S3 E10: “You can’t just live in doorways”
Once again Discovery is punching us right in the feels
This is the perfect episode to end the year on. Sonia Van Meter finds the passageway in Star Trek: Discovery that leads us from the Before Times to whatever is next. Because the last thing we can do is stay there. The Uncertain Now is not a place to stay. This year is a door, and what do you do with doors? You pass through them.
by Sonia Van Meter
“Our future is unwritten. Let’s make it count, shall we?” --Emperor Philippa Georgiou
The concept of “making it count” has taken on a strange new meaning in the Uncertain Now. With quarantines forcing us into seclusion and so many of the usually welcome distractions gone from our lives, we’ve all been given, or perhaps I should say “force fed,” the opportunity to take stock of our lives and consider with intent what we really value, what we want to prioritize, and how much of our daily life is just an exercise in running out the clock. And as reliably as morning prayers (if you’re into that kind of thing), Star Trek is here with another opportunity to examine our lives in concert with the cast of Discovery, as the conclusion to Philippa Georgiou’s arc leaves us with unanticipated hope for growth even as she resisted it at every turn.
If you are reading this recap without having seen the episode, I should go ahead and let you know that once again Discovery is punching us right in the feels with its parallels between the Trek universe and our own. This week it’s especially brutal, but it’s Christmas of the most horrible year in a generation, so what better time for us to take stock of what we have, of what we’ve lost, and just how far we’ve come while still keeping, for the most part, our heads above water?
First, I’ll say this though: It’s fun to be right. And boy was I right about Philippa going back to the mirror universe, about the “why” of it all. Her incredible efforts at saving Michael Burnham and bringing her back into the fold, of improving the Terran universe with even just a small amount of compassion, of giving her empire a vision of what they could be… well, I was here for every lovely nanosecond of it, even though the delusion of it was so pronounced that it draped like a blanket over her every word and action. Her internal soliloquy as she tortured Burnham for her disloyalty was a revelation:
First, I’ll say this though: It’s fun to be right.
“I wish there were another language you could understand, but here where strength is power, and terror is love, there is no other way to reach you. I’ve seen who you can be, Michael. I've seen who I can be. I've seen what this world can be and it is luminous. We can have that. We can be more. But first, we must remake ourselves. We must leave behind all of that which destroys us.”
Philippa has changed. She’s no longer Terran, even as her very molecules riot against her to prove she is. It wasn’t just that her bloodlust had diminished or her need to control things had subsided. Her time in the prime universe has broadened her worldview. She’s capable of seeing the potential that comes with supporting and even encouraging other people rather than simply dominating them. Also, and I’m probably projecting here, but being that angry, that domineering, and that vicious all the time must be unfathomably exhausting. Who has that kind of energy to dedicate to being awful? It takes effort to be that cruel, and if you’re spending your energy on cruelty, you’re not spending it on being creative, or ingenuitive, or resourceful. Or happy.
But it was just a daydream. It was a fiction that Philippa could transform her empire into a wiser and more forgiving place. And in the end, just as she had the first time, she had to kill her own daughter who would not yield. Holding out hope until the moment she finally plunged the blade into Mirror Burnham, Philippa didn’t allow herself to be defeated, but nor would she let her own daughter destroy her. It must have broken her heart in a way I’m sure surprised the hell out of her.
“I've seen what this world can be and it is luminous. But first, we must remake ourselves.”
But as we all observed at times in utter amazement, she made very different choices this time, and those choices will echo through the Terran universe long after she’s gone. In sparing mirror Saru’s life and trusting him, she created a warrior. Telling Saru that he wouldn’t just survive the Vahar’ai, but would emerge stronger from it, she did more than free him from a life of slavery. She gave him dignity and enabled him to transform his own life. And now he will continue freeing and enabling the rest of his people, not just the ones in servitude, but all Kelpians everywhere. Emperor Philippa literally ate a Kelpian the first time we met her. Now she’s empowering the entire species. And her kindness toward him is immediately rewarded with a now cemented loyalty. He begs her to return to wherever she’s really from, because no one capable of that kind of generosity could possibly be Terran. And he’s right. But her response is perfect: “This is my home. Now and forever. And I will make it what it needs to be. That is how I will survive.”
Philippa is leaving a legacy.
It was never about changing the past. That was never possible, even for the indomitable Philippa Georgiou. It was always about proving her new values, proving she had changed, proving she had improved for her time on Discovery. And when she tells Saru that the Vahar’ai isn’t a death sentence and he panics at the thought of all the loss his people had endured at the mercy of a myth, she doubles down on her kindness and gives him resolve: “SURVIVE. That is how you honor them. Teach others what you know. That is how you avenge them.”
Who would have thought that Emperor Georgiou would ever find the capacity to care about someone other than Michael Burnham like that?
But that, as I have repeated so many times now, is the glory of Star Trek. Cruelty, disdain, and viciousness are dangerously contagious qualities. Unchecked, their capacity to destroy is limitless. But decency, compassion, and hope are just as contagious, as this season has gone to great lengths to show us. Put anyone in the mirror universe, and the cruelty will permeate them like venom. But even Philippa couldn’t escape the honor and decency of Discovery in the prime universe. And the benefits, she learned, of living that kind of honorable life far outweigh the limited pleasures of domination. When you help and enable people, the potential for good things to follow are limitless.
I would have loved a season dedicated to Philippa reforming her empire into something closer to the prime universe. Given that the prime and mirror universes were once not quite so different from one another, there’s a wealth of potential for great story arcs. But for now, the prime universe is the one where good things are possible and where change for the better is always the goal of our intrepid heroes, and since Philippa can’t stay here without literally flying apart atomically, we have to find a way to let her go. Having ended her daughter and taken a blade to the neck, she fades into unconsciousness in the arms of her devoted servant Saru, who has emerged from the Vahar’ai a respectable facsimile of his prime universe counterpart. And as her world goes black, she whispers, “You passed through” to Saru with pride and encouragement.
And then the phrase is echoed by that fool Carl back on Dannus Five, who was tending the magical door she walked through. She’s back on the snowy ground, waking up in the prime universe in Michael Burnham’s arms. Dorothy has awakened back in Kansas, and folks, she’s a little pissed.
Dorothy has awakened back in Kansas, and folks, she’s a little pissed.
But before we get to that, a few housekeeping items. First, and frankly they should have dealt with this in the last episode, who the hell is Carl, and why is he tending a door in the middle of nowhere? Oh right. Carl is one of the guardians of forever. If you’re an extremely old school Trekkie (and we’re talking original series, not Next Generation) the Guardians of Forever are gatekeepers to time travel ports. They made a few appearances in the original series, but I don’t believe we heard from them in any Trek series after 1969. And that’s all fine and well, and I do appreciate a B-side deep cut as much as the next FanGirl, but after such intricate and nuanced plot development, it seems like a cheat to suddenly open up a time/space super highway on-ramp just to conclude a character’s story arc. But here we are. Carl the time/space guardian gave Philippa what she thought was going to be either a cure for her condition, or an opportunity to meet death on a level battlefield. Turns out neither was the case.
The opportunity on Dannus Five was never intended to be a cure. It was only an opportunity for Philippa to be measured. To see if her time in the Prime universe had really had any significant impact on her character:
“You weren’t sent back to be cured. You were sent back to be weighed.”
“Weighed?”
“Tested to see if she’d make different choices. To see if this time, here, had changed her at all.”
And it most certainly had. Despite the same conclusions coming to pass, Philippa’s efforts at rehabilitating an empire steeped in barbarism and savagery were all the moral arbiters of the universe needed to see to know she was a changed woman. And for her efforts, she’s been awarded the opportunity to live out her life in a different universe. Not the Terran universe where she’s from, because she’s no longer right for that universe. Nor can she stay in the prime universe, which is literally tearing her apart at the seams. But she’ll return to a time where the prime and mirror universes were a little closer together, a little more familiar, and a little less brutal, where she may still prove beneficial to a community, and her decades of experience as a tyrant might also prove useful.
It is, I suppose, a fitting end for Philippa, though I’ll miss her punishing honesty, her scathing wit, and her epic swagger. As she exits stage right, she leaves a legacy we would all do well to consider. The testing of protagonists to measure their worthiness is as old as storytelling itself, but in a time when our challenge lies not in rising to meet an enemy but rather in staying away from others to keep our communities safe, the lessons remain the same.
In a time when our challenge lies not in rising to meet an enemy but rather in staying away from others to keep our communities safe, the lessons remain the same.
Stay home. Don’t gather. Keep to yourself. So much time alone with our thoughts and without the noise of the Before Times can unearth demons we may not have been aware of, but if we’re just a little bit brave it can also be a time to discover strengths we might not have known we had. When we’re not constantly barraged by the din of everyday life, what do we see? What do we hear? What finds its way to us, and how do we choose to face it? Will we choose to be the mirror universe versions of ourselves where we meet unpleasantness with anger and vitriol, inadvertently perpetuating a cycle of insecurity, unhappiness, and misery? Or do we want to dig deep and find the prime versions of ourselves? Will we acknowledge our unease and discomfort, and approach our fear and uncertainty with self-love, forgiveness, and maybe even a little courage? What do we want the consequences of our actions to mean for the future, whether that’s tomorrow, next week, or for the next generation?
“See that’s what you do with doors. You pass through.”
Carl the Guardian casually tossed off this obnoxious metaphor after Philippa collapsed back in the prime universe, and I wanted to hurl something at my TV. The omniscient beings in the Trek universe get unlimited license to use hackneyed metaphors and they always land with a loud thud, but given what 2020 has meant for so many of us, I find myself considering this line a bit more that I might usually. If this year was not real life, but a gateway between the Before Times and the post-pandemic world, then there will be a point when we’ve finally passed through it. After all--
“You can’t just live in doorways.”
Carl has a gift for the obvious, doesn’t he?
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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