S3 E7: Come Again
Losing our home obliges us to find our home.
Sonia Van Meter finds our hero searching for home in the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery and finding herself. Tears were shed.
by Sonia Van Meter
This show really does like to pack as much as it possibly can into every single episode, doesn’t it? Over the last several weeks I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to watch the series so that I can really suck the marrow out of each installment, but so far that’s meant pausing the show every 15 seconds to make notes, leading to a 4-hour watch time and 20 pages of scribblings covering everything from current political parallels to themes extending all the way back through the franchise. Distilling that down to 3,000 words each week is tough, and inevitably means I have to ignore certain facets that I could otherwise opine on for days (Tilly’s hair, for example, is never within regulation standards and would simply not be tolerated. Every time she gets knocked around that orange mop flies in her face impairing her vision. But that’s hardly worthy of mention even though it bothers the hell out of me literally every time she’s on screen.)
But after two viewings and a week of brooding, a particular theme did emerge from this episode. And as is always the case with Star Trek, it’s exceedingly relatable, tugs on the heartstrings, and makes you fall in love with the series all over again. It makes you feel seen, and a little less alone, even in the dark days of the Uncertain Now. This week, that theme is home.
“This may not be my home anymore.”
This is Michael Burnham’s private sentiment as she records a personal log entry in the opening sequence. We all saw this coming, but that doesn’t make it sting any less. Burnham couldn’t outrun her impulses. She’s always known she didn’t quite fit into Star Fleet even if her commitment to them and the Federation was an indelible certainty. She’s not one for rules, and being busted down in rank has her facing this fact, and she’s considering, rightly if you ask me, whether she really belongs on Discovery anymore. For the entire crew, determining what a new home should be has been a continuing struggle. For some like Stamets and Culber, it’s been reinforcing personal relationships. For Commander Nhan, it was quite literally going home, even if her planet is 900 years older than she remembers. Some hurl themselves into work, while others (looking at you, Detmer) are finding peace in introspection and therapy. But Burnham is eyeballing Book and his cozy ship as though it’s more familiar to her than the ship that’s been her actual home for the last three years. It is nice to see her and Book finally connecting more intimately though.
“I know I’ll never be at peace until I solve the Burn. But I don’t know if I can do that from Discovery,” Burnham continues. She’s at least clear in her motives, if not where her motives will be best served.
“I know I’ll never be at peace until I solve the Burn. But I don’t know if I can do that from Discovery,” Burnham continues.
She’s also mourning the distance she now feels between her and all her friends on board. Strangely though, I’m not sure she feels the responsibility for creating that distance. Particularly when Tilly voices her pain about the position Burnham put her and Saru in by going rogue, Burnham’s response is… a little self righteous. Burnham’s definitely a daughter of Vulcan even if she doesn’t have the ears to go with it.
But all of this gets back-burnered when the computer completes its analysis of the black box Burnham came home with and indicates that the timestamps on each of the three black boxes are different. From this, Tilly and Burnham are able to get a general read on where The Burn might have originated, but unfortunately it’s not specific enough for 3-dimensional space. They need more data. And in a fun twist, Burnham has unearthed records about a massive Federation experiment known as SB-19 which had data sensors placed all over a huge swath of space. Surely those sensors must have had a front row seat to The Burn. But where is that data? Who has it? Why has no one published it? Burnham goes to the Admiral with these questions, assuming he probably has answers. He does, but not the answers Burnham wants. He definitively shuts her down with 2 little words:
“It’s Ni’Var.”
Come again?
“You’d know it by its former name-- Vulcan.”
COME AGAIN?
One of the cool things about this season is that the crew of Discovery, being used to the universe as it was almost a millennium ago, gets to experience certain bombshells right alongside the audience, and this one is a doozy. Vulcan was a founding member of the Federation, one of the first planets introduced in the original series. What in god’s name would convince them to change their name?
“It’s not just the Vulcans who live there now. They share the planet with the Romulans.”
COME AGAIN?
Harken back with me, reader, to Star Trek Next Generation season 5, episode 7, titled Unification I. Spock has seemingly defected to Romulus, paralyzing Star Fleet with fear of what intel he may give the Federation’s mortal enemies, and Captain Picard is sent to retrieve him. But in the subsequent episode, Unification II, we learn that Spock has not defected. He’s on a mission to reunite two species, the Romulans, and his own, the Vulcans, who descend from the same ancestors. It took a few hundred extra years, but apparently Spock’s efforts at unification were ultimately successful, even if it didn’t happen until long after his death. It’s a strange and interesting development that I assumed would be the biggest jaw-dropper of the episode, but just seconds later the Admiral blows up our world yet again:
“Ni’Var left the Federation nearly a hundred years ago.”
COME THE F*CK AGAIN??
To make matters even more baffling, it was the Vulcans, not the Romulans, who wanted to leave the Federation. The Romulans wanted to stay. The story seems to be that the Federation was running out of dilithium, a substance necessary for warp drive, and they’d asked all its best scientists on all member planets to look for other means of space travel.
Okay, NOW we’re getting somewhere. Sounds like The Burn was an accident alright. An accident caused by some mad scientists trying to fix a problem they saw coming-- a shortage of dilithium that was growing by the day.
The SB-19 experiment (not to be confused with the Filipino boy band of the same name) was a Vulcan effort to create a new faster-than-light propulsion system, but during their research, they reached a point when they decided the technology was too dangerous to pursue. The Federation demanded they continue, as it was the most promising alternative to dilithium to date. And so they did. And something went wrong. Now, the Vulcans don’t simply believe they caused The Burn, they believe the Federation forced them to cause The Burn. Unwilling (or unable) to continue a relationship with the organization that helped them create such an extraordinary catastrophe, they left the Federation and kept all the SB-19 data for themselves.
Burnham is now flush with hope. Thanks to the data from the black boxes, she has proof that the origin of the Burn was elsewhere! It wasn’t SB-19 that caused it. It couldn’t have been! They must take that proof to Ni’Var! They need to be relieved of that terrible burden! But the Admiral’s response is crushing-- he doesn’t believe any amount of data would convince the Vulcans otherwise.
That last statement nearly knocked the wind out of me. The most logical, rational race in the galaxy so convinced of something that can be easily disproved? It’s impossible. Simply impossible. But then I remember we come from a culture with people that believe vaccines are dangerous because of a single and thoroughly discredited study amidst a landside of other studies that prove them safe. If we want to believe something badly enough, and if we are emotionally beholden to the idea as a fundamental component of our identity, all the data in the world won’t convince us otherwise.
That last statement nearly knocked the wind out of me. The most logical, rational race in the galaxy so convinced of something that can be easily disproved?
But certain as the Admiral is that Ni’Var won’t want to hear from Star Fleet, he decides to send Burnham as a sort of goodwill ambassador. She’s Spock’s sister after all, the man who ushered in this new era of unification. Burnham, of course, has reservations about being an ambassador to an entity she’s thinking about leaving. But she’s got her orders, and at least this time they align with her personal mission of discovering the source of The Burn. Let’s roll.
As she prepares for her trip to Ni’Var, she reflects on her last words to Spock before she went through the wormhole.
“Listen to me, little brother. This is the last advice I’ll ever be able to give you. There is a whole galaxy out there full of people who will reach for you. You have to let them. Reach for them.”
They are words of encouragement of course, about allowing yourself to love, and be loved. She was trying to help her cold, stoic Vulcan brother remember his human side, the side that recognizes that sometimes home is a place, but more often than not, it’s the people around you that make up your home. And as Spock was a being of both Earth and Vulcan who fit into neither culture especially well, his sister probably knew he would spend a lifetime trying to find a place or a community he could call home.
Oh, Spock. If Star Trek is a story about faith in people, the original First Officer is the perfect embodiment of that faith. He knew reunification was not simply a possibility, but an inevitability, because people need to reach out for each other. He saw his own people, the Vulcans, and his Romulan cousins “struggling through a new enlightenment,” and knew that the best thing for them all was to put their enmity behind them and work toward a unified future. Was he proposing they let the past be the past, embrace one another’s common interests, and (ahem) *Build Back Better?*
Oh, Spock. If Star Trek is a story about faith in people, the original First Officer is the perfect embodiment of that faith.
Yet again, their message to us is as subtle as a gunshot in the dead of the night, and yet again, it didn’t stop me from whimpering like a toddler with a skinned knee at the beauty of Spock’s words. Get the message, America.
And because I hadn’t already embarrassed myself thoroughly by openly weeping during Spock’s message, I had to fall apart again when Saru summoned Tilly to his ready room to ask her to serve as his first officer. I’ve never been more proud of our fuzzy headed ensign. Season after season, her integrity is unimpeachable. Saru’s faith in her is richly deserved. But back to the larger mission at hand...
Spin. Flash. Ni’Var. The president of the planet greets them. She’s pleased to welcome the sister of Spock, a great hero to all the people of Ni’Var, but immediately dispenses with the pleasantries and informs them that she will not be sharing the SB-19 data. As a woman of politics, even a Vulcan one, she knows that all science is inherently political. Even though Discovery’s request is about scientific inquiry, reopening this investigation may very well open old cultural wounds that are too freshly healed. When a culture believes they’ve single handedly destroyed billions of lives in an instant, they’re unlikely to want to revisit the issue ever again. That’s not a risk the president is willing to take, particularly at the hands of the Federation.
My first reaction to the president’s refusal was I imagine the same reaction that Saru and Burnham had standing on the bridge with their mouths open in disbelief. Surely the president must realize how myopic she’s being. If new analysis of their data can prove that Ni’Var wasn’t responsible for The Burn, why would they not want to revisit the issue and tell a new story about themselves?
But while I’m over here gaping in disbelief, Burnham is playing her high card. She squares her shoulders, lowers the tenor of her voice ever so slightly, and asks the president if the people of Ni’Var still honor any of the old ways. When the president nods, Burnham stands a little straighter in front of the Ni’Var president. “Then as a graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy, I respectfully invoke the T'kal-in-ket.”
Now I’m a decades-long Trek fan, and even I had no idea what those words meant. But from context alone, we can assume that the phrase is probably like the sound of a gauntlet when it hits the ground, because the president’s jaw sets, and with ice in her voice, she tells Burnham she will convene a quorum and transport on board Discovery. And with that, the president ends transmission.
Ah, cool cool cool.
Saru slowly turns to Burnham and asks “Commander?” in such a sweet, gentle voice that the “bitch what did you just DO?” undertone is only barely noticeable. Burnham responds that the T'kal-in-ket is a ritual during which graduates of the academy defend a scientific hypothesis before a quorum of peers. Once invoked, it cannot be denied.
Ah, cool cool cool. Burnham has now forced the president’s hand, bypassed her authority, and gone ahead and ripped off a cultural bandaid that might have been holding the whole planet together. Diplomacy? Out the window, in true Burnham fashion. Hope for a collaboration between the Federation and Ni’Var is evaporating like a puddle in a Texas summer. The quorum beams aboard Discovery, and Saru makes every overture of friendliness he can think of to the president, who waves him off politely. The damage is done, she quietly informs him. All they can do now is try to move forward.
Ahh, but we’re not done with the cool surprises yet. A feature of the T’kal-in-ket is that the person defending their hypothesis has an advocate with them, and the advocate is always a member of the Qowat Milat. For those of you who haven’t enjoyed the inaugural season of another extraordinary Trek series, Star Trek: Picard, the Qowat Milat are Romulan warrior nuns. All female, all lethal, they are required to speak with absolute and unflinching candor and they bind themselves to worthy but lost causes. They are badass as hell, and for some reason a particular member has expressed a particular interest in representing Burnham at her defense. Why?
BECAUSE IT’S MAMA! Lord a’mighty somebody get me smelling salts I’m not gonna make it through this episode. Burnham and her mother have been reunited. They are a family again. Across unfathomable space and time they have found each other.
But as usual, the joy is short lived. Gabrielle Burnham immediately senses her daughter is a little lost, unsure of herself, and has no perspective on the fight she’s just picked. Michael is walking into this thinking reason and logic should be enough to win the day, but Gabrielle paints a much more thorough and grim picture of Michael’s situation. Each member of the quorum has their own agenda and will interpret the facts Burnham presents to their own advantage. The president was right-- all science is inherently political, and Burnham will have to convince a Romulan, a Vulcan, and a Romulo-Vulcan that what she’s asking is in the best interest of Ni’Var. In short: Burnham’s screwed, even with mama’s help. And if the president is to be believed, if Burnham’s not successful in her challenge, it will be known forever that Spock’s sister returned to Ni'Var as a dissembler. The ramifications of that will shake the foundations of the entire culture. Michael Burnham may, in fact, in a single day, destabilize an entire society and undo everything her brother worked for. No pressure.
Lord a’mighty somebody get me smelling salts I’m not gonna make it through this episode.
Meanwhile Saru, ever the diplomat, is trying to glean more information from the president and figure out the best tack for opening more diplomatic relations between the Federation and Ni’Var. His gentle and inquisitive nature seems to be winning over the president. Slowly.
The inquiry begins, and right away we see how right Gabrielle was. The Vulcan “purist” in charge of the quorum attacks Michael’s character, intentions, and preparation. The Romulan pragmatist then attacks the Vulcan for being inflexible and shortsighted. The Romulo-Vulcan only opens her mouth to voice abstention. It’s like watching a Republican, a Democrat, and a Libertarian debate religious freedom if you sucked all the emotion out of the room. But it’s immediately clear that Burnham won’t be winning anyone to her side today no matter what kind of evidence she presents. Zealotry, fear, and mistrust are too deeply rooted among these people.
Before the inquiry began, the president took Burnham’s hand and implored her to “be honest, especially with yourself.” I didn’t understand that cryptic command. Burnham was at times uncertain about things, but I never saw her act dishonestly. But as the inquiry continued, and the quorum devolved into accusation and attack from all sides, I saw Burnham come to terms with her role in all of this. She only thought she was sure of her intentions. She only thought she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t even sure whether or not she still felt like Star Fleet was home. She needed to reexamine her motives and her goals, and as she becomes aware of her uncertainty, she’s finally able to be honest with the quorum in a way that makes a difference.
This show is so good about rewarding integrity. Burnham wins so hard when she wins.
She can’t vouch for the intentions of the Federation. She doesn’t know what they might do with the data they’re asking for. She can’t confirm that they won’t try to restart the experiment. It’s a level of honesty we haven’t yet seen, and her newfound clarity makes her path forward unmistakably clear.
She withdraws her request, and concludes her own inquiry. The bickering in the room ceases. Burnham has somehow put the genie back in the bottle.
“I ask you for nothing, but I am giving you MY trust, as a member of Star Fleet.”
This is the promise Burnham makes as she brings her inquiry to a close. She admits her fear, her fallibility, and her concern that she’s unequal to the task before her. And it’s unfair, and even dangerous for her to ask this planet to trust her, or the Federation, when they are still so fragile and stand to lose so much. The reunification and newfound peace between Vulcans and Romulans is worth more than data. It’s a new home that must be protected and defended.
This is one of the first times I’ve been able to see how the Federation is amazing and aspirational and still very self serving. They did send Spock’s sister to Ni’Var in an attempt to get the data they needed, knowing full well she carried the weight of emotional manipulation with her. I can understand why Ni’Var was skeptical. Burnham’s withdrawal of her request might be the only thing, the VERY thing, that saves any potential for a reunification between Ni’Var and the Federation.
And her trust is rewarded. The president, upon seeing how honest Burnham was in the end, deems her trustworthy, even as a member of the Federation, and gives Burnham the SB-19 data, no questions asked. This show is so good about rewarding integrity. And of course I’m crying again. Burnham wins so hard when she wins.
Burnham and her mother must now once again say goodbye again, but as her mother lovingly tells her, “I finally get a chance to say something to you that I’ve wanted to say for a very long time. You always know where to find me.” Mama Burnham has her new home. Now it’s time for Michael to remember where hers is.
And as the entire senior staff gathers in engineering to encourage and congratulate Tilly on her promotion to First Officer, we see another crewmember realize that home will always be the people who love her rather than the roof over her head. When Burnham walks in late to high five Tilly, there’s an emotional moment between the former and current Number One, which Burnham immediately dispels by telling Tilly that all she needs from her is for Tilly to lead her. And with that, we know Burnham has plans to stick around.
“I belong here,” Burnham later whispers to Book.
Losing our home obliges us to find our home. Or in this case, to create our home. Home isn’t a place you always feel comfortable. Home is messy. You fight and cry at home with your family. It can be a place that challenges you, annoys you, tries you, but you grow and learn at home. You serve there. You find love and respect there. Whether it’s Romulans and Vulcans rebuilding their communal planet, Burnham deciding if Star Fleet is still right for her, or Tilly accepting that her new family wants her to lead them, the quest for home in this new time is a theme that’s with us each week, but especially this week. For a franchise so dedicated to the concept of exploring and looking outward, this was a lovely reminder that sometimes the big adventure is in creating the space you want to live in.
Sonia Van Meter, Larry Wilmore’s nemesis, is an award-winning political consultant, a partner in the Truman National Security Project, and former aspiring Mars colonist. Follow her on Twitter at @bourbonface.
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