Welcome back for the second episode of Star Trek: Discovery season 3, in which the ship and the rest of the crew makes a bumpy landing on an unknown, inhabited world in the 32nd century. As Saru and Tilly head off to find help, the rest of the crew work to repair the ship, which is slowly being consumed by the surrounding ice.
“Far From Home”
Written by Michelle Paradise & Jenny Lumet & Alex Kurtzman
Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi
1. The Magnificent Duo
Saru and Tilly discover a mining community held hostage by the courier Zareh; they put up with him and his thugs because they’re the only ones capable of bringing supplies and resources to the colony after the Burn. It’s like The Magnificent Seven (itself a remake of Seven Samurai), and the western vibe doesn’t stop there, as Saru and Tilly’s first port of call is in a saloon, where the wary locals eventually pull guns on them. It really feels like a Sergio Leone film, with long, tense standoffs between the officers and the miners, and then Zareh’s men, as well as a subconscious homage to Gene Roddenberry’s description of Star Trek as “Wagon Train to the stars.”
2. Oh, Georgiou’s in This?
I completely forgot Philippa Georgiou was still on the Discovery when it left the 23rd century: for some reason I was under the impression she fled beforehand, partly because there’s a spinoff in the works focusing on her at Section 31. Well, as she explains here, she had no interest in eventually winding up behind a desk, and spends the episode butting heads with Saru, Tilly, and Commander Nhan (as well as apparently charming Linus the Saurian).
She’s caught snooping around the bar by Zareh’s men, and after the ensuing fight, she really wants to execute the scumbag, causing further tension between her and Saru. It embodies what will clearly be the main conflict going forward: do the crew of Discovery allow this post-Federation future to remain somewhere the cynical Georgiou can thrive in, or will they continue to uphold their ideals? She’s persuaded to let him go (even though his fleeing risks tipping off his rivals), suggesting there’s still some hope left for the galaxy after all.
3. Stamets, Culber and Reno’s Triple Act
Stamets, Culber and Reno have a fun subplot here, trying to repair the ship despite their injuries. Poor Stamets was almost killed last season, and despite not having fully recovered, he insists on climbing and crawling through a Jefferies tube to fix the ship’s last blown relay, exacerbating his physical duress. Reno offers to get someone else to do it, but Stamets clearly wants to prove he’s not a burden who’s only there to pilot the spore drive. There’s a hilarious line when Culber finds out his husband is already back doing physical engineering work, and tells him over comms to come back safely so he can kill him himself later.
4. Detmer’s Unwell
Helmsman Detmer is thrown over her console pretty severely when Discovery crash lands, and although it seems like the cybernetic implant on her temple is damaged, she’s told in sickbay she’s perfectly fine. But she’s not fine: she seems to be suffering from shellshock, with the same audio-visual cue Tom Hanks’s character had in Saving Private Ryan, struggling to concentrate, and hear her fellow crew members at times. Perhaps on an instinctive level, she’s already finding it difficult to cope with the sacrifice she made with everyone else, leaving her native time period behind permanently — I’m keen to see how her character’s role expands and develops this season.
5. Burnham ex machina
The episode ends with Discovery fully repaired and ready for lift off, but the ice has become too much, and another ship appears. Everyone fears it’s one of Zareh’s rivals, attempting to salvage the vulnerable ship, but Saru opens a channel nonetheless — and lo and behold, it’s Michael Burnham, who’s quite emotional seeing her crew again. Her hair is now braided, because (as she states), it’s been a year since she arrived, and she’s been searching for them ever since. It’s great that Discovery‘s crew are already back together again: now, “let’s see what’s out there.”
Continued belowBonus thoughts:
– The Coridanites, who make up most of the colonists, were first introduced in Enterprise, with radically different designs in the two episodes they appeared in: this episode uses the original, maskless design.
– Zareh’s phaser is a seriously cruel weapon, designed to slowly burn an opponent to death, causing them to weep blood as they do — Kal, the Coridanite leader (Jonathan Koensgen), was a really likable character, and it rubbed further salt in the wound when he was murdered.
– I like how the opening shots made you briefly think the ship had already crashed, and most of the crew were dead.
– Before heading out, Saru orders Tilly to receive a treatment that’ll make it easier for her to breathe the planet’s atmosphere: to my knowledge, this is the first acknowledgment of a planet capable of sustaining human life still having a subtly different mixture of gases in its air.
– I like that the name of Sanjay Pavone’s cleaner character — which Reno quips she’s already forgotten — is Gene, which seems like a sly joke about leaving Roddenberry in the past.
See you next week, as we head home in “People of Earth.”
