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And we’re back with “Chapter 2” of Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 for a final six episodes, picking up right where things left off before the winter hiatus as the crew found themselves lost in space after a spore jump went awry. What unfolds over the next not-quite-an-hour is a solid enough Star Trek adventure -- and the start of a new arc for Burnham, Lorca and the rest -- but surprisingly unsatisfying considering the high stakes, extreme setting, and pedigree director at the helm.
That director is none other than Jonathan Frakes, Will Riker himself from The Next Generation. During his time on that show Frakes began directing some episodes in addition to acting in them, churning out several of TNG’s greatest hours before going on to direct two of the feature films (including the beloved Star Trek: First Contact) and, in the years since, scores of episodes for other television series. All that said, it was perhaps a fait accompli that Frakes would take the center seat on Discovery eventually. (Read our interview with Jonathan Frakes here, where he talks jumping back into Star Trek, the Tarantino Trek, and much more.)
And while Frakes acquits himself well in the technical department, adapting easily to the quantum-signature pizazz that he clearly pushed against when directing his more modestly budgeted and scheduled TNG episodes, “Despite Yourself” suffers some from certain dramatic reveals which, for most observant viewers, play as anticlimactic; namely that yes, the Discovery is stranded in the Mirror Universe, and yes, Lt. Tyler is almost certainly the Klingon Voq in disguise.
Which isn’t to say that these elements don’t work at times. Shazad Latif as Tyler is an increasingly tormented soul, but he never pushes too far with the character’s suffering to make him overly melodramatic. And when Tyler takes a shocking, vicious turn here, abruptly snapping the neck of Wilson Cruz’s Hugh Culber and killing him, our pity for the character begins to be tempered with anger. He knew he was in a bad place, and yet he let that happen. And he’s not fessing up about any of it, even to Burnham.
The scenes between Tyler and Mary Chieffo’s L'Rell are also troubling (“Sweet Tyler…”) and strangely passionate, while also complicated by the new wrinkle that apparently L’Rell and Voq’s plan to awaken the latter within Tyler isn’t working.
As for the death of Hugh, this is Star Trek, where back in the day a main character could die and be resurrected as soon as we got back from the commercial break, so who knows what’s really happened there. Certainly killing off one half of the first gay couple on Star Trek TV could be perceived as a misstep, a tone deaf slap in the face to fans, but the show’s producers promise that the love story between Stamets and Culber is far from over. And hey, this is the Mirror Universe now…
Speaking of which, we get a lot of the usual Mirror Universe stuff we’ve seen in so many Star Trek episodes that have come before -- characters whose alternate selves are weird reflections of them, funny costumes and posturing, dead people returned from the grave, and so on. Some of these bits work here, even if they’re kind of tired when compared to Discovery’s usual standard of pushing past Trek tradition. Mary Wiseman in particular is a lot of fun, as usual, having to play dress up as the new captain of the Mirror Discovery. “Captain Killy!”
But the episode gets very workmanlike as it breaks down the ins and outs of the crew trying to disguise themselves as the evil versions of themselves, trick other ships’ crews into buying their act, etc. Sweet turbolift hand-to-hand battle notwithstanding, by the end of the episode it feels as though our characters -- aside from poor Hugh -- are at basically the same place they were at the start. Not to mention where we’ve been too often before on Star Trek in general.
Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
- So the Mirror Lorca was captain of the Buran but never made it to the Mirror Discovery, eh?
- It continues to be interesting to see how much this show looks back to Star Trek: Enterprise as much as it does forward to Classic Trek. The Defiant seen on a viewscreen here originated on The Original Series, but it actually got all its Mirror Universe play decades later on Enterprise.
- Sam Vartholomeos returns, briefly, as Danby Connor, Burnham’s old ops officer who found himself on the wrong side of a bulkhead in the series premiere. His Mirror self doesn’t last very long in this episode either, and it’s funny to look back at the show’s pre-release press where he was sort of treated as a main or recurring castmember.
- “Hold your horses!”
- Jason Isaacs -- and Captain Lorca! -- break out the Scottish accent. A tribute to Scotty? Gotta be.
- Of course, several episodes back Stamets did predict that Tilly would be a captain.
- Man, multiple agony booths!