The Sound of Thunder

DVD, Discovery S2 (The Sound of Thunder)

There are a couple of minor additions that detract from its goodness, namely Tilly's usual 'humorous' bluster and the slight subplot of Culber being uncomfortable in his new body (and I could also say Burnham deciding she needs to pop back to Vulcan on a whim at the end, as if one crewman can make choices like that so easily), neither of which added anything, but this is one episode that is otherwise pretty good, the music was beautiful, and though the roving camerawork is tiresome at first, I soon forgot about minor aesthetic annoyances as the story took hold. Surprisingly it came from Lippoldt and Kim, two of my least favourite (to put it diplomatically), writers on the series! After their ludicrous plotting seen in 'Short Treks' episode 'The Brightest Star,' they effectively undo all (well, most - we still see a shot of Georgiou in current uniform that doesn't make sense, especially as we get confirmation it was eighteen years previous!), of the logic flaws and errors of judgement I levelled at our first visit to Kaminar and provide a stimulating, thoughtful, and heroic episode that rings true of Trek through the ages, and gave me some small hope again that this modern era could yet turn into something that more than merely resembled Trek, but wasn't true to it at the core. It helped that Section 31's influence was minimal, reduced down to Tyler's cynical reaction to the new information they learn of the Red Angel - he's certainly swallowed wholeheartedly Leland's paranoiac rhetoric and it shows just the kind of damaged souls that 31 uses for its own ends.

Apart from this note of caution, this episode is very satisfying in its depiction of Kelpien culture, answering most of the many questions raised by 'The Brightest Star' and providing Saru the chance to reveal the truth to his people without violating the rules as blatantly as blurting out that Vahar'ai, the natural Kelpien development, is okay, a kind of puberty that turns them from prey to predator, childlike race to adult. He so wanted to express this truth, but the saying 'the truth will out,' was never truer: it comes out as a necessity as the Ba'ul press home their technological advantage, but leave themselves vulnerable in doing so. I found it fascinating that the Ba'ul themselves were the ones operating out of fear, that even their great technological advancements over their fellow Kaminar dwellers wasn't enough to give them a sense of security. They were fearful of the Kelpiens because they had once been prey to them, and this 'Great Balance' was the thing holding them in check. There are still many questions that could be answered, such as how this bizarre, twisted, tar-like race (my first thought was Armus, the oil-slick creation of pure evil that killed Tasha Yar in 'TNG'!), came to have the capacity to develop sciences that led to warp travel (they achieved it only twenty years previous to the episode), and were able to build intricate and complex technology with those long, greasy claws! From that perspective it's a little ridiculous, but it's possible the way we see them in this episode was only one form - perhaps they liked to make a muddy entrance like that to intimidate their enemies, and in the background there were lots of clean Ba'ul in suits operating controls. Or perhaps this was part of their cycle, a sleeping arrangement (in which case, no wonder it was so cranky), or even that this was the leader of their High Council, and only it rested in the gunk?

The point from all this is that it throws my mind into speculation, and rather than saying how stupid it all is, and how little sense it makes, a good episode can inspire and cause the creative synapses to fire. This really hasn't happened on the series yet, and this must be the best episode since 'The Vulcan Hello.' The downside is that they cram so much development into the space of a single episode. In old Trek money it would have been the unspooling ongoing arc for seasons, in amongst the mix of other stories and plots - it would be like Odo discovering his people at last, then in the same episode the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar come to bombard the planet, and then Odo infects them with the virus, etc! But with far more limited storytelling potential in their short fourteen or fifteen episode seasons, and the likelihood that there probably won't be that many years to come (although in truth we're in uncharted territory as regards how long the series might last), I suppose it does fit with the sped up nature and lack of hanging around to smell the Fredalias. Whatever it means for Saru's people in the longterm, and I really hope we get to see how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul come to live together on the planet, this on its own was a nice story. As long as they work out better than the Kes and Prytt from 'TNG,' another story about two races inhabiting the same world.

As ever, you do wonder certain things about how it all played out, such as why the Kelpiens would be a threat with their little threat ganglia turned to dart shooters, as no Ba'ul has been seen in living memory, so they don't come into physical contact, and these things are shown to be harmless compared to the might of forcefields, so the Ba'ul come across as a species that you would say has atrophied through lack of threat if not for the fact it was only two decades ago they achieved warp travel. There was another way to tell this story, too, since if they'd approached the Federation for trade and diplomacy, that would have added further complications - if the Federation had already had a connection with them it would have been harder for the Kelpiens, though once the Federation found out they'd have had to do something. I do like the issues at hand, whether it was whether Saru should be permitted to beam down to his home planet and all the pros and cons of getting involved with a warp capable world, yet having to make contact with a pre-warp species on that planet. It was quite unseemly for Saru to be so openly hostile to his Captain on the Bridge. He should have requested a private audience with Pike in his Ready Room, since he has one on this massive ship, and then hashed out the arguments in private. I'm still not sold on Pike as being the man we knew from 'TOS,' though he remains a considerable improvement on Lorca, and I did appreciate his dedication to upholding General Order One even while his crew are so eager to break it!

Talking of which, Saru does break faith to save his sister, Siranna, whom we'd seen in 'The Brightest Star,' now a full grown woman, and the priest of her village, taking over from her deceased Father, Aridar, who died shortly after Saru left. It was a simple matter for Burnham to stop him - she didn't need to point the Phaser, she could just have powered down the Transporter console, so it would have been an ideal moment to indicate that it was encrypted to prevent anyone tampering with Saru's plans. A small matter, but the kind of detail the old Treks would have made sure of. That there were no consequences of either Saru interfering with Pike's orders or Burnham for not stunning him is easy to get past since everything turned out well in the end, but I would have liked Pike to have a word with the two of them at the end to say that if they ever act like that again there will be consequences. Again, it's only a small addition required to make it more Trekky, but there's enough good to overlook such things. It's harder to accept that the USS Discovery, this powerful Starfleet ship could so easily be outgunned by primitive vessels such as those which the Ba'ul possessed. I know there were ten of them (they reminded me of another 'TNG' episode where a vast 'God-like' machine thing prevented interference from space), but really!

I also felt it was highly unlikely the Ba'ul would listen to Pike after he'd effectively allied himself with their enemy, the Kelpiens, by saying that Saru was one of his people. I'm glad he stood up for his First Officer, but you'd think he'd be experienced enough to know that such a brutal race would immediately take against any positive action towards their enemy. I also wondered why the Red Angel needed Discovery to do what it did if it could just deal with the Ba'ul in their moment of attempted genocide, but I gathered that thanks to the events that took place with Saru going there and inciting the Ba'ul to action, it left them vulnerable for a window. They worked this ongoing story of the benevolent avenging angel being into the story again well, and even better, because Saru witnessed its appearance we were given a more detailed look at it thanks to his superior eyesight, a brilliant and logical use of the character's abilities - we discover that it appears to be wearing some kind of EVA suit, and knowing that Burnham is going to wear a 'time suit' at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be her from the future (though I could be wrong - I predicted the Ba'ul would turn out to be another group of Kelpiens). I would have liked some reference to the Temporal Cold War of 'Enterprise' when Pike and Tyler are discussing it at the end, but I'm not sure how much of that was known outside Archer, and just as Section 31 shouldn't be the common knowledge that it is, I'd much rather they kept to canon than break it for effect as they seem to have done by making 31 so obvious and well-known. It's more likely that the TCW never entered the writers' heads, but in this case, now I think about it, it probably worked best not to mention it.

Another question I had was in the forced activation of the Kelpien Vahar'ai across the planet. Rather than make them seem unthreatening, I'd have thought this was exactly what would stir up a hornet's nest with the Ba'ul. Obviously they needed to know the truth that The Great Balance was a lie designed to keep them in order and prevent them from turning into the predators the Ba'ul feared, but even for the wellbeing of the Kelpiens it seemed a little extreme to do it without any warning. I could imagine terrified Kelpiens committing suicide or helping others to do the same if they'd had the opportunity, just as Saru asked of Burnham before. Fortunately it all happened so fast they didn't have time to react to it and we see with Siranna that she was incapacitated with pain. I'd have liked a more concrete conclusion to how the Kelpiens and Ba'ul were going to progress from that point, since the Ba'ul still have all the power with their superior tech, and the Kelpiens only know a simple existence, as well as that they were almost wiped out by the Ba'ul, which wouldn't be the best basis for mutual understanding. If these things are addressed in the future then all the better, but I suspect we'll never hear anything more about Kaminar, except in passing. I suppose it's true to the style of 'TOS' which would make fundamental changes to societies, then go on their merry way without much sense of responsibility to those they interfered with. At the same time Kirk used to give these races the benefit of the doubt that they'd find their way and should deal with their own problems now they'd been shown the way, so maybe that's the same here.

One other little thing I wanted was to see Burnham made up as a Kelpien for her mission to the planet. We're told that although Kelpiens are pre-warp, they now know about space travel, thus why General Order One could be disregarded, but it still would have been a shock if Burnham had been seen by anyone other than just a single, solitary Siranna who also had the benefit of being primed by her long thought dead brother! It would have been in keeping with Starfleet even of this time, as we saw Kirk go undercover as a Romulan in 'TOS,' so it would have been a nice reminder of Starfleet operating procedure. But once again, I was so taken with the story that any qualms or questions I had weren't enough to take me out of it. I even noticed the odd little detail that pleased me, such as seeing buttons flicked rather than everything on touch screens, and Yellow Alert is visibly used. Lastly, Linus was credited, but I never noticed him - I was waiting for him to crop up again so I could correct a mistake in my previous reviews: I denoted him an Arcturan, but he's actually a Saurian! Whoops. If this episode is an indication of where the series will go then I would say there is still hope for it. If only they could create episodes that work as well as this one on a regular basis I would be much happier - it's just like when they showed the Klingon with flowing locks of hair, it reassures me that it can be true to the history even if things seem so distorted and messed up so much of the time. It doesn't take much to make most things feel right, and I'm glad they achieved that on this occasion. My only fear is that this was a one off - after all, we haven't seen Spock yet.

***