Do you have to accept no-win scenarios in order to be a good starship captain?
We’ll find out this season on Star Trek: Discovery! Maybe. We’ll see where it goes.
This is a review of “Kobayashi Maru,” the first 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.
No, no, please — you don’t have to thank me.
This promises to be an interesting season for Discovery. Last season we saw the crew arrive
in the 32nd century, and they spent that season kind of exploring their new setting,
getting their bearings, figuring out why things are the way they are, proving themselves.
When we join the crew at the start of this season, they’re a few months into their mission to rebuild
the Federation and distribute dilithium to far-flung planets isolated by the Burn.
The 32nd century is no longer a strange new world — well, not entirely, anyway. It’s now
the established status quo of the show.
The crew of Discovery seems to be settling into their new surroundings.
Many members of the bridge crew have gotten promoted — Tilly is now a lieutenant — eat shit,
Harry Kim! — Detmer, Owosekun and Rhys are now lieutenant commanders, and we get to see Rhys
in the command chair for a few minutes while Captain Burnham is off the ship.
None of that is really relevant to the story at this point, but it at least indicates that
these people’s lives aren’t as static as the characters in most other Trek series have
traditionally been — I said most. And it reminds me of a story I heard once that the producers of
the original Star Trek weren’t able to give the supporting cast raises for the third season,
so they gave their characters rank promotions instead. I’m sure they appreciated that.
Anyway, as the title of this episode suggests, “Kobayashi Maru” is ultimately about placing
Captain Burnham in a situation where she has to make a life and death decision whether or
not to risk everyone to save a few, what she does, and what that says about her.
Before we get there, we start with Burnham and Book on a mission to deliver some dilithium
to a planet full of white people — and I mean, literally white people, if you’ve seen the
episode you know what I’m talking about — who reflexively misunderstand everything they say
and end up chasing them trying to kill them. Like I said: white people. It’s an exciting scene,
it reintroduces us not only to Burnham and Book but also to the rest of the Discovery bridge crew,
who jump into action to help the captain out of the crisis. The situation feels a little too
contrived, and it’s obvious whoever came up with the character design for the alien white people
was having some fun — maybe a little too much fun — but overall, good beginning.
It reminded me of the first scene of a good Star Trek movie:
no captain’s log, no expository dialogue, we’re just thrown straight into the scene,
before very long some action kicks off, it’s good.
The balance of the episode takes place at a space station that has just been seriously damaged by a
gravitational anomaly. At first they try to fix the station, but eventually their repair mission
becomes a rescue mission, with some members of the Discovery crew trapped on the station
along with its regular crew. Also along for the ride is the new President of the Federation,
a situation which does not please Burnham at all. There’s tension between Burnham and the President
throughout the episode, because Burnham is the captain and she doesn’t like this politician
loitering on the bridge of her ship! It’s classic Star Trek captain shit.
I like seeing the crew work together to solve problems. I think this show has always worked best
when we get to see that. Most of this episode is devoted to the crew of Discovery
working together to solve problems — first, figuring out what damaged the space station and
how to fix it, then scrambling to come up with a way to get everyone safely off the station.
I also like how a lot of the technobabble in Discovery at least sounds more scientifically
plausible than that in other Trek shows. For instance, in this episode they deduce what damaged
the space station by studying a sensor image and noticing gravity lensing, which is a real thing.
It’s not that Discovery is any more realistic than any other Star Trek show,
but its technical language at least sounds a bit more tethered to reality, and I dig that.
This being the first episode of the season, there are a few clunky moments
as we run through exposition to remind us of who everyone is and what their deal is,
but that sort of thing is difficult to avoid in a show like this, and it’s handled reasonably well.
But, like I said, ultimately the episode is about Captain Burnham, the choices she makes, the risks
she takes, and the potential consequences of those risks. It looks like an important thread
as this season proceeds is going to be whether or not Burnham is suited to the captain’s chair — not
because she’s not competent — she definitely is — but because she’s too quick to take risks,
and too reluctant to cut her losses when the odds turn against her,
especially when those losses come in the form of people’s lives.
Lots of story potential there. And not just there — the episode ends with the crew confronting the
catastrophic result of the anomaly that damaged the space station, the consequences of which
have affected one of them in a very personal way. We know from previews that this season
will be about the crew dealing with that natural disaster, which I find intriguing. Star Trek has
flirted with that sort of thing in the past — the TNG episode “Force of Nature”
that dealt with a region of space where warp drive usage had damaged the fabric of space,
and the 2009 Star Trek film and the first season of Star Trek: Picard, both of which referenced
the destruction of the Romulan sun — but we’ve never seen a Trek show or movie that
really focused on a natural disaster and the consequences of it, so I’m looking forward to it.
There was the Burn in the previous season of Discovery, but by the time our heroes arrive
on the scene, the Burn had happened decades in the past. This gravitational anomaly thing
isn’t something that happened a long time ago — it’s happening right now,
and our characters will have to deal with it right now, as it happens. That’s got potential.
I’m looking forward to this season, and I’m looking forward to talking about it with you as
we go along. This is a bit of a departure for me, I’ll be doing individual episode reviews
for this entire season. Discovery is far and away my favorite of the current generation
of Trek shows, I’m hyped for this season, and I hope you’ll join me as the season goes on.
Let me know what you thought about this episode, and how you feel about where
this season might be going in the comments, 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 two!