Spoilers are coming toward you at warp speed, so you'd better have deflectors on full
Previously on Star Trek: Discovery: Episode 1: “The Vulcan Hello”; Episode 2: “Battle at the Binary Stars”; Episode 3: “Context is For Kings”; Episode 4: "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry"
Cast: Sonequa Martin-Green (Michael Burnham), Doug Jones (Saru), Shazad Latif (Ash Tyler), Anthony Rapp (Paul Stamets), Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly), Jason Isaacs (Captain Gabriel Lorca), Emily Coutts (Keyla Detmer), Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber), Kenneth Mitchell (Kol); Guest Cast: Rainn Wilson (Harry Mudd); Teleplay by Kemp Powers; Story by Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts & Kemp Powers; Directed by by Lee Rose
Although Discovery had gotten itself into a pretty good groove with episodes three and four, the same can’t besaid for the fifth. It starts off intriguingly enough with Burnham watching herself in agony in the spore drive chamber, only to awaken from the nightmare triggered by guilt she feels over the debilitating effect the ship's jumps have had on the tardigrade. And maybe there’s a reason for that guilt, since the Federation is desperate to find more of these creatures due to the success Discovery has had.
At the same time, that success has resulted in Starfleet ordering Lorca to stand down from the current mission as intelligence reports suggest that the Klingons have become aware that the starship was behind recent defeats. There is also the issue of Burnham, a war criminal whose placement on Discovery isn’t considered good for morale. Lorca disagrees, emphasizing that he has the power to use her and will continue to do so. Taking a shuttle back to Discovery from the vessel of Admiral Cornwell (Jayne Brook), Lorca's pilot is killed and he's taken prisoner by the Klingons.
Saru is made temporary captain, and immediately begins making plans to try and rescue Lorca, the idea to make multiple jumps into Klingon space until they locate him. In private, Burnham expresses her concern to him about the creature, but he doesn’t care, instead focusing on the rescue mission at hand. Burnham is dismissed and told not to worry about the creature at this point. Alone, and filled with insecurity, he asks the ship’s computer about the greatest captains living or deceased and is provided the names Robert April, Jonathan Archer and Christopher Pike — a nice callback to canon. It is Saru’s hope to guide himself by using the legacies of others while simultaneously wanting to ultimately compare how his actions during this mission compares to them.
Klingon Ship: Lorca finds himself in a cell with intergalactic conman Harry Mudd and a Starfleet prisoner of war. Klingons enter, telling Harry to choose his pain, and he picks the other guy who’s unconscious. The Klingons beat the crap out of him, which, interestingly, Lorca is seen wincing at. One of the popular theories going around is that Lorca is actually from the Mirror Universe. If that were true, one does wonder whether or not he would react that way to a beating, which is something he’d be right at home with back home.
Discovery: Burnham (once again ignoring orders and deciding to do what she wants to do) has enlisted the aid of Dr. Culber to convince Stamets of the harm being done to the creature. Doing so starts off awkwardly as Burnham offers Stamets a series of compliments so obviously designed to blow smoke up his arse — to both the audience and the character — that it makes you wonder what she was thinking. He agrees to try and fix the situation.
Klingon Cell: Lorca discovers another prisoner, Starfleet officer Lieutenant Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif), tucked away in the corner of the cell. The two men start to converse as Harry sleeps, Tyler admitting (turning away as he does so, suggesting some abuse here) that the Klingon captain has taken a liking to him. Harry awakens and immediately pisses them off when he offers the opinion that this war is Starfleet’s fault; that their push into space caused the confrontation with the Klingons. Soldiers abruptly arrive and pull Lorca out of the cell.
Discovery: Stamets, Burnham and Tilly are trying to figure out an alternative to the tardigrade. Artificial means won’t work — Stamets has tried — but he comes to the conclusion that what they need is a living interface, one that is compatible and understands what it’s doing (as the tardigrade does) to make the drive work. This causes Tilly to comment that “this is so [f'n] cool,” which Stamets agrees with, also using the full word. Pardon the tangent here: Maybe this was designed to be humorous, but it was so blatant a shout out saying, “Hey, we’re streaming, we can cuss!” that it’s a little ridiculous and completely out of place in the Star Trek universe.
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when, on present day Earth, Kirk is called a dumb ass and he awkwardly counters, “Well, a double dumb ass on you,” that's funny. Here it triggers an eye roll. Admittedly a minor point, but annoying.
Klingon Ship: Lorca is strapped to a chair, questioned by the Klingon captain, demanding answers on how Discovery has been able to do what it can do. He refuses to answer, she comments on his eyes’ photo sensitivity, to which he counters that they all have problems, hers being seeking sexual release with a species that doesn’t even have matching organs (good one, Cap, and almost worth the punch to the face he receives in response). Forcing his eyes wide open, she shines a series of lights directly into them, triggering agony (in a moment that parallels the kind of pain we had seen the tardigrade in last episode).
Discovery: Saru enters the bridge and is told they’ve limited Lorca’s position to three possible locations. He wants them to start making jumps, but is told that the spore drive has been taken off line by Stamets. In engineering the experiments are continuing when Saru arrives, furious that his orders to Burnham have been disobeyed. She quickly tries to inform him that using tardigrade DNA with a human could be the result they’re looking for, but he is outraged, first because human genetic manipulation is illegal (thank you Khan and the Eugenics War). Second, her countermanding his orders coupled with her trying to psycho analyze him, convinces him that she is a predator, and conveying the kind of behavior that got Captain Georgiou killed (his voice cracking during the latter point). He confines her to quarters and tells Stamets to get the tardigrade back online. It is a great moment between Saru and Burnham, who continue to provide dramatic fodder to this series in their back and forths.
Klingon Ship: Lorca is returned to his cell, where the first thing he does is destroy a device Harry was obviously using to transmit everything they say to the Klingons. Harry has been used to get intel on every prisoner that has passed through. Tyler slams him against a wall threatening him, but Harry tries to regain the upper hand by relaying the fact that Lorca’s last command resulted in the death of his crew and the destruction of his ship, which Lorca himself somehow survived. He tells Harry that that’s only half the story: he did escape, but only so that he could be sure that he would be able to destroy his vessel to take the lives of his crew to spare them from what awaited them on the Klingon home world: degradation, torture, slow, public death. He refused to allow them to suffer through that.
While providing some interesting and revealing backstory to the Lorca, character, it still doesn't provide enough of an explanation of why he would allow himself to escape. If his motives were so noble, shouldn't the captain have gone down with the ship and his crew, leading them in death as he had in life?
Discovery: The tardigrade is transported into the spore drive chamber and a jump is made, but afterwards, the creature collapses and molds itself into a dehydrated ball-like shape, its vital signs dropping significantly. Saru is told this by Stamets and Dr. Culber, but he seems unmoved, telling them to rehydrate the creature and get it back online. It’s an interesting moment for Saru, his complete lack of empathy for this creature (even though its in an effort to rescue the captain) surprising considering his own genetic design to serve as prey on his world. One would think this would make him even more sensitive to the plight of other life forms.
Klingon Ship: In the cell, Lorca is told to choose his pain and Tyler asks the captain to choose him, but he and Tyler quickly turn the tables, killing the two guards, grabbing their weapons and leaving, Harry applauding the fact that they played him (though how they did so is a little unclear) before he realizes that he's being left behind. As duo move down the corridor, Harry screams that Lorca hasn’t seen the last of him. From there the two of them fight their way off the ship, taking a Klingon Raider (which they’re able to fly, surprisingly), followed by several others.
Discovery: Saru watches the chase and concludes,based on the flight pattern, that the first vessel has Lorca on board. They're beamed aboard just as their raider is destroyed. Lorca gives the order to jump and the ship does so. Lorca welcomes Tyler aboard as Discovery’s newest crewmember. Then, when there’s no word from Stamets following the jump, Saru heads to engineering where Tilly states that Stamets had injected himself with the tardigrade DNA compound to take the creature’s place. Although for a moment it seems as though he’s died as a result, Stamets awakens, seemingly no worse for wear.
Afterwards Saru comes to see Burnham to fill her in. In their conversation he admits that he’s not afraid of her, but, instead is angry at her for “how much she stole” from him. He is jealous that he never had the chance to be Captain Georgiou’s first officer, to learn all that she had to teach. Ideally, Burnham would have gotten her own command and moved on, allowing Saru to take her place. And if that had happened, he would have been more prepared for the events of the day. Burnham for her part provides affirmation, stating that he did very well and would have made Captain Georgiou proud. To drive home the point, she gives Saru the captain’s telescope that had been bequeathed to her, believing he should have the opportunity to see the universe the way that she did. Before he leaves, he points out that the doctor believes the tardigrade is a sentient being and therefore they have no claim on its soul. She is ordered to save its life.
To do so, it’s jettisoned into space with spores, which has the desired effect: the opportunity for freedom results in its regenerating itself as it begins traveling through the cosmos. It’s a lovely moment, although you’d think someone may have wanted to bounce this off of the ship’s captain before making such a move, though obviously now there is a human solution to the need for tardigrades.
The episode ends in the quarters of Stamets and Culper as they brush their teeth and it’s revealed for the first time that they’re in a relationship, this revelation handled extremely well and ushering in a new era in Star Trek diversity.
Culper is worried about long term effects of the tardigrade DNA, but Stamets is more taken by the first view he’s had of an entire universe of possibilities he never dreamed existed. The two leave the bathroom, but Stamets’ reflection in the mirror remains there, dopily suggesting that this is an introduction of the Mirror Universe to this show. Instead of being an exciting portent of things to come, it’s a really silly, unsophisticated, clumsily-handled moment.
There are a number of excellent moments in this episode (again, those Saru/Burnham moments are true standouts), Jason Isaacs continues to add depth to Lorca, and Rainn Wilson does well as a considerably more serious Harry Mudd than the way Roger c. Carmel played the character on the original Star Trek. It will be interesting to see what sort of role he will play on the show in the future as the character will be recurring.
High praise really needs to be paid to Doug Jones. After working for so many years buried under prosthetics, and oftentimes with other actors' voices being dubbed in place of his own, the actor has proven himself more than up to the challenge of being at the forefront of an ensemble series as Saru.
Previously we've criticized the fact that CBS seems determined to keep the length of each episode within a broadcast network's running time. "Choose Your Pain" stands as an obvious example of why this shouldn't be the case. Just about everything feels too rushed, from Saru's challenges on the Discovery to Lorca's experience as a captive on the Klingon vessel. It's particularly true in the case of the latter as this series has taken so much time to explore Klingon culture, yet in this episode they're turned back into cartoon baddies. And the escape by Lorca and Tyler is ridiculously easy, the pursuit by the Klingon raiders devoid of any kind of suspense. And added to this, again, is the final moment and Stamets' mirror reflection — so annoying that is warrants repeating.
This lack of nuance impacts negatively on "Choose Your Pain." Hitting a running time is not as significant as allowing the show to properly breathe.
