First Move.
(Spoilers for previous episodes and some of this episode)
We’re back for another week of Star Trek: Discovery and I can say that Mondays have been pretty exciting because there’s a new episode every Monday (still should’ve been released all at once though). This week’s episode, the long-titled ‘The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry’, was another good episode in my book as the crew of the USS Discovery solve their new flight problem and the Klingons are back in action.
Michael Burnham is given the job of using the space monster/alien from the previous to the Discovery’s advantage. Captain Lorca entrusts her with finding out a way to use the alien, now named Ripper, and it’s specific features to better enhance the ship for war. Burnham instead finds another use for Ripper and solves the ship’s problem with their new jumping drive. The Klingons are also back as they are apparently still stuck in the same place they were after the first two episodes.
This episode had a few small reveals in terms of character building and how each character is going to interact with each other. With the show now being a full story in the one season, it’s good to get a grasp early on of how the crew operates together. We already know about Burnham and Saru and how well they know each other but this week’s episode gave an interesting light on how the crew follows Captain Lorca. From the very start, I thought that Captain Lorca would for sure be a bad guy or he’d at least end up being a bad guy, I mean the guy literally can’t be around lights that are too bright so he’s always lurking in the shadows. This episode, however, showed him being in command, saving people and well being a captain in Starfleet and he is pretty good at it as well. I think the show is trying to get us to think he is evil by portraying him as this crazy leader who will angrily jump into battle and make arrogant decisions but one scene where he is talking to a general of Starfleet he is at least half taking orders while you can also see him thinking about saving the people in peril. Maybe he is just a nice guy who has crazy aspects to him?
The new aspect to the show for this episode is the Discovery’s new jumping ability, a storyline that I thought would run for a while. The Jumpdrive allows for the ship to teleport to any spot that’s charted that Captain Lorca feels like, too him it’s mainly behind enemy lines for some crazy attack because that’s the type of crazy move he apparently is thrilled to pull off. With this new ability comes a new special effect and the show has managed to make the jump look really awesome but also dangerous at the same time as it looks like the ship and everything around it is being ripped and turned in the middle of it all. Just more awesome special effects for a TV show, keep it up Discovery team.
Every episode that turns out to be good always has its questions and as of right now I don’t exactly know where Discovery is going and that’s a little unsettling. The Discovery has it’s new jump drive, despite some alien animal cruelty, but that’s it and I thought that was going to be a long arc in the story. Perhaps it’s a good thing that the show is moving at a faster pace than I thought it would be but I also don’t want it to run out of steam too early, the nice visuals can only win you over so many times. With the Klingons barely on their tails, I’m keen to see what next week’s adventure is and hopefully it isn’t a full story season that is being pulled back by the previous way of making Star Trek, episode by episode…I don’t want that, I’m loving this new Star Trek.