January Meme: Thoughts about Saru (from Star Trek: Discovery)
The various incarnations of Star Trek have included at least one alien (as in non-human) character among their regulars ever since Spock turned out to be so pivotal to TOS‘ success. Some of these characters provided outside povs or worked as bridge characters between different cultures; several, though not all of them were used to explore the alien culture which produced them. (Spock, obviously, but also Worf - arguably TNG was the single individual Trek show who in terms of on screen canon did most to develop the Klingons from evil enemy race to the space Vikings with their own mythology, customs, and political history they became -, whereas Dr. Phlox on Enterprise and Neelix on Voyager were prominent ensemble characters, but their respective people never got that much attention. (Enterprise‘s big contribution to the ST verse in terms of deepening/developing an alien race were the Andorians via recurring guest star Shran, whereas Voyager did the outsider pov angle with both the Doctor and Seven of Nine, not Neelix, and went for established people like the Vulcans, the Klingons or even the Borg rather than the Talaxians when it came to featuring/exploring more of their culture.) DS9, by its very setting on a Space Station, was something of an exception in that there were fewer human than non-human characters around, but even so, Bajorans were getting explored primarily, though not exclusively via Kira’s storylines, Ferengi via Quark (and family), and so forth.
Star Trek: Discovery has Saru, who isn’t the only alien on the bridge but by far the most prominent one and indeed a main character on the show. His people, the Kelpians, are new to the ST-verse, i.e. they’re getting established through him, which means that in this, he’s in a similar position to Spock on TOS. Otherwise, though, his narrative function (as of Discovery‘s first season, and of course subsequent seasons can change this) strikes me as very different, not least because Discovery is the first ST show in which the Captain is not the leading character; Michael Burnham is, which means that the alien character is not the lead’s subordinate (no matter how friendly they are), but at different points her rival, equal or superior, which already makes for a different dynamic before we bring the personalities into it.
Then there are the first basic traits of Kelpians the audience learns about, the baseline from which the individual personality gets developed, if you will. With Vulcans, via Spock, it was the Vulcan insistence on logic over emotion (which makes inevitably the majority of Spock’s dramatic scenes those where this is challenged), Klingons are a warrior culture (so a great many of Worf’s dramatic scenes are those where he has to figure out how to reconcile his idea of his culture - with Worf’s, there’s the additional complication that due to having been raised by humans, he in many ways is more Klingon than Klingon precisely because he never lived in the Empire beyond his early childhood - with also being a Federation officer ), with the Ferengi, it’s greed (so again, the Ferengi characters are put in situations where this is challenged), etc. With Kelpians, it’s fear.
The longer I think about it, the more inevitable (and clever on the writers‘ part) it strikes me. Spock was a product of the 1960s, where the free expression of emotions, the questioning of restraining them was very much the spirit of the age. In our age, otoh, fear is universal; fear and rage, but rage primarily produced and justified by fear. Fear of the other and of each other, of, depending on your pov, fear of one’s rights taken away, fear of being lied to constantly, and that’s true no matter where you stand in the ideological divide. I don’t think it’s claiming too much to say that most societies currently existing on earth have ended up in fear, permanent fear, on an existential level. They’re not just afraid of losing this or that privilege but their entire value system and their existence, not solely (but also) via outside interference but by a part of their own people.
Kelpians, Saru says to Michael, aren’t just afraid, they are born afraid. There is literally no moment in their lives when they’re not afraid. (Well, until Saru chances upon a planet where he experiences this via unexpected means.) Because it’s inherent to them that they are either predator or prey. There is no in between. Now, Saru having chosen a job which puts him constantly at risk (even in the non-warring state of affairs the Federation is in when Discovery starts) and constantly in contact with strangers instead of living on his home planet or elsewhere in safe seclusion already points towards him having developed coping mechanisms and equally strong traits compelling him to said job. But the fear is still there.
The tension that exists between Saru and Michael in the pilot is more or less that of competing work colleagues, with Saru aware that Michael is a favourite of the authority figure whose approval is so important to him. If all had gone as expected by them at that point, Michael would have gotten her own command on another ship, Saru would have gotten her old job as First Officer to Georgiou’s Captain, and they’d probably hardly seen each other again. They certainly would not have thought of themselves as friends on those later encounters, but not as enemies, either. There wouldn’t have been a connection. It’s Michael’s mutiny and the subsequent loss of Georgiou that changes all this, along with Lorca’s recruiting of Michael six months later. Now, Michael to Saru is both the other survivor and fellow mourner of that catastrophe, the only one who can understand that loss in full (and he’s the same to her) and the cause of it. Their shared past both binds them together and causes his distrust of her. His initial behaviour, when he doesn’t expect her to stay on Discovery, is kind, especially at a moment where everyone else (other than Lorca, who has his own agenda) treats her like a leper, which tells something of Saru’s innate decency, and also that his inherent fear as well as old and new resentment of Michael haven’t made him cruel. But when he realises she’ll stay on board, that he’ll serve with her again, he voices his distrust, more than once. It’s always easier to show pity and sympathy if you can be sure you don’t have to live with the object of it for long. It’s incredibly difficult to live with someone who could be either a danger or a fantastic ally or both at the same time, having given you reason in the past to assume both. Who simply refuses to be either predator or prey and challenges your thinking in these categories, the very thinking that forms your existence.
Yes, the Kelpians are the aliens for our time.
Saru in the course of the season isn’t just challenged via his relationship with Michael. (Much as I love that relationship, if that were all, Saru would be a lesser character.) When he is temporarily in command of Discovery because Lorca has been captured by the Klingons in episode 5, he’s still very insecure about it, letting his fear of failing the ship and the crew in a dangerous situation drive him to abandon ethics regarding the Tardigrade. I find it narratively important that it’s not Lorca who even future revelations aside has already been established off erring on the ruthless side of ambigous behavior who gives the order to continue using the Tardigrade even after it’s been established that this is torture, likely resulting in death, but Saru, who because of his cautious nature and capacity for kindness shown so far could have been easily classified as the „too good for this world“ type of character, and who most definitely does have ethics. It’s also important that he doesn’t give the order because Lorca or Starfleet command told him to. It’s his own decision. It’s not Lorca, but fear - of failure, of the approaching Klingons, fear of losing another ship and the crew, fear also for his own life, of course - that drives Saru to act this way, and by the end of the episode, despite Michael’s comforting words, he’s keenly away of his own failure to live up to who he wants to be and determined to do better. (This, instead of using the „well, the end justifies the means“ excuse for himself, is why Saru is a good character in the moral as well as the narrative sense, and why Discovery isn’t a grimdark show.)
Saru’s other point of failure in the first half of the season happens when he’s on a planet whose innate intelligent species allows him to, for the first time, experience life utterly without fear. (Sidenote: the show wants to have its cake and eat it in this episode via first presenting it as if said species is deliberately manipulating Saru to evil ends, which they aren’t, in order to heighten the suspense, presumably. It's not the best executed red herring.) This experience is so overwhelming for him that he’s willing to strand his colleagues and himself on the planet in order to keep it, and when Michael and Ash figure this out and act against it, he’s even driven to violence. It’s his moment of hitting rock bottom but also facing his own capacity for darkness, not justified by looking out for other people but simply to keep the overhelming relief of feeling safe. It doesn’t drive him to become an aimless Hippie or a mindless raging brute, as the story would have gone in 1960s ST. It drives him to sacrifice principles and other people for a lack of fear.
Saru doesn’t take the out Michael offers at the end of the episode, her assumption that he was under hypnotic control. He insists he knew what he was doing. Because this is Star Trek, and „anyone is capable of anything“ doesn’t mean „and thus they have to act on it and not learn from it not to do it“. The second half of the season puts Saru in actual command of the Discovery, in a universe where everyone really is a predator, and simultanously in charge of a chip where a crew member really does turn out to have been a predator in disguise. And this time, he rises to the occasion. Not just in the sense that he keeps the Discovery safe until it’s time the universe needs to be saved and then comes through doing just this. No, even more importantly: in the sense of doing all this while also doing it ethically. Not because he’s incapable of listening to his worst impulses, or because he’s innately good; the first part of the season has established very clearly indeed he’s not. But because he’s learned better, and because Saru is aware being good isn’t easy, it’s hard, it’s not something one chooses once but something one has to choose again and again.
When Tyler-and-Voq is beamed back on board the Discovery, Saru doesn’t let him die despite Tyler/Voq having proven himself a danger. He gets L’Rell to save him not via torture or threats but by using the emotional understanding he has gained. (It’s compassion of the type Bilbo and Frodo would understand.) When Mirrorverse Georgiou, the doppelganger of his lost Captain, arrives on board the Discovery and in her first sentences reveals not only that she’s a different woman but that she’s a genocidal predator of the first degree who literally consumed his species, and that Michael didn’t tell him the truth about Kelpians existing in the Mirrorverse, he doesn’t react by wanting to harm the Emperor in turn or by renewed resentment against Michael, but by listening to Michael’s reasons and accepting them while making sure the Emperor is kept safely but without trying to degrade her. It’s Saru who, in Michael’s second mutiny, joins her first, just as he spoke first against her in the pilot, when her first mutiny had been conducted for exactly the opposite reasons. They’ve both come far since then, deciding in the show finale that no, even the threat of extinction does not justify doing the same to your enemy. Not because they’re free of fear, or suicidal. But because it’s possible to live with constant fear, be aware of all the threats in the universe and still prioritize your compassion and ethics. Because that is who Saru chooses to be.
An alien, hopefully, for our time.
The other days
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1323164.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Star Trek: Discovery has Saru, who isn’t the only alien on the bridge but by far the most prominent one and indeed a main character on the show. His people, the Kelpians, are new to the ST-verse, i.e. they’re getting established through him, which means that in this, he’s in a similar position to Spock on TOS. Otherwise, though, his narrative function (as of Discovery‘s first season, and of course subsequent seasons can change this) strikes me as very different, not least because Discovery is the first ST show in which the Captain is not the leading character; Michael Burnham is, which means that the alien character is not the lead’s subordinate (no matter how friendly they are), but at different points her rival, equal or superior, which already makes for a different dynamic before we bring the personalities into it.
Then there are the first basic traits of Kelpians the audience learns about, the baseline from which the individual personality gets developed, if you will. With Vulcans, via Spock, it was the Vulcan insistence on logic over emotion (which makes inevitably the majority of Spock’s dramatic scenes those where this is challenged), Klingons are a warrior culture (so a great many of Worf’s dramatic scenes are those where he has to figure out how to reconcile his idea of his culture - with Worf’s, there’s the additional complication that due to having been raised by humans, he in many ways is more Klingon than Klingon precisely because he never lived in the Empire beyond his early childhood - with also being a Federation officer ), with the Ferengi, it’s greed (so again, the Ferengi characters are put in situations where this is challenged), etc. With Kelpians, it’s fear.
The longer I think about it, the more inevitable (and clever on the writers‘ part) it strikes me. Spock was a product of the 1960s, where the free expression of emotions, the questioning of restraining them was very much the spirit of the age. In our age, otoh, fear is universal; fear and rage, but rage primarily produced and justified by fear. Fear of the other and of each other, of, depending on your pov, fear of one’s rights taken away, fear of being lied to constantly, and that’s true no matter where you stand in the ideological divide. I don’t think it’s claiming too much to say that most societies currently existing on earth have ended up in fear, permanent fear, on an existential level. They’re not just afraid of losing this or that privilege but their entire value system and their existence, not solely (but also) via outside interference but by a part of their own people.
Kelpians, Saru says to Michael, aren’t just afraid, they are born afraid. There is literally no moment in their lives when they’re not afraid. (Well, until Saru chances upon a planet where he experiences this via unexpected means.) Because it’s inherent to them that they are either predator or prey. There is no in between. Now, Saru having chosen a job which puts him constantly at risk (even in the non-warring state of affairs the Federation is in when Discovery starts) and constantly in contact with strangers instead of living on his home planet or elsewhere in safe seclusion already points towards him having developed coping mechanisms and equally strong traits compelling him to said job. But the fear is still there.
The tension that exists between Saru and Michael in the pilot is more or less that of competing work colleagues, with Saru aware that Michael is a favourite of the authority figure whose approval is so important to him. If all had gone as expected by them at that point, Michael would have gotten her own command on another ship, Saru would have gotten her old job as First Officer to Georgiou’s Captain, and they’d probably hardly seen each other again. They certainly would not have thought of themselves as friends on those later encounters, but not as enemies, either. There wouldn’t have been a connection. It’s Michael’s mutiny and the subsequent loss of Georgiou that changes all this, along with Lorca’s recruiting of Michael six months later. Now, Michael to Saru is both the other survivor and fellow mourner of that catastrophe, the only one who can understand that loss in full (and he’s the same to her) and the cause of it. Their shared past both binds them together and causes his distrust of her. His initial behaviour, when he doesn’t expect her to stay on Discovery, is kind, especially at a moment where everyone else (other than Lorca, who has his own agenda) treats her like a leper, which tells something of Saru’s innate decency, and also that his inherent fear as well as old and new resentment of Michael haven’t made him cruel. But when he realises she’ll stay on board, that he’ll serve with her again, he voices his distrust, more than once. It’s always easier to show pity and sympathy if you can be sure you don’t have to live with the object of it for long. It’s incredibly difficult to live with someone who could be either a danger or a fantastic ally or both at the same time, having given you reason in the past to assume both. Who simply refuses to be either predator or prey and challenges your thinking in these categories, the very thinking that forms your existence.
Yes, the Kelpians are the aliens for our time.
Saru in the course of the season isn’t just challenged via his relationship with Michael. (Much as I love that relationship, if that were all, Saru would be a lesser character.) When he is temporarily in command of Discovery because Lorca has been captured by the Klingons in episode 5, he’s still very insecure about it, letting his fear of failing the ship and the crew in a dangerous situation drive him to abandon ethics regarding the Tardigrade. I find it narratively important that it’s not Lorca who even future revelations aside has already been established off erring on the ruthless side of ambigous behavior who gives the order to continue using the Tardigrade even after it’s been established that this is torture, likely resulting in death, but Saru, who because of his cautious nature and capacity for kindness shown so far could have been easily classified as the „too good for this world“ type of character, and who most definitely does have ethics. It’s also important that he doesn’t give the order because Lorca or Starfleet command told him to. It’s his own decision. It’s not Lorca, but fear - of failure, of the approaching Klingons, fear of losing another ship and the crew, fear also for his own life, of course - that drives Saru to act this way, and by the end of the episode, despite Michael’s comforting words, he’s keenly away of his own failure to live up to who he wants to be and determined to do better. (This, instead of using the „well, the end justifies the means“ excuse for himself, is why Saru is a good character in the moral as well as the narrative sense, and why Discovery isn’t a grimdark show.)
Saru’s other point of failure in the first half of the season happens when he’s on a planet whose innate intelligent species allows him to, for the first time, experience life utterly without fear. (Sidenote: the show wants to have its cake and eat it in this episode via first presenting it as if said species is deliberately manipulating Saru to evil ends, which they aren’t, in order to heighten the suspense, presumably. It's not the best executed red herring.) This experience is so overwhelming for him that he’s willing to strand his colleagues and himself on the planet in order to keep it, and when Michael and Ash figure this out and act against it, he’s even driven to violence. It’s his moment of hitting rock bottom but also facing his own capacity for darkness, not justified by looking out for other people but simply to keep the overhelming relief of feeling safe. It doesn’t drive him to become an aimless Hippie or a mindless raging brute, as the story would have gone in 1960s ST. It drives him to sacrifice principles and other people for a lack of fear.
Saru doesn’t take the out Michael offers at the end of the episode, her assumption that he was under hypnotic control. He insists he knew what he was doing. Because this is Star Trek, and „anyone is capable of anything“ doesn’t mean „and thus they have to act on it and not learn from it not to do it“. The second half of the season puts Saru in actual command of the Discovery, in a universe where everyone really is a predator, and simultanously in charge of a chip where a crew member really does turn out to have been a predator in disguise. And this time, he rises to the occasion. Not just in the sense that he keeps the Discovery safe until it’s time the universe needs to be saved and then comes through doing just this. No, even more importantly: in the sense of doing all this while also doing it ethically. Not because he’s incapable of listening to his worst impulses, or because he’s innately good; the first part of the season has established very clearly indeed he’s not. But because he’s learned better, and because Saru is aware being good isn’t easy, it’s hard, it’s not something one chooses once but something one has to choose again and again.
When Tyler-and-Voq is beamed back on board the Discovery, Saru doesn’t let him die despite Tyler/Voq having proven himself a danger. He gets L’Rell to save him not via torture or threats but by using the emotional understanding he has gained. (It’s compassion of the type Bilbo and Frodo would understand.) When Mirrorverse Georgiou, the doppelganger of his lost Captain, arrives on board the Discovery and in her first sentences reveals not only that she’s a different woman but that she’s a genocidal predator of the first degree who literally consumed his species, and that Michael didn’t tell him the truth about Kelpians existing in the Mirrorverse, he doesn’t react by wanting to harm the Emperor in turn or by renewed resentment against Michael, but by listening to Michael’s reasons and accepting them while making sure the Emperor is kept safely but without trying to degrade her. It’s Saru who, in Michael’s second mutiny, joins her first, just as he spoke first against her in the pilot, when her first mutiny had been conducted for exactly the opposite reasons. They’ve both come far since then, deciding in the show finale that no, even the threat of extinction does not justify doing the same to your enemy. Not because they’re free of fear, or suicidal. But because it’s possible to live with constant fear, be aware of all the threats in the universe and still prioritize your compassion and ethics. Because that is who Saru chooses to be.
An alien, hopefully, for our time.
The other days
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1323164.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.