Star Trek Discovery episode 5 review, ‘Choose Your Pain’

Now we’ve moved past any questions concerning whether Star Trek: Discovery is any good – it is – this episode is the perfect time for the show to open things up beyond its stoic but hardly laugh-a-minute protagonist and bed in the other characters we’re likely to spend the next few years with.

Given we live in a post Battlestar Galactica world, the crew of the Discovery was never going to be belting out showtunes on the holodeck, but even if this episode’s development of the cast beyond Sonequa Martin-Green’s Burnham didn’t exactly end with them playing a good-natured game of poker, TNG-style, it was still nice to get to know our new space buddies a bit more.

So, we finally see science officer Stamets and ship’s doctor Culber’s much-vaunted same-sex relationship, brushing their teeth together in snazzy Starfleet PJs. Saru, unexpectedly thrust into authority, anxiously cross-references his performance with an Easter Egg-filled list of past captains. Even literal space cadet Tilly gets to show her mettle, delivering both a stream of techno jargon and what I’m fairly sure was the Trek franchise’s first ever F-bomb.

This all happens more or less in the background, however, as Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) is kidnapped by the Klingons on his way back from a meeting with his superiors. This strand feels very BSG, as Klingon L’Rell (Mary Chieffo) takes equal inspiration for her torture from A Clockwork Orange and Marathon Man. In between struggle sessions, Lorca is confined with Rainn Wilson’s Harcourt Fenton Mudd, a conman who appeared way back in the original series and is here acting as an unofficial spy for the Klingons, feeding them info on what the Starfleet captives say in their cell. In an interesting idea that doesn’t really go anywhere, the Klingons force their prisoners to choose who among them receives the next beating, a ploy to prevent them bonding but one that doesn’t feel resolved.

Meanwhile on the Discovery, Burnham, Stamets et al are wrestling with the repercussions of last episode’s revelation that their intergalactic mushroom drive causes their overgrown tick ‘navigator’ to suffer (best not to think about this element too much). Lorca’s abduction puts them on a clock – our heroes have as much time as it takes acting captain Saru to work out where Lorca’s likely been taken before he’ll use the drive again.

Your enjoyment of this thread will likely be tied to your tolerance for words like ‘xenoanthropology,’ but the question at hand is always front and centre: what are the rights and wrongs of nearly killing the tardigrade every time they teleport the Discovery somewhere new?

The end result is a messy compromise, with a nice reveal that Stamets has injected himself with the creature’s magic DNA so he can be used as a willing live subject rather than an innocent animal with no say in the matter. This is going to have consquences, which we’ll come to.

First of all, Lorca plots an escape with Tyler (Shazad Latif from Toast of London!), a Starfleet Lieutenant who, it’s heavily implied, has been used as a sexual plaything by the Klingons – unusually salty territory for Trek, the consequences of which will have to be examined if it’s to feel like anything more than an attempt to darken things even more; so too will the reveal that Lorca killed the entire crew of his previous command rather than let them fall into Klingon hands and the public torture and execution that would have happened next. This is a big thing to drop, but happens almost in passing: it’s a mark of STD that it’s so far proved pretty adept at being cagey about its characters’ secret, and seeding future situations episodes in advance.

Eventually, Lorca and Tyler punch their way out of their cell (aren’t Klingons meant to be far tougher than humans?), blowing a few of their captors away with cool guns that turn them to green mist and make their escape in a small craft that feels very Star Wars. Stamets’s using of himself as a guinea pig means the Discovery is there to pick them up, and Saru allows Burnham to release the tardigrade into space. Satisfied he’s done a man’s job, he tells the computer to stop comparing his decision-making to the greats of the past.

So, all in all, a solid episode where we shook off Burnham and her glowering for enough time for other characters to step into the light. The Lorca bombshell where this shows heir to Kirk or Picard is revealed to be a mass murderer (or mercy killer) is going to be a rich seam to mine, but the most intriguing setup is saved for the very end. Stamets seems suspiciously fine for someone whose body has been jacked into a universe-spanning network of quantum fungus: he does, at least, until we see him brushing his teeth, and his reflection lingers after him as he walks away.

A set up for this show’s version of the original series’s mirror universe, home of Nazi earths and evil twins of the main characters? Probably not, as the Evil Twin Goatee trope is a tad played out in 2017 – still, thought, Star Trek Discovery is continuing to intrigue.

Oh, and how often do you see spaceships’ bathrooms on TV