Star Trek Discovery Episode 2.6 - good moments but muddleheaded on some plot points

Am finally all caught up.

Episode 2.6 was a frantic story with some good moments (Doug Jones and company are fantastic actors) but overall it left me feeling unsatisfied due to some of the plot points.

As I have mentioned on many previous occasions that I accept that “suspension of disbelief” is a part of story telling and in particular science fiction story telling. On this occasion, I believe the scriptwriters tried to stuff too many things into this story and though individual moments work the whole thing falls down.

*** Spoilers ahead ***

Once again the red bursts and the red angel lead the Disco team on another errand of mercy. However, on this occasion, it is less clear that a positive outcome was assured. To recap, the first time they went to a signal, they found a crashed Star Fleet ship and rescued that crew before the asteroid crushed it. In the second signal, they went to a planet that was going to get wiped out by radioactive rocks dislodged from its ring system. In both cases, the way the Disco crew can help was clear: get the people off the ship in case one and stop the rocks in case two.

In this third scenario, it is much less clear that things will turn out right. There was the obligatory discussion about the prime directive and whether it was the time and place to interfere with the current order on the planet Kaminar. Some Trek fans will object to the blatant violation of the Prime Directive. However, there is in the history of Star Trek story telling many occasions where the Prime Directive was ignored so that doesn’t bother me too much.

One near parallel story from the Original Series was “A Taste of Armageddon” where the society the Enterprise visited was at war with its planetary neighbor. The two sides settled into a “balance” of death based on mathematically launched attacks. To preserve their society, instead of real bombs inflecting real damage and deaths, they skipped the damage part and retained the death part by having the calculated casualties of war die in painless death booths. Captain Kirk determines that the society is stuck and destroys the computers running the war and challenges the two sides to truly deal with their conflict.

Another near parallel from Star Trek Enterprise was “Dear Doctor” when Dr. Phlox and Captain Archer discover a planet where the dominant species is dying of a disease while the subservient species is evolving to greater ability. Archer has to decide whether Phlox should give them the cure and thus interfere with the development of the planet. Ultimately, Archer decides against providing the cure and sets the groundwork for what eventually would be formalized in the Prime Directive of non-interference.

Captain Pike’s decision to interfere in the Kaminar balance could probably be defended on the grounds that the Red Burst and Red Angel entity was interfering and Disco wasn’t in the position to stop that interference. That could be debated - what would the Red Angel have done if the Disco squad left Kaminar the minute the Baul asked them to leave? Could the Red Angel have disrupted the balance of Kaminar without the cast and crew of Disco? It seems not hence the red bat signal for Discovery to go there.

Another possibility would be the defense on moral grounds that one society was oppressing another society and it was within the power of Pike and company to do something about it. That could be debated as the Baul were about to kill all the Kelpiens as a result of Disco’s intervention and it was the Red Angel’s intervention that saved the Kelpiens. Pike could not have been sure the Red Angel would intervene although it was a possibility given their past experience with the red burst signals and red angel actions.

In terms of suspension of disbelief, Pike opting to set aside the Prime Directive I can accept.

However, there were three other big suspension of disbeliefs that sunk the story.

#1 The Baul who claimed to truly understand the dangers of the evolved Kelpien species sure acted very non-chalantly when they captured Saru! If he was so dangerous, why didn’t they kill him right away? If he was so dangerous, why didn’t they have much more aggressive restraints and technology to prevent him from doing his deeds of sabotage?

#2 The sabotage that Saru was able to accomplish was not believable. How could he just whack some of the electronics in his prison cell and hack the Baul communications system and send the vahar’ai signal that transforms Kelpien society? Way. Too. Easy.

#3 The transformation happened so fast! In the previous episode, Saru had a long and agonizing process before his transformation was complete. I suppose you could say the Baul communications network amplified the signal much more than the thing-a-blob from last week.

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