelvin Timeline films, and now to 'Discovery.' It suggests that while I may find the occasional episode or scene to my taste or requirements, I'm not going to find what used to appeal to me, even though the ages have inverted - when I was young it didn't occur to me the demographic or age of characters, only that they were older than me and were uniquely qualified to do what they did. It's certainly a strange place to be in, in life when you see what you most enjoy alter so perceptibly.

I digress from the episode, however. If I was to point out the vagaries of time travel then I might suggest that Mudd's 'time crystal' sounded more like something out of 'Dr. Who' than the serious business of Trek, but then 'magic' or a non-consistent approach to storytelling and internal logic, the desire to show off flashy effects work rather than explore ideas intellectually, a much more visceral approach which is more likely to attract the young audience for which this is primarily aimed, would encourage all manner of 'magic' solutions. It's the tone and style, and the presentation of them that decide how easy it is to suspend disbelief, which is why I could accept much of what older Trek ran with, and one reason I have a hard time buying superhero films these days, or most genre fare for that matter. It's made for the mentally lazy generation of the short attention span, and a world of options that mean even the most expensive proposition can be cast off at a moment's notice should it not be deemed a success in the marketplace, and I'm not going to go into railing on social media, mobile phones and all manner of the changes to our social structure that have been affected by instant expression, but I do wonder if Trek even has a place in today's world when there is no censorship, pretty much, and only in terms of what is against the flow and the norm do people censor each other rather than bodies making decisions of content for TV or film, or whatever, where Trek's ability was to address issues hidden within a sci-fi veneer. I can't help but go off at these tangents, such is the thoughts this series brings me to, quite apart from its own intentions, but through comparison and contrast with the giants whose shoulders it lounges atop.

I might also say that Stamets' concern over no more people dying so that he reveals the key component missing from Mudd's gambit, was missing the point of the time loop. As long as he kept Mudd on the merry-go-round no one died because everything could be reset, but if he allowed his own emotional attrition to form his judgement, as he did, that meant those people would stay dead because Mudd would get what he wanted. But Stamets was under a lot of stress and for all his callousness and lack of social grace, a directness borne out of who knows where, he was affected, just as he was already affected by the tardigrade DNA that was part of him, a good use of a piece of previous plotting, for a change, to place him outside of the time loop. I wonder if he's eventually going to become one of those giant pig amoebas, or something? While I'm hovering in the vicinity of issues with the episode I could also bring up the ridiculousness of postponing a mission in wartime to make an effort to save what was essentially a space whale. It's nice to see a space-borne creature, another element of Trek's back catalogue that you'd expect to crop up (just like time travel), for the Trek name to truly bear its fruit, although I wonder if they were throwing in as many traditional Trek elements into this one episode so they could get back to Klingon-bashing in the next. It was ludicrous that they'd have to save something like that during a war, albeit they weren't in immediate peril. At the same time, it's only ludicrous because of the statements of the series to be so much more militaristic - it would fit into 'Voyager,' for example, though there might be more thoughtful discussion of whether they really could fulfil such a directive over a current mission.

You don't get those scenes of the Captain gathering his crew together to work things through, one reason why the 23rd Century seems particularly of interest to those in charge of Trek this century - lest we forget, even Kirk used to have briefings with the command staff around a desk, so it's wrong to suggest 'TOS' was all fistfights and Phaser battles! I suppose there's a cursory nod to such input when Burnham and Tyler are repeatedly summoned to the Bridge in the loops when the Gormagander is discovered, but Lorca is a man of action, not a man of talk. I will say this for him, he didn't show fear in Mudd's offbeat, but dangerous presence, but he's a hard man. He admirably (considering his real status under the pretence he's carrying off), goes about his job of being a Starfleet Captain, even if he deals with the necessary diversion in the most offhand way, having no interest - again, that could be strange since he's amassed such a collection in his menagerie stash which we visit once again, complete with that intriguing Gorn skeleton hanging in its alcove like the Salt Vampire in Trelane's castle on Gothos. They were quite light on references this time, perhaps feeling that Harry Mudd was enough to cover that side of Trek connections they like to play. But I did wonder if the environmental suit he first uses to come aboard was of Andorian design, perhaps a visual clue that those blue skins were going to be featuring soon (I do hope so). At first I thought the helmet was horned, but then the blueness and the impression of antennae arose in my mind…

Another, less obvious influence upon the episode may have been the being known as Q on 'TNG' (and others). Mudd, on leaving Lorca on the Bridge says: "Adieu, mon Capitan!" Just the sort of thing Q used to say to Picard, and I'm sure it was intentional - they've been very careful to throw in these many references wherever possible in what I can only assume is designed to placate the older viewers like me who get it. Well I did, so thank you for that. Now can you just make things a bit more Trek-like in tone as this episode proved was possible by the working together of the crew to solve a problem? I'd still much rather it was a new character rather than Harry, perhaps an associate of Mudd's rather than the man himself, allowing plenty of mentions of the rotund con artiste, just as 'Star Trek Into Darkness' would have been easier to swallow in at least that one aspect if it was a follower of Khan rather than Khan himself. But that's the thing, now that the barriers have been broken down, and they no longer expect to keep the visual continuity clean and consistent, extending also to anyone being allowed to play a previously seen character rather than keeping to the idea that the actor was the character, they don't fail to take the opportunity to get more publicity by playing with the toys that couldn't be played with before for fear of upending the sandbox. That's something major (as seen so potently with Sarek). I don't know why they didn't do 'spinoffs' of characters, or, say, make Tyler a relation of Jose Tyler as was my first leap of logic when the character was announced. But they don't believe in subtlety, it's a different generation, as we saw with the party scene, and so many other scenes in this season.

I even found it mildly disconcerting that the episode doesn't have a teaser, but a few short scenes of recap to remind us of important details, then goes straight into the opening credits. And it remains galling when the Enterprise's fanfare is appropriated for this 'other' ship. And I still find it more than mildly disconcerting that they abandoned the conceit of always showing the episode title, and it means that having such an interesting combination as this one does, is almost a waste not to show it on screen. No doubt if you view it on a streaming service then you pick the episode from its title and thus get it that way, but they could have included it with no trouble or issue. It's tradition, and Trek has always (used to always), be very traditional, that's one of the reasons it's survived so long: by becoming a tradition and leading the pack. These days (these last ten years), it's been a follower, a trend-aper not a setter. It's really only once the dust has settled that you can judge a series objectively. I'm not going to give up, I'll keep watching. Of course I will, how else can I applaud or condemn the latest entry in my favourite franchise? Commenting on it is a way to get it out of the system. I don't see myself accepting it, or even really enjoying it this season, but like Burnham I live in hope that a few episodes and films can't fully strip. I've always said that whatever 'thing' is revived, be it film or TV, if it goes on long enough, will revert back towards it centre point and become more recognisable over time. Look at 'Enterprise' Season 4, that was well worth waiting for. By the time we get a fourth season of 'DSC' maybe I'll be on board for that, too.

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