Worth: $12.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sonequa Martin-Green, Michelle Yeoh, Doug Jones
Intro:
...a solid step in the right direction.
Caught in a violent confrontation with the Klingons, Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) attempts to command the USS Shenzou to victory. Meanwhile her mutinous first officer Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) attempts to escape from the brig when the Shenzou suffers heavy damage.
Released hot on the heels of the series premiere, the second episode of Star Trek: Discovery already shows quite a bit of improvement from the first. While many of the series’ more pronounced problems seem to remain, there is definitely positive change going on. From its action-packed opening to its surprising conclusion, it maintains a sense of momentum and energy much more effectively.
Both Martin-Green and Yeoh suddenly feel settled into their roles, with the heavy emphasis on action allowing the episode to avoid the weak exposition-heavy dialogue that crippled “The Vulcan Hello”. Instead of telling the audience of the close relationship between the two women, this episode actually showcases it. Flashback sequences reveals their first meeting, as well as key elements from Burnham’s childhood that colour how her attempts to fight the Klingon warship is received by both crewmates and audience.
Burnham’s strange back story – she was adopted by Sarek after her parents were killed in a Klingon raid, and was raised on Vulcan with a strong philosophy of logic – does not sit comfortably, but to the credit of writers Gretchen J. Berg & Aaron Harberts her instinctive collapse into very human emotions of rage, affection and grief start slipping out more and more obtrusively as her situation worsens.
Scenes featuring the Klingons still drag interminably. It all feels like sound and fury, with ranting warriors posing and swearing loyalty to one another. There’s very little variation in the tone, but thankfully less scenes involving them than in the first episode.
Putting aside hard-core fan obsessions with continuity, the redesign of the Klingon race is poorly done. The prosthetic make-up seems much more extensive that the traditional style, and it prevents the actors from properly using their faces to express themselves. Likewise, the large dental prosthetics each actor wears interfere badly with their diction. They may be speaking Klingon with subtitles, but their slurred speech still distracts badly. The latter could be easily fixed with some re-recording of dialogue during post-production. The former I suspect audiences are still with for the long haul.
The episode’s dramatic conclusion presents quite a shock (look away now if you have not seen the episode): the sudden violent death of Captain Georgiou. It is a moment with both good and bad consequences for the series going forwards. Firstly it does introduce a strong sense of jeopardy to the series: is anybody safe in future episodes? It also leads to a very bold conclusion, with Burnham being court-martialled and sentenced to life in prison for everything that has occurred. On the other hand it does obliterate what seemed the most positive and creatively successful part of the series so far: the relationship between Georgiou and Burnham. It seemed a very positive step to base a series around two women of colour. From the next episode we get Jason Isaacs – a middle-aged white man – in the captain’s chair. Given Yeoh’s prominence in the series’ advertising, it feels like a distasteful bait-and-switch: a tease of a more progressive show before a retreat to the status quo. It is too early to tell how this will all work out, but the signs do not look good.
The episode has problems, and it still needs a lot more work to really fulfil its potential, but “The Battle at the Binary Stars” is absolutely a solid step in the right direction.
