rating: ****
the story: The ship has been taken over, and now the Emerald Chain wants to negotiate with Starfleet...!
review: There’s a lot that happens in this episode in terms of the first part of that brief synopsis, involving the crew working to regain control (but not Control!), including a return of first season Klingon actor Kenneth Mitchell as the lone good guy among the bad guys, but none of it’s nearly as interesting as the second part of that synopsis.
Osyraa is not a great screen presence for most of her appearances. But she’s great when she needs to be, and her encounter with Admiral Vance is exactly what the season needed to nail down the era. The idea of the Burn transforming interspecies relations, making everything more dangerous, and diminishing the role of the Federation, but not its moral clarity, is something Vance makes clear.
Too often fans reduce what Star Trek is to a format or even a given set of characters, but at heart it’s really about ideals, ones we are still working toward embodying, in some ways being far away from, in others we’re hopefully closer. Vance refuses to sanction the Emerald Chain’s worse attributes, and forces Osyraa to finally admit for all the good she’s willing to commit to, she also has to admit that bad she’s done. Which she is not willing to. And thus makes impossible Vance agreeing to what otherwise seems like a great deal.
Discovery tends to work small details well. It gets another big hit in that regard with Eli the truth detector hologram. He’s a big part of how well this sequence works, emphasizing the narrow ledge between Osyraa’s good and bad intentions.
criteria analysis:
>franchise - Casual fans ought to cheer the Federation ideals.
>series - Discovery fans ought to cheer this moment, too.
>character - It’s Vance’s best moment of the season, justifying his recurring role. He was essentially the Lorca/Pike spot.
>essential - Absolutely. A moment that represents Star Trek’s whole message.
notable guest-stars:
Oded Fehr (Vance)
Kenneth Mitchell
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