This week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery is a fine example of the KISS method of storytelling:
Keep It Simple, Star . . . Trek — KISST?
KISS-TUH?
Is that — what is that?
This is a review of “Anomaly,” the second episode of Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth
season.
If you’re watching this before you’ve seen the episode, don’t worry: this review
is spoiler-free.
It is possible.
You know, ever since Star Trek: Discovery debuted in the long-gone epoch of four years
ago, its detractors have been saying that one of the things they don’t like about
it is that it just doesn’t “feel” like Star Trek, it’s Star Trek In Name Only — as
though there is some definable essence of Star Trek that all previous versions of the
show possessed but which Discovery lacks.
Well, I do not subscribe to that theory — either of those theories, really — I don’t think
Discovery is “Star Trek In Name Only,” and I don’t have a particularly narrow concept
of what Star Trek is or ought to be — but to anyone that does, to anyone who has dismissed
Discovery as not being Star Trek, I would love to show them this episode, “Anomaly,”
and ask them when it’s over, “If that’s not Star Trek, then what the hell is it?”
I’m only being rhetorical — I wouldn’t love to show them this episode and then talk
to them about it — I’m not invested in whether or not other people like the show
or not, I don’t give a shit — my point is simply this: the episode of Discovery I
just watched felt as much like an episode of Star Trek as any episode the show has yet
produced.
We’re still only two episodes into this season, so who knows where we’ll go from
here in terms of quality, but if there are a few more episodes this season as good as
this one, this is gonna be a hell of a season.
There are a few reasons why “Anomaly” works as well as it does, but it mostly boils
down to focus.
There’s one story here, one plot, one problem that everything in the episode either centers
on or branches off of.
I’m not saying that episodes with multiple plots are bad — they’re not, lots of great
episodes of Star Trek and many other shows are structured with A plots and B plots and
sometimes even C plots — but when you can put together an episode with the focus and
the unity of “Anomaly,” you’ve really got something special.
As you might have guessed from the title of the episode, the problem the crew faces this
time has to do with the gigantic spatial anomaly they discovered in the previous episode.
We saw the kind of destruction that anomaly is capable of causing — absolutely catastrophic
— and while the characters who were most directly affected by the destruction we saw
last time are struggling to come to terms with what has happened, Starfleet decides
that Discovery needs to find this anomaly, study it, figure out what it is, where it’s
going, and how to stop it — if that’s even possible.
So, that’s the problem of the episode, or rather the constellation of problems: Where
is the anomaly?
Because it’s gravitational, which means they can’t just look out the window and
see it.
They can pick it up on sensors, but they need to know where to look.
What is the anomaly?
The crew develops some theories that sound good and yield some promising early results,
but then things start going sideways, and the problem they were trying to solve creates
another problem, and then another, and so it goes.
What’s beautiful about the way this episode is plotted is how every new complication feels
like it arises naturally from the situation.
It doesn’t feel contrived, it feels like characters scrambling to adapt and deal with
a fluid situation.
And they deal with it by using their brains, working together, trusting each other, and
trusting science — or, the wacky made-up Star Trek version of science, but ya know,
it’s science to them!
I also admire the way the story finds space for some really nice character moments, without
it feeling like it’s finding space for them.
Sometimes when you get a conversation between characters in the middle of an action-driven
plot, it feels a bit like, “Okay, time to pause for a character beat,” but not in
this episode.
It feels natural.
And it feels smart and true to these characters — the younger, less experienced characters
react a little more strongly to traumatic events; there’s a lovely thread in here
between Tilly and Adira, where Adira is now the bright young newcomer and Tilly is somewhat
more senior now than she was when the show started, and realizes that Adira is kinda
looking up to her; there’s another scene with Adira, Culber, and Gray, where they’re
talking about a plan to reincorporate Gray — who, you’ll remember from last season,
is basically a ghost who only Adira can see and hear — and Adira admits that they feel
bad for getting excited about the prospect of Gray getting a new body, because there
are so much bigger and more dire things to deal with right now — “Why should I be
happy when everything is so terrible?”
Who hasn’t felt that way from time to time, possibly recently?
And there are some other really smart, really well done interactions between characters
in this episode that I don’t want to get into because we might cross over into spoiler
territory, so let me just say, overall, really solid character work in this episode, which
plays even better because it feels like it emerges organically from the plot.
None of this is extraordinary, by the way.
Ideally, every episode of every TV show would work like this, would feel natural and effortless.
I’m not saying this is an all-time classic episode in the history of the franchise.
I am saying this is a really, really, really good episode, and what makes it really good
is that it keeps things simple, it stays focused, and it nails the fundamentals — which is
still very challenging, and a joy to behold when it’s done right.
In my review of the previous episode I said that the beginning, where we’re just kinda
thrown in to our characters on a mission without a captain’s log or anything else to set
it up or orient us, felt like the start of a Star Trek movie.
And some of you in the comments agreed, and said it reminded you of the beginning of Star
Trek Into Darkness, or Star Trek Beyond.
Those both fit, but I wasn’t thinking of a specific scene from a specific movie, more
just the overall vibe that it had.
But this episode, “Anomaly,” reminded me very specifically of one Star Trek movie
in particular, and that movie is Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Part of that, I think, is that this season picks up a few months after the end of the
previous season, which Discovery has never done before — every previous season picked
up immediately following the events of the one that preceded it.
I mentioned that a little bit in my last review, how things are just a little different now
— characters have been promoted, life on the ship is mostly the same but not exactly
the same — but it really came home to me in this episode, that sense of having been
away and now coming back.
And, the literal embodiment of that feeling is Saru, who really feels like Spock in this
episode — not in terms of his character, because Saru is a different character from
Spock in many ways, but in terms of his role in the show, and also in terms of how the
other characters respond to him.
Think of Spock in Star Trek: The Motion Picture — he’s left the Enterprise, returned to
his home planet, but then in the moment of crisis he comes back, and everyone’s glad
to see him.
That’s Saru in this episode.
Also, the threat of the anomaly feels similar to the threat of V’Ger in The Motion Picture
— it’s this big, scary thing our heroes know nothing about, and at the start of the
episode they are preparing to journey into the unknown to confront this mysterious, extremely
dangerous threat, so they can learn about it and try to figure out some way of dealing
with it.
This is all good stuff — the episode evokes Star Trek: The Motion Picture without ever
directly referencing it or feeling like it’s just retreading the same ground.
It’s more like the writers took The Motion Picture as a guidebook, a very general template
for the plot and, somewhat, for the emotional vibe of the episode, but then did their own
thing with it.
And, like I’ve said several times already, it works really well.
So, those are my thoughts about this episode.
Let me know what you thought, but remember: my review was spoiler free, so if you’re
going to include spoilers in your comments, please include a spoiler warning so that folks
who haven’t seen the episode yet can avoid spoilers if they want.
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Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week for a review of episode three!