Yahoo News Star Trek: Discovery episode 5 review – A dark turn
They've taken time to build up the world of Star Trek: Discovery so far, but now the introductions are clearly over. No longer is this series slowly establishing character mannerisms and teasing out the episode's stakes as it goes; instead, it's launching straight into multi-faceted plot lines and complex character interactions, and delving deep into the morally grey decision-making of a command under pressure.
It starts slowly as Captain Lorca goes through the motions of Starfleet command. His need to prove the hero is swiftly shut down by superior officers who reveal the Klingons have identified the Discovery's spore drive as Starfleet's secret weapon. (It's a clumsy bit of foreshadowing that the promo trailers gave away anyway.) But the episode soon allows Lorca to take centre stage as he's taken prisoner by the Klingons.
Cutting Lorca off from his crew so soon after establishing the dynamics of the Discovery was a bit of a risky move on the show's part, but it did manage to take the determined and commanding Captain we've already met and turn him into a smart and calculating prisoner fighting for his life and making ruthless choices in the name of survival.
Related: 7 lessons Star Trek: Discovery has learned from Game of Thrones
And, thanks to the introduction of Discovery's version of con artist Harcourt Fenton Mudd ("Harry for short"), we also learn that it's an instinct Lorca has always had. Harry's taunting prompts Lorca to explain what really happened during his last command: he made the decision to blow up his ship and his crew after a Klingon ambush to spare them the slow, humiliating, public death that he thought awaited them on the Klingon homeworld of Qo'noS.
It's a revelation that ties in nicely with the episode's main focus this week of "choosing your pain" – a concept established in the Klingon prison cell as inmates are asked to accept torture for themselves or pass it onto their cellmates.
In the story of what happened to his last command, Lorca effectively passed that torture on but did so on his own terms, something he justifies later by saying everyone chooses their own pain and the pain he's chosen just helps him "to remember".
Lorca is operating within the realms of his own moral compass, and it seems his military-minded personality is shaping up to be a bigger threat than we previously thought – but at least it does fit with the recurring message that Lorca sends out across the episode and, really, the series so far too: "My ship. My way."
We've seen this in action before in his decision to bring Starfleet's first convicted mutineer Michael Burnham on board his ship to aid the war effort – a decision that is being seen by others as Michael avoiding justice and stirring up its on conflicts – and we see it here too.
Lorca chooses to escape his Klingon cell with the captured Starfleet soldier Lt Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) and leave behind self-proclaimed survivor Mudd, played brilliantly by Rainn Wilson, after learning the con man has been feeding the Klingons intel on every prisoner who passes through in order to save himself.
Over on the Discovery, with Lorca captured, the position of acting captain falls to First Officer Saru and the idea of choosing pain comes down to Michael's concern that using the tardigrade to power their spore drive is hurting it, backed up by Dr Culber's assessment that the creature is deteriorating with each jump.
Michael's resolution to spare the tardigrade from more suffering puts her at odds with Saru, who's determined to jump as many times as is necessary to find his captain and protect him in the way Michael didn't protect Captain Georgiou in the premiere – regardless of what it means for the tardigrade.
The power shift between Saru and Michael brings up a lot of old resentments, with Michael undermining the captain's orders in pursuit of her own interests and Saru arguing that she's still engaging in exactly the same kind of behaviour that killed their previous captain.
Saru is so determined not to second guess himself based on what Michael is saying that he leans a bit too much into Lorca's ruthless captaining, rather than considering his own usually grounded reactions or even Captain Georgiou's influence.
He's so set on saving the ship and his captain – basically do everything Michael failed to do on the Shenzhou – that he loses a bit of his compassion in the process, which is something Michael herself is learning to let guide her as she feels her emotions more strongly than ever here.
Michael urges Lt Stamets to find a workaround to save the tardigrade, which leads to the theory that if they can find an animate creature that can be injected with the tardigrade's DNA compound and understands its role in the system, that creature could take the tardigrade's place.
Related: Star Trek: Discovery writer insists the show does NOT contradict the Original Series
As it turns out, that animate creature proved to be Stamets himself, paving the way for even more morally ambiguous questions to come – especially with the return of a Captain who's not afraid to leave a man behind if it suits him, and after Michael frees the tardigrade for good. And that's not to mention the effect that being used as a navigational tool had on Stamets too, who appears medically fine, but his reflection hints at a more unexpected consequence.
'Choose Your Pain' may not have been as slick as previous episodes, jumping between two distinct stories and settings with no real links between them both, but it proved itself with its strong character turns and its teasing Black Mirror-style twist in Stamets' creepy cliffhanger.
Discovery is a darker Star Trek than we've seen before, and the series shows no signs of reigning that back in any time soon. We may not have been given a crew that works together as well as the Enterprise in The Original Series, but we do have an unpredictable series that continues to surprise week after week.
Star Trek: Discovery airs on CBS All Access in the US and Netflix in the UK.
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