S3 E4: Communion
"One day I’ll get through one of these episodes without crying. But today ain’t it."
Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery is not being subtle with the parallels between what’s happening 900-some years into the future and what’s going on right now. Sonia Van Meter gets into it and pulls out a lesson we all can say grace around.
by Sonia Van Meter
I came of age in the Next Generation. As a kid growing up with overachieving parents, I was forbidden from watching TV during the week lest it rot my brain and set me up for a lifetime of lazy habits. The one hour per week exempted from this rule was on Thursday evenings, when Star Trek: The Next Generation aired new episodes. Perhaps it was the unbridled optimism of the show, or the crazy space adventures they had, or maybe it was just that it was the only hour per week from Monday through Thursday I was allowed to mindmeld with a screen. Either way, I embraced that show during my formative years, and the series had a profound effect on my worldview.
The funny thing about it is that I don’t recall the parallels between the show and current events being quite so powerful. Even my young brain was able to see that the themes of fighting injustice and being brave and giving strangers the benefit of the doubt were pronounced. But Discovery is boldly going where no viewer can possibly avoid the tsunami of truth being dumped on our heads. To wit -- this week’s episode sought to remind us that even in the midst of a global pandemic, when our stress levels are off the charts and we have so little individual control over life’s circumstances, none of us are really alone, help is always available, taking care of ourselves must be paramount, and after incredible trauma can come incredible growth.
We open with a soliloquy from the criminally unheralded Dr. Culber, wiser and almost ethereal after his season 2 exile into the Upside Down. He notices how the crew is suffering from the losses associated with their time jump. Without their friends or family waiting for them at home, indeed without a home that even recognizes them anymore, and without the security of Star Fleet or the rest of the Federation, never has a group of people been so truly alone. They have one another of course, but as Star Fleet officers, they are trained to endure, to overachieve, and to persevere through adversity. But even for this extraordinary crew, these are extraordinary circumstances, and without being willing to admit their vulnerability, they cannot accept the help they so desperately need.
Discovery’s newest crew member Adira, the sixteen-year-old girl playing host to a Trill symbiont, struggles with a unique kind of loneliness. Though a native to the time period, she has no memory prior to a year ago when she woke up in an escape pod to discover an alien squid taking up space in her abdomen. I’m not sure I can imagine a more lonely feeling than not knowing who you are, particularly if you’re dimly aware of other personalities dwelling within you. But right now there’s not a soul on board who’s not feeling isolated and lost, and dealing with an ongoing trauma that doesn’t seem to have a finish line. And if any of this sounds familiar, it might be that the writers clearly know what we’re all going through right now and want us to have some hope. Because there is nothing in this universe more hopepunk than Star Trek. No, nothing.
But hope for everyone lies within Adira. Despite not knowing much about the symbiont within her, she’s at least aware that Admiral Senna Tal had the same symbiont inside him. That means his memories should be accessible to Adira, including the whereabouts of what remains of Star Fleet. So the mission becomes clear: Get Adira to the Trill homeworld where she might gain some insight as to why she cannot access memories from the symbiont’s former hosts. And if this were 900 years ago, this would be a simple enough plan. But because so much of the galaxy is cut off from one another, there’s no way to know if a Star Fleet vessel will be welcome on Trill. Given the gigantic middle finger Discovery got when they arrived back on Earth, there’s no reason to think Trill will want outsiders invading their space either. But with no better options on the table, they set course for Trill.
What if they try to impose their creepy biological will on her? I try to fill the hole in the pit of my stomach with more wine.
Meanwhile, on advice from Dr. Culber, Saru is down to the business of resurrecting the morale of his crew. He’s chatting with the computer looking for options (yoga, breathing exercises, “interstellar shopping”) when a glitch in the matrix occurs. Suddenly the computer is… saucy. She gets playful in her tone, and her suggestions extend well beyond her programmed algorithms. It’s as though she’s suddenly come to life, and frankly, this wouldn’t be the first time a Star Fleet vessel’s computer became sentient. But she’s giving good advice, and when Saru requests she perform a self diagnostic, you can almost hear her flip her hair as she giggles and tells him “Oh, I’m just fine!” Saru is oddly calm about it. But then Saru isn’t exactly easy to fluster, even these days.
So we’ve popped into orbit around Trill, and they hail the planet. A Commissioner responds, quite pleased to see a Star Fleet ship after so many years. And the ship couldn’t be bearing better news -- they have brought a host and symbiont home! The Burn was especially hard on Trill, and there are so few symbionts left that to have one return is “a blessing.” The Commissioner immediately welcomes them to the surface, and everyone on the bridge breathes a sigh of relief.
In engineering, Saru asks Stamets to consider possibilities for other interfaces with the spore drive only to unintentionally tap into the abyss of butt-hurt Stamets is currently harboring.
I, however, knot up like discarded Christmas lights in January. Being a woman means constant reminders that society likes to tell you what you can, should, and can’t do with your own body, and suddenly I’m worried about sending that sixteen-year-old into their turf. The Trill might be thrilled to have a symbiont return home, but they don’t yet know that the host is a human. What are the chances they don’t mind a non-Trill hosting one of their own? What if they don’t accept her? Or worse, what if they try to impose their creepy biological will on her? I try to fill the hole in the pit of my stomach with more wine. (ed. True.)
In engineering, Saru asks Stamets to consider possibilities for other interfaces with the spore drive only to unintentionally tap into the abyss of butt-hurt Stamets is currently harboring. Stamets is always a bit prickly, but the idea that Saru wants to have other people occasionally hold his baby in their arms is too much for him. If you needed more evidence that the crew is under undue stress, look no further than his reaction to Tilly when she gently offers her thoughts on new interfaces. You could cook vegetables in the steam that comes off his head.
Meanwhile, Adira and Burnham take a shuttle to the surface of the planet to be greeted by a panel of spiritual and political leaders. They gush with enthusiasm and thank them both for joining them, then they look around questioning. “Your captain said you’d be bringing a symbiont and host.” Burnam smiles and gestures to Adira who beams at all of them. One by one, the Trill faces morph from joy to confusion to horror, and I scream at my TV for Burnham and Adira to run like hell back to their shuttle and get off that rock before Adira’s tethered and branded. (ed. She did, in fact, yell.)
One of the Trill, an iron jawed man with piercing blue eyes and a stare that would look quite at home on a man in an SS uniform slowly steps toward Adira and I freeze. “Speak your names,” he says to her.
“Adira.”
“Continue.”
“That’s it. That’s my name. I’m Adira.”
He retreats, and I exhale.
Burnham goes on to explain that Adira can’t access the memories of her previous hosts. That’s why they’ve come. But the Trill are growing increasingly uneasy. One flat out tells Adira she’s an abomination that must be destroyed, and I grimace. I really didn’t want to be right about this, but an entire conversation then occurs among the Trill about the “being” that is inside Adira, and not once do they even acknowledge that Adira is even still standing there. Someone poses the possibility of forcing a separation of the symbiont and the human, and Burnham leaps into the conversation with Big “Her Body Her Choice” Energy and declares that no one gets a say in what happens to Adira except Adira. And then Blue Eyes pipes up again with a statement that, frankly, kinda shocked the hell out of me.
“Our apologies.”
Burnham leaps into the conversation with Big “Her Body Her Choice” Energy and declares that no one gets a say in what happens to Adira except Adira.
He confesses that The Burn destroyed so much of their culture because so many symbionts were lost. Because they live such long lives, 500-plus years frequently, symbionts are the deep-seated memories of their planet and culture. Now they don’t have enough hosts for them anymore. But Adira could be the answer they’ve been looking for! If other species are capable of hosting symbionts, the Trill way of life may begin to thrive again. They have never looked beyond their own for hosts before. This incredibly hopeful and progressive line of thought is, of course, immediately shot down by the Commissioner, who I shall now demote in rank to “Angry Trill #1,” who calls Adira “a contamination.” After a little more debate, finally the political leader speaks up, but her decision doesn’t satisfy anyone. She asks Burnham and Adira to leave, and not return. Apparently their interest in saving one of their own, and potentially their entire species, only goes so far.
“The longer she stays, the greater the challenge to the only thing our species have left: our ideals.”
It seems The Burn killed a lot more than just bodies. It killed compassion, tolerance, and multiculturalism too.
Burnham and Adira are escorted back to their shuttle by Angry Trill #1 who, quite predictably, leads them astray to a quiet corner where he has every intention of having his own men kill them. That goes about as well for him as you might expect. As Burnham looks over the bodies she’s just phasered to the ground, Blue Eyes pops up, again with an apology, and this time with an offer. The Trill culture is on the verge of collapse. Assisting Adira might be the only way his species has a future. He wants to take them to the Caves of Mak'ala where symbionts are born so that Adira may have her symbiont commune with others and hopefully break through whatever mental barriers are keeping her from connecting with her symbiont’s previous memories. Finally, someone with some vision.
These writers are all about us facing our demons and handling our emotional responsibilities, and even if the metaphor is about as subtle as a trainwreck, this Trek fan is 100% here for it.
Back on board Discovery, Saru is trying out some good old fashioned love and care for his ailing crew. For most of the ship, that simply means a night off, but for his senior officers, he has invited them to what looks like an absolutely gorgeous family style dinner, though admittedly a lot of the food is unrecognizable. It starts off well enough, with a revisiting of the moment they all collectively decided they would join Burnham on her mission into the future in spite of the unfathomable cost to them all. It is described as a prayer, a communion of sorts, and you see a ripple of smiles and even joy spread across the faces of the officers as they remember that promise they made together. There’s even a little laughter. But it’s short lived, as Detmer suddenly has a bit of an emotional collapse, attacking Stamets for his righteousness, who attacks back at Detmer’s arrogance. The mood is destroyed, and the officers all withdraw from the table looking despondent, leaving Saru to deal with his failure.
On Trill, Adira submerges into the sacred pools in the caves in an attempt to commune with the other symbionts. Blue Eyes tells Burnham, who’s watching this with not a small amount of anxiety on her face, that “a symbiont can’t thrive in an unwilling host” so the problem is likely not to do with any kind of forced joining. He continues that a repressed memory relating to the joining might be the problem, but “whatever it is, she will need to face it.”
Yep. These writers are all about us facing our demons and handling our emotional responsibilities, and even if the metaphor is about as subtle as a trainwreck, this Trek fan is 100% here for it.
Adira floats about in the pool and then electricity starts to spark and her eyes go completely white.
“She is now in communion,” whispers Blue Eyes, and both he and Burnham settle in to wait. Unfortunately word has gotten out that one of the symbiont guardians has led a “contaminant” being into the sacred pools, and a flood of security comes in ahead of the political leader, who’s good and pissed. But before she can properly chastise Blue Eyes, Adira has a violent reaction in the pool. Burnham, fearing for her life, asks what’s happening, but no one has any good answers as to why a human being might not have a good reaction to communion. So Burnham does the only thing she can think to do -- she goes into the pool to try to psychically connect to Adira to save her life.
Suddenly we’re in some submerged psychic space, and Burnham is calling out to Adira. Adira comes running, wanting to get the hell out of this place. As the two stand there, Adira having a bit of a panic attack, tendrils start to emerge from the surroundings trying to connect to Adira’s body. She keeps slapping them away and begging Burnham to take her out of this place, but Burnham deduces that the tendrils are the way the other symbionts “connect” with one another, and after a few more shaky breaths, Adira consents to the attachments. Suddenly, WOOSH! We’re seeing memories!
We see Adira holding the hand of a boy roughly her age. He’s Trill, and he’s on an operating table preparing to be joined with a symbiont. His name is Gray, and he and Adira are in love. Adira breaks out of her reverie and tries to run away from her realizations, but Burnham guides her back in. Gray and Adira are on a ship together. He’s playing a cello, she’s watching in adoration. Gray tries to describe the experience of hosting a symbiont to Adira. Adira gazes at him lovingly. And then there’s an explosion.
It’s too painful. Adira again rips away from the memory and tries to run from Burnham. In true adolescent rage and sorrow she lashes out at Burnham. “The only reason you’re here is to get that message from Senna Tal so do not pretend like you are doing any of this for me!”
And then Burnham digs deep and finds empathy for this poor hurting angry child who must remind her so much of herself at that age:
“This is for you. It’s for all of us. We all want a future that’s real, that matters. If you don’t face what this is, no matter how painful, you’ll never move forward.”
One day I’ll get through one of these episodes without crying. But today ain’t it.
And with that, Adira summons the courage to dive back in. The explosion on the ship has wounded Gray. He’s not going to survive. It’s so gut-wrenchingly unfair watching a young couple have to deal with this, but Gray has the wisdom and presence of mind of a several hundred years old being inside of him. He tells Adira that he can’t bear the idea of all of the lives contained within him suddenly disappearing for good. He can’t let all the memories die. And so she hesitates only for a moment before saying “I’ll take them!”
It suddenly makes sense why this human was able to accept a symbiont. Unions like that cannot be forced. There must be trust and love between the two, and Adira loved Gray with every ounce of her being. Of course the symbiont would find a happy home within her.
The emotional block now removed, the reverie ends and Adira finds herself back in the strange psychic space, collapsed in Burnham’s arms. Behind them six figures emerge from the darkness -- the memories of the previous hosts, including Senna Tal… and Gray.
Jesus. One day I’ll get through one of these episodes without crying. But today ain’t it. (ed. There were, in fact, tears.)
The six welcome Adira to the “circle” of hosts who carried the symbiont, Tal. Her reunion with Gray is so uplifting that Burnham standing face to face with what remains of Senna Tal is totally secondary. Burnham thanks him for his message: “It gave me hope!”
But they’ve spent enough time in this dream space, and now they must return to the physical world. Each of the former hosts fade into black, with Gray lingering just long enough to give Adira a radioactive smile, and then Burnham and Adira burst through the surface of the waters, back in the caves where they started. They emerge from the pool, and Blue Eyes gently wraps a ceremonial towel around Adira before asking again, “Please, speak your names.”
This time, Adira beams.
“I am Kasha Tal. Jovar Tal. Madela Tal. Cara Tal. Senna Tal. Gray Tal… and I am Adira Tal.”
“We were wrong.” Damn right you were, you simpleton.
Everyone, even the skeptical politicians and puritanicals standing by, are overcome. They humble themselves and join together in a chanted prayer. Angry Trill #1 steps forward to apologize. “We were wrong.” Damn right you were, you simpleton. Maybe next time don’t rush to judgement on whether someone’s life should be extinguished just because it doesn’t conform to your ideology, huh?
The lead politician offers to mentor Adira, but Adira politely declines. “Thank you, but I believe I’m supposed to stay on Discovery. The symbionts are a gift for everyone, not just the Trill. And I think I’m supposed to be that messenger.”
The politician responds in kind. “And perhaps someday, when the Federation returns, we will discuss a different joining.”
Okay, Star Trek does a lot of things well, but sometimes subtlety really escapes them.
So much of this episode centers on communion as a means of self care. The word itself is used at least twice: when Adira goes for her swim, and when Saru tries to dine with his officers. When I think of communion, I’ve always thought of a religious ritual rooted in humbling ourselves to a god of some sort, but in this context, communion is about sharing yourself with your people and inviting them to share themselves with you. It is still an act of service, but not to some faceless deity. It’s to one another that we owe communion, and we owe it to ourselves not to deprive ourselves of that intimacy. The soul, I believe, cannot bear it.
Star Trek does a lot of things well, but sometimes subtlety really escapes them.
Discovery seems to lean more heavily on the social metaphors than other Star Trek series, but I’m not sure there’s ever been a Star Trek series written during a time of more extraordinary societal uncertainty. And with unprecedented environmental, racial, economic, and health crises all culminating under a president that has exploited and exacerbated the divides between us as a nation, I think perhaps now is a time for our entertainment to smack us in the head with messages of hope and unity and, most importantly, taking care of ourselves and our people.
It should come as no surprise that I teared up yet again during the final two scenes of this episode. (ed. It should not, and she did.) First, Tilly returns to the captain’s ready room to find Saru still sitting motionless at his abandoned dinner table. She thanks him for what he tried to do, and tells him that his objective may not have been achieved at the table, but that reminding the crew who and what they are to one another is the very definition of leadership. Saru graciously thanks her. Communion. Then in walks Stamets who, surprised to find Tilly, forgets what he needed the Captain for and offers what, for him, is the most kind and generous apology possible. He could not have achieved what he had with the spore drive without Tilly’s help, and he failed to tell her that. Sure, she knew, but he’d never told her, and for that, he was sorry. Communion.
And finally, Detmer stands timidly at the door of sick bay in search of Dr. Culber. He meets her at the door. “Are you alright?” he gently asks?
“No. Obviously.”
He acknowledges how hard it can be to ask for help. Communion. Then she makes a joke about how pilots like her are supposed to be “macho,” and once again I have one of my fantastically silly moments where I clutch my chest and whimper at how lovely this show is, because in a single scene they’ve destroyed stigma surrounding struggles with mental and emotional health as well as flipped the traditional gender roles to make a woman the badass pilot, even going so far as to call her “macho.” Seriously, I struggle to even understand sometimes how they pack this much goodness into 55 minutes of TV.
“Are you alright?” he gently asks?
“No. Obviously.”
The ship has the Star Fleet coordinates from Senna Tal’s memory, Adira has her memory back, and Saru has found a way to emotionally support his crew. Not a bad day on Discovery. The episode concludes with a “surprise” for the entire ship. In a cargo bay, Saru is showing an old silent movie from Earth on a projected screen, and everyone is sitting in front of it, eating popcorn, and laughing at the show. More communion, more camaraderie, and even Stamets and Detmer have a moment of acknowledgement. Everyone’s walls are coming down, and while it’s probably going to be a little messy for a while, at long last, our crew can begin to heal itself.
What a marvelous example for us all.
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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