S3 E1: That Hope is You
"A Star Trek series in which the Federation has failed is the next logical place for the franchise to go."
My wife Sonia Van Meter, whom I’ve written about previously for The Experiment, is many things: an accomplished political consultant, community leader, and an unjustly unheralded vocalist. (You really should hear her sing sometime. It’ll take the breath right out of you.) But to know Sonia at all is to know of her deep faith in the Star Trek universe. I have no doubt of her love for me and am nevertheless secure in the knowledge that I will always come in second place in her heart to Jean Luc Picard. We’ve been watching CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery. For the third season, Sonia has graciously agreed to provide episode recaps which I’m going to be studying like the Talmud from now on, because when she watches this show, she sees stuff I’d never notice.
by Sonia Van Meter
Holy cow she made it. Michael Burnham made it. She emerged from the wormhole, landed safely (kinda) on a nearby planet, got her mangled equipment up and running, and confirmed that she had, in fact, saved all life in existence from extermination. Not bad for a day’s work.
But now our heroine is utterly alone, hurtled 930 years into a future she knows nothing about on a planet she can’t even identify, with nothing but the handful of supplies she brought with her. Her brief moment of exhilaration over, she’s faced with the daunting task of locating her ship which she HOPES followed right behind her, and not dying in the process.
Enter Book, or Pilot Cleveland Booker, the man who’s ship she collided with upon exiting the wormhole. He’s good and pissed at her for mucking up his travel plans, and lets her know this pretty definitively by engaging her in a little hand to hand combat. Unfortunately for Book, Star Fleet training is nothing to sneeze at. Despite having traveled 900 years into the future, vomiting up the contents of her stomach and crash landing in the middle of a desert, Burnham’s moves put Book on his back with a phaser in his face as she very patiently explains herself: “I’m not fighting you. You’re fighting me.”
Because even when the chips are down, when you’re pained, miserable, lost, and have nothing but the clothes on your back, Star Fleet officers live by the code. They’re explorers with a deep and abiding love for life in all its forms and a fervent desire to see all beings live in peace. Despite being alone and hurt, Burnham clings to the one thing she has left in the universe -- her faith in the core values of the Federation. But then, because she hasn’t had a hard enough day already, Book lands a fatal blow to her morale: The Federation is gone. An epochal event he refers to as “The Burn” left the universe in tatters when nearly all dilithium suddenly exploded, destroying most warp-capable ships and killing millions of people in a flash. The remnants of the long-dead institution are a few and scattered people referred to as “True Believers,” people who still believe in the old rules and old values in a new universe which is decidedly “every man for himself.” Book encourages Burnham to hide the Star Fleet insignia on her chest lest it cause problems for them at the Mercantile, where they go in order to make a deal for dilithium so Book can get his ship off the planet and deliver his questionably obtained cargo. It seems he’s decided to let Burnham tag along, so we assume because he’s got a soft spot for a hard case, or because he thinks she may be of value down the line. Probably both.
The Federation is gone.
The next few moments, you’ll forgive me, are a bit of a blur as I try to shake off the suckerpunch that is a universe with no Federation.
Upon arriving at the Mercantile, two uniformed gatekeepers try to stop Burnham from entering because she’s not a licensed courier like Book. Book snarks at them that they’re denying a lucrative business opportunity for their bosses and shames them into conferring with said bosses, who instantly tell them to quit sitting on their brains and let Burnham in. Believing she has found an ally in Book, she thanks him for his help and tries to locate a comms station where she can try to find her ship. But Book has other plans, misleading her into the station’s security vault by telling her it’s actually a communications array. The station’s security immediately kicks into action, grabbing Burnham in some kind of paralysis beam, affording Book the opportunity to rob her of her remaining equipment which he intends to trade for more dilithium. Burnham, seething with rage, tells Book the second she’s out of this she’s going to come after him, and anyone who’s seen seasons one and two of this show knows exactly how well that’s likely to work out for Book.
Now our gal is in custody of two rather bumbling and colorful guards. They dust her with some kind of chemical truth serum that seems more like a monster dose of MDMA for all the giggling and chatting it induces. While she babbles aloud her internal monologue she reveals to the guards that Book is the man she collided with in space, a man who steals other people’s cargo. Immediately interested, the guards press her for more details.
Cut to a FABULOUS scene with Book having been found by the courier who’s cargo he stole -- a gremlin looking thing named Cosmo -- who’s beating Book senseless and threatening to feed his cat to a planet of hungry people. I mean let’s be real, when you throw our gal under the bus like that you deserve a few good pops to the kisser. The guards and a very loopy Burnham stroll up and break up the fight, and Burnham lands the first of several extremely satisfying punches to Book’s face. Cosmo complains that he’s entitled to kill Book because he stole his cargo. The guards deny his claim, saying they need Book to return said cargo to the bosses first. Miffed, Cosmo asks if he can shoot Burnham instead. And because we’re living in the age of JJ Abrams-style space adventures, we then get a furtive glance exchange between Book and Burnham (who both recognize how screwed they are separately) before they kick into action throwing punches, stealing phasers, and generally blowing things up and running off towards escape.
Ahhh, but on the way out of the vault, Burnham spots dilithium, the highly coveted and impossible-to-obtain substance needed to power Book’s ship. She helps herself to a bag full while phaser fire whizzes by their heads, which of course Book then begs her to give it to him. Burnham, no longer in any mood to suffer betrayal, laughs in his face and tells him where he can stick it. And then Book plays the last of his cards, using his portable transporter to whisk them both off to safety.
Or so we thought. Turns out the guards are just as quick on the transporter draw as Book, and the firefight ensues through several more transports before our protagonists finally arrive back at Book’s ship where they are forced to surrender. As the guards attempt to reobtain their stolen cargo, we’re at last allowed to see what it is-- a giant worm that is sleeping quite peacefully until the noisy bastards interrupt his slumber. And apparently the worm is in no mood to suffer fools either, because after making a snack of one of the guards, the others immediately beam away to somewhere safer.
Then, after the giant worm and Burnham have a rather fraught introduction (look man, worms eat things, how was he supposed to know our girl wasn’t an entrée?) we’re at last on board Book’s ship, with new dilithium, en route to bring the giant worm back to his home planet. And in these few moments of calm, we learn more about Book’s history. He can psychically connect with all living creatures. He comes from a family of poachers, and as the galaxy’s last devout conservationist, he’s no longer welcome at home. At last we see Book’s humanity, at which point I’m willing to forgive his initial transgressions, especially since Burnham has now landed several right hooks onto his flawlessly constructed face. We’ll call it even.
Folks, we’re back in the game. Our heroine has found family again.
His delivery made and his business settled, Book now takes Burnham to someone who might have the inclination and the equipment to help her find her crew. And the end of this extraordinary episode takes us back to its beginning, where we see an elegant man in a grey suit daily assume an unidentified duty with reverence and dedication. Book and Burnham walk into the austere room where the gentleman sits at an empty desk. He greets them with a welcoming expression and a ramrod straight spine:
“Hello. Welcome to Star Fleet. May I help you?”
For the first time since her crash landing, we see hope on Burnham’s face. She takes a cautious step forward and in a shaking voice introduces herself as Commander Michael Burnham, science officer of the USS Discovery. She needs help locating her ship and crew. And in a moment so validating I want to frame it and hang it on my wall, the gentlemen responds with an equally hopeful expression, slowly rising and walking around his desk to meet her. His voice caught in his throat, he stammers his name and title (Aditya Sahil, Federation Liaison) and says, “It would be my honor to assist you.”
STAR FLEET. IS NOT. DEAD. And they’re here to help!
Folks, we’re back in the game. Our heroine has found family again. Across 900 years and god only knows how many light years, she is no longer alone. My heart positively leapt when I realized what Sahil and Burnham had found in one another, so much so that in the next moment, when Sahil had to tell Burnham that her ship was nowhere to be found, it was only moderately dispiriting. After all, Discovery and her crew had faced countless impossible situations in their first two seasons. What’s a little temporal mechanical hiccup to the best Star Fleet crew in the universe?
A Star Trek series in which the Federation has failed is the next logical place for the franchise to go.
As Burnham sits quietly contemplating that her crew may not show up for days, years, even millenia, Sahil gives us one more reason to love this franchise with every fiber of our mortal beings:
“Commander Burnham, now I’ll tell you a secret. I'm not a commissioned officer. You see my father was, his father before him, but unlike them I was never officially sworn in. There has been no one to do it, yet I watch this office every day as I have for 40 years. Believing one day others like me would walk through that door, that my hope was not in vain. Today is that day. That hope is you, Commander Burnham.”
If bearing witness to that kind of faith doesn’t make your heart leap, let me save you the trouble of reading any more of this, or any more of anything I ever write about Star Trek, space travel, humanity, indeed LIFE, because I don’t know how to reach your cold, granite soul with words if that moment didn’t touch you. And then Sahil continues:
“I don’t know how much of the Federation still exists. I simply do my part to keep it alive.”
And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the soul of Star Trek distilled into a single sentence: Star Fleet and the United Federation of Planets… these are not places, or insignias, or planets or ships. These are ideals, a sacred and noble philosophy meant to be tried, tested, even adapted when necessary, but honored no matter what befalls the people who hold them. And as long as there is one breathing being in existence who upholds those values, Star Fleet will live on.
A Star Trek series in which the Federation has failed is the next logical place for the franchise to go. We’ve seen its origin story in Enterprise, it’s heyday in The Original Series and The Next Generation, and even gotten glimpses of it’s fallibility in Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and especially Picard.
But the one eternal quality of Star Trek is hope. That we are not alone. That goodness and decency will prevail no matter how deep the darkness may feel. That whatever we are today, we can be better together tomorrow, because there are others like us willing to forge forward when we ourselves may be too weak to keep moving on our own.
And that’s a universe I’ll always want to explore.
Click here to read the recap for S3 E2.
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