This week on Star Trek: Discovery, the crew received a frosty reception when they found Starfleet and the remaining Federation worlds’ headquarters in deep space. To prevent their ship from being dismantled for study, Burnham seized the opportunity to prove themselves still worthy of Starfleet, by undertaking a mission to save a group of sick refugees.
“Die Trying”
Teleplay by Sean Cochran
Story by James Duff & Sean Cochran
Directed by Maja Vrvilo
1. The Starship Showroom
When Discovery reaches Federation HQ, they find an enormous space station that’s cloaked on the outside, and resembles a giant fiber-optic cable on the inside. The crew gawp at the beautiful installation and all the starships parked inside, which are much more recognizably Star Trek-style designs than the organic shapes of the United Earth Defense Force. I didn’t understand any of the technobabble the crew were saying as they remarked on all the new ships, but it was still delightful seeing them all be awed like children learning about space for the first time.
2. Acting Captain
The joy doesn’t last long though — Charles Vance (Oded Fehr), the current fleet admiral, is a man clearly weighed down by all the responsibilities the diminished Starfleet has to take on (he tells Saru exploration is a luxury they can no longer afford), and can’t accept Discovery‘s explanation of where they came from without any evidence, so he orders the ship be decommissioned and the crew assigned elsewhere. It got rather tense, because I really empathized with Burnham’s reaction to this terrible decision, but Fehr is so charismatic that you don’t want to see him be the bad guy.
Burnham picks up on the plight of the Kili, who are (rather topically now) suffering from a deadly disease. She realizes the antidote may lie in an old seed vault ship, and with Vance and Saru’s permission, she embarks on the mission by taking command of Discovery for the first time. I had chills realizing this, but the whole sequence is suitably dramatic: Discovery using its tractor beam to pull the derelict vessel from the stormy space cloud it was floating in brought about the mental image of sailors harpooning prey during turbulent weather, an appropriate baptism of fire for our acting captain.
3. David Cronenberg?
Seeing Oded Fehr join the cast was cool, but the real surprise appearance of the week was none other than legendary horror director David Cronenberg, who played Kovich, the programmer of the holograms assigned to debrief each crew member. He watches over Georgiou’s debrief, where she outwits his creations by blinking at them too quickly for them to process, causing them to glitch out. (I wonder if Michelle Yeoh and Cronenberg ever thought they’d do a project together.)
They begin talking face-to-face: Kovich is fascinated by why humans in the mirror universe were so aggressive compared to their prime counterparts, and eventually manages to break Georgiou’s icy shell by bringing up the Terran Empire’s collapse (as seen on Deep Space Nine) after her departure, and by asking if there’s a reason she’s remained with Discovery. At the end of the episode, Burnham finds Georgiou back on the ship rather dazed, but she snaps out of it when asked if she’s ok (a question she dismisses in trademark sarcastic fashion). It’s clear Burnham is the one anchor in Georgiou’s life now, even if she’s not the version she raised in her universe.
4. Homesick Blues
Loss continues to be a major theme this week, as Burnham, Nhan and Culber discover there is still someone on the seed ship: Attis, a Barzan like Nhan, who was stationed aboard with his family until they were hit by a coronal mass ejection. Attis survived, but cannot accept the death of his family, and won’t allow anyone access to the seeds in case they contain a cure. Burnham persuades him to let them get the seeds they need, but is concerned by this asset being otherwise lost to the Federation.
Nhan decides to stay with Attis, ensuring that won’t be the case. If this is to be Nhan’s final appearance, then that’s disappointing, since she was only in three episodes this season (and barely in the previous episode), so I haven’t had time to grow into feeling like I’ll miss her. This episode does try, by using Attis’s home videos to make you understand that Nhan is — like the rest of the crew — struggling with the loss of her family, and it is nice that she gets to connect with someone else from her homeworld, but it feels like they had to cut a cast member who needed prosthetic makeup. Maybe we will see her again soon though — we only did learn the first initial of her first name (D) during her debrief.
Continued below5. Mystery Melody
While watching the recordings of Attis’s family, Burnham notices his wife singing a melody resembling the cello piece Adira played last week. She asks around at HQ if anyone knows the name of the piece, but is only told it’s a familiar tune that’s floating around in the ether. My guess is that music was the Federation’s anthem: I’d say I hope Adira can answer Burnham’s question for us next week, but there’s got to be a lot more here going on than the apparent lack of a search engine, or audio recognition app, in the 32nd century.
Bonus thoughts:
– Vance states the Federation currently consists of 38 worlds (down drastically from a peak of 350), and there may be more, but with subspace transmitters disabled by the Burn, they have no way of working together anyway.
– The amusing debriefing sequence really emphasizes how absurd Discovery‘s adventures must be to the rest of Starfleet (although in fairness, they’re positively tame next to what the Enterprise and Voyager got up to).
– It’s nice to see the name Voyager lives on too.
– Nhan’s eyes turning brown while breathing the vault’s Barzan air, and the invisible holographic helmets Burnham and Culber use on the ship, were really neat ways to save time and money.
– Discovery always looked unique partly because of her bronze color scheme, and it feels thematically appropriate now seeing her against all the 32nd century ships.
– My favorite line of the week had to be Kovich admitting he wears glasses just to look smart: in other words, he’s a 32nd century hipster.
– Detmer’s PTSD resurfaces while pulling in the seed ship, but she manages to overcome it with her colleagues’ encouragement: it’s good to see it’s not simply gone after last week.
– Booker’s a no show again this week.
This was a more interesting episode than an emotional or exciting one, but it was still full of solid worldbuilding. See you all next week for “Scavengers.”
