- SPOILERS AHEAD … AND SOME GOOD OLD-FASHIONED “IS IT GOOD OR IS IT BAD?” STAR TREK-ING …
Damn those multi-phasic stasis shields!
Just when you’re zipping through the Alpha Quadrant at speed, warp speed, hot on the heels of Spock’s (Ethan Peck) warp signature – thanks to Number 1 (Rebecca Romjin) who is plucky, smart and resourceful and happy to play fast-and-loose with Starfleet protocols to help a friend, a multi-phasic stasis shield stops you dead in your figurative tracks.
Not only that but it begins to wreak havoc with your comms systems, leading to a Tower of Babel situation where an on the fritz universal translator starts randomly assigning each person a different language.
It makes for one hell of an hilariously chaotic scene, through which the entire Bridge team somehow manages to make headway, thanks to a decidedly-unwell Saru (Doug Jones) who speaks 94 languages and brings up the backup bridge translator.
Which is fine if you’re ON the bridge but no so fine elsewhere where a variety of Earth and alien languages are competing for air time and making responding to whatever the hell has Discovery in its grasp a wholly-complicated undertaking.
Which brings us to – just what the hell is it?
In the finest of Star Trek storytelling traditions, where what appears to be the case at the start of the episode is not the case by the middle or end of it, with a neat teachable moment buried within, we witness Discovery come to grips with the fact that the 100,000-year-old 565 kilometre sphere composed of organic and non-organic matter that has it in their grasp is actually just trying to say “Hi there”.
Actually, considerably more than that, since it turns out it’s dying and wants to impart all its knowledge to Discovery before it shuffles off its very large, very old and really combustible mortal coil.
The thing is, what looks like an aggressive act at first soon turns out to be a desperate one borne of fatalistic exigency, and Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and an ever more ailing Saru (more on that later) are able to convince Pike (Anson Mount) and the bridge team that the sphere just wants to be friends.
Or at least have one big, final chat, if only it can find a way to make itself understood.
So while Pike wants to strike back and save the ship, because the computer virus introduced by the sphere is causing mass havoc across the ship, degrading and corrupting systems right across Discovery, Saru and Burnham argue for a digital olive leaf, a lowering of the shields to get the conversation started in earnest.
Thankfully, they’re right – phew! Would’ve been a tad messy if Saru’s intuition and his perception of ultraviolet light hadn’t been wrong – and the sphere gets all its knowledge safely transfered (to the, no doubt, eventual delight of Federation scientists) just before it goes rather spectacularly kaboom! (Fortunately, it shields the Discovery, in one of its final acts, from harm, so win-win all around; well, unless you’re the sphere, in which, win-lose since death isn’t much of “victory is mine!” moment now is it?).
The beauty of this “A” story is that its rich, engaging and heartfelt and manifestly draws on a long Star Trek tradition of seeing people/creatures/giant spheres for what they are and not what we perceive them to be; it’s an important message and it’s anchored many an episode in the franchise, as well as infusing its entire ethos.
It also gives Discovery the chance to explore some other characters with the kind of intimacy and emotional evocation that you might not expect in an episode of this kind.
Take the Saru arc, where the ailing Kelpian has a terminal condition known as vahar’ai triggered by the presence of the sphere.
Despite spiritedly working to save the ship, in the end Saru, helped by his close friend Michael, has to bow to his inevitable fate, something he accepts with painful and regretful grace but which Michael struggles to come to terms with.
As he lays dying – SPOILER ALERT! He doesn’t, and as his inflamed ganglia fall out, causing him to lose the fear that has plagued him entire life – we find out he is a refugee from his home planet of Kaminar, that his pre-warp people (yep, Saru has made quite the journey to get to where he is) are fed upon by the more technologically-advanced Ba’ul, a fact that has made life for the Kelpians one of subservience and fear, inhibiting them from making any great strides towards civilisational progress.
What makes the scene with Saru and Michael so touching, confessions aside, is the emotional intimacy of their friendship and how close the two are; you know they are good friends but it’s only when Saru is at the supposed end of his life, that the full vibrancy and truth of their connection is really given room to breathe.
Full marks, especially to Martin-Green whose emotional depth as an actor gifts her scenes with the kind of evocative energy that makes you feel as if the world is ending, which if you think back to when you’ve lost someone, is exactly what it feels like.
The other main storyline concerns Lt Stamets (Anthony Rapp), the gorgeously-eager, endlessly-sweet Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and the USS Hiawatha’s Jett Reno (Tig Notaro who is fine, wisecrackingly-combative form.
If you recall, and how could have forgotten, it was but a week ago, when last we saw Tilly, she was infested with a fungal creature straight from the mycelium network, only freed by Stamets quick thinking.
In the middle of all the sphere-caused chaos – gotta sat sphere, this whole speed dating and sharing of info thing needs some work done on it; oh wait, as you were, you’re dead so non-issue – the sentient creature leapt onto Tilly’s arms, then swallowed her (goop alert!) and then disappeared her!
Yup, by the end of “An Obol For Charon” – the title refers to Greek mythology where Charon is the ferryman of Hades who requires the payment of an “obol” or coin, to get people across the rivers Styx and Acheron which separate the worlds of the living and the dead – Tilly has, once again, gone through the wringer, rendering her an honorary “Red Shirt”.
Obviously, a character that rich and compelling, who is a catalyst for emotional growth for so many around her, not least of all Stamets and Burnham, isn’t going anywhere permanently, but right now she’s somewhere not good – my money is that she’s in the mycelium network itself, from which the creature emerged and whose civilisation has been, to Stamets’ apologetic horror, been ripped to shreds by the presence of the Starfleet crew – and you can only imagine what lies in wait for a woman who admits to Stamets that she struggled to relate to people when she was teenager.
“An Obol for Charon” was brilliantly-good TV – packed full of quintessential Star Trek values and storytelling, rich, emotionally-evocative character moments, mystery (why is Spock the subject of so much official secrecy and who is the Red Angel really?) and a propulsive push for season’s arc.
As storytelling goes, it doesn’t get much better, making the next episode, “Saints of Imperfection”, one to really look forward to …