Star Trek has, historically, been really really terrible with consequences.
On the original series, Kirk was present for the deaths of several important people to him: his best friend, his brother and sister-in-law, and two of the great loves of his life, one of whom was pregnant with his child. Yet he was never seen to feel any trauma beyond the episodes where those things happened.
And it wasn’t much better in the first wave of spinoffs. But if the trend toward serialization has given us nothing else, it’s given us TV writers who are willing to examine long-term consequences.
All the Trek shows prior to 2017 were generally awful at showing consequences of actions beyond the episodes in which they took place. In TNG, Picard’s living someone else’s life for 35 subjective years had basically no effect on him, ditto being tortured, while La Forge’s brainwashing by the Tal Shiar similarly had no long-term impact on him. In DS9, which generally was pretty good about it, we still had O’Brien suffering all kinds of trauma with no real followup after the episode where it happened. Voyager was hilariously awful at showing consequences, with the most egregious being Tuvok and Neelix showing no repercussions from being combined into a single being.
Not that they were always as bad as the original series was. For example, things like Picard’s assimilation by the Borg and Worf’s discommendation from the Klingon Empire continued to be recurring issues for both, in the latter through both TNG and DS9.
Discovery, however, has proven to be much much better at it, from things like Georgiou’s death continuing to have an impact on Burnham’s behavior to the effect Airiam’s death had on the crew to Detmer’s PTSD after coming to the thirty-second century.
“Anomaly” is chock full of consequences, and while the most impressive one is what is suffered by Book, I want to take a moment to talk about how very brilliantly we saw Tilly and Adira being affected by the death of Commander Nalas last week. Nalas is exactly the kind of guest character whose death moves the plot along but who is generally forgotten, often before the episode is even over much less beyond it. So it’s incredibly heartening to see that Nalas’ manipulative death was manipulating us for a reason. Tilly is having trouble processing it, and her conversations with both Saru and Culber are strong examinations of Tilly’s trauma at watching him die after trying to rescue him.
But the biggies are Book and Stamets, the former suffering from his homeworld being destroyed last week, the latter from the events at the end of last season.
First of all, David Ajala gives the performance of a lifetime here. Book’s devastation is etched on Ajala’s every pore. Secondly, Sonequa Martin-Green does a good job of showing Burnham’s conflict here, as her personal relationship with Book is affecting her decision-making—which is why you shouldn’t be in command of your loved ones. (Ah, television…) Saru makes a good sounding board here, because he can see objectively that Book is right in the abstract: he is the best person for the job.
The job in question is the driving force of the plot, as the titular anomaly is the gravitational thingamajiggers that destroyed both the Deep Space Repair Station Beta 6 and Kwejian last week. Discovery is sent to examine it, and the only way to get decent readings is to send in Book’s ship, which is smaller, more maneuverable, and can alter its shape—and Book is also the one most qualified to pilot the ship. Burnham’s instinct is to have Detmer fly the ship—and it’s mine, too, as Detmer is a better pilot than Book, but Book does know his ship better, especially given Detmer’s relative lack of experience with programmable matter.
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And yes, Saru is her sounding board, because of the one plot point in this episode that actively pissed me off: Saru, while still holding the rank of captain, has been offered his own command (of the U.S.S. Sojourner), but has instead chosen to return to Discovery as Burnham’s first officer. He’s doing it because he feels that Burnham needs his counsel as Number One in much the same way that Saru needed hers when he was in command.
It’s maddening because, on the one hand, this is a hundred percent in character for Saru, who is very much the type to put someone else’s needs ahead of his own for the greater good. And, all things being equal, Saru will be excellent in the role, as indeed he is in this episode.
But Saru’s a fucking captain, and he really should have his own command. In a show that has mostly moved past some of the dopey clichés of television—like the lack of consequences—it’s still trapped by the tyranny of the opening credits. It’s also why Kirk’s and Picard’s crew stayed in the same positions despite advancing in rank through the first ten movies, and it’s absurd. The only reason Saru is taking a demotion to be Burnham’s first officer is because Doug Jones is still the second-billed star of the show.
Mind you, it’s great seeing Saru back on board, and Jones plays him with his usual mix of brilliance and compassion. But he really doesn’t belong on the ship anymore—or Burnham doesn’t, one or the other.
(I do like that they come to a compromise on what to call him, since referring to him by rank would be confusing—they settle on “Mr. Saru,” which is perfect.)
The other trauma in this episode alongside Book’s is Stamets’, and this one threw me for a loop, but it works. Apparently, he and Burnham have kissed and made up over her tossing him out of Discovery last season—Stamets makes a vaguely tasteless too-soon joke about it, and that’s a tale that I hope some work of tie-in fiction tackles at some point, because there’s a story there, dammit—but the engineer is still suffering other trauma.
At the end of last season, Book was able to do something that previously only Stamets could do: operate the spore drive. He was able to save Adira and Culber (and Gray), where Stamets couldn’t.
His conversations with Book are fraught and fascinating. Stamets—who is on Book’s ship as a hologram so he can run the scans, but be safe back on Discovery—tries to be friendly to Book, but it’s awkward as hell, and they get pretty snippy with each other. But eventually, Stamets admits to what his problem with Book is: that he’s jealous that Book could save his family when Stamets himself couldn’t.
It’s also worth noting that Book is obviously suicidal in this episode. At one point, he tells Stamets to return to his body with the data and leave him be in the anomaly, and the way Ajala played it, it very much plays like he wants to let the anomaly take him the way it took Kwejian. Only when Stamets tells him that the data is in the ship’s databanks and can’t be transferred to Discovery due to interference does he prove willing to go back. And even then, navigating the anomaly proves difficult—he has to rely on Burnham telling him when to go and ride some distortion waves (a notion provided by Lt. Commander Bryce). The first time, he hesitates, and that solidified the suicidal notion to me. Burnham has to pretty much talk him down off the roof to get him to come back.
Both Anthony Rapp and especially Ajala play all of this so incredibly well. Book isn’t out of the woods, yet, but at least he’s processing his trauma and hopefully won’t try to kill himself again. It helps that both Burnham and Stamets don’t give up on him.
In the end, they get some data on the anomaly, but mostly it just raises more questions, as it doesn’t behave in any manner that the science nerds on Discovery can predict. As usual, the crew of Discovery is at its best when science-ing the shit out of something, and those are some of the best moments in the episode, particularly when Tilly and Adira are trying to figure out how to get Book’s ship out of the anomaly.
(It’s also fun watching Tilly grow into a more together officer, only to find herself being hero-worshipped by Adira, who’s acting very much like first-season Tilly, and it’s just adorable…)
Speaking of Adira, they’re also on the verge of getting Gray his own body. Using the same technique that enabled Picard’s life to be saved at the end of Picard‘s first season (which was specifically referenced by Culber), the process is said to have a low success rate generally. However, Gray’s consciousness having been transferred successfully before means the likelihood of it going well is pretty high here.
Besides dealing with multiple traumas and finding out more about the anomaly, we get a look at the thirty-second-century version of a holodeck, as Burnham is able to alter the environment in her quarters to make it seem like she’s on Ni’Var, specifically a locale she remembers from her childhood. (I love that both Saru and Burnham refer to the world by its new name, not the one they knew from the twenty-third century, and that the viewers are still more likely to remember—though its former identity as Vulcan is mentioned, just in case…)
Ni’Var’s president is also back, as she’s part of the big meeting about the anomaly at Starfleet HQ that also includes Vance, several other captains (including a Ferengi!), and President Rillak. It’s always good to see Tara Rosling’s President T’Rina, and I hope we see lots more of her as the season goes on, as she was my favorite new character last year.
This episode stands on its own less successfully than “Kobayashi Maru” did, but it does also have a beginning, a middle, and an end, while setting up lots of things for the future: Book’s ongoing trauma, Tilly’s desire for therapy with Culber, Gray’s new body, the reintegration of the Federation, and, of course, the ongoing question of what the anomaly is.
Keith R.A. DeCandido wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving. He is very thankful to everyone who reads his work here on Tor.com, and to the folks at Tor.com for hosting his work. And don’t forget to listen to “Alice’s Restaurant” at noon…
I wish to mention something my wife Wrenn complained about as we were watching: the sound mix is maddening on this show, particularly when Sonequa Martin-Green and/or David Ajala speak in a whisper, which they both do with annoying regularity. Captions ameliorate this problem, of course, but still, it’d be nice if they brought those two up in the mix a little bit when they whisper dramatically……………………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m really liking the season so far; it feels like the show has finally found itself and hit its stride. This felt like a classic kind of Trek episode, setting up a crisis situation as an excuse to pair off two characters for the sake of exploring a conflict or growth moment between them, and it handles it well. I also like it that there’s no bad guy, just people using their smarts and courage and compassion to solve problems.
Even the science was relatively plausible again, aside from the way they talk about the anomaly’s course and the debris hazard as if the speed of light didn’t exist. I mean, it’s allowable in Trek terms that a gravitational distortion could travel at warp — a warp bubble is a gravitational distortion, after all — but they could’ve at least acknowledged that it’s an issue (and that it wouldn’t happen with a binary black hole). Aside from that, though, the science terminology was generally pretty grounded. It seems like they’re actually listening to their science advisor this year.
I am getting a little tired of how Book’s ship always happens to be perfect for doing what Discovery can’t. Also, why don’t they have any probes? Why would they need to put sensors on DOTs? I mean, probes wouldn’t have worked either, since there needed to be a live pilot there to get out again, but it’s annoying that they didn’t even think of it as a possibility.
Also, they’re still sending out regular puffs of gratuitous flame from the bridge walls during action scenes, without the slightest attempt to hide the theatrical artifice of the effect, and it’s far more distracting and annoying than any lens flare. They need to stop doing that.
I also wish they’d used a different title than “Anomaly,” which was also the name of episode 2 of Enterprise‘s third season. There have been plenty of cases of two Trek episodes having nearly identical titles, but there’s always been a slight difference (e.g. “The Emissary” vs. “Emissary” or “Demon” vs. “Demons”). The Voyager episode “Tsunkatse” was originally called “Arena,” but they changed it at the last minute to avoid duplicating the TOS title. Now, for the first time, we have two different Trek episodes with the exact same title. Either nobody caught it, or they noticed and didn’t care.
As for Saru, he wasn’t “demoted.” Apparently he still holds captain’s rank, so it’s like Captain Spock being Captain Kirk’s first officer on the Enterprise-A in the later movies. (Which raises the question of why Decker had to get demoted to commander in TMP.)
This episode is great every time it focuses on Book – or Stamets. I really love whenever Discovery has an episode from the frame of reference of a character besides Michael – something it does too infrequently. Book gets a coherent character arc over the course of the episode as well, which is always appreciated.
The problem with the episode is everything else is pretty bleh – at least for me. The first half or so of the episode is almost entirely given to expository dialogue. I know it’s a Trek staple – so much so that TOS episodes can be listened to with audio only and work just fine as “radio plays” – but it was just a bit too overwhelming for me when it came to the technobabble and the like.
Add to this that – aside from the brilliant interactions between Stamets and Book – the “character moments” are all basically one note. Similar to much of last season, Discovery characters are loving, supportive, and understanding of one another’s trauma to a fault. I don’t need the series to be quippy or anything, but I’d like a bit more emotional range than “character A displays vulnerability, character B is understanding.” That is why the Stamets/Book scenes stand out so much – Stamets is trying to do the right thing, but he initially fails at it. He’s not a perfect supportive person, which is in part what Book needs to get the focus away from his own trauma.
Regardless, enjoyed it less than the premier, but it wasn’t actively bad. It just could have been so much better if the narrative was more tightly focused.
I don’t recall Picard ever verbalizing his feelings about the events of “The Inner Light” in subsequent episodes, but they did show him playing his Ressikan flute every now and then, which at least allowed viewers to imagine what was going on inside him. I’m okay with Discovery being a more emotional take on Star Trek, but the Ressikan flute is a good example of how not every emotional beat has to be cranked up to eleven, something the folks making Discovery would do well to keep in mind.
My main issues are that this still appears to be Star Trek: Whispering Burnham (must use captions) and that The Wizard of Oz must be in charge of Discovery’s bridge flame throwers…
@@.-@ I think the cranking to eleven is a critique well worth taking to heart…but I also think it’s endemic to shortened seasons and serialized storytelling. You don’t have the time to spare on subtle handlings, and subtle handlings will get overlooked with the big splashy emotional beats that do get woven in.
(Hm. I also wonder if Stamets is entirely over his annoyance with Burnham).
Random observation: I find I’m really liking the new uniforms. I had a negative reaction to them at first glance in the trailer a few months ago, but now I think they look really good, certainly better than the gray uniforms from last season, though it’s basically the same design with different colors.
Another random observation: it seems that every TV or film black hole or similar anomaly these days is designed to look like a knockoff of the black hole from Interstellar, with the accretion disk warped by gravitational lensing. Well, I guess that’s nothing new; arguably every screen black hole since about 1980 was modeled on the one in Disney’s The Black Hole, with its big bright “swirling around the drain” accretion disk. Before that, black holes onscreen were just big black circles.
One of the things with the set up of both Disco and Picard is that episodes don’t have to stand up by themselves since the episodes are designed to bleed into each other. It’s why I don’t get bent out of shape that Gray is still invisible last week because I get that it will get addressed at some point. If this was a TNG episode that was going to be syndicated at 6 next Saturday I’d be really lost with what’s going on but that’s not how it’s setup. Disco is a miniseries, not truly a season.
We are very much doing a Joseph Campbell monomyth here- Michael ended last season at her pinnacle, we had the call to adventure last week and this week we officially crossed from the known town the unknown. It’s a truly interesting take on Star Trek since as you pointed out, characters always had the magic reset button. At some point during seven seasons every single cast member of TNG was abducted, tortured or otherwise violated and largely were unchanged by it. It took EU writers like our intrepid recapper and weekly commenter CLB among others to start showing characters be truly impacted by what happened to them. Even DS9 which had plot arcs didn’t fully impact their characters. I like and appreciate that Stamets is still suffering from last season. I like and appreciate that Tilly is struggling.
As far as the probes go, I think they addressed that with the conversation of mass- presumably a probe wouldn’t have enough mass to penetrate. It was great that it was Bryce came up with the solution- Discovery has really gotten good at bringing in its supporting cast the last few seasons. I did wish there was a scene with Michael and Rhys talking about Saru coming back as first officer vice Rhys. Also as was pointed out Spock was first officer and a captain in ST6 as was Scotty. It’s also not a Star Trek creation as Aircraft Carriers in both the US and Royal Navy’s put to see with both CO and XO as full captains as well as the air group commander being a captain as well. The old Soviet navy (and I believe the Russian navy continues) to have non-command captain ranks for engineering and other specialties as well. I think it’s in character for Saru to come in under Burnham
I enjoyed this episode a lot, but it definitely reminded me of Roger Ebert’s oft-repeated question of why the Enterprise bridge chairs never had seat belts in the Star Trek movies.
I thought Jeff Russo really brought it with the musical score. And yes, David Ajala totally wins the episode acting-wise.
What gets me the most about this episode is the pan-out sequence at the end, which gives us some sense of the scale of the titular anomaly. I’ve read some of the fan chatter speculating that the anomaly is going to end up being V’ger. At the end of the sequence I mentioned, the pattern was clearly (to me at least) an eye, and I thought it looked a LOT like Gracie’s eye while Spock was attempting the hell to communicate with her. I’m wondering if we’re dealing with something related to the whale probe.
Book’s demeanor reminded me of Torres’ in VOY: Extreme Risk. Someone with survivor’s guilt, who wants to be put in harm’s way.
This episode was slower than the opener. I liked it fine, but felt a little like not much happened. Great to see Saru back. At first, I thought he was planted to keep an eye on Burnham, but it fits his character to want to be on Discovery. SuKal said it was clear Saru missed his family on Discovery.
The best thread for later is Tilly. Does she miss her mother? Is it about all the stress and loss and responsibility they’ve had? Mental health is an all too often ignored issue, so I hope they do it justice.
Also, the data might be worthless because the anomaly doesn’t follow known science. Welp…
@8/Mike Kelm: “Disco is a miniseries, not truly a season.”
Except that serialized approach is how many, if not most, 21st-century TV series structure their seasons, so it doesn’t make sense to say it’s some kind of anomaly.
“As far as the probes go, I think they addressed that with the conversation of mass- presumably a probe wouldn’t have enough mass to penetrate.”
The issue isn’t why probes wouldn’t work. The issue is why the characters didn’t even seem to be aware of the possibility of using probes, instead making the overcomplicated suggestion of rigging the repair robots to do what’s supposed to be a probe’s job. Probes have been a staple of Trek since TOS, so it’s bizarre that the DSC writers seem to have forgotten their existence.
“Discovery has really gotten good at bringing in its supporting cast the last few seasons.”
In terms of giving them moments onscreen and contributions to the action, yes. In terms of really developing them as characters? Not so much. Aside from Detmer’s PTSD last year, and the odd bit of character info like Owosekun being an experienced diver and Bryce surfing, they’re still pretty much just a bunch of uniformly competent officers and supportive friends, without a lot of individual depth. Part of the problem is that there are just so many of them.
Like others I am also not digging the flamethrowers they’ve installed on the bridge set to convey things going badly. Any dramatic weight they might have is cancelled out by the fact that nobody seems to react to them. And I wish they’d tone the music down a bit, though by this point in the show’s run, that seems like a foolish hope.
Otherwise, I’m enjoying this season so far. Hope it stays this good throughout.
I was expecting that Stamets was lying about the data not having been transmitted in order to give Book a reason to want to make it back out. I agree that Book was acting suicidal, which Stamets could have noticed as well (let’s give him credit for trying here to be more empathetic, so maybe that’s possible despite his normal issues with it). It didn’t make much sense that data couldn’t get back out – there had to be data going back and forth in order to allow Stamets to interact with what was happening on Book’s ship – so surely at least some of the anomaly data could have tagged along.
Did I miss an explanation (other than the story) why Book and Stamets both couldn’t have gone in as holograms? It seemed that Stamets could interact with items on the ship, so couldn’t have Book similarly have operated the controls remotely?
@7 For the Interstellar reference, considering that was based on Kip Thorne’s calculations and input to the effects team and it’s generally considered to be our best visualization of a black hole’s accretion disc, it’s not surprising it’s caught on.
I was impressed by this episode, and thought it was a step up from the prior one, just because I liked a lot of the character growth and dialogue, most especially between Stamets and Book. But a lot of the other main characters also had plenty to do.
It’s great to have Saru back aboard Discovery and he seems to fit in nicely into the role as advisor to to Burnham.
I am genuinely intrigued to see the developments of what happens with this anomaly and who and what it poses a threat to next. I’m sure some familiar alien species and planets will get name-checked.
The synchronized flame throwers on the walls of the bridge are actually pretty hilarious. They look more like pyrotechnic effects at a pop concert than actual battle damage.
I’m not sure if I’m a fan of the uniforms but perhaps I’m just not used to this boxier style. I’m guessing they are also intentionally designed to be more flattering on the actors, some of which don’t fit the slim aesthetic which was pretty much the standard on TOS and TNG-era actors.
@11: I don’t know how you can say that it seemed like not much happened in this episode. For one thing, Discovery was in pretty big risk of being destroyed by the anomaly, people were getting tossed around a lot on the bridge, and Book’s ship was also nearly destroyed and him along with it for his suicidal tendencies.
@10: I don’t think we’re dealing with a prior threat like V’Ger or the whale probe. The Discovery writers like to come up with original ideas and threats as we’ve seen in prior seasons like Control and The Burn. Also, there’s the very practical real-world reason that the studio doesn’t like to pay out royalties by crediting previous writers of their intellectuals property. That’s why Robert Duncan McNeil didn’t play Nick Locarno on Voyager but the entirely new creation of Thomas Paris. And likewise, the original idea to do T’Pau as a regular character on Enterprise instead morphed into T’Pol.
@11/WTBA
I, too, hope they do it justice, but I don’t need there to be something Tilly’s depression is “about.” There certainly are things that can trigger depression, but the depression itself isn’t always a response to trauma. Sometimes it just happens because your body isn’t producing the chemicals it needs to.
I would love to see Tilly work through identifying how she’s feeling, struggling to decide between treatment options (or whether to go beyond talk therapy at all), and dealing with the consequences of whatever treatment she chooses. I’d also just love to see what mental health care looks like in the 32nd century. But I don’t need there to be a reason she’s depressed. Because depression doesn’t require a reason to appear.
@@@@@ 12 – They didn’t use a probe for the same reason that Burnham had to jet over to the Klingon Ship in The Vulcan Hello. The story demands that someone be put into danger. Much like Burnham also had to be the one to take out the work bee last week.
Has Discovery ever used a probe? Maybe, for whatever reason, the ship isn’t equipped with them? No, it doesn’t make any sort of sense but I’ve given up on expecting some things to make sense long ago.
@15/texrangr35: “I was expecting that Stamets was lying about the data not having been transmitted in order to give Book a reason to want to make it back out.”
I had the same thought.
“Did I miss an explanation (other than the story) why Book and Stamets both couldn’t have gone in as holograms? It seemed that Stamets could interact with items on the ship, so couldn’t have Book similarly have operated the controls remotely?”
Stamets’s holo kept glitching in and out. A Book holo might’ve glitched at a critical moment, or suffered signal lag.
@16/Ryan: “For the Interstellar reference, considering that was based on Kip Thorne’s calculations and input to the effects team and it’s generally considered to be our best visualization of a black hole’s accretion disc, it’s not surprising it’s caught on.”
True, but this isn’t really supposed to be a black hole; they ruled that out. I think it’s more just that the FX artists are emulating a popular, widely recognized image.
@20 I’m pretty sure Discovery sent probes into the big red swirly phenomenon created by the magic Red Angel time suit in Season 2. Now that I’m remembering, I think the probe evolved into a mechanical monster and attacked a shuttle. Because time shenanigans. That season really did not make even the tiniest bit of sense.
I love it when a show is firing on all cylinders like this. Discovery is very much embracing the best storytelling elements of past Trek shows, having the crew deal with a classic scientific problem, and – as Krad put it – science the hell out of it while still keeping track of the character arcs (which is something the show is thankfully addressing, and not just letting things slide under the radar). I can’t remember the last time I was on the edge of my seat over pure (and yet comprehensible) technobabble.
Plus, it seems the show’s finally struck the perfect balance between serialized and episodic. Season 3 was helpful in getting to this balance. I guess Paradise, Lumet and Kurtzman finally got it right. We’ll see if this feeling of narrative synergy holds for the rest of the season.
It was great to put Stamets and Book together on what has to be one of the most uncomfortable collaborative missions in a while. It was certainly fulfilling to see Stamets – usually the insular selfish one – learning to navigate dealing with Book’s own sense of loss. And I love how the show effortlessly used most of the crew in their own arcs, including Tilly and Adira, as well as having Saru in this newfound fatherly XO role. It keeps Burnham focused on the mission at hand.
As for the black hole, I’m certainly intrigued. It doesn’t seem to operate under natural law at all. All signs point to the presence of some intelligence behind its actions (maybe one of the Q?).
@1/Krad: To me, this is not a Discovery-exclusive problem. I have the same problem with most streaming-based shows that broadcast content on native 5.1 surround sound. Relying on the TV speakers to handle sound meant for more elaborate surround systems is usually why clear dialogue tends to get lost in the mix. The other ambient sounds usually drown out the voices.
I don’t know, y’all. I’ve been a Discovery watcher all along, but I’m a little disengaged so far Our villain so far is faceless; it’s a ridiculously unbelievabe anomaly. Binary black holes? That nobody had ever charter before even though we’re in well-charted space? The “appearing out of nowhere” should be the thing that everyone’s freaking out about.
But that’s not my big complaint. I’m just getting tired of the lingering focus on the characters’ fragile inner lives. I’m beginning to think of it as Star Trek: Trauma.
I get that we need to think a lot more about these things these days. But this episode felt like 60% emotional exposition. We’d go snaling along from one disclosure of feelings to the next. In the middle of universe-ending shenanigans characters who are supposed to be selected to be good at this get more in-crisis crisis counseling than really feels safe for everyone else around them.
I feel like I’d be the jerk on the Discovery saying, “Look, could you deal with your deep ptsd-feelings about something you feel horribly guilty about after you course-correct us away from the explodey thing?”
But it’s been a long pandemic, so maybe I’m just acting out. I’ll keep watching. And maybe in fifteen years I’ll do a rewatch to see if maybe I’m just full of crap.