Discovery 1x13 "What's Past is Prologue"

rating: **

the story: Burnham confronts Mirror Georgiou and Lorca.

what it's all about: Well, it had to end.  My enthusiasm for Discovery had been riding pretty high.  It would have been truly remarkable if that had been maintained through the end of the season.  Turns out it didn't.  The very serialized storytelling that's been working so well is actually what did it.  "What's Past is Prologue," to my mind, once again indicates there are limits to this style.

Even though Deep Space Nine in part reached its greatness thanks to its pioneering use of the style, and Enterprise received its only acclaim from employing it, serialized storytelling itself is not automatically good.  Storytelling is still storytelling, and must be judged on its own merits, not the way it's presented.  Today it's called "binge" storytelling, and there are a lot of people who seem to like it for the mere fact of its addictiveness. 

Which is to say, each episode still has to stand on its own, and must be able to justify what adds or doesn't add to the overall storytelling arc.  "Prologue" attempts to once again twist the knife of constant twists in this series.  For me it doesn't work.  And it works, as presented, about as poorly as anything has in Discovery (read: "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum").

As with a lot of Discovery material, the viewer is expected to carry previous events in mind, and judge the new material based on these previous memories.  This is the third episode in thirteen in which there's a big action sequence with Burnham being asked to confront the villain.  And this time, inarguably, the villain, for the first time, is someone we should reasonably be expected to care about.  With the two times it's happened with Klingons, we've known both times that it didn't matter, because we still had the Torchbearer, we still had (and as of this episode, have) L'Rell.  In a manner of speaking, that dynamic remains, because we still have Georgiou.  Well, Mirror Georgiou, anyway.  But that only makes things unnecessarily complicated.

Because the villain this time is Lorca.  We've just discovered that a character we've known throughout the season has been someone else all along (and hardly the only character like that), that he was from the Mirror Universe.  "Prologue" not only confirms this, but confirms that he's as bad as anyone has ever been in the Mirror Universe.  This feels like a development that can't be judged, entirely, on one episode, that it might be counterbalanced, once we see where Tyler/Torchbearer settles.  We can't use Burnham as the control element, because she's the only character in this series being allowed to operate on more than one level at a time.  Which turns out to be unfair, and part of what's slipping off the scales of what keeps Discovery feel like traditional Star Trek, despite everything else.

Because the episode ends with her believing she has a chance at redeeming Mirror Georgiou.  And not because Mirror Georgiou is redeemable, but because Burnham feels guilt about what happened with her Georgiou at the start of the series.  The series wants us to believe we care about what happens to Georgiou, any Georgiou, more than what happens with Lorca, and yet this is not really a Star Trek question at all.  If all we care about is Burnham, and whether or not those wacky people around her stop stumbling into dramatic situations, sort of tangential to her adventures but constantly defining them (Stamets and the spore drive has basically been confirmed to be a Maguffin)...

Sorry, I don't want to be flippant or negative.  My point is, "Prologue," even in that title, desperately wants to be evocative and climactic.  If you accept it to be a dramatic conclusion to Lorca's story, and that alone, it probably works the way it wants to.  If you wish Mirror Georgiou's arc concluded here, too, as I do, then it probably doesn't.  To my mind, it doesn't work because it weakens Burnham, and it strains the credibility of the storytelling.  Burnham's guilt doesn't outweigh Mirror Georgiou's character.  We don't need another episode to decide this.  Suggesting we do is a slap in the face of "Prologue" itself, which is all about reconciling the facts and what we want to believe.  Except in the matter where it really matters.  That's not good serialized storytelling.  It's deliberately prolonged storytelling, and not because it produces good storytelling.  Far too much serialized storytelling is like that.  Until now Discovery had avoided that trap.

Well, hopefully the rest of the season can make up for this.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Reflects poorly on Star Trek ideals.
• series - Regardless of its merit, this is relevant Discovery material.
• character - And relevant to Burnham and certainly to Lorca.
• essential - The death of a major character has rarely been this disappointing.

notable guest-stars:
Michelle Yeoh (Mirror Georgiou)
Rekha Sharma (Mirror Landry)