One of the things I particularly love about Discovery is something that was established when the titular ship first appeared in “Context is for Kings”: it’s a science ship. Most of the main characters are science nerds, and indeed Burnham, Saru, Stamets, Reno, Adira, and Tilly are all science geeks of the highest order.
What’s fun about “Rubicon” is that the events are driven by knowledge: Burnham’s knowledge of Book, Book’s knowledge of Burnham, the science of the spore drive and the interior of the DMA, and a math problem that Stamets and Zora work out.
And we get a devastating ending.
Most of this episode sees our heroes making smart decisions and taking actions that are thought-out and not reckless, and also trying to do their best not to harm anyone. Both sides of this fight—Discovery and the rest of the Federation vs. Book and Tarka and their big-ass weapon—are in this to save lives primarily.
Discovery first tries to board Book’s ship covertly, using the tracker Burnham put in last week to find them, and they try to board. But they’re done in by a security protocol Tarka put in that even Book didn’t know about. It almost destroys the shuttle that contains the boarding party of Saru, Culber, Bryce, and Rhys. Book is appalled—and actually helps Burnham rescue her people—but the element of surprise is gone.
Buy the Book
Sisters of the Forsaken Stars
The chase continues to the DMA itself, and the race is on to find the control center, as that’s what Tarka wants to blow up.
Because there’s an obvious conflict of interest in Discovery going after Book and Tarka given the relationship between Burnham and Book (and, indeed, between the ship’s entire crew and Book), Vance sends in someone to backstop Burnham: Nhan.
This is a brilliant move. Because of the spore drive, Discovery is the only ship that can get to Book and Tarka in time. And they can’t just replace the entire crew. So they send Nhan—last seen in “Die Trying” last season, and now back in the saddle as part of Federation Security, a welcome return of Rachael Ancheril to the show. She’s someone Burnham (and the rest of the crew) knows and trusts, she doesn’t really know Book all that well, and she’s security, so she’ll do what’s right.
I like this notion a lot, because it takes a cliché of the franchise and makes it far less annoying. The outsider who messes with our heroes’ mojo is a tired Trek trope (“A Taste of Armageddon,” “The Pegasus,” “Much Ado About Boimler,” etc.), and Discovery has been good about mostly avoiding it (with exceptions, like this season’s premiere, “Kobayashi Maru”), and that continues nicely here. Nhan is a professional doing her job, and she and Burnham and Saru have several intelligent—if sometimes intense and argumentative—discussions about how to proceed. Nhan has the authority to relieve Burnham if Nhan thinks she’s compromising the mission, but she never has to take that step.
In particular, I like that Burnham is completely transparent with the crew: she lets them know right away why Nhan is there and what she is empowered to do.
One of Burnham’s strategies is to try to figure out how long the DMA will remain in this spot. Now that they know its purpose is to mine boronite, Stamets and Zora are tasked with creating a mathematical model based on how much of the boronite in the area it’s mined to figure out how long it will need to remain in this particular location before it finishes the job. And Burnham’s strategy—which Nhan goes along with, though she needs to be talked into it—pays off, as they determine that the DMA will be here for another week. That gives the Federation seven days to try a diplomatic solution, after which they can try Tarka’s crazy-ass plan.
The problem here is the one part of the episode that doesn’t work: Tarka. Early on, Culber points out that the wild card in all this is Tarka—they know Book is, at heart, a good person, but Tarka’s an issue here. That’s brought into sharp relief when the security protocol that Tarka installed in Book’s ship nearly gets four people killed.
And then the rest of the episode is spent completely not taking Tarka’s single-mindedness into account. This is a problem, since in the end Tarka’s the one who fucks everything up, an outcome that was so predictable that Culber actually predicted it, and yet none of our heroes took it into account when dealing with Book and Tarka throughout.
Which proves fatal. After Book agrees to wait a week, Tarka goes ahead and beams his isolytic weapon into the DMA’s control center. After everyone busted their ass to find a peaceful solution, Tarka plays the wild card and blows everything up anyhow.
This made me crazy, because as we’re watching this, both my wife and I were screaming at the TV, “Don’t just worry about Book, worry about Tarka.” And nobody worried about Tarka and he screwed them.
However, this is slightly made up for by the fact that Tarka’s plan winds up being a disaster on both a microcosmic and macrocosmic level. His plan was to use the DMA’s power source to travel to the alternate universe he and his friend found—but there’s no sign of the power source after he detonates the device, and he realizes belatedly that the power source is on the other side of the subspace corridor through which the DMA is sending the boronite to Species 10C.
The bigger issue is that, after the DMA is blown up, Species 10C just sends another DMA to replace it. Because when your dredge breaks down, you don’t stop mining, you bring in a new dredge to finish the job. (In a cute touch, the ship that detects the new DMA is the U.S.S. Mitchell, which I’m guessing is a tribute to the character of Gary Mitchell, who was a victim of the Enterprise‘s encounter with the galactic barrier—just outside of which Species 10C is currently hanging out—back in the original series’ “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”)
The revelation that the DMA is just a piece of mining equipment already indicated that Species 10C is very very far advanced from the Federation, and the dismissive ease with which they dealt with Tarka’s destruction of the DMA is an even bigger indication. These guys probably view the Federation the way you or I would view a colony of ants. Or maybe a bunch of amoebae…
One of my favorite lines in any Trek production is something Picard said to Data in the TNG episode “Peak Performance“: “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.” The Discovery crew was pretty good at doing things right here, and they still lost, admittedly in this case because they did make one mistake, to wit, underestimating how much of a selfish asshole Ruon Tarka is. And Tarka himself made no mistakes when it came to the execution of the plan that he proposed back in “…But to Connect,” but it still fails utterly.
I’m heartened to see that the crew isn’t all united against Book and Tarka. Rhys—at least in part motivated by the backstory we learned about in “The Examples“—is very much on Book’s side, and he gets into arguments with Nilsson and especially Bryce on the subject.
Saru does important work reminding everyone to stay on mission when Bryce and Rhys get into their first argument on the subject, and indeed playing the role of rational peacemaker is Saru’s function throughout the episode—he keeps Nhan and Burnham on point, for starters, and is the one who gets them to try to find a middle ground. Doug Jones, as always, kills it both here, and in his other little bit of business.
The latter is an absolute delight, moving forward with a theme that’s been running since Ni’Var President T’Rina was introduced in “Unification III,” to wit, the spectacular chemistry between Saru and T’Rina. The latter helps Saru with some meditation techniques at the top of the episode, and the holographic communication ends with T’Rina inviting Saru out on a date. The mission precludes Saru being able to answer immediately, but it takes Culber giving Saru a metaphorical clubbing over the head to convince him to say yes. The two of them are an adorable couple, and Doug Jones and Tara Rosling have been magic every time they’ve been on screen together.
This is an episode that is equal parts frustrating and wonderful. On the one hand, it’s true to Discovery’s mission statement as a ship of science, and the crew tries to use their brains to solve the problem. More to the point, they try very hard to maintain Trek‘s trademark compassion, finding solutions in which the fewest number of people are hurt or die.
On the other hand, they totally should’ve seen Tarka’s final gambit coming.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is one of the contributors to the anthology The Fans are Buried Tales, edited by Peter David & Kathleen O. David, currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. It’s about a bunch of cosplayers snowed in at a convention who gather in the bar and tell stories in character for who/whatever they’re cosplaying as. Keith’s is “The Carpet’s Tale” (the cult of the Marriott carpet lives!!!!). Besides Keith and Peter, other Star Trek prose stylists contributing include Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, John Peel, Rigel Ailur, and Robert T. Jeschonek. Please consider supporting it!
I had lots of small issues with this episode (though I enjoyed it) but two very big issues bear mentioning.
First, Michael and Book are boring as a loving, supportive couple who never lose trust in one another, despite being on opposite sides and literally engaging in ship-to-ship combat here. Real long-term relationships have irritation, miscommunication, strained feelings, etc. From Michael’s position, Book has betrayed her, and from Book’s position, Michael has failed to back him up. Last week at least hinted at some strain in the relationship, but it’s gone entirely here. Discovery really seems to love making everyone perfect allies, but sometimes we’re short-sighted jerks (and that makes for better character writing).
The bigger issue is, as you noted, this mission was a failure – a big fucking one. Starfleet was worried that Michael was too close to Book to be objective, and they were right. Michael had a chance to kill Book, and she didn’t take it. Now, it’s understandable – the conflict between duty and love is strong material for a character arc. But Michael should have faced consequences. She should have been dressed down by Nhan or maybe even Vance, for the mission ending in failure. But instead the episode ends with a weird heart-to-heart and a “you win some, you lose some” – along with Saru’s dating travails (which could have been left to next week). It’s just…argh! We know Michael will end up being proven right at the end of the season – can’t she have a temporary setback now?
A lot of dialogue that doesn’t stand up to reason in this one. Beyond that, Burnham’s diplomatic moment would be akin to someone in Biden’s cabinet getting Putin’s chauffer’s assurance that Russia won’t further invade Ukraine. “Mission accomplished people! Oh wait what, they attacked? But his driver said…” Absolutely absurd.
Further, didn’t Tarka posit that the power source was likely a star, like, I don’t know, the one contained in the solar system sized shielded bubble outside the galaxy? Shouldn’t he have known the power source was on the other side of the wormhole? I had already assumed that personally, had you? Is there any mining equipment that stores its power source in the business end of the drill? Last Tarka note – if getting the power source for the weapon was as easy as they made it here, why the casino subplot last episode?
Not surprised Burnham had time for a nice heart to heart with her former crew mate, completely free of the weight of the critical and potentially apocalyptic mishandling of their relatively simple mission for which they were arguably over equipped.
Not much has happened in the past couple episodes. A lot of treading water up to this moment. Let’s pick up the pace, please.
This was much better than last week’s. I love how much the focus was on finding the middle ground, always one of my favorite themes. I love it that their strategy for dealing with Book and Tarka was to send in a counselor to de-escalate rather than a security team with guns blazing. Maybe that’s a commentary on America’s hypermilitarized police forces.
Also great to see Nhan back, and I agree, it was a good idea to have the outsider at odds with the captain be someone we know and like rather than just a stock obstructionist.
And yes, it was screamingly obvious that Tarka was going to launch the bomb anyway. When Book backed down, I was mentally urging him to get between Tarka and the console.
But you know what I’m tired of seeing in sci-fi? Holograms that constantly glitch to remind us that they’re holograms. There’s no good in-story reason for their image quality to be so damn bad. 24th-century holograms could maintain perfect image quality indefinitely, but 32nd-century ones are so bad that they fritz out every ten seconds? It’s dumb. And it insults our intelligence. We saw T’Rina’s and Book’s holos materialize. We knew they weren’t really there. We don’t need a constant reminder.
@1/Karl: I disagree — I think it’s lazy, cliched writing to make people act like immature jerks to create problems that could otherwise be easily solved. The more interesting, meaningful conflicts are the ones where two reasonable, well-meaning people end up on opposite sides for equally good reasons, because there is no clear, simple answer.
And finding an alternative to violence should be a Starfleet captain’s default practice with anyone, whether it’s a lover or a stranger.
@3/CLB – I like to think the glitch is added on purpose to holograms by the users, like a fun retro filter. I mean, on video chats today I can overlay virtual items and video effects. Why not for a full hologram? Or maybe that’s the default setting for the holo-chat, so you remember you are not there with someone face-to-face. And we know how many people keep the default settings!
Another decent if not outstanding episode. I’m over-ready to meet species 10C, but maybe that won’t happen until the end of the season. Maybe it won’t happen at all. If they’re so much more advanced than the Federation, perhaps no meaningful contact is possible (unless they feel like talking down to our heroes’ level, like other superbeings the franchise has featured).
@5 – As it’s very unlikely that 10-C could be unaware of sentient life, a few options emerge. We can assume they’re either callous as a people or singular entity, or their leadership is callous. As for potential reasons for their uncaring nature, they’re either arrogant higher brings, purely logical synthetics, or extremely similar to humanity but with more advanced tech. Additionally, they might figure that since some other catastrophy is about to strike the Milky Way there isn’t an ethical concern with collecting materials before said catastrophy strikes. The last item could pair with any of the others.
I decided during the standoff that if the weapon didn’t get launched, the story would feel too anticlimactic and too neat. The conceit that Tarka fucked up and didnt anticipate the power source wasn’t there was novel. For all this planning and modeling, he overlooked that possibility. Too much ego and too much desperation.
I thought leaving the outcome for next episode (10Cs reaction) would be best, but them just placing another DMA as fast as you or I might change a drill bit or vacuum bag was not something I considered. They might have DMAs in multiple systems/galaxies. Even if you get them to leave the MW galaxy alone, they might be wiping out lives elsewhere!
Finally, one thing I really wanted to mention: in the scene where Book does the explodey thing and Discover has to avoid it, Burnham anticipates what is coming and orders Detmer to go down, under the shockwave. A fantastic use of the 3D aspect of space. Much better than the usual, here we are facing/fighting each other as if there are only two axes. A welcome sight.
@7/WTBA: “They might have DMAs in multiple systems/galaxies. Even if you get them to leave the MW galaxy alone, they might be wiping out lives elsewhere!”
“All In” established that the cloaked region occupied by Species 10-C is within the diffuse stellar halo around our galaxy — basically the near orbital space of the galaxy, technically still part of the galaxy itself, and no more distant from the Federation than, say, the Dominion or the Kazon would be, just in a more “vertical” direction. So it’s unlikely their influence reaches to other galaxies, aside from maybe some of the nearer small satellite galaxies around our own.
“in the scene where Book does the explodey thing and Discover has to avoid it, Burnham anticipates what is coming and orders Detmer to go down, under the shockwave. A fantastic use of the 3D aspect of space.”
I felt just the opposite, because any explosion in space would be 3D, an expanding sphere rather than the stupid, stupid, stupid flat-disk “shock wave” trope that was introduced in Star Trek VI and has unfortunately become a routine sci-fi gimmick ever since. It would expand in all directions, so there’d be no way to dive “under” it.
Plus, of course, there’s no such thing as a shock wave in vacuum, since a shock wave is a propagation through a medium. There would only be an expanding front of superheated gases and a burst of radiation, both of which would be pretty much in all directions. Well, strictly speaking there would be a shock wave through the diffuse interstellar medium, but it would be far too feeble to have any effect on a starship and can thus be discounted.
@8 – Additionally, I was thinking, even if a flat radial shockwave were to be caused by that explosion, the idea that it would expand across a vacuum in such a specifically predictable horizontal fashion in relation to the angle of the shot, so as to allow you to dodge it, would require a very specifically shaped charge, and would also require that the warhead load somehow resist reorientation by the continuous force of the explosion, regardless of the elements involved in the explosion. You’d be extremely lucky to pull it off once.
@9/Transceiver: I can imagine that maybe you could constrain the gas/debris wave (again, “shock wave” is a misnomer) to a roughly flat plane with some kind of shaped magnetic field, although you’d be more likely to get a pair of jets shooting out from the poles. If so, the ship might be able to detect the orientation of the magnetic field and predict the alignment of its equatorial plane. But the question is why you’d bother to design an explosive that way.
Anyway, I thought that the way Burnham and Book kept predicting each other’s moves was a good argument for why someone else should’ve been in command of Discovery for this mission, or at least why someone else should’ve been in charge of strategy for that part of the mission. He knew her playbook too well, so she couldn’t outmaneuver him. They needed someone whose strategies he didn’t know, someone who could take him by surprise.
Yeah, that was the episode’s biggest flaw, but it’s a flaw endemic to television. While it absolutely makes sense to send Discovery, since it’s the only ship that can move that fast, Burnham should have been temporarily relieved of command and Saru put in charge, still with Nhan as a backstop.
But Sonequa Martin-Green’s place atop the opening credits makes that unlikely…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@11/krad: Speaking of endemic flaws, there’s also a flaw endemic to Trek — why did they send so many commanders on that shuttle mission? Surely the commanders are the department heads and should mostly stay on the bridge. It’s weird that they bumped all the supporting bridge crew up to commander rank all at once. I think it would make more sense for the likes of Owo, Detmer, Rhys, and Bryce to be lieutenants, since that seems like a better fit for their story roles. Having practically the whole cast be commanders or captains is the same kind of implausibly top-heavy rank structure we had in the TOS movies. (And meanwhile Harry Kim is standing on the sidelines, clearing his throat…)
They’re lieutenant commanders, but yes.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I thought this was the best episode of the season because for once, stuff seemed to actually happen. Everything up until this point has kind of felt like one long slog and dragged out. It’s not helped by the fact there was a long break mid-season so Prodigy could come back. Anyway, in this episode the tension and drama were ratcheted up to peak capacity and I was kind of on the edge of my seat (even though I was laying down). But I also had the same problem as mentioned in this review: everyone on Discovery is acting all relieved that Book has backed down and not even given consideration to what Tarka, who they don’t know very well, might do. So from the viewer standpoint, it seemed pretty obvious that Tarka would still go ahead and do what he wanted to achieve his singular goal. It’s been telegraphed since the beginning of his arc. Burnham really should have destroyed Book’s ship because of the risk Tarka posed and if she couldn’t do it, than Nhan should have relieved Burnham to finish the job. The episode would have ended on a much more devastating note to have Book killed in order for Discovery to be successful in its mission.
And if they’re not somehow killed by the end of this season, then Tarka and Book both need to be sent to prison because they are past the point of no return at this point.
It was great having Nhan back. It would be awesome if she were just made a regular on the series already.
The Saru/T’Rina stuff was cute.
I was troubled by the fact that you have the bridge officers essentially arguing their positions regarding Book/the DMA on the bridge. It just seemed very unprofessional, especially when you equate Starfleet with the military in which you would be reprimanded for such behavior/dissent.
The mystery of the DMA and the advanced aliens beyond the galactic barrier is indeed very intriguing and I believe the best of all four season-long arcs of Discovery so far. However, this plot to me would be better served condensed to feature film length. As I mentioned before, it seems like there’s been a lot of filler and dragging to get to this point and we still have several more episodes to go.
As much as we too were screaming ‘He’s going to do something stupid’ because we’re watching a television show where we have an idea how things have to end – I realize that there was one blind spot a Starfleet crew, even one of science-mavericks, will divert to, every time.
When the ship captain makes an agreement, everyone is expected to abide by it in action. That’s the default setting.
And for just a couple of minutes, the relief of Book standing down and that reflexive assumption gave Tarka the opening needed to be Tarka. As a real life scenario, its entirely plausible. The question then became what the effect would be (my thought was the device was going to explode but the controller survived it). My second thought when it did work was ‘Hmm. Where will the next DMA pop up?)
I find Saru and T’Rina’s genteel courtship very charming. Seems like something out of a Regency romance novel. And always a highlight of an episode when they are together.
@8 Chris/ at this point, I take the explosions in space as just how things are in the ST universe, so I didn’t think deeper about the explosion itself. I suppose I accepted that because Burnham was familiar with the tactic Book was deploying, she’d know how the wave/reaction would be, so she could react properly. Of course, there is no guarantee one dust cloud reacts the same as every other, etc etc. It didn’t take me out of the drama in the moment, but it does break down of course in hindsight
@@@@@ 12 – “Having practically the whole cast be commanders or captains is the same kind of implausibly top-heavy rank structure we had in the TOS movies.”
At one time the aircraft carrier Enterprise had 5 captains assigned to her.
Also, how many landing parties on TOS were Kirk, Spock and/or McCoy?
It’s Trek. Sending most of your senior officer on a mission together isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
I first noticed the excess of commanders back in Season 2, when you had Saru, Burnham, Nhan, Stamets, Reno and Airiam all being addressed as “commander” while Lieutenant Spock, third-in-command of a ship of the line, stands there wondering what the deal is with this show he’s wandered into.
I think we were all there- we knew Tarka would do the batshit crazy thing to get us to our season finale next week, but kudos to the writers for how it was done. While it was predictable, it was predictable in a good sense that we all want our characters to succeed, not in the bad sense of “just get on with it already”. And it makes absolute perfect sense that 10C has multiple miners, so we got another trope (actually a couple times this episide) of the genius not seeing something coming.
As far as Discovery’s crew, I actually always thought that there WASNT enough rank on the TOS/TNG enterprises. It’s a ship with 1,000+ crew and they all seem to be overseen by about six command level people (Picard, Riker, Data, LaForge and Crusher and Troi). That being said, I also figure that Discovery is an “exception to the rule” ship with Vance realizing that keeping the 23rd century-ites together is better than splitting them up, so it makes sense that like 1701-A that despite the ranks they don’t get split up. I know modern navies would never operate this way, but as been pointed out this isn’t the navy
@20/Mike Kelm: Next week isn’t the finale. The season is 13 episodes, not 10. Discovery and Picard will be overlapping for the first three weeks of March.
I did read that with season 5 of Discovery, that the episode count will be reduced to 10.
My take on the ignoring of Tarka and focus on Book by the Discovery crew (and seemingly the higher echelons of Star Fleet and the Federation) was that, in the reality of the show, Book played the role of front man in the debate episode, while Tarka was more of the technical genius. Thus, from the outside, Book appears to be the main driver, pulling along the technical genius to take advantage of his knowledge and weapons design expertise. The audience sees into the conversations that the rest of the cast can’t, so we don’t make that same mistake, but without those glimpses into the dynamic of the pair’s relationship, it would be easy to confuse who was the focal person.
@23/DavidK44: That’s a good point. But it still leaves Book himself, who did know how obsessed Tarka was and who should’ve noticed how close Tarka was to the console. He, at least, should’ve been on his guard.
DavidK44: the problem there is Vance. Tarka was his guy and he should have known what a force he could be and made sure everyone was on their guard regarding him.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@25/krad: “the problem there is Vance. Tarka was his guy and he should have known what a force he could be and made sure everyone was on their guard regarding him.”
I’d say just the opposite. If Vance believed Tarka was untrustworthy or dangerous (at least, more so than Book), he never would’ve put Tarka in such an important position to begin with.
Am I the only one who is thinking it will turn out that Tarka himself is a fugitive from Species10C? That he is motivated by an escape plan, perhaps? Or did I miss something that would preclude that idea?
btw krad, I love your alliterative phrase “tired Trek trope.” It deserves its very own recognition among the terms on TV tropes.
srEDIT – I haven’t had that particular impression of Tarka, but I do think there’s a lot more to him than we’re being shown. Since I can’t find any clues in the script, I’m chalking it up to the excellent acting. But also, the fact that the script has kept him around this long may be a clue in itself. One thought that has wandered into my brain is “Lorca Revived,” though I don’t think that would literally be true. I also don’t think he’s from the Mirror Universe, because of the way he parried Booker’s question about it. But I do think there’s something there and it’s not all about his desperately trying to get back to his mysterious “friend.”
@26 – Vance should’ve seen through Tarka at the summit where he was the sole voice of power to aggression.
@27 & 28 – I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last we see of Tarka outside of a brig scene. There’s no conceivable reason he should have continued participation in matters unless they need a mad genius for all out war.
@29/Transceiver: “Vance should’ve seen through Tarka at the summit where he was the sole voice of power to aggression.”
Hardly the sole voice, since Book took his side as well, and when the vote was cast, I think around 1/3 of the delegates voted for Tarka’s plan. And having advocates argue both sides of an issue before a vote is how democracy is supposed to work.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last we see if Tarka outside of a brig scene.”
They wouldn’t build him up as such a major character and then just drop him with four episodes to go. He’ll probably have a redemption arc and play a role in making peace with 10-C.
@31 – Book is just a man with a ship and an opinion – Tarka is a man with an illegal and highly dangerous weapon schematic who just needs a driver, and who gives a rousing pro-violence speech. Book may support Tarka’s aggression, but it was Tarka’s idea, and Tarka alone is supplying tangible power toward aggression in the form of a weapon and a plan. Aggression was so completely unviable without his input that it wouldn’t have been on the table if he hadn’t put it there.
There’s no sensible narrative reason 10-C would have a specific interest in Tarka. It’s also inconceivable that Star Fleet would let him anywhere near the rest of this mission, even if they need help reverse engineering a wormhole to access 10-c space. He shouldn’t have the continued intel clearance that would be required for him to redeem himself, and they shouldn’t listen to him even if he does. There are other scientists and he has proven that he is nothing but a liability due to his personal interest in securing an unlimited power source, which is questionable as hell to begin with. Despite that – I think you’re absolutely right – Discovery’s writing team is likely to continue to include him. I’m probably looking at the narrative possibilities too logically and missing the obvious cue that he’s been built up for a reason. I just doubt it’ll make much rational sense.
@32/Transceiver: “Book is just a man with a ship and an opinion – Tarka is a man with an illegal and highly dangerous weapon schematic who just needs a driver, and who gives a rousing pro-violence speech.”
Book and Tarka had the same opinion that they both advocated with equal passion. They both went rogue together. There’s no reason for anyone who hasn’t seen Tarka’s private conversations with Book to assume that Tarka was any more likely than Book to act rashly. And again, if Vance were as quick to see the worst in Tarka as you and Keith are suggesting, he never would’ve trusted Tarka with this responsibility to begin with. I still think DavidK44 had it right in comment 23.
“There’s no sensible narrative reason 10-C would have a specific interest in Tarka.”
I never said they would. What I said is that there’s no sensible narrative reason to set up such a central character and then just abandon him 3/4 of the way through the story arc. They must have some further use planned for Tarka; I offered no speculation as to what it will be. You’re making arguments based on in-universe logic, but what happens in-universe is shaped by the needs and logic of the narrative, not the other way around. Fiction often maneuvers characters into unlikely roles for the sake of the story.
My mad theory is that Tarka is actually just in love with an alternate universe version of himself. Surely he’s got the ego for it.
The Discovery was a science ship in the 23rd century but has no business being one in the 32nd. The scientists’ knowledge is almost a millennium out of date; if a group of 10th century scientists somehow were transported to our time would we keep them together to run a NASA mission? Stamets is the only one who has the unique knowledge, and more importantly, the ability to operate the spore drive, who should still be on board. The rest would need many years of education to catch up with advanced technology.
Vance and Burnham should have both been cashiered after that catastrophic failure. The demilitarization of Starfleet has been a disaster. Every season of Discovery has had military conflicts and they have only succeeded due to the deus ex machina plot devices created by the show runners. Where is James T. Kirk when you need him?
@35/Charles Oppenheimer: “The demilitarization of Starfleet has been a disaster.”
Say what? How is Starfleet any less military here than in any other show? And how can you say it’s been “demilitarized” when it’s taken place in two different centuries? You want a demilitarized Starfleet, look at the first couple of seasons of TNG.
On one hand, Tarka got under-estimated by Vance and the crew because only Book knew his true motivation was trying to get the power source and not actually neutralize the threat. Which makes it frustrating in that Book wasn’t more careful to lock Tarka out of the weapons console. But maybe a guy who stole the spore drive and added secret security measures to the ship, he probably added back-door command controls in case Book turns on him.
Either Tarka is a super-genius that Vance accepts was able to steal a secret drive on a whim or he should have considered this a planned heist and Tarka had other motives.
Did Tarka and Book argue about how much is smidge before pouring the crystals? LOL.
@37/Mike: “Either Tarka is a super-genius that Vance accepts was able to steal a secret drive on a whim or he should have considered this a planned heist and Tarka had other motives.”
Neither. Before the vote, Tarka proposed his attack plan openly; it was only after the vote went against him that he decided “We are therefore going anyway.” And Tarka developed the next-generation spore drive prototype along with Aurellio, so of course he already had access to it. So it was neither a whim nor a preplanned heist. It was a plan he openly tried to carry out through legitimate channels, then chose to carry out illegitimately using the resources he already had legitimate access to.
Considering the speed at which Tarka gathered his bomb components, got the defence mechanism installed on the ship as well as the spore drive, I’d say that he didn’t change his mind after his plan was shot down. He obviously had everything ready to go just in case the Federation decided that they couldn’t do two things at once.
The thing that really stuck out for me was during the confrontation at the DMA, everyone was Book this and Book that, barely mentioning Tarka at all. And at the end, when Book said he’s stand down, everyone just assumed that Tarka, the mastermind behind the “Let’s drop a bomb into the DMA” plan would simply go along with it.
We get all sorts of talk about how Discovery has to stop the bomb from being delivered. Nahn is on board to make sure that Burnham isn’t distracted from her relationship with Book and what happens? Everyone is distracted from Book, including Nahn, the bomb is delivered and once back at Starfleet HQ, it’s like nothing happened. Nobody is called out for letting the bomb be delivered into the DMA. Nahn isn’t facing any sort of hearing for failing in her mission. The net result is exactly the same as if Discovery never went out on the mission at all. The only difference is that Burnham and Book made up.
A couple of things. Why is the weapon schematic illegal? Dangerous, yes, but any weapon should be dangerous. Because it uses isolynium? I don’t recall it being illegal, just very volatile and difficult to get. As I recall, there were four legitimate sources for it that Star Fleet was monitoring when Book and Tarka took off. Even if isolyniuim is illegal, someone in research and development could certainly legally develop such a device. Indeed, at the conference and vote while people are shocked at the possibility of using such a weapon, no one calls for security to arrest Tarka for having the schematics.
Your other point that only Tarka and Book are presenting a violent solution and if they hadn’t it would never be brought up is, I think, a bit naive. Someone would surely have done so. And, in fact, it should be brought up. As Krad noted in his review of “… But to Connect” it was ridiculous that the whole vote went for only one option. They should have had peaceful contact as the first attempt, but a violent solution should have been proposed and approved for development in case peaceful contact didn’t work. Both should have been planned for, developed, and ready for action.
@40/costumer: Insurrection established that isolytic weapons were banned under the Second Khitomer Accord due to their damage to subspace. The Federation apparently still honors that ban 800 years later, but Tarka proposed making an exception under the circumstances.
Isolytic weapons were banned in the Second Khitomer Accords. Mentioned first in Insurrection and later by President Rillak a few weeks ago in …But To Connect.
@41 and $42
Ah, I had forgotten that. Though still, just having the schematics would not, itself, be illegal. Certainly no one, right up to the president, suggested Tarka be elected.
@43/costumer: I figure Transceiver probably meant to say “a schematic for an illegal and highly dangerous weapon,” not that the schematic itself was illegal. But you’re right — Tarka made the proposal quite openly that the isolytic weapons ban should be suspended for the emergency, and he had a fair amount of support. After all, Tarka was a respected, eminent scientist working on behalf of Starfleet Command and the Federation Council, while Book is a courier and smuggler with an iffy reputation at best. We viewers have more reason to trust Book than Tarka, and so does Discovery‘s crew, but other observers like Vance would probably be more inclined to trust Tarka than Book.
@3 – “But you know what I’m tired of seeing in sci-fi? Holograms that constantly glitch to remind us that they’re holograms. There’s no good in-story reason for their image quality to be so damn bad. 24th-century holograms could maintain perfect image quality indefinitely, but 32nd-century ones are so bad that they fritz out every ten seconds? It’s dumb. And it insults our intelligence.”
Don’t forget that they’re still susceptible to a particular pattern of eyelash fluttering that they were nearly 1,000 years before.
I think having the crew fail as they did in this episode to be a good thing for dramatic purposes, but the writers dropped the ball by ignoring the failure. We needed a Vance yelling at them scene.
Count me among those who are growing really weary of the Book/Burnham thing. As krad noted @11, there’s no way in hell Burnham should be captaining this ship. She claims to recognize the right of Nhan to relieve her of duty whenever she wants, yet during their shouting match that Saru interrupted, she screams she’s not going to let her. As is always the case with Burnham, she is so very acommodating in that little singsong voice of hers when everyone is playing nice, but as soon as someone in authority wants to assert it in a way she finds displeasing, she throws a tantrum. As for Book, he talks a good game but when the chips are down he’s really just a chauffeur for the madman. I didn’t really know why I waited three weeks to watch this until now. I guess I will need to find out what happens, but I’m really not looking forward to it. This whole love conquers all thing with Book and Burnham is just maddening. As Nhan said, billions of lives are at stake, but they keep letting those two miscreants off the hook because Book and Burnham have such a deep connection. And Golly Gee, she knows Book. I mean, not only does she know him, she KNOWS him.. We get it already. Utter dreck.