Star Trek: Discovery - 'Choose Your Pain'

"Aways worked better when we used Gelflings."

Discovery has been kicking Klingon butt for a while now, but there are two problems: First, Starfleet wants Lorca to back off until they can get more spore drives online, which in turn means finding more tardigrades. They are worried that the Klingons will recognise Discovery’s importance and target it. Second, Burnham has noticed – as the viewers did last week – that Ripper does not like being the navigator; it hurts, and seems to be having a deleterious effect on the tardigrade’s health.

The latter problem is pushed into the background when the former results in Lorca’s capture by L’Rell. Thrown into a cell with civilian prisoner and TOS alumnus Harcourt Fenton ‘Harry’ Mudd, and Starfleet POW Ash Tyler, Lorca butts heads with the anti-Federation entrepreneur. Tyler, meanwhile, admits he has only survived so long because L’Rell has ‘taken a liking’ to him, which is creepy. Lorca determines that Mudd is spying on the Starfleet prisoners in exchange for not being beaten up so much, as well as allowing others to take his beatings when the Klingons ask him to ‘choose your pain.’

Saru tries to be a man of action, overriding concerns for the tardigrade’s wellbeing and insisting that they need the spore drive, which results in Ripper entering a defensive state of cryptobiosis. Against the advice of medical officer Hugh Culbert – later revealed as Stamets’ boyfriend – he insists that Stamets rouse the tardigrade ready for their escape.

Lorca and Tyler break out of their cell with almost laughable ease, but refuse to take Mudd with them because... Well, it’s about 50:50 because Mudd is a dick and because Lorca is an opposed kind of dick. L’Rell tries to stop them and gets knocked down by Tyler, then blasted in the face by Lorca, which looks like it’s going to leave a mark. The two officers steal a raider and flee, and Saru makes up for his misguided decisiveness by using his real strengths to identify that the lead raider in an approaching group is carrying the captain. The Discovery then nopes the hell out of Klingon space thanks to Stamets using illegal gene therapy to make himself into a part-tardigrade mushroom Khan.

"When people learn you sold us out, your name will be... Oh, wait."

Burnham and Tilly release Ripper into the universe with Saru’s blessing, and Stamets’ reflection starts to lag behind him in a most alarming fashion.

This has proven a divisive episode, both for Lorca’s cold-blooded abandonment of Mudd, and for Saru’s treatment of the tardigrade. The latter was owned as a mistake, however, while the former may yet come back to bite Lorca, and not just inasmuch as it would have been handy to have someone to help carry Tyler, who was on the point of collapse despite having the strength to punch out a Klingon. I think – I hope – that in keeping with Star Trek’s traditional worldview, abandoning someone to torture will prove to have been an error, however much of a pill-pushing, borderline people-trafficking douchebag Mudd might be. Much has also been made of whether characters in Star Trek ought to describe something as ‘fucking cool,’ but that’s more a matter of taste(1).

There has also been some speculation that Tyler might be a spy, given the ‘not a Klingon’ treatment seen in ‘Trouble With Tribbles’, given his good condition, the ease of their escape, and L’Rell’s promise to Voq that he would learn much from the Matriarchs of Clan Mok’ai, but at the cost of everything, which is what losing his Klingon-ness would be to a zealot of House T’Kuvma. It might explain L’Rell’s attachment, but there are plenty of gaps in the theory as well, not least that any plan would have had to include Lorca fortuitously not hitting her square on with the disruptor.

Characterised by some as too far from Star Trek, honestly it’s fairly equivalent to some of Deep Space Nine’s bleaker episodes, particularly ‘In the Pale Moonlight’. If Lorca looks like someone who is never going to learn the error of his ways, then everyone else is more clearly aware of their sins.

(1) I’m against it, simply because it makes me wonder why people didn’t swear at some of the shit they’ve seen during the run of the other shows.