The Discovery and Book's ship play cat-and-mouse inside the Dark Matter Anomaly, Burnham trying to prevent Book from destroying it with Tarka's weapon. Aboard Discovery is Nhan, assigned to a supervisory role ito make sure that Burnham will make the hard choice, if it comes to that.
The end point of this episode is compelling, to be sure. The Dark Matter Anomaly is destroyed, but it's a meaningless victory all around: another one has replaced it, and Tarka didn't even get his universe-hopping Macguffin for the trouble. More tantalizing to me is the notion that we don't really know how the mysterious and powerful "10-C" aliens feel about what has happened. Their reaction could be anything from "now you've kicked the hornet's nest" to "other species are so far beneath their notice that they were just replacing a burned-out light bulb." It's a great setup for next week.
But man, getting there seemed rough to me. I didn't have much attachment to the character of Nhan either way, beyond being surprised at how abruptly she was written out in season three. I'm all for bringing her back. It just doesn't work for me at all in the context of this story. We get some exposition about how a Barzan will always put the mission first, and that's why she should have authority over Burnham. But first, the many personal interactions between Nhan and Burnham throughout this episode belie that premise. Second, the last time we saw Nhan, she went off mission for personal reasons. And three, Nhan never actually does what she's brought there to do; she keeps moving the goalposts in Burnham's favor, giving her a second, third, fourth, fifth chance. And in the end, the thing Nhan was supposed to prevent "at all costs" happens anyway, when she had ample chances to prevent it.
Of course, everybody knew Tarka was going to destroy the anomaly. Everybody in the audience, anyway. Not anyone in the episode, apparently, which made them all look dumb, dumb, dumb. No one thought to consider that they're all dealing not just with Booker, but with Tarka (the man who "converted" Booker). And so Tarka is left essentially unsupervised to do exactly what he did. Yes, it's a dramatic necessity for the season-long narrative, but it felt like almost any other way of getting there would have been an improvement. Telegraph it less? Find a way to make the characters consider Tarka yet still fail?
Setting aside the gaping holes for me in the A-plot, I did at least enjoy many of the scenes on the periphery. I'm charmed by the budding relationship between Saru and T'Rina. We've seen a Vulcan in a relationship already, but we've never really seen how a Vulcan "falls in love," despite all the Star Trek there has been. That alone gets me on board here, though Saru's awkwardness about it all adds extra fun.
Presenting Rhys as pro "blow up the anomaly" was an interesting bit of character. I do like that we're long past worrying about Gene Roddenberry's "no conflict among Starfleet characters" edict, so the arguments between Rhys and Nilsson (and Bryce) were interesting to me. And I like getting to know more about all of those characters. Still, this far into Discovery, I wish we just already knew more about them. It feels to me like 50 episodes into The Next Generation, you could have gone through all the characters and anticipated how most of them might feel about a debate like this. For Rhys, his vehement emotions felt a bit out of nowhere.
I think this episode bottoms out for me at a C+, one of the weakest installments of the season. I certainly like where things seem to be going next, but this is one chapter of the novel that could have used a polish.
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