Despite Yourself

DVD, Star Trek: Discovery S1 (Despite Yourself)

It's not because Jonathan Frakes, Commander Riker of 'TNG' fame, directed this episode, but it may be that having an old Trek face behind the camera helped, as I definitely enjoyed this one more than any since the pilot. What makes it easier to relax into is the fact that they're in the Mirror Universe, a place we know very little about. Sure, it has its own canon and continuity, but aside from a different logo (and I don't know why they didn't just reuse the exact same one which was seen from 'Enterprise' across all the MU episodes of 'TOS' and 'DS9,' but at least it was pretty close), they respected the history of this aberrant and topsy-turvy land. The best thing was that the USS Defiant from the 'TOS' episode 'The Tholian Web' (how I'd love to see them do Tholians!), that we discovered from the 'Enterprise' two-parter was pulled into the MU, is still part of the plot a century later! Leaving aside the unlikeliness of a powerful Constitution-class vessel not having been either blown up or run into the ground from over-use by the powers of this Terran Empire, or become a target for the Rebellion to destroy, it's terrific that it's still a key component of this universe and a wonderful and direct connection to 'Enterprise' and 'TOS' - even the onscreen graphic they showed looked very true to the design, although I know we'll probably not see it in the flesh, as I know what's coming at the end of the season, and that we wouldn't see the inside of the USS Enterprise until Season 2. But just the fact that it's being talked about and is the motivation for the story, excites.

A lot is packed into this forty-six minute episode, and it's good that for once they're actually making a proper-length go of it, as the older series' used to do. We still have yet to witness the full potential of streaming allowing longer episodes, that they talked about early on - so far it's tended towards the potential for ad revenue being just as common as on broadcast TV, with shorter episodes so they can squeeze in more advertising. But it was long enough that I kept thinking it was going to end: when they beam over to the Shenzhou; when Tyler pulls a Worf and snaps li'l Culber's neck in a pique of Klingon reaction; and one or two other points along the way that could have served as ideal jumping off points to leave you hanging. The actual final moments weren't quite as strong and made me wonder if (after all that!), it wouldn't have been better to be a touch shorter rather than show Burnham and Tyler having a smoochy moment, or Captain Lorca a painful one in the agony booth. Burnham is the one I have to discuss: I was so close to rating this episode three stars and then she goes and stabs 'Captain' Danby Connor! Okay, so it wasn't in cold blood, and they're setting us up to expect our good guys to be doing dirty stuff in order to survive, but this may be the single most controversial thing in the whole controversial season: our main character, a Starfleet officer of good morals, brought up in Vulcan training and the importance of life, stabs a man to death when she didn't need to. It's not like she breaks down afterwards in her quarters, either!

It looked for a moment as if she was going to lose it, in shock at having killed a double of someone she respected (we assume, we never got to see the USS Shenzhou crew long enough to understand their interpersonal makeup), but she just looks tired, and it's because she's been hoping to get the data on the Defiant's whereabouts and the crew have all been so obsequious to whom they believe is their former Captain, returned from the dead. I don't deny that letting the dead body of Connor fall out of the Turbolift onto the Bridge was about the best introduction she could have made to this Mirror crew, but was it in her character? Could they not have preserved her purity by having Connor fall on the knife when she cunningly paused the Turbolift and they float up in the lack of gravity, before slamming to the floor? No, they deliberately have her given a split second choice, and she plunges the knife in! Is that the world we live in now, that Starfleet officers can do this? Again, it's much more like a 'Battlestar Galactica' approach, where they want to muddy the waters so much that you sometimes wonder if the good guys are good at all. Maybe that's more realistic. For other franchises, yes. But not for Trek, that was going too far. Are we going to see her degenerate from this act, and have it on her conscience? That's not why we (well, I know it's not why I do!), watch Trek. Trek was always different, the people are better than we are today. They find ways around problems, but she didn't. It's not like she was helpless and defenceless, she was already using Vulcan martial arts, and even if she can't do a proper nerve pinch, she can still incapacitate for a short while, long enough to get to the Bridge and order him put in the Brig.

Needless to say I was uncomfortable with how this played out, and even if there'd been signs of deep remorse in her quarters, it would still have been unpalatable. No doubt people will dredge up precedents (like Worf snapping Weyoun's neck, or Worf killing Duras, or Worf… Hmmm, sensing a pattern here, and it's all Klingon related!), but with seven hundred episodes plus, and fifty years plus, there's always a precedent somewhere, and that's no argument. At least remorse would have shown how deeply it had affected her instead of giving the impression that, well, it's an alternate universe so these people's lives don't matter - it's not like she killed a 'real' person, after all… For one thing I was quite interested in seeing Connor a bit more, since the original was so quickly taken out - wouldn't it have been just as good to know he harboured ill feelings and was ready to strike Burnham at any moment, than removing this threat? Knowing at the start of the season that the MU was coming, I'd always imagined we'd be seeing Connor again, only left to wonder how many of the crew would return (T'Kuvma? This universe's Voq?), so I was somewhat disappointed to learn that ISS Discovery switched places with the USS and went into our universe. Will we get to see what happens in the Prime Timeline and all the damage it's sure to do? I can't imagine they'd be able to do much since the MU was 'unknown' before Kirk and crew discovered it, so I don't know how they're going to cover all this up. I don't think it was mentioned in 'Mirror, Mirror,' the first ever MU episode, as seen in 'TOS' (now the third series chronologically to have dealings with it, keep up!), that they had any knowledge of our universe, either, though that was shown to be incorrect by 'In A Mirror, Darkly' on 'Enterprise,' since our Defiant had gone over there.

If we're talking coverups, then I have a couple of points to make on that: did Tyler leave the dead body of Culber lying in Sickbay, or did he find somewhere to stash or dispose of him? It seems like half the crew were covering for each other: we see Burnham covering for Tyler when he has a few trembles from shell shock as he pilots a worker bee to pull out a Klingon data core from amid the floating debris (where we also see our first Andorian, though you can't actually see anything - I was really hoping the Andorians were going to play a part in our universe, since I knew they'd be showing up, so again, it's somewhat disappointing to see that they'll most likely be Mirror Andorians and we won't be able to add to their culture or history in meaningful ways, not that 'DSC' tends toward culture or history, or even meaningful…). Culber was covering for Lorca when he hid Stamets' true medical status, and Tyler's covering for, well, the Klingons, you could say, or L'Rell in particular - hey, there's an idea: maybe he made it look like she murdered Culber? For we get the most unequi-voq-al reveal of what everyone had been guessing since Tyler first appeared: that he is indeed a deep cover Klingon agent, and having been sent to the Matrons of Marzipan, or whatever they were called (Matriarchs of Mo'kai?), he was surgically and psychologically altered to be human. But did they rip out Voq's mind and put it in a real human, because that seems as likely as just making him look like one of us? The exchange where she tries to activate him by talking of Kahless was good, and then it fails to work, so he's really messed up now.

I'm glad they brought L'Rell along, and I hope she gets out and doesn't waste another episode locked away, as that would be to waste one of their best characters. Speaking of which, Saru has been underused from being one of the top two or three in early episodes to barely featuring (except for Kirsten Beyer's starring role for him). I get that since Tyler joined he needed to not be around too much or his threat ganglia might have spoiled Tyler's secret identity somehow, but that wasn't actually necessary since, as we see here, they only activate now that Tyler knows who he is. I felt there was a note to play with Saru specific to this episode: when Burnham presents the research she's done into this universe from reading what was in the data core, she says they all live in constant fear, everything so unstable and threats round every corner, and it immediately brings Saru to mind. You'd think he'd at least have something to say on the matter, because this is right up his street, an entire universe that is like the way he's always lived, so maybe he'd be in the best position to deal with anything, like surprise attacks from underlings as Burnham fought with. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope his uniqueness pays off in some way over the course of the coming episodes set in this universe, rather than just being on the Bridge to say a line here or there.

For some reason I noticed a few things this time that have been apparent before, but something pointed them out: pointed is the operative word, as I realised that Lorca has the traditional pointed sideburns we expect of Starfleet humans - I must have not noticed amid all the other varied hairstyles. To think that the least Starfleet of them has the most Starfleet! And L'Rell's pointed head also stood out so much more now that she's forced to wear the prison uniform. It's old, old news, and why do I need to keep repeating it, but if they had only made their heads normal shaped then half the issue with the Klingons wouldn't be a problem, as the front looks like 'Star Trek III' onward. In some ways the silly claws were the worst change because you question how can they have done all these delicate operations on Voq/Tyler, or even built warp ships, or really, done much of anything, with hands like that! All the better for making them seem monstrous creatures, I see that, but they haven't developed the Klingon culture as they first seemed to be promising, but maybe that was in Bryan Fuller's direction and they chose to go a different way once the boss was kicked out? I wonder if it was in his original plan to go to the MU? I suspect it was because he set up the mycelial network and spore drive, and what was the point of it unless it was to get them there? I'm still not sure what the point of jumping into the MU is in terms of the story, because the season was supposed to be about the Klingons, and war against them, and that hasn't been particularly well handled with little sense of a scope, scale, or narrative to the conflict.

You don't hear about this famous world falling (like Betazed in 'DS9'), or the tactics, it's just 'Star Wars' style dogfights and little else, which is one reason I've been very underwhelmed by the first half of the season. At least with the MU I feel more comfortable for them to do radical or weird things that are off-kilter and out of canon's grasp because the MU is, ultimately, meaningless, and only good for a bit of silly fun. Which still makes me wonder why they wanted to go here, and obviously spend some time since I suspect they're going to be here for a few episodes at least. Or maybe not? Maybe it's just another two-parter like in 'Enterprise,' which I'd be okay with, but I had the impression they were doing multiple MU stories for the first time ever. My fear is that this was their first port of call when they knew they were unregulated by the censors by being on streaming, because the MU has always been the most indulgently violent and inappropriate in all ways. In old Trek this stood out because they were generally so straight arrow and grounded, but this series is so fantastical and not reining in its lust for going where no Trek's gone before, that the MU wouldn't be such a big deal, unless it's far more disturbing. All of which makes me hope it isn't set to be a showcase of all the baseness the series can squeeze in on the grounds that 'it's the MU so anything goes.'

So far, with this episode, anyway, only Burnham's failure to save herself without killing another, stood out as wrong, and the rest of the story was not a bad jaunt. From the start, when they get fired on by a Vulcan ship, it has you wondering what could happen, because although we've had characters pop into the MU, we've never had the trouble of a whole ship that needs to be returned, as well as its crew. There were little things that were a little silly, such as painting out the 'U' in 'USS Discovery' into an 'I' for 'ISS,' but then they needed to do that or it would stick out like a sore thumb. That's the price you have to pay for doing something so blatant and unwieldy as taking a whole ship in rather than just the odd character here and there. I'm not convinced the Mirror crews of the Terran Empire would have noticed, but if they had, and the Defiant was known about (which I'm not sure it was - they say it's classified, which is why they had to go to the Shenzhou to find out more), then they'd instantly know something was amiss, though I'd have thought it'd be just as easy to bluff and say they fancied changing it to 'U' for some reason. Usually I want explanatory details, so I suppose I am being churlish to complain when I'm shown them, it's just that it did look a bit ridiculous, especially when you consider that it's just as likely there are other details about the ship that would make it look different, but it's one of those things you just have to go with in MU stories.

The other thing was the uniforms. Now I like that they have the accent of the gold sashes we'd 'later' see in 'TOS,' and it makes sense that they would have to change into these things so as to fit in, and it's not like they can avoid coming into contact with Terran vessels when they've got the huge Discovery flying around, so they had to do something, but it's hard to believe that they have any chance of not being found out, since they're completely different people, with different experiences and knowledge. It should be a near impossibility for them to pass muster in the eyes of the MU inhabitants! Before I saw the series I was slightly concerned that having MU versions of characters was far too early in the series, before we really knew them, and in a way I was right, but the characters haven't grown on me, and if anything I like them less than when I first met them. Everything now happens so much faster: shorter seasons, fewer seasons (I expect), so whatever getting to know them business we'd have had in old Trek has had to be condensed so much that there isn't even the same feel of learning about this ship and crew as there was before when you can now see it as a great luxury we got to spend so much time with crews and characters. Now it's all much more about the action-driven spectacle and generating viewership based on effects and wacky fantasy ideas, so character has definitely become a lesser concern. All this means that seeing MU versions doesn't faze me in the slightest, and in actual fact we're unlikely to see many anyway since Mirror Burnham is supposedly dead, and the rest of the crew are away in our universe, supposedly.

We do get an approximation of one MU character, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention Captain Tilly. We already knew she was going to be the Captain from Stamets' mutterings when he came back from his spore jumps, so it wasn't a shock (and might have been better as one, though I'm glad it had time to sink in previously or I'd be railing at how ridiculous it is, just as Captain Lorca does for us), and it was the most fun part of the episode when she has to curb all her instincts to chatter and be the usual annoying personality that she is, in order to sit in the Captain's Chair and bluff their first contact with allies. I wish she wasn't so irritating all the time, but she did well in this position, though how she'd be able to keep it up under scrutiny, I don't know. The Mirror uniform actually benefited her and she looked and sounded much better than in any other appearance of the character. It was also great fun seeing Lorca in the Captain Sisko role as a wanted renegade, though no one was going to out-act Avery Brooks in such things, even if Jason Isaacs has a good go, screaming in the agony booth (created by Dr. Phlox for those that remember), to herald the end of the episode. I suspect foreshadowing in the same way as we heard of Captain Tilly previously, when Burnham says something about removing his head, as there was news of Isaacs having a head cast made during production so it's obvious that's how he's going to go, and when you vaguely know these things you can spot them setting it up.

Something else I enjoyed was when he affected a Scottish accent as the 'Chief Engineer' just in case someone on the other end of the comm channel recognised his voice (yeeeeeees…). It's a nod to Scotty, obviously, but I would have liked him to do his normal English accent, and that's what I was expecting when he mentioned he'd have to speak differently. It brought to my attention something: where is the actual Chief Engineer? Stamets isn't it, he's an astromycologist, so why was a Cadet (Tilly), left to sort out this vital component of the data core? Also, where is the Chief Medical Officer, because it isn't Dr. Culber. Lorca says he wants Stamets under a different doctor's care, so how many docs do they have, and are there even more Sickbays because we never even see the others, at least not to make it obvious? I know the series was originally planned to be taking a more skewed approach to the characters so that we'd be seeing lower ranked people in the main cast slots, but I'm not sure that's had any real bearing because if you do that then it's difficult to be on the Bridge, yet they want to show all the main stuff that's going on, so they haven't actually fulfilled that approach very effectively - you just get the sense of the absence of certain authority figures. Maybe there aren't any, and Lorca had them hidden away somewhere - in his menagerie that has been all but forgotten?

There weren't many references apart from the obvious ones to the Mirror Universe and Defiant, etc, but I did catch Organia, which Saru mentions, and he also says about their position relative to the Galactic centre, which of course is where Kirk and crew went in 'Star Trek V.' The biggest deal for me was when Tyler uses a laser cannon to slice out the Klingon data core - at this time lasers were the weapon, not Phasers, as we saw in 'The Cage,' and in that episode they even used a laser cannon to try and break through the rock on Talos IV, so this must have been a reference to that. I only wish that rather than throwing in references, they were more true to the bedrock of Trek, so that they were using lasers and calling them that, and adhering to the visual canon, and all the other things they've played fast and loose with, much to the detriment of a Trek feeling being allowed to permeate. At least, as I said, that doesn't matter so much when they're in the MU, and I hope they talk about the history of the Terran Empire and what happened in 'Enterprise' - with all these holograms flitting around, it would be wonderful if they could at least use it to show some historical record of MU personnel. As great as it was to see a list of the names of great Captains, it would be the perfect way to bring in someone from 'Enterprise' for a cameo. But I never heard about it, so I don't think that's happening, sadly. All I can say in conclusion is, that although I didn't notice Frakes' directing style, and he filmed it well (such things as the fight in the Turbolift stand out), whether it was his influence or no, this was the only one I found myself truly enjoying since the first, the only caveat being Burnham's murder, and I hope the following episodes of Season 1, Part 2, don't disappoint.

**