The Red Angel

DVD, Discovery S2 (The Red Angel)

Airiam was right, it very much is all about Burnham, she's the Luke Skywalker destiny child of this fantasy melodrama that was created in opposition of the science fiction 'Star Trek' once was, and I don't think Martin-Green has the ability to be that centre-of-the-universe figure. It's not entirely her fault, it's as much the behind-the-scenes ravages that struck the series right from its early days, losing her her essential essence that creator Fuller set up: she's a human Vulcan child, she's logical and restrained and repressed in a way unnatural for a human. Except she very soon lost that one defining characteristic that made her somewhat fascinating. Maybe this is the result. Maybe her repressive upbringing is what has pushed her to be the most emotional, melodramatic character in Trek history? In which case they're doing a fine job of showing what the result of a formative life without emotion might do to a human psyche. I could buy that if the rest of the world these writers create was coherent, but it's pretty far removed from the straight-talking, grounded (yes, I'm using that word yet again), believable extrapolation of a future first shown in 'TOS' and furthered on 'TNG,' 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' Everything really is about her, though, she's not just some scientifically minded savant, she really is the centre of this universe that we're following, and it's just such a frustrating alteration of the way Trek tells stories that I can never entirely take it seriously!

I've highlighted so many times the blatant flaws that run through this shiny, glossy iteration that seems fit only for magpies attracted to its cathedral-like sets and glowing special effects. People that can ignore its two-dimensional characterisations and portentous, self-important dialogue and directorial choices that look like they come from 'The Lord of The Rings' rather than serious sci-fi. People who can ignore its confused morality and its bizarre need to distance itself from its own genetic heritage by bringing in technology far too early for the era it's supposed to represent in the history of the future. And it's not getting any easier to justify the series' existence, no amount of Captain Pike sternly reminding characters of his strict adherence to Starfleet regulations, able to do that. Take this episode, a mostly expository one with some new information that is not uninteresting, but still rife with the ground-level problems of this cracked and broken series: it begins with a sad farewell to Airiam's corpse, a kind of funeral service in which they show the traditional Trek manner of disposing of a body by launching it out into space within a torpedo casing, which itself was an updating of the traditional maritime method of disposing of a body by casting it into the sea. The character is eulogised and everyone's very emotional, but it means so little because we had so little to do with her! Tilly says she was her friend, so it's a shame we never (apart from in the previous episode), saw that. We were never allowed to develop a bond with this character, just as we haven't with many of them.

If the episode begins in this way, it also continues the same path. So we have Culber moping around still unable to get a grip on being a different Culber so that he even stops by Admiral Cornwell to get advice as she was once a counsellor or therapist, or whatever. We have Burnham getting so unprofessional that she actually bops Captain Leland on the nose. Twice! We have Discovery trusting Section 31 and working together in their goal of capturing the Red Angel (I wouldn't even have wanted them to know they believed Burnham to be inside). We have Georgiou expressing concern for Burnham when she doesn't really care about anyone but herself. It is, as usual, a big mishmash of mush, the only bright spot being that Ethan Peck's Spock remains Vulcan, reserved and deliberate in his speech. But really, Burnham practically justifies Leland's role even though she's unhappy with his 'intricate moral gymnastics' - she says that is his job, she knows. It's bad enough that everyone in Starfleet seems to know about this organisation that was supposed to have been kept hidden since its inception in the Federation Charter, the best and most fascinating thing about the organisation. They stripped out the good stuff about S31 being an impossibly secret, clandestine part of deep cover Federation intelligence so they can run around in big black ships, cliched up to the max, wearing big black badges so everyone knows their 'authority.' It's so laughable if it weren't a tragic waste of an invention by Trek's best writers. And then we have Saru saying he needs to know Leland can be trusted. He actually says this. To Leland.

Then we learn that, not content with introducing 24th Century technology into the 23rd Century because it's too boring to make stories without it (the writers completely misunderstanding the point of different eras is that very difference, not just in the galactic relations of alien politics, not just in the different approaches Starfleet makes, but in the limitations of their time - creativity needs boundaries to soar, and they completely fail in this regard!), we now have S31 developing a time travel suit, run on 'time crystals' (Project Daedalus). A one-man time travel suit. So it's not from the future, it's from this era! Not only that, it was designed by Burnham's own parents! Not only that, her Mother is still in it! Okay, so that was genuinely interesting, although this series does seem to have a thing about girls and their Mothers (Tilly and hers stands out; Burnham and her adopted Mother, Amanda, too). At least it being Mummy Burnham sets right a few questions I had about Burnham once again being the focal point of all time and space (it sometimes seems!), as if she's the Doctor from 'Dr. Who'! I was wondering why Burnham wouldn't know about attempts to trap her if she was from the future, but it wasn't her, so that's okay. Even Burnham wonders why she wouldn't say anything about an apocalyptic future if she knew about it (to which Spock replies that perhaps she has a penchant for the dramatic - understatement of the week!). But still, a time travel suit, invented in the 23rd Century? I was expecting it to be Burnham in there (I'm glad it wasn't), but I still assumed it would be tech from the future.

Somehow S31 can invent such a device (or Burnham's parents can), that, just like the spore drive, is going to have to be uninvented, otherwise what's to become of all the history past this? I'm hoping at some point they'll just admit this is another universe, not the 'TOS' one, because it simply does not fit. In 'TOS' they could time travel, but only by using the full power of their starship to zip round the sun. In later series' we saw other methods, but none of them were certain or something that anyone could just do, certainly not a one-person operation. Indeed, we've even been told that it isn't until around the 26th Century that time travel began to be used, and then only with great care by Starfleet and other races. If they were tying into the Temporal Cold War, that would have been an ideal avenue to explore, but it's just so continually frustrating that they cast aside the rulebook in order to muck about and do whatever they want. Because they don't have the imagination or the vision to do Trek as it should be done, they want to make a fantasy series using the Trek branding. They should have left well alone and made a whole new space series not constrained by Trek's coherent and consistent world, but then who would care? It really is like some 'Dr. Who'-inspired rubbish, where you can have unexplained fantastical time crystals and nothing has to make sense from week to week, one reason I don't think much of 'Who.' Even in the 24th Century they weren't hopping about on a whim into past or future, they had to engineer a good reason or a specific set of circumstances, but now 31 can just come up with tech.

As usual I can't stand Georgiou, or Tilly, but at least there was one good moment involving both of them: when Tilly's in Engineering (or a Science Lab, I don't know - they still haven't laid out the ship's sense of place very well at all), she burbles and bumbles as she does, until Georgiou tells her to 'stop talking!' There's never a Picard around when you want him: "Shut up, Tilly!" There was one other thing I quite liked in the episode: when Leland is talking about how Burnham's parents were investigating certain leaps in technology and advances in certain cultures weren't 'happenstance' as he puts it, but the result of time travel. I don't know, but this sounded exactly like what happened to our own 20th Century when Henry Starling created the computer boom of the latter half by using tech from a crashed 29th Century ship (as seen in 'Future's End' on 'Voyager'), which was a fun way to explain the rise of computers in our lives. I was really hoping for some reference to Chronowerx or Starling, and maybe we'll get it, but probably not. I also found that the punch bag Burnham got out her stress on, although initially odd to see, made some sense - we'd already seen a gym on the NX-01, and in 'TOS' the Enterprise also had a gym, so perhaps the holograms we've seen on 'DSC' aren't physical entities that can be interacted with as they could be on 'TNG' and beyond? That would ameliorate my problem with them a little, but I'm not sure what the evidence is for them being non-interactive physically, I just can't remember an example on this series.

Despite these few positives I still find the episode to be hard to accept, with Burnham a real disappointment, so far from the upright, good Starfleet officer that she initially seemed. Can you imagine Kira or Dax, or most of the other female characters on other Treks getting all weepy and snivelling about the difficult task they're about to do? But Burnham heads to Tyler's Quarters for some moping. I'm sure it's meant to make her more identifiable and human to audiences, especially female audiences (which this series, more than any other Trek, is very much gunning for, even against male viewership by the choices they make and the style they choose), but she just comes across as pitiful. Yes, it's more realistic that someone would be feeling vulnerable and upset, but she agreed to do this mission where she will 'die,' if only for a short time, in order to lure the Red Angel to save her (since, once again, everything revolves around her which is how they realise they can trap it). Once resolved she should be showing courage, not whimpering and simpering. Maybe I'm too harsh, but yet again it's an example of her lack of Starfleet (let alone Vulcan), strength and polish. It's a big deal for her to risk her life like that, and she is courageous to go through with it, I just can't stand her making the decision and then booing about being scared - it reminds me of that teary Ensign in Red Squad from 'Valiant,' an episode in which the Cadets take over the asylum and run a ship behind Dominion lines.

That and her assault on Leland put her in a very poor light this episode - as much as it's supposed to be something we like to see, Leland's decking means nothing other than lack of self-control and discipline, suggesting it's alright to do such a thing if you have a good enough reason. That's the way of the jungle, yes: you hurt me, so I'm gonna hurt you. But it's not the Starfleet way, and any organisation in which a subordinate struck a superior officer would take it very seriously. Well, we know they do since they came down ridiculously hard on her for 'mutinying' against Georgiou in the first episode, imprisonment for life not fitting with Starfleet any more than ignoring such an infraction does! In this case we can guess that Leland just took it and didn't report the action, but how did Spock know about it? I can't imagine Pike accepting such behaviour, and to me it's just another worrying trend in the series, when discipline and punishment are deemphasised because that's how our society seems to be going (like decriminalising drugs or the TV licence fee - almost as if, well, people are doing this stuff so we may as well stop trying to stop them!). But really, it does look bad for the organisation, even though Leland is scum and probably deserved what he got, that we're supposed to feel cheered by such an action is very uncomfortable and only makes me like Burnham less. Not only does she break down into emotional tempests all the time, she doesn't have control and is fast becoming a repugnant character.

When we finally get to the heroic moment of Burnham going through intense and mortal agony (and it is uncomfortable to watch and to see all the crew watching from their various positions - note Nilsson replacing Airiam at her station, so it's nice that they're not getting rid of the actress even though they chucked her earlier character), and the mysterious Red Angel is captured, yes, it is a good twist that it's her Mum, and a good cliffhanger making you wait to find out what's going on. When I first saw her I thought maybe it was Owosekun, then I thought Georgiou, then maybe a relation of Georgiou and it wasn't until Burnham spoke that I realised it was her Mother (and credit for Spock for having faith to keep the others from stopping the experiment - they all knew the idea was to temporarily kill Burnham, so why get upset about it, especially Georgiou who has seen, and done, far worse things!). One thing I did not get at all was when Leland is stabbed in the eye by his own ship. Huh? Why would you even have a needle in an optical piece of equipment, that was weird, and then that it wasn't explained what he was doing was also weird. It's easy to assume that it was 'Control' and this altered AI has infiltrated the S31 ships so there's more danger there, but why, why and why?

Finally, one little nugget worth mentioning is the series' approach to time travel. So often nowadays we're supposed to accept that time travel supposedly would split you off into an alternate reality, and every journey in time would be to a subtly different alternate, thus dispensing with so many of Trek's great time travel stories, or classic films like 'Back To The Future' - the point has always been that we can restore the past or save the future if we change something or restore it to the 'correct' version. That our time stream matters, rather than just being a permutation of infinite versions, none of which have any claim to being the 'right one.' Again, there are moral implications here, that nothing really matters and every version of everything exists somewhere. All to say that I was glad when Spock mentions the Grandfather paradox of Burnham not existing if she doesn't come back to prevent her death, which sounds to me like they're going with the traditional Trek approach to time travel, that things can be altered and restored, and that our 'reality' is important, so well done there. Of course that's a lot to extrapolate from one comment, but coming from Spock, an authoritative scientific figure (if not yet), it means something (I just wish he'd thrown in a mention of his own people once denying time travel, as a reference to the Vulcans of 'Enterprise'!), even if it turned out the Angel wasn't Burnham after all, thus negating his theory. I do hope they stay with the traditional Trek view, after all it is all fiction and theory, not reality and fact, and it's better to stick to the proven rules of Trek, even though they mostly don't on this series, which is why it suffers.

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