ST: Discovery 5.08
Episodes which take place mostly in the mind of a character tend to be masterpieces (The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari or bores (whatever the DS9 episode about Julian Bashir's very early midlife crisis when he turned 30 was called). So it was with some unease I read the summary for this one. As it turns out, the the part of the episode taking place in Michael Burnham's mind isn't that long and is fine, but I was more intrigued by the Moll storyline this time around.
Seriously, Discovery might have decided to flesh out the Breen late in its day, but fleshing them out it does, and possibly it's because I'm currently listining to a podcast about the Hellenistic (i.e. post Alexander the Great, pre completed Roman takeover) world, but there is a flair of that type of power struggles. I am even more impressed that Moll might be grieving (and desperately hoping) for L'ak, but she's simultanously thinking and using all she knows aobut the Breen from him. First getting the Evil Uncle Primarch to take her along as a propaganda tool and then getting rid of said Evil Uncle via a coup was impressive. I don't mean that she had it all plotted out in advance, on the contrary, I think it was two thirds improvisation, but I think she was always very aware that Evil Uncle had not the slightest intention of actually resurrecting L'ak once he got his hands on the tech, and that she therefore needed to get either the tech herself or needed to get rid of him somehow. As of now, my speculation still is that L'ak won't come back the way Moll hopes he will, but that she'll end up the Breen Catherine the Great, i.e. the Ruler not born into the people in question who originally got there via marriage and then a coup. (Sidenote: yes, that also means her ending up as an autocrat herself.)
The archive and archivist Hy'all were charming, and I liked that the last test wasn't about Michael's compassionate nature or honorable intentions (leaving aside the road to hell is plastered with those, there were already tests for that), but about her capacity for self knowledge and confronting the parts of herself she'd like to avoid. Mind you, it's not that the audience learned anything new about Michael here - the fear of being undeserving and the drive to succeed were there from the pilot, it's just that through the years she's learned to deal with them better - , but letting David Ajala play the voice of the archive in addition to book gave him some excellent actorly stuff to do in both parts. (Re: his regular role as Book, I'm thinking specifically of the scene where the archivist gives him the relic of Kwejion.)
Something else I appreciated was that we saw the Discovery crew working on a solution on their end, not just the (adorable) engineering trio but the lesser knnown parts of the bridge crew (good for you, Rhys!!). Though I have to say: when a few episodes back we heard that Detmer and Owo were piloting the ISS Enterprise to the Federation storage at the end of that ep, I figured it was an in verse explanation for the actresses being absent... for the next episode (singular). Not episodes plural! I mean, it's nice to give the bit players more to do, but couldn't we have gotten that and sitill maintained the Sulu and Chekov of Discovery on screen?
In non-ST related news, I visited Sanssouci in springtime and did a pic spam elsewhere.
Seriously, Discovery might have decided to flesh out the Breen late in its day, but fleshing them out it does, and possibly it's because I'm currently listining to a podcast about the Hellenistic (i.e. post Alexander the Great, pre completed Roman takeover) world, but there is a flair of that type of power struggles. I am even more impressed that Moll might be grieving (and desperately hoping) for L'ak, but she's simultanously thinking and using all she knows aobut the Breen from him. First getting the Evil Uncle Primarch to take her along as a propaganda tool and then getting rid of said Evil Uncle via a coup was impressive. I don't mean that she had it all plotted out in advance, on the contrary, I think it was two thirds improvisation, but I think she was always very aware that Evil Uncle had not the slightest intention of actually resurrecting L'ak once he got his hands on the tech, and that she therefore needed to get either the tech herself or needed to get rid of him somehow. As of now, my speculation still is that L'ak won't come back the way Moll hopes he will, but that she'll end up the Breen Catherine the Great, i.e. the Ruler not born into the people in question who originally got there via marriage and then a coup. (Sidenote: yes, that also means her ending up as an autocrat herself.)
The archive and archivist Hy'all were charming, and I liked that the last test wasn't about Michael's compassionate nature or honorable intentions (leaving aside the road to hell is plastered with those, there were already tests for that), but about her capacity for self knowledge and confronting the parts of herself she'd like to avoid. Mind you, it's not that the audience learned anything new about Michael here - the fear of being undeserving and the drive to succeed were there from the pilot, it's just that through the years she's learned to deal with them better - , but letting David Ajala play the voice of the archive in addition to book gave him some excellent actorly stuff to do in both parts. (Re: his regular role as Book, I'm thinking specifically of the scene where the archivist gives him the relic of Kwejion.)
Something else I appreciated was that we saw the Discovery crew working on a solution on their end, not just the (adorable) engineering trio but the lesser knnown parts of the bridge crew (good for you, Rhys!!). Though I have to say: when a few episodes back we heard that Detmer and Owo were piloting the ISS Enterprise to the Federation storage at the end of that ep, I figured it was an in verse explanation for the actresses being absent... for the next episode (singular). Not episodes plural! I mean, it's nice to give the bit players more to do, but couldn't we have gotten that and sitill maintained the Sulu and Chekov of Discovery on screen?
In non-ST related news, I visited Sanssouci in springtime and did a pic spam elsewhere.