Into The Forest I Go

DVD, Star Trek: Discovery S1 (Into The Forest I Go)

It's so difficult to know what to make of this series. Now would seem to be a good time to reflect, perhaps judge, because the end of this ninth episode was the 'halfway' point of the season, the place where they took a break before the final six episodes were released a few short months later. I will say again that I want to like it, that it's part of the greater Trek whole, which means I'm obligated to care because I care about what came before. But it's so tough to care about something that turns what came before on its head and struggles with my ability to make it make sense. A lot of questions or problems can be dismissed by the fact they're nitpicking details that should be of far less import than the main thrust of the episodes, or the characters, or the stories. But again, the series' style is also so at odds with how Trek works that it alienates me and makes me uncomfortable. It's like sitting on a prickly seat, I just can't get comfortable with it. This episode is a case in point. No matter how Trekky an episode can get, and the previous one was certainly along those lines, so much is un-Trek-like it takes me out of the reality. What it comes down to is that they've chosen to go a much more fantastical route, a much harder to believe style, and a much more action-oriented method of telling a story. It's not as bad as the Kelvin Timeline films in that they're not especially setting the narrative up to reach set-piece action beats, but then they don't have the blockbuster mega-budget given over to such films, as expensive as the series is.

Kelvin is still very much an inspiration, however, and as I consider the series, having given it a good, long period to bed in and see how it fits, I can tell that's its favourite inspiration (admittedly mixed in with other Trek eras to provide a hotchpotch that is almost as frustrating), that of show and effect, which is what the Kelvin films got from the earlier films themselves. The original film series went towards stereotypes and almost parody of the cast, characters and situations of 'TOS,' so much that we think of those versions as the traits each character embodies. It should be a relief that they didn't do a straight-up 'TOS' remake for this series because I can imagine it even more pronounced. The Kelvin films took what the 'TOS' films did and added a huge budget and CGI effects spectacle that failed to satisfy on many levels, and 'DSC' has done much the same. It's not entirely their fault, they're following on from 'Enterprise,' which tried to bring viewers back to the fold by making it more acceptable to the masses by focusing on more basic action at the expense of exploring ideas and fleshing out the crew. Few can argue that characters such as Hoshi and Mayweather deserved so much more than they got and were largely sidelined in favour of the trio of Captain, Engineer and Vulcan First Officer. You can even point to the end of 'Voyager' where they introduced physical shields that clunked over the ship's hull, as something that was going into the realms of fantasy, albeit rationalised by it being tech from the future.

All of which brings me to the approach of 'DSC,' in keeping with today's audience of attention-deficit viewers that don't have patience and require constant prods of excitement to get them through. I'm talking generally, of course, and this episode certainly made time for the occasional scene of two people talking in a room, which is a staple of Trek, to build the characters and create bonds. Gene Roddenberry's original idea was for a battleship of the seas crossed with a wagon train to the stars. On the one hand the Enterprise was designed to be a ship with history, the crew part of a line of crew that had served aboard her. Ever since then it seems like it's always about the latest new ship, shiny and untapped. There's something to be said for both approaches, but 'DSC' follows the latter, which means it's like the latest Apple product that the kids all want for its shiny newness. I would much rather see a ship with history, but history isn't too popular these days, unless it be the revisionist kind, it's all about the now and looking forward to the next, which we really want now. The USS Discovery had to have some unique selling point, so they came up with the ability to jump anywhere. You'd think this would have unfurled limitless story possibilities, but instead it became about using it as a weapon of war. There are hints in this episode that they're looking forward to putting this technology into practice to fulfil Starfleet's mandate of exploration 'once the war is won,' which brings in some kind of optimism, but it remains that first they have to trudge through the current problem before they can have fun.

Do your homework before you can go out and play. I don't see why they couldn't have included stories about using this tech as a means to explore ideas, planets, races, as well as contribute to the war effort. Oh, hang on, yes I do: they only had fifteen episodes to tell their story. This abbreviated season in favour of spending more money on individual episodes is necessary to bring in the audience (because no one watches twenty-plus episode seasons like 'Agents of SHIELD' or 'Arrow,' do they?), to wow them with effects and spectacle (there we go again), rather than to engage brains and imaginations. It was business decisions at the expense of creative. With long seasons you have the time to explore not just space, but the more important notion of exploring individual journeys, individual cultures, which in Trek's style has been to make each major race a facet of humanity's emotions or thoughts. In the film series' we often saw outlandish-looking aliens, more in the vein of 'Star Wars' than the relatively low-budgeted TV show, and they were there purely for the spectacle, like 'Star Wars,' to make you wonder at their weirdness and then move on to the next visual treat. They weren't there even to represent an aspect of humanity, useful as a lens to tell stories about us, just eye candy. And so it is with the increase in aliens aboard Discovery: we often see odd-looking crewmembers that we either never see again or are certainly only there as background. You can argue that even the great 'DS9' did this, with its stream of visitors along the Promenade, but it also thoroughly explored the culture and mores of the main races.

It had time to do this, and now it seems we aren't afforded that time because we need to impress the unfaithful, the ones that have grown up with spectacle in place of stage plays. And so, at this juncture in the first season I still don't feel I know any of the characters very well. It's nice to see a slow (treacle slow), raising of the visibility of the Bridge crew, with the African lady, the Asian guy, Detmer and Airiam, but we don't know them as people any more than when we first saw them. In many ways the same could be said for the main crew, to a much lesser extent, which is more worrying, in the same way that 'Enterprise' failed to really get into their cast of characters and it went down as the worst Trek series. It may have found a new audience in recent years, and I always liked it, right from the start, but I would still class it as the weakest series. That is until 'DSC.' Although I feel qualified now to discuss 'DSC' and its place compared to the others, it will still be impossible to judge it as a whole until the whole is complete: in other words, if it goes for three seasons (guaranteed now), or ten (unlikely in modern TV), there will be times it improves, just as 'Enterprise' did, peaking in its final season (though I really like Season 1 also). So I can only judge it upon what I've seen so far, and what I've seen so far has largely been a thumbs down from me. It is certainly the weakest first season, and I doubt the final six episodes can pull it back from that, with only the first episode giving me cause to appreciate what they were doing.

That hasn't changed and is worrying when you consider how far along I am now thanks to a short season. I can't say it's worse than I thought it would be, but it certainly has in no way exceeded any kind of expectation. It was a troubled season behind the scenes, with the co-creator and main creative behind the setup, being kicked out. Would Fuller's inclusion have made it more objectionable or would it have felt more Trek-like? And what of Nicholas Meyer, whose name appears to have been merely attached, with little actual contribution asked of him, sadly. Then the removal of two more of the show-runners in a troubled writers' room and it should be no surprise that the shuffle meant the series was never likely to be firing on all thrusters. The needs of a modern series competing with the set in stone requirements for good Trek have also conspired against it, and it may be that creating Trek in our current time is impossible. The time period seems to have been chosen as a cash-in rather than a good place to set a series, given the changes in technology of our time and the solid history of Trek that we know so well. It's like everything was against the likelihood of the series succeeding, at least in terms of Trekness, and with people like me, who adore Trek.

In consolidation of my thoughts halfway through the season I have drawn up a list of the positives and negatives I found so far, some are nitpicking, some are style concerns and others are just plain canon upsets. Having a Holodeck in this time period when we know 23rd Century ships did not have them would come in the latter, while not showing the episode title onscreen is a concern of style that still irks me. It also saddens me that we don't get time for much in the way of beauty shots - even 'Enterprise' took time out to present the ship gliding through space, but then there's no time for this, nor ship's logs, none of those reassuring, comfortable staples that we want. The incorrect uniforms for the period; the incorrect technology; the mechanics of plot over story; the casual way they speak; redoing old characters; elevating things like our time's pop music rather than higher forms of entertainment; no rationale for the Klingon look; lack of character focus and undefined recurring cast. That rounds up a pretty long list of discontent, but the things I like still remain the same: the Klingon language is brilliant; there is an actual title sequence and theme music; Saru; Burnham when she acts Vulcan; some of the references; the Shenzhou (though horribly disappointing we had so few flashbacks); content not being as explicit as was expected.

That last one is pertinent for this episode as we do see Klingon nakedness, though in a choppy nightmare flashback sequence. I was too busy finding interest in the exoskeleton to be too concerned about what they were showing, but we have been short on the 'mature' content talked up before the series came out. I was also interested that L'Rell does the Dr. Gillian Taylor thing from 'Star Trek IV' and leaps on Tyler's back as he's beamed away, so she can come too and escape the Sarcophagus ship's demise. The developments in the plot are certainly myriad as we see Kol blown up (which surprised me as I thought he'd be around much longer), L'Rell becoming a Starfleet prisoner, Admiral Cornwell being rescued, and Stamets bringing the ship into the Mirror Universe. At least that's what I'm expecting since it's been hinted at occasionally (Stamets' double in the mirror; he and Lorca discussing parallel universes in this very episode), even if I didn't know it as a fact from spoilers. It's not a bad way to take the entire ship there and makes sense within the internal logic of the spore drive that they've built up, though I don't really see the point of doing the MU except as more spectacle for the uninitiated to be drawn to - it's well known as a place for which streaming service content would be well suited in a negative way and maybe the talk of mature content stems from the MU stuff to come.

However they use it and whatever reason they had for doing it so early in the series, I can imagine the majority of characters we've seen coming back as twisted versions. I am interested in the politics of the MU as a whole, something that 'DS9' added to the table, but this is before all that, a point before 'TOS' but after the 'Enterprise' details… If we're talking details though, there are some that need mentioning: I'm not sure we've ever seen the Communicator specifically decreed as how the Universal Translator works. That sequence with Burnham on the Sarcophagus ship was interesting, but problematic. It shows the Klingons really did learn English (which seems bizarre, especially when you consider their attitude to outsiders), and it shows that aliens hear what comes out of the Communicator which adds clunkiness to the Trek trope that aliens understand each other. And although it made sense that Kol would accept a challenge, there was no way a diminutive human woman would have the physical strength to parry the blows of a full-sized Klingon warrior, no matter what Vulcan training she'd received! So fighting with those little daggers that could have been stunted mek'leths, was too ridiculous for me to enjoy it (I'd have loved to see bat'leth duelling, however!). The same with the central idea of the episode: that they would defeat the cloak (and they do call it a cloak this time), by finding the imperfections in it. For one thing, does this ship not have shields? Or do they have to be deactivated whenever it cloaks? And for another, if the sensors could tell them that it had come into the system then they could detect the ship, right? The logic didn't seem to make sense.

So they have to plant a couple of beacons to amplify a signal that will allow them to detect the imperfections in the cloak. The idea of having to sneak onto a Klingon Bridge in the middle of battle to plant a beacon should have been terrifically dramatic, but instead they focus on Tyler losing it to his post traumatic stress when confronted with L'Rell whom he clearly doesn't know except as his torturer. All the while the Discovery is causing a diversion by going into battle with it to draw attention from the intruders. Klingons can't detect when someone's beamed aboard? There's never any shaking so the Discovery is doing nothing to it, but somehow isn't being destroyed and they have time for Burnham and Tyler to creep around and even explain what's going on to Cornwell… I didn't get a sense of urgency about anything. Even when Burnham shows herself it seems like it's to play for time. I can get onboard if both the ship and she were playing to a 'draw' in the sense that she wasn't trying to defeat Kol, just defend herself long enough to get beamed out, and the ship was doing enough to stay clear from too much damage. But it's still hard to accept the plan. Doing all those micro jumps and almost doing in Stamets seemed like a clever idea, but in reality it makes the ship look more fantasy than ever, and it already looked pretty dodgy from the way it has to twist around at super speed (and I still can't stand the fact that stars don't go in a straight line when they're at warp - there's no reason for such stupidity!).

Lorca comes off looking like a better Captain, not wanting to leave the Pahvans at risk from the Klingons (but even though they've defeated the main ship, surely others could still come?), and refusing to leave Burnham and Tyler behind, as well as showing appreciation of Stamets' sterling efforts in the many micro jumps he had to endure. But he still goes against a direct order (just as Burnham almost returns to her mutinous past when she doesn't take no for an answer about going with Tyler - the fact they're so close would seem to be unprofessional for them to demand they do the mission together, but she convinces Lorca to let her), and if he hadn't succeeded in getting Cornwell back and destroying Kol and his ship, thus striking a grand blow for the Federation in the war, you can bet he'd have been busted. I sensed Vulcan Admiral Turrel being potentially duplicitous in his order to return to Starbase 46 (not 47, was that an in-joke by absence?), in a way that he was coaxing Lorca to return with the promise of being awarded a medal, but could possibly lock him up for his disobedience as soon as he arrives. Maybe I was reading too much into that? It doesn't matter what the intentions were anyway as they're stuck in a parallel universe from what it seems, something much worse than a cunning Vulcan superior to worry about.

The brief flashes of Trekkiness haven't managed to shine through so much that is out of place and time, and one reason it takes me so long to get around to viewing each episode is because I'm not enthused to do so. It's so strange that I have all these new Trek episodes to watch and the will to see them has been sapped. I do want to see what happens next, but I also know that each new episode doesn't have the satisfaction of past Treks. It is very much like the Kelvin films that don't give me that satisfaction so many of the older films did, and still do, and I struggle to accept any of these characters as people I want to spend time with, so different from the other Trek series' (and other TV shows as well). The truth is I don't find it to be very well written, I don't find it to be fulfilling the reasons I watch Trek in the first place, and I don't find it to be something that impresses. It's no longer a case of waiting and seeing, giving it a chance to find its voice and rhythm. It's had that chance and it did not manage to make this time period work. It was a tough assignment in the first place, so for them to now go off into a parallel universe as an avoidance of the real universe, seeking story potential in something that's tricky to pull off by its place in that era, is yet another aspect of the series that doesn't bode particularly well. I don't sense a direction that they were heading in and I'm fascinated to see how this starship wreck will play out and whether they can recover any small amount of goodwill they achieved in the first episode.

**