Star Trek: Discovery – 'The Vulcan Hello' and 'Battle at the Binary Stars'

So shiny, like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck.

With Game of Thrones between seasons and slightly stalled on Sense8 and The 100, Hanna and I have picked up the new Star Trek series, Discovery, as our 'thing we watch together.' The first two episodes hit Netflix UK yesterday.

'The Vulcan Hello' introduces us to the crew of the USS Shenzhou, including Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), first officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and science officer Saru (Doug Jones). Georgiou is pushing Burnham to try for her own command, after mentoring her for many years, although from the beginning it is clear that, although highly confident of her own abilities, Burnham is not a born leader, lacking people skills and struggling to trust the abilities of others.

T'Kuvma, the One and Only. "Can you dig it!?"

Tasked with investigating a damaged subspace relay, the Shenzhou discovers an electromagnetic anomaly concealing an ancient satellite. Investigating, Burnham is attacked by a Klingon warrior, who is accidentally killed as she tries to escape. The audience see that this was 'the Torchbearer', a warrior tasked with activating this ancient beacon in pursuit of a prophecy of Kahless the Unforgettable. Shenzhou faces off against a massive Klingon ship which decloaks(1) in their faces, commanded by T'Kuvma, a zealot intent on reuniting the factionalised Klingon Empire by means of a war with the Federation. The beacon lights up like a star.

We learn that Burnham was raised on Vulcan as the ward of future Spock-Dad Sarek, and attended the Vulcan School of Computers Being Dicks to You All Day, where she learned about Klingons and their face-punching ways. She consults with Sarek, who tells her that the only way to normalise relations with the Klingons is to go in swinging; shoot early and shoot often. Georgiou rejects the recommendation to issue 'The Vulcan Hello'(2), as "Starfleet doesn't shoot first," and so Burnham gives her the old nerve pinch and orders the crew to fire on the Klingons, only for Georgiou to stop her at the last minute, seconds before twenty-four Klingon ships arrive, one for each of the great houses of the Empire.

"Bad news, Captain. You're only listed as a special guest star."

Burnham is sent to the brig, while Georgiou tries to talk peace. Some of the Klingon leaders swan off, angered by the presumption of a warrior of a fallen house who adopts outcasts and misfits like the albino fanatic Voq into his household, but others stay and here out the plan. Seeing the 'peace' of the Federation as a more insidious weapon than any torpedo, T'Kuvma fears the erosion of the Klingon way of life and sense of identity. His war cry is 'Remain Klingon,' and his followers(3) proclaim him Kahless reborn. As Starfleet reinforcements arrive, T'Kuvma brings the shit and it all kicks off hard.

'Battle at the Binary Stars' is pretty much what is says on the tin. A forty minute slug-fest as the Federation fleet faces off against the Klingons. It's a pretty even match, but finally with numerical and tactical advantage, Starfleet tries to press for a peaceful resolution. T'Kuvma seems to accept the Admiral's overtures, only to order a cloaked vessel to ram the Federation flagship Europa. In the shock of this attack, even as the Europa is set to self-destruct and take her destroyer with her, the Klingons renew hostilities and pound the everloving fuck out of the disheartened Starfleet.

Pew-pew-pew-pew!

Burnham, invigorated by a long-distance telepathic message from Sarek to remind her what the defining incident of her childhood was – a terror attack on the Vulcan Learning Centre where computers were dicks to her – escapes the mostly destroyed brig and returns to the bridge. Georgiou has a plan to destroy the Klingon command ship by loading torpedo warheads into a small transport craft, but Burnham tells her that would only make a martyr of T'Kuvma. To break his cause, he must be captured alive. They cripple his ship by planting a bomb on a corpse as the Klingons are gathering in their dead(4), then Georgiou and Burnham beam aboard to take T'Kuvma prisoner, because that was the sort of thing the entire senior staff used to do together back in the day. 

The plan goes tits up, because it turns out that two Starfleet officers aren't really enough to muscle an entire ship full of lethal warrior-zealots. In a failed attempt to save Georgiou, Burnham fatally shoots T'Kuvma(5), and Saru beams her back alone. T'Kuvma becomes a martyr for the cause of Klingon unity and war with the Federation, while the survivors of the Shenzhou lifepod the hell out of there(6) and Burnham goes on to face a court martial for screwing the pooch in moderately spectacular fashion, pleading guilty and being sentenced to life imprisonment. Given that she ended episode one in the brig, I expect her to be sent to supermax at the end of episode four, Rura-Penta in episode eight, and to round out the season on that Klingon ship of souls bound for eternal damnation.

So, that was Star Trek: Discovery's big opener. Although explicitly set in the Prime timeline, its look is heavily informed by the Kelvinverse reboot, from the design of the ship interiors to the fact that the Klingons' giant, ritual Macguffin is basically a weaponised lens flare. The new uniforms in particular offer a professional, military cut reminiscent of Enterprise, and while they are a good look it is hard to imagine what could happen in the next decade to give rise to the polychromatic mini dresses and bell-bottoms of the TOS era. A part of me is saddened that the ship interiors don't look more like those of the original Enterprise, but I suppose that you couldn't really keep that going for an entire series without it becoming a parody.

"How many Kingons on this ship, and more importantly, why didn't I ask that
earlier?"

The core performances are all excellent, although the dialogue is not all it could be. James Frain and Michelle Yeo wrestle with a lot of leaden exposition, with the most egregious example coming when Sarek begins his explanation of his long-range mind meld with Burnham with: "Ever since the attack on the Vulcan Education Centre, a day that changed your life forever..." Thanks for that, Sarek. I would have assumed that the bombing of a school would be something a child would take in their stride if you hadn't mentioned that.

Sonequa Martin-Green carries a lot of the weight of the series on her shoulders, and Michael Burnham is an interesting character. Raised and trained by Vulcans, she strives for logic, but is just really bad at it. Not that her logic is poor, but for all the Vulcan training in emotional detachment, she is possibly the least with-it protagonist in Starfleet history. Jim Kirk is, like, 'take a moment.' An especially good moment comes when Burnham first arrives on the Shenzhou, and it's clear that she's adapted to life on Vulcan by being even more of a snobby toolbag than a Vulcan.

"Vulcans. We're better than you."

Georgiou is an interesting character, and not just for having a Greek name while being played by a Malaysian martial artist and getting whupped in a sword fight. She represents the spirit of Starfleet, trapped in an impossible position between the advice of her senior officers. Saru – whose people evolved as a prey species and have a super-adapted sense of when the shit is about to hit the fan – wants to bug out, while Burnham wants to strike first, but the Shenzhou is the only line of defence between the Klingons and a number of colony worlds, and Starfleet doesn't kick off. Burnham admits that she couldn't stick to her guns because she won't sacrifice her crew to her ideals, although notably she doesn't consider that they are the ideals shared by everyone aboard, nor that they might choose to die for them. Perhaps as a result of that Vulcan upbringing, she's kind of an insensitive dick, but she also has some serious past trauma and apparent PTS going on.

T'Kumva is an interesting antagonist, utterly consumed by his own vision of the universe and determined to do right by his people in the light of that vision. Insular and driven, intensely pious, he will order a cloaked ship on a suicide mission to ram an enemy heavy cruiser, then have his tractor beams bring in all of the Klingon dead and prepare them all for burial in person, or he would have done if he hadn't been bombed and shot. His cause also is unique, fighting not for personal power, nor for wealth and territory, but for what he sees as the survival, not of his race, but of his culture.

It's worth noting at this point that we've got through the two-part opener and we still haven't met about 60% of the regular cast, and with nary a sniff of the titular USS Discovery. 

The goal of the series was Trek, but darker, and it's made the latter in spades. As to the former... Well, it certainly captures the diversity of the original series, but what it's lost in the name of that darker edge is the idealism that characterises TV Trek at its best. Even as the Federation became mired in the Dominion War and resorted to ever-tougher tactics, the characters in DS9 retained their Federation ideals. Whole episodes explored the complexity of making hard, moral choices and doing bad things to protect that which was good. By contrast, Michael Burnham is reckless and unapologetic during the episode, and despondent after, and despondent not because she had to do unpalatable things to protect her ship, but because despite doing those things, she ultimately failed. If future episodes of Discovery can inject some of that complexity, however, while maintaining the kind of pace we had here – especially in 'Battle at the Binary Stars' – and just get some of those awkward edges off the dialogue, we'll have something fine to watch for the next few months.

(1) If you're thinking that this is at least a decade early for Starfleet to have records of Klingon cloaking technology, or even for the Klingons to have acquired said tech from the Romulans, I can only assume that the writers don't give a damn.

(2) Which I struggle not to interpret as a euphemism for a headbutt.

(3) Whom I may opt to call Remoaners.

(4) I'm pretty sure that this means the "good guys'" plan was to bomb first responders, which is pretty dark.

(5) The weird thing is, I'm sure they were using stun to start with, which means that Georgiou was killed in the second it took Burnham to switch settings.
(6) Setting a new speed record for writing off a starship in-series.