Light and Shadows

DVD, Discovery S2 (Light and Shadows)

It's back to normality for this blighted version of Trek once again, but it's mercifully short at thirty-eight minutes. An episode in which very little of consequence occurs as if it was supposed to be enough that we see adult Spock for the first time. Back in the old Treks, the good Treks, they would have devoted an entire episode like this to that subplot of Captain Pike and Specialist Tyler off on a mission together and getting trapped, forced into finding common ground. And that probably would have been good drama. With 'Discovery,' they think good drama is flinging flashing lights and sounds at you as a substitute for character and plot, and so it feels like another largely wasted three quarters of an hour of them playing with the Trek train set. We do learn some new and important facts for the ongoing stories, but the rest of it is like they can't construct a narrative, they can't ever reach a conclusion, it's all about setting up the audience to want the next 'fix.' Because of that I'm never satisfied and on the intensely rare occasion that an episode actually has any merit, as the previous one did, it's notable as a blip, an anomalous reading in the time stream, shall we say, before tripping back into meaningless melodrama.

The best I can say about this 'story' is that they didn't break canon about Sarek and Spock not speaking to each other at this time, since the son is out of it, babbling away while the Father has trouble leashing his wife's passions. For a woman that came to love a Vulcan, this version of Amanda is incredibly emotional and rebellious to her husband, even saying she doesn't live under his authority and generally making a mockery of his position by saying that she claims diplomatic immunity for Spock. For a moment I actually appreciated Sarek and his authoritative attitudes, having faith in Starfleet that they wouldn't incarcerate Spock if he's innocent, but he doesn't look like a very impressive figure with his diminutive wife bossing him about and holding the reins, and it's not hard to forget what a mess they've made of this character who sat by, even supported, the terrible genocidal actions of laying a bomb on Qo'noS last season. It's not just James Frain's failure to understand how a Vulcan should be portrayed (he once again shows emotion quite heavily), but what the writers have done to a once proud and noble heritage that they inherited from people that actually could write intelligently. Every time I see Amanda I like her less, and Sarek is the same, which doesn't help when this season in particular is so strongly based around this family. As usual, the noodly direction and constantly dramatic music heaps portent and meaning on scenes that have very little, and it's a disappointment once again to see what has become of Trek's signature style, grace and coherence in the hands of these modern writers.

At least they didn't break the canon, as I said before, and at least Burnham asks permission of her Captain to visit Vulcan, and at least Stamets remains calm and professional next to the burbling, fluttering Silly Tilly, but these minor positives are small comfort to take from a series that lost so much of Trek in exchange for a malaise of misplaced humour and melodrama. The main interest comes from news that the Red Angel is from the 28th Century, even if the surmise is completely conjectural from Captain Pike, since he bases this on the fact that the probe they sent into the temporal rift came back modified from five hundred years in the future, and therefore the Angel must be too. I've heard whispers of the Borg having something to do with things, so the probe's modification might have something to do with that, especially as it seemed to 'assimilate' all the shuttle's data once it had smashed its way aboard. The best the writers could come up with in the way of character development was that Pike and Tyler don't see eye to eye, Pike sees a ripple of the future where he's at the back of the shuttle and shoots Tyler, and you're supposed to wonder when this will happen and what brings them to that point, only it turns out that he was actually shooting the probe's Doctor Octopus arm to save Tyler. They like their twists, but that's all there is. Message to the writers: can you please watch some real Trek and find out how it's done, because even 'Enterprise' was more sophisticated than the superficial action-based 'storytelling' you keep giving us. Thanks.

When Tyler said at the end that they were in the middle of a fight for the future, it once again brought to mind the Temporal Cold War, and it's also in keeping that five hundred years in the future we know that Starfleet has time ships - at least in the 29th Century they do, and I believe it was in the 26th Century time travel began to be used as a method of exploration. What I didn't get was Pike's comment about Tyler being right about his reasons for wanting to go on the mission: Saru suggests he shouldn't go because he's too important and he goes anyway (surely at this period of history captains were allowed much more leeway, it's in the 24th Century that things became so rigid - another example of failing to adhere to the era they're supposed to be representing), and Tyler accuses him of wanting adventure or, I don't know, I can't even remember or be bothered to go back and check, I just didn't see Pike's agreeing with him on his motives for leading the mission. The shuttlecraft they travel on doesn't even appear to have a name, which is another break from tradition and shows how throwaway their view of the ships are in this Trek - it didn't even matter about forming a bond with the shuttle anyway because it's blown up by the end. They don't seem to care about the fidelity of this world, about building bonds between the audience and the technology or ships, something else that alienates me from it. While we're on ships, it seems that Section 31, far from just having this one 'special' vessel, has a whole fleet of them - we see three of the same kind searching for Burnham when she escapes with Spock!

That was another ridiculous part of the story - for one thing, why would Georgiou care to help her, she's an evil self-serving horror that has no right to exist in our universe, let alone serve in a branch of Starfleet (let alone even more to have her own series - oh, calamitous days!), and how does her blackmailing of Leland work? She claims she knows the truth about him being responsible for the death of Burnham's parents, but so what? What difference would it make to anyone except Burnham? I didn't believe in Burnham being able to take out Georgiou in a physical confrontation, so why would they even bother to pretend that's how she escaped? Oh, right, it was so they could shoehorn in some martial arts since that's all Michelle Yeoh is good for - she certainly isn't good at creating a real, breathing character! Anyway, I thought it was the Vulcans who killed her parents. Or was it the Klingons? Everything's so vague and poorly defined, in complete opposition to how Trek used to be and had as its strength. Murky, messy and muddled is how contemporary 'storytelling' is supposed to be, it seems, and Trek is just a follower of the crowd these days, and for the last decade with the films, so no wonder none of this works for the Trek faithful like me! And how did this super-duper Section 31 ship fail to stop a single shuttle from escaping? It's so silly!

I was at least slightly more interested in Leland as a character when he shows concern and seems to be not so bad when assuaging Burnham's fears about Spock, but we learn that was all an act and he just wanted her off the ship so they could use some mind-emptying device on Spock, so there goes the nuance once again. I did wonder how it would seem to have Spock with a beard. This might sound like a small thing to those unfamiliar with Trek, but the Spock beard is a whole concept in itself since it came to represent an evil version of someone, as his Mirror Universe counterpart had a little goatee. I suppose I should be grateful they gave him a full beard (I'm 'sure' it has nothing to do with beards being fashionable these days or an attempt to make Spock seem more contemporary and 'cool'), and I can see that it is all part of the straggly look of a man living on the run with mental problems. It'll be interesting to see how Ethan Peck holds up as a normal, rational, clean-shaven Spock, because although he doesn't look like the character (which hasn't bothered the makers in the slightest with Sarek, Amanda, Mudd and Stella, so why should it now?), his voice does have the same deep timbre of Leonard Nimoy, so that's one promising sign to hang onto, and closer than Zachary Quinto's high-pitched squealing.

I also liked Pike's brainy way of alerting Discovery to his whereabouts by ejecting some of the fuel to burn, the same technique used by Spock in 'The Galileo Seven,' an episode made over fifty years ago that has far more drama and tenseness than anything this series can come close to. It's also of interest that Burnham is off to Talos IV at the end of the episode, Spock's babbled numbers turning out to be coordinates for a planet. Now I knew Talos IV and the Talosians would be coming into the story at some point (I've managed not to see any image of them so I hope they live up to the superb design of 'TOS' and don't change a thing), and it is a little hard to see how this is going to fit in since we know that there were two encounters with the Talosians in 'TOS': 'The Cage' in which we saw Pike's mission there, and 'The Menagerie' where we saw Pike's mission there again, and it ended with the Enterprise returning to leave Pike to give him a new lease of life after his paralysing accident, so it's tricky to see how another interaction with them would work. At least Pike isn't on the shuttle ride so that's something, but the only death penalty in the Federation is for going to this planet and they haven't even mentioned this. You'd think the computer would have flagged it as soon as the coordinates came up, so I hope they're not going to ignore this integral piece of canon (I think there was a mention by Cornwell last season that there is no death penalty in the Federation and it bothered me then).

I was hoping the 'Tokma,' this intense meditation thing that's supposed to telepathically connect with lost souls and guide them home, which Sarek performs in his home, was something already established, but they have to have some latitude to create new things. I wasn't happy with what they created for the shuttlecraft - I admire the fact that it has the little red bussard collectors at the front of the nacelles, and I quite like the external design for seeming quite close to the film-era versions (even though it should look more like the Galileo, and is sad that it doesn't), but the insides look the same as ones from 'Voyager' - indeed, I almost felt at home imagining Seven of Nine or Tom Paris being in there, which is not what you want from a period specific ship, and another sign they don't give a monkey's about the integrity of Starfleet design and development over the decades. But what really annoyed were the metallic shutters that come down over the front window - what happened to shields? And what good would a metal shutter do that this futuristic transparent material in the windows wouldn't already? And don't even get me started on the shot of Discovery's internal Turbolift structure which is some vast empty space where they run on rails! What's the point of bottomless shafts and all that wasted space? Due to the many irritants of the episode I couldn't even enjoy things like Sarek's house and views of Vulcan which otherwise would have stood out as being meritorious, despite all the rain on that desert planet… Bad design, bad Trek, bad mood for me.

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