S3 E11: Time to Face our Fears
On bubbles, remote learning, and dilithium
What happens when we use technology to raise our children? Well, when your child’s DNA is infused with radiation and dilithium, strange things are afoot at the Circle-K. For one, Burham is Trill, Culber is Bajoran, Saru is human, and Sonia Van Meter is all caps: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? The cultural parallels are clearly marked in this episode. Parents of kids doing remote learning at home will especially appreciate this one.
by Sonia Van Meter
Last week’s emotional farewell to Philippa Georgiou was so jam packed with moral lessons I was really looking forward to an episode of mindless battle scenes and action sequences this week. Gimme some phaser fire and hand to hand combat and maybe just a dash of Federation optimism sprinkled in, huh? No? Oh, OK cool, let’s just jump right back into metaphors so relevant and timely they practically leap from the screen and slap us across our tear-streamed faces. That’s fine. Who needed an emotional breather after this magnificent tire fire of a year anyway?
And in the most gruesome year of our Lord 2020 (and good riddance you merciless thug), if I talked a bit about isolation and personal reflection in these recaps, it’s only because the pandemic has plopped these themes front and center in our lives for the better part of the year. It’s been impossible to ignore them in our entertainment whether they’re there deliberately or we simply choose to see them because they’re in the forefront of our thoughts. Though in the case of Discovery, I’ve got to think it was intentional. While filming of season 3 took place between July 2019 and February 2020, the post production was all done remotely during the pandemic, and I suspect the editors made conscious choices to adapt the stories to meet the occasion. And may I say, well done team.
Last year was a concentrated exercise in staying in our bubbles, and it was predated by a decade of American society cultivating its own intellectual bubbles online. Since the advent of social media more than a decade ago, people have been carefully selecting their own programming, their own companions, and their own echo chambers for years already. And as Discovery seems to revel in finding the most vulnerable spot on our soft underbellies and poking it with a sharp stick, it follows that eventually they’d get around to skewering us right in the heart of our protective fortresses-- our own bubbles.
On Discovery, it looks like we’re back to the business of figuring out the origin of The Burn. And it’s about time, because wow, we’re definitely onto something. Between the information from the black boxes Burnham’s been collecting plus the newly acquired data from SB-19, Discovery has tracked the origin of The Burn to a place called the Verubin Nebula where, lo and behold, a 125-year-old Kelpian ship has become stranded. The ship has been broadcasting a distress signal ever since it became disabled, and upon closer inspection we find there’s a lifesign aboard. The questions mount. That ship is more than a century old. How could anyone survive that long, particularly with the amount of radiation emanating from the nebula? How is this the origin of the burn? What could have caused that kind of chain reaction among so much dilithium in the galaxy? Time to get to work, crew.
Osyraa has held up the store during poor Tilly’s first shift as Night Manager.
So off they go to this nebula in search of answers. And to everyone’s surprise and delight, they find a dilithium nursery. Like metric tons of dilithium. Enough dilithium to power every ship in the galaxy. And under ordinary circumstances that’d be fantastic news, but as we still don’t know what caused The Burn, we’re incapable of preventing a second one, so let’s proceed cautiously, shall we?
Unfortunately this delightful find is spoiled by the news that the Emerald Chain is now going after Kaminar the same way they went after Kwejian. And they seem to be doing it for the same reason-- to lure Discovery out of hiding. We know the Chain is running out of dilithium and Osyraa wants the spore drive on Discovery, of course. But if we’ve now got an all new epic source of dilithium, might this not change everything? Not for her. That green mobster wants it all. It’s about payback for Star Fleet not bending to her will. But for the time being, Discovery can’t worry about her. Their mission remains the same: get into the nebula as safely as possible and retrieve the lifesign and whatever salvageable data remains that might give us a clue as to why The Burn happened.
To that end, Saru, Dr. Culber, and Burnham head off on a rescue mission to grab the survivor on the damaged ship, and upon learning that the lifesign is Kelpian, Burnham has the audacity to question whether or not Saru has the objectivity necessary to see the mission through responsibly. From anyone else on board I’d take that concern seriously, but as much as I love Burnham’s character, she burned (pun so very intended) through any credibility she might have had about personal judgment ages ago. The woman refuses to acknowledge that the rules actually apply to her, and she’s ignored the rules so religiously that she inadvertently started a war with the Klingons, was convicted of mutiny, and after building up even a small amount of trust with her new captain, then decided to ignore direct orders again just to run off and pursue her own agenda. Sorry, but former First Officer F*ck Up doesn’t get to sit in judgment of anyone else’s objectivity these days.
On the other hand, Burnham does still play a significant and important leadership role on the ship even after her demotion. Her discussion about “staying in the moment” with Tilly is apposite and kind, even if I think Burnham is the last person who should be giving anyone instructions on how to live their life. But Tilly is about to be responsible for Discovery for the first time ever as First Officer, and Burnham understands the weight of that responsibility intimately. Her guidance about not being overwhelmed by one’s circumstances, and the lesson that she learned from Captain Georgiou about finding a way to ground yourself in any situation no matter how dire is just the reassuring pat on the arm Tilly needs right now, especially from a former First Officer.
So. Acting Captain Tilly. I still have all kinds of opinions on her nonregulation hair flopping about, and there’s certainly a case to be made that she’s not the right person to leave in charge during Saru’s absence (she may be brilliant but she’s still only an ensign) but seeing her sit uneasily in the big chair for the first time and pronounce “black alert” in her perky little “let’s do this” voice is the most adorable thing anyone will see this year.
That, my friends, is the sound of a sociological bomb going off.
Meanwhile, Burnham, Culber, and Saru beam over to the Kelpian ship and arrive as DIFFERENT SPECIES. Suddenly Burham is Trill, Culber is Bajoran, and Saru is human, which is the wildest thing imaginable despite the fact that we always knew there was a human actor underneath that Kelpian costume. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WHY HAVE THEIR APPEARANCES BEEN MODIFIED AND WHO COULD BE DOING THIS?
And then, reader, we jump into the rabbit hole. The world they’ve just arrived in, with its changing landscapes, floating monsters, and glitch ridden characters, is a holoprogram. It’s an elaborate illusion made up entirely of fabricated beings and images created for the sole purpose of raising a child.
Raising a child.
That, my friends, is the sound of a sociological bomb going off.
Imagine, if you will, a mother in the final days of her life. Imagine that she knows that there will be no one around to take care of her young child after she’s gone. Beyond that, she knows the very world into which he was born, a decrepit star ship, will break down over time. She has a limited window to create an entire universe of computer programs that will house, love, care for, and educate her child until help can arrive. These programs won’t simply be teachers. They’ll be his family. And he’ll have to eventually come to understand that while the relationships he’s formed with these computer programs are real, the programs themselves are nothing more than photons and force fields. How, even in a Star Trek universe where the impossible happens every day, can anyone possibly create a sufficient world like that for their child?
And then I remember that for a lot of 2020, parents were homeschooling their children on their own. They were setting up class time on laptops in living rooms. They were arranging toddler playdates on iPads. They were trying to socialize their kids in a world where it wasn’t safe to be around other kids. Children’s whole worlds were reduced to the “inside” versus the “outside.”
Star Trek really doesn’t like letting a pitch go by without taking a swing at it. And this week they definitely hit a thematic double. First, there's a solitary child in quarantine with nothing but computers and distance learning to guide him. But then, because Trek loves to see us weep, they double down on reflecting ourselves back to us when they reveal that Junior isn’t just an anomalous being who’s somehow lived twice as long as he should. He is also the source of The Burn.
Yeah. This hundred-year-old child is the thing that caused The Burn. How? No idea, but Dr. Culber of course has a theory:
“Bodies adapt. All this dilithium and subspace radiation-- his cells acclimatized to it in utero as they divided.”
Star Trek really doesn’t like letting a pitch go by without taking a swing at it.
So because he was conceived and raised in this utterly inhospitable environment, his body is somehow attuned to dilithium and radiation in a way that makes dilithium react to his emotional state. So when he’s calm and happy, dilithium is calm and happy. But when Junior has a temper tantrum, the whole galaxy trembles.
Honestly there’s so much in here I’m not even sure where to start. Let’s start with the obvious: When human beings aren’t properly taught to deal with their emotions, catastrophe can result (see also: Trump, Donald J.) Junior was abandoned. Not by choice, of course, but he was still left alone and never shown any examples of people acknowledging and dealing with their own uncomfortable emotions. And now, thanks to a miracle of biology and physics, his inability to control his emotional outbursts has almost cost millions of people their lives again. Further, his fear of the “outside” as he calls it is keeping him from being saved from a deteriorating environment that’s well beyond sustainability. Many of the programs he’s been raised with have taught him about the outside world, but now, when presented with the opportunity to finally see it, he’s running the other direction, afraid of what might be outside his own safe little bubble.
Well screw that. It’s 2021 now, and I’ve had about as much of my own bubble as I can stand. I’ve had enough of people not dealing with their own emotional difficulties and using them as an excuse to inflict their pain on others. I’ve had enough of people being afraid of what lies beyond the familiar, as though “other” is inherently synonymous with “dangerous.” I’ve had enough of echo chambers, lulling us into a lazy satisfaction that doesn’t challenge our ideals. I’m tired of this era of people reverting back to their primordial lizard brains, protecting themselves and their own regardless of the cost to others. It’s time to start with the assumption of best intentions, and do the hard work of rebuilding after trauma. And that means facing fear.
Well screw that. It’s 2021 now.
Deep in the bowels of this imagined world is a program designed to look like a Kelpian elder. He sits on a rocking chair and, we presume, tells bedtime stories to the child to help him learn, to keep him company, and to soothe him when he’s scared. When Saru approaches this program, the elder talks about one of the stories he most frequently relies upon for his teaching of Kelpian children.
“To be truly free, they must face their deepest fear.”
You know what? I’m ready. Let's do the thing that scares us. After living this whole ridiculous year away from other people, and the previous three years of living under a regime hellbent on creating panic and chaos, I’m ready for all of us to face whatever fears might have taken hold of us and charge boldly toward them. Managing our fears is the only way to move past them, and the longer we let our fears reduce us, the longer we wait to live our best lives.
Unfortunately, at least in Discovery-land, that’s not going to be possible right away. Osyraa has held up the store during poor Tilly’s first shift as Night Manager. Tilly held her own in the verbal sparring with the evil green queen, but Osyraa won the day. With the away team still trying to get back to the ship, Osyraa sneaks through Discovery’s defenses and takes control of the ship. It’s an ugly, ugly sight, that shamrock colored gangster sitting in the captain’s chair. But she wastes no time setting coordinates.
Spin. Flash. They’re gone.
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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