On the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Discovery season 3, Osyraa used the ship to enter Federation HQ, and began negotiating a truce with Admiral Vance. Meanwhile, Burnham and Booker boarded Discovery to rescue the crew and retake control.
“There Is A Tide…”
Written by Kenneth Lin
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
1. Is that a Khan Reference?
Remember Zareh, the thug holding the mining community hostage in the second episode of the season? He returns this week as Osyraa’s right-hand man, calling the shots while his boss is away. He tells Tilly he barely survived being forced to flee through the frozen wilderness, and reveals that his left hand has been rendered useless by frostbite. He wears a glove to conceal the injury, which feels quite reminiscent of the mysterious gauntlet Khan wore in the second film, an appropriate reference given Khan attempted to take over a ship in his first appearance.
2. Disability in the 32nd Century
Osyraa’s left-hand is the “wheelchair” using human scientist Aurellio, played by Kenneth Mitchell, who previously portrayed several Klingons on the show. Mitchell recently revealed he was diagnosed with ALS, and it’s great that he still gets to be part of the show, and without the heavy make-up as well. Aurellio’s a very sympathetic character, who we learn, despite his terminal diagnosis as a child, has beat the odds to start a family with an Orion woman. He (no pun intended) humanizes the Chain by demonstrating how many people have had to depend on them to survive, and underscores how vital Burnham’s mission to restore the galaxy to its post-scarcity state is.
3. Osyraa Helps Those Who Help Her
Aurellio demonstrates show the Chain aren’t as ruthless as we thought, but it makes you realize in some respects they’re worse than pirates: they’re capitalists, only helping those who can afford their services, or who can provide them with something they wants. As Stamets says, Osyraa only helped Aurellio because she saw his brilliant potential, as well as the possibility of making him a figurehead for a Federation-Chain alliance: she’d have turned down anyone else unable to cover the cost of their healthcare.
Osyraa proves she has no honor when Vance tells her he’ll accept her treaty if she turns herself in to be tried for her crimes, a condition she refuses to accept. Furthermore, when Booker and Ryn are captured, Booker asks that Ryn be spared if he gives up the location of Su’Kal’s dilithium-rich world, but she kills Ryn anyway, because he’s of no use to her — let’s hope Booker manages to get her marooned on that godforsaken world next time.
4. Stamets’s Family
Speaking of Su’Kal’s irradiated planet, when Stamets is rescued by Burnham, he’s determined to return there and retrieve Saru and Culber before it’s too late. He’s further horrified to learn Adira is there buying time for them, but Burnham refuses to let him take the ship out of HQ with the Chain still on board, and is forced to subdue him with a Vulcan nerve pinch. (It definitely hurt her more than it hurt him.)
The subsequent scene where Stamets comes to, and bitterly confesses he and Culber came to the future so Burnham wouldn’t be lonely, was pretty heartbreaking: Burnham doesn’t literally kill him when she improvises a way to get him off the ship after the Chain disabled the transporters, but she may as well have been, by choosing to sacrifice his husband and (unofficially) adopted child — I hope they can reconcile next week, otherwise season 4 is going to be tense.
5. Trojan Horse
The Sphere data, voiced by Annabelle Wallis, greets the crew personally for the first time at the end of the episode, after taking control of the ship’s DOT-23 droids. Osyraa’s men noticed the Sphere data, but they believed it to be Buster Keaton movie file that they were simply unable to delete. There’s a nice degree of irony in the Chain using Discovery as a Trojan Horse to enter Federation HQ, while failing to notice the advanced AI that was hiding itself within an innocuous file.
Bonus Thoughts:
– The episode’s title is derived from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
Continued below– I wonder if the Federation really does have a President, because Vance’s title as Starfleet’s commander-in-chief implied the role had fallen away.
– I’ll have to doublecheck if I simply didn’t notice before, but Osyraa’s make-up is much better here than in previous episodes: you could see the speckles on her green skin, rendering it much more realistic looking.
– Vance mentions he has never eaten a real apple, implying he has only ever eaten replicated food. I’d rather not get into him revealing replicated food is recycled feces by the way: you’ve truly got to be from the future to not dwell on that.
– It’s interesting that Morse code has ceased to be common knowledge in the 32nd century.
Happy new year folks, and see you next week for the season finale, “That Hope Is You, Part 2.” (Yeah, between that title and “Unification III,” it’s been a weird one for follow-ups this season.)
