I figured I ought to acknowledge the passing of D.C. Fontana, one of the original guiding voices of Star Trek. Fontana was instrumental in the development and execution of the first two seasons of the original series, and arguably, her departure from the regular writing staff in the third was part of the reason fans even today claim it was a marked downturn in quality. She worked on
The Animated Series, and the first season of
Next Generation (again, an involvement that dovetails with popular fan sentiment; she left after one too many clashes with Gene Roddenberry), and wrote one episode of
Deep Space Nine in
its first season ("Dax"), as well as one of the fan-made
Star Trek: New Voyages productions. Aside from the films, her involvement was about as comprehensive as anyone's in the history of the franchise. Star Trek literally wouldn't be what it is today without her.
And speaking about Star Trek today, I recently bought the DVD of
Star Trek: Discovery's second season, and watching it again, in the classic binge fashion, was like experiencing it anew all over again. The whole Spock arc plays out much differently when it doesn't seem like you're waiting forever for something to happen. I didn't necessarily have a problem the first time around, but I
did often wonder if they were dragging it out. In binge mode it's pretty rapid progress.
As part of that I caught "Project Daedalus" again, obviously. This is the episode pivoting around background player Airiam (the character who looked like a robot). I stand by my original assertion that it's not as moving as he clearly wants to be, in much the way fans in a previous era worried that Harry Kim's random friend in
Voyager's "Ashes to Ashes" lost some of its impact because it centered on someone we hadn't really met before.
But IGN included "Project Daedalus" in its
best TV episodes of the year. My problem with that has as much to do with the above sentiments as to the fact that the episode epitomizes the worse instincts of the season, not its best. The writers spent a little too much time reiterating the same points, hoping it would lend the season greater resonance, when it really added endless repetition and a competition for relevance. "Project Daedalus" will stand out for impatient viewers, who won't care to focus on better moments more entwined in series and franchise lore, and on that level it's fine. The season, and series, has been light on such moments, rushing to embrace the trend of fully serialized storytelling. What this ignores is that Star Trek has often been at its very best when it lingers on one brilliant moment, something that happened in episodic series past not
because they were episodic, but because the opportunity was there.
Deep Space Nine and
Enterprise both found landmark episodes in the midst of serialized material ("Far Beyond the Stars," "Twilight"), but when they hit a pause button on known characters, which was why they worked so well, and still work now.
Airiam's death, and life, are fleeting elements even in "Project Daedalus." So many new, and interesting!, characters were introduced in the second season, but Airiam still had to wait for one episode, and not even get to be the focal point, just the featured element, of the story, it was like a tacit acknowledgement of how much time had already been wasted with the character, and that the great weakness of the great strength of finally doing so was that the character herself hardly mattered. Instead she packs an emotional wallop in a season full of them. Too many. And hers isn't, at least for me, the best of them, but rather...the worst.
Maybe in time, when I've watched the episode, and the season, and the series, this perspective will change. I still care most for Saru learning the truth about his people, even if I think the idea itself was undercooked. I think it's a perfect, timeless moment, in an episode ("An Obel for Charon") that fires on all cylinders, the series at its absolute best. That it centers on Saru, in a season that focuses most of its attention on Michael Burnham's relationship with her obscure foster brother (Spock? I think the name was), is all the better, because like Tilly, he was a character who in the first season stood ought despite having little material to truly justify it, and he and Tilly were both vindicated in the second (but Saru's materuak was better). But maybe the randomness of Airiam and her tragic fate(s) will ring like the perfect echo of events truly epic in Star Trek lore.
If
that's what those observers are thinking, I can get behind that.
