Star Trek: Discovery, Season 1, Episode 5: Choose Your Pain
Not going to be super-long. I think this is the weakest episode yet, although I wouldn't call it strictly bad. Mostly my feel is that there seems to be kind of a disjoint on the Klingon side of things, where we last see Voq and L'Rell they were stranded and abandoned by the rest of their people, but here we see L'Rell alone and in command of a prison ship. Unless I miss something beyond the brief time gap between episode 4 and 5, it's a bit jarring.
We also tie up the little plotline with the Tardigrade. Basically, the screaming the critter made last episode is real pain, and this episode we have to contend with Burnham trying to explain that they're killing the tardigrade with so many leaps, and acting captain Saru, driven by both a distrust of Burnham and a desire to not lose another captain, overtaxes the tardigrade so much that it goes into a state of hibernation. Burnham and Stamets manages to save the tardigrade, Saru learns a lesson in humility that doesn't portray him as an arrogant schmuck, Saru and Burnham make up, Ripper gets set free and Stamets gets some creepy reflection thing going on because he injects himself with space microbe DNA.
Meanwhile Lorca is imprisoned in a Klingon ship and tortured with light straight into his photosensitive eyes. He recruits the captured Starfleet dude Ash Tyler, beats up charming conman Harry Mudd (who I felt was an odd distraction, but apparently he's some kind of canon character as well?), vaporizes some klingons, Ash beats up L'Rell (apparently they bang off-screen or some shit?) and they escape. We learn more about Lorca this time around, about how he personally blew up his previous ship to prevent them from being tortured. So that's the big fuck-up in Lorca's life that probably made him more than a little accommodating for Burnham's own fuck-up. Lorca's an interesting character. I do like him.
Overall, it's an okay watch, but it does feel a bit off compared to the previous few episodes.
No comments:
Post a Comment