Star Trek: Discovery: Season 1 – Episode 4 ‘The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry’ REVIEW

What a melodramatic title! It’s no ‘The Curse of Fatal Death’ but it’s perfect Trek-episode-title absurd in how very very serious it seems to think it is. And since it refers to screaming lambs, it’s also going to take all my powers of objectivity not to immediately ding it for not featuring Anthony Hopkins doing a villainous monologue, so wish me luck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-0rLKcnF1M

Now that she’s back on Starfleet’s books, Michael gets a special delivery – an all-purpose federation capsule, which turns out to be Georgiou’s last will and testament. Michael is incredibly not ready to deal with this and immediately turns off the recording, a profoundly awkward moment for Tilly as accidental witness. Georgiou having left us far too soon, it’s good to see that her ghost is still looming over Michael, whose slightly terrified revulsion lends the moment the weight it deserves.

One of Starfleet’s outlying colonies is under attack – and worse yet, it’s one of the colonies that produce an important space mineral. Dilithium crystals, vespene gas, call it what you will (Avatar actually called it unobtainium, because James Cameron was more interested in anatomically correct cat-people) – Starfleet is staring down the barrel of a critical lack of it. The nearest ship is Discovery, and they’re still too far away to get there in time – unless they can get the mushroom drive working.

Lorca confidently informs Grand Admiral Thrawn that they’re well ahead of schedule and will have the mushroom drive up and running in plenty of time. Comedy smash cut to Stametz telling Lorca that the mushroom drive is currently a dilapidated, higgledy-piggledy mess and there’s no way he could ethically sign off on using it. Both could take a lesson from a certain Mr Scott, whose stock in trade, we eventually learned, was to vastly overinflate his estimated schedules so that when he got stuff done just in the nick of time he looked like a god.

(Though it should be noted that, by Discovery’s timeline, it’s entirely possible Scotty hasn’t invented this technique yet.)

Lorca insists Stametz get it done and hang the consequences, but there’s a brittle desperation to it. Stametz may be near-terminally uptight, but he’s not saying it’s far too dangerous for nothing. Hey, wouldn’t it be super if a different strand of the plot came up with a solution?

On an unrelated note, Lorca’s set Michael and Landry to investigating the great big hell-beast they picked up last week, a being oddly similar to a giant-sized version of one of our earth tardigrades, or ‘water bears’ as they’re affectionately known. Landry decides to call this one ‘ripper’. Their brief is to see what tricks they can pick up from it – essentially, weaponising an animal. Which isn’t actually a crime here on Ee-arth, but is widely frowned upon.

Michael reckons it only attacked because it was provoked wants to try and reason with it, or at least take a slightly more softly-softly approach than Landry, who decides to let it out of its cage and try shooting it, for reasons she doesn’t explain particularly well. Granted, taking off all the safety features and poking the alien until it freaks out has worked in many works of sci-fi before now. Unfortunately, this time it just gets Landry killed.

Now, while it’s laudable that Discovery has decided to feature a black female protagonist – for the novelty, if nothing else – this really doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if the show’s just going to kill off every other woman who’s darker than a paper bag within two episodes of meeting them. Particularly in circumstances like this, where Landry was set up basically as minor antagonist, then unceremoniously killed to basically prove that Michael was The Right Person Who Was Right.

With Landry’s manufactured objections neatly out of the way – even if they were clumsy, God knows Michael needed a foil – Michael is free to investigate the big water bear’s apparent love of mushrooms. Tilly breaches many, many Starfleet regulations to get her a canister of mycelia, and presented with this, Ripper is as chill as can be.

They then let it loose in Discovery’s onboard mushroom forest, where it’s happy as a pig in truffles – and with this, the puzzle pieces start slotting together. Why were there no hull breaches on the Glenn? Because Ripper was already on it. And just what was it doing on there, exactly?

When they plug Ripper into the mushroom chamber – well, it doesn’t like it much, but all of a sudden the mushroom drive is working perfectly, just in time to get them to the threatened colony. They smash up a couple of the Klingon ships, then lure the remaining ones into what would have been a suicide bombing if they didn’t have a mushroom drive that can blink them to the other side of the galaxy. An innocent, vulnerable colonist looks up at the sky afterwards and asks ‘who saved us?’

With the day saved (albeit that the colonists are left to rebuild their homes and society themselves), Michael can finally get around to looking at Georgiou’s will – although she’s still reluctant, and Tilly has to pull her finger out and practically insist, surprising nobody as much as herself. Georgiou has recorded her a nice, ‘follow in my footsteps’ sort of message – predating the mutiny – and left her her most prized possession, her primitive lens-based telescope, dinged, battered, and well-loved from being lugged from ship to ship.

Elsewhere, poor old Voq’s been left drifting on the sarcophagus-ship all this time, which feels worryingly like the writers of the Klingon plot had to hastily work around the jump forward in time we had with Michael. Voq is learning the hard way that being a leader of men isn’t as simple as having been anointed as one. He has T’kuvma’s blessing, but that’s about it, and his crew are starving – having not eaten anything since Georgiou.

When Kol, a snobby leader of a rival house, turns up with full larders, the crew strike their colours while Voq is rooting around the Shenzhou for clues. Most shockingly of all, Voq’s confidante L’Rell also jumps ship, immediately pledging loyalty to Kol when he makes his move. He orders her to kill Voq, but she has a better idea – marooning him on the Shenzhou among the dishonoured dead.

Watching the Klingon fleet leave, Voq is just starting on a really good brood when L’Rell beams in. Before he can take immediate violent revenge on her, she explains she’s always been on his side and gamed Kol into sparing his life – having pulled not a double-cross, but the rarer triple-cross. The fact they ate Georgiou aside, it actually comes off quite sweet.

So just as Michael’s series arc will probably be her trying to row back from the disgrace of having committed mutiny, Voq – who, bar eating people, is the very image of a plucky underdog – will probably be rowing back from his own shame, failure to prevent a mutiny, a possibly even more damning charge.

 

THE TREK FUNDAMENTALS

‘to explore strange new worlds‘: Sadly, the colonists and their Klingon attackers are doing the heavy lifting in this regard – Discovery is actually present at the colony for under five minutes, and hardly have the time to take in the scenery.

‘to seek out new life and new civilisations‘: Dammit, there’s a war on! There’s no time for this long-hair hippy nonsense! Though Michael and Tilly have made a bit of a connection with Ripper, so we might hope to see it (him/her?) being something other than a threat or a living space-compass.

‘to boldly go where no one has gone before‘: While they didn’t actually travel anywhere new, using the mushroom drive to fold themselves up and zip along through the space mushroom network – or whatever it is – has to get them some points.