Saturday, January 11, 2020

Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 4 (An Obol for Charon)


It seems to be a constant in the universe that when you’re in a rush, things pop up to block you.  When you’re late for a meeting, you catch all the red lights, for instance.  Or you don’t get a check you need until five minutes before the bank closes on Friday and the rent’s due Monday.  Or, like, when you’re chasing your science officer, who escaped from a psychiatric ward, and this giant sphere appears out of nowhere and stops you from moving.

Ok.  So, maybe that last one has never happened to any of you.  But it does describe what happens to the Discovery.  Spock has just escaped from a starbase where he was being examined when a sphere holds them and seemingly inserts a virus into their universal translator.

Many of the other systems are affected, but the big problem is Tilly being stuck in engineering with Paul Stamets and Jett Reno.  Stamets is a nice enough guy, but Reno seems to be a bit harsh.  This wouldn’t be a problem, except that Tilly is still dealing with that spore parasite that was manifesting as a hallucination.

Add to this that First Officer Saru is experiencing his death cycle.  His species normally undergoes this process right before being killed by the other major species on his planet, but he’s not on his planet.  So, what gives?

I’d like to say that everything works out, but that remains to be seen.  Spock is still out there, so that’s left unresolved.  Tilly disappears, but we have to assume she’ll be found.  As for Saru, his threat ganglia fall out.  He lives, but he has no idea what that really means for his species.  He’ll live without fear, but he’s never known it to happen to anyone.

It turns out that the sphere just wanted to dump its vast knowledge into the ship’s computer before dying.  This does give the crew a lot of information.  It would also explain something about The Next Generation.  In The Last Outpost, Data is able to give information on the T’Kon Empire.  I always wondered how Data had information on an Empire that ended about 600,000 years ago.  I doubt it’s directly from the sphere, but it’s possible.

In a nice bit of continuity, Number One comes onboard the Discovery for a few minutes.  We still don’t find out her name, though.  Maybe next time.


 

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