Star Trek: Discovery 5x2 "Under the Twin Moons" Review

rating: **** (Classic)

summary: The crew begins its search for the clues that will help it locate the expected treasure.

review: The second episode of the fifth season lands better, for me, than the premiere, having more focus and more to say about the new circumstances and even new characters like Rayner.

Online, Discovery has become known as the worst of the new Star Treks, too polarizing or perhaps merely too ambitious to contend with the much more obvious crowd-pleasers that followed (Picard, Strange New Worlds, even Lower Decks).  As I look back at its legacy, though, I see a rich tapestry that's ably demonstrated all over again in "Under the Twin Moons."

What I've long loved best about Discovery is its ability to depict the classic "smartest in the room" mentality of Starfleet, spread generously around the whole room (last season maybe got a little carried away with this), which as Burnham and Saru are trying to survive another of those death squad security systems and then figuring out the clue behind it, is once again in full glory.

But the best part of the episode is how it revisits the complicated history Burnham and Saru share (just these two alone have reached what Gene used to call "beloved character status," at least as far as I'm concerned), and how Rayner gets to reflect it.  Rayner is interesting, a welcome new wrinkle in the far future the crew has inhabited now for three seasons, an example of the working reality Starfleet was in before the revival, and early on I even began to wonder if he'd not actually a double agent, actually working with the pair of villains we'll be following this season (which if he is would itself be another fascinating callback, this time to Lorca), but the end of the episode turns it around completely by having Burnham offer him second-in-command  Burnham's reputation at the start of the series still colors how many fans view her, which is unfortunate, so it's nice that the series itself continues to dwell on it.  If Voyager seemed (again, mostly in the unforgiving eyes of disgruntled fans) to shy away from its complicated origins, then it's nice for Discovery to have never lost sight of its overall arc.

I loved how last season the show finally moved past the straight hero complex and refocused on the science, and that this season follows up on that, while also tying in with the Next Generation episode "The Chase."  It's rare, even in a franchise that has long since moved on from its episodic storytelling origins, to revisit concepts from that period, but Discovery has long since demonstrated its ambitious nature.  This will be a heck of a way to go, and "Twins Moons" is a fine way to prove that.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The whole season links in with existing Star Trek lore!
• series - An episode that deepens long-term storytelling, from the start and as recently as the last two seasons.
• character - New character Rayner becomes integral to the season, and arguably, the series.
• essential - Another fine selling point for the series as a whole.

notable guest-stars:

Oded Fehr (Vance)

David Cronenberg (Kovich)