Logline
While undercover in a pre-warp society, Captain Burnham is forced to consider breaking the Prime Directive when a local tradition threatens Tilly’s life. Meanwhile, Culber tries to connect with Stamets, and Adira steps up when Rayner assigns them a position on the bridge.
Written by: Kenneth Lin & Brandon Schultz
Directed by: Chris Byrne
Note: Episode 5x07, “Erigah,” was released in some regions, presumably by accident, hours ago. If this hasn’t been fixed by now, and you are able to watch “Erigah,” please don’t post spoilers from that episode in this thread. We will create an episode discussion post for that episode once we’re confident it has been properly released globally.
Ah yes we had to have a Prime Directive bending episode in Disco.
For a split second, when they looked at the paper with the list of scientists, I had hope that the Discovery would fly to Denobula. That would have been so much more interesting than what we’ve gotten. Although I give them credit for doing a more traditional Star Trek episode with a bunch of technobabble, prime directive shenanigans and the obligatory human-like pre-warp civilization.
My expectations for this one were low based on the preview, but I enjoyed this one more than I thought I might. A very “traditional” Star Trek plot in many ways.
Watching the Culber/Stamets interactions, I wonder if they’re going to address the “awakening” that Stamets had following his genetic modification. That’s something that’s been mentioned a bunch of times (as recently as two episodes ago), but I don’t remember them ever digging really deep into it. It seems like there are some parallels there that could be explored.
The beginning and last line of Dr. Culber’s conversation with his grandmother recreation felt a bit stilted, as if he wasn’t fluent, which was strange because the middle part of the conversation had a goof flow to it. It made me wonder if there was some failure in directing or if Wilson Cruz is just not that fluent in Spanish compared to the actress for the grandmother, which is understandable and I’m not knocking him for it.
Anyway, I quite liked this episode. Very classic “planet of the week” Star Trek deal that I’m always down for. Break that prime directive. Save those natives from themselves. You can splurge on a plot or two of those. We’ve seen it before, we’ve seen it again. It had a solution more rooted in a character moment rather than Treknobabble which I appreciated. Thumbs up for Tilly’s endurance, they made that whole run not look easy.
I can’t help but think them teleporting to Moll and L’ak with the fresh new clue would essentially play right into their own hands.
Annotations for 5x06 up at: https://startrek.website/post/9827520
