Star Trek: Discovery – That Hope Is You/Far From Home Review

Huh. That’s my general reaction to the two-part third season premiere of Star Trek: Discovery. While some of the show’s problems have been alleviated by the 900+ year time jump to the future, the series still relies too much on style over substance when it matters the most.

First the good: Discovery continues to have the deepest bench of all the Trek series, and it’s clear that the show’s writers intend to lean into that strength. The best elements of Discovery‘s uneven (but still pretty good) second season were those that made use of the show’s expansive supporting cast, thereby allowing the show’s less interesting main characters to share the considerable load of carrying the series. Keyla Detmer, Hugh Culber, Nahn, and Jett Reno are, at this point, far more compelling characters than Burnham or Stamets – which is certainly a HUGE issue, considering those two remain at the center of the series – but so long as the writers continue to keep these (and other supporting characters) in the mix of the main story (meaning sending them on missions with the show’s leads and giving us time with them away from the show’s core characters), it should go a long way to solving the character issues the series has had over the past two seasons. I found myself genuinely enjoying the Stamets scenes in “Far From Home,” as the writers allowed us to watch him play off Culber and Reno, making the prickly and underdeveloped character palatable. Similarly, letting Tilly (a character I genuinely enjoy) bounce off Georgiou and Nahn was a stroke of genius, making their scenes pop and allowing us to see another side to the normally chipper Tilly: frustrated. Giving us character moments amongst the flash will go a long way to creating the balance Discovery needs to be a truly successful series.

And speaking of character, holy shit, I think they cracked the Burnham problem. “That Hope Is You” was the first moment in the history of the series where Burham was a fully realized character and not just a plot delivery device. And it was glorious to finally see Sonequa Martin-Green sink her teeth into some fun, light scenes. The problem with making your show’s central character essentially a Vulcan (and yes, I know she’s human) is that so much of the show’s emotional beats are then filtered through a character who refuses to react with emotion, zapping those moments of the resonance they should have. Which was a large part of the reason swaths of the first two seasons just didn’t work: the audience isn’t triggered to have an emotional response to a major event unless we witness it hitting the characters the same way. When Burnham was confronted with emotional beats, the character naturally resisted reacting in an emotional manner, leading to the moment getting lost. It was frustrating as a viewer and I suspect frustrating for Martin-Green as the actor. But, seemingly freed from the bonds of her Vulcan past, this lighter version of Burnham is one I’m genuinely excited to get to know.

So, season three appears to have righted the ship in terms of character, but can it do the same with its story arc? My major critique of the past two seasons was that the expansive nature of the season arcs often overshadowed the characters within them. Yes, serialized Trek is going to be different than the traditional episodic structure the majority of the past series operated under, but Discovery consistently bit off more than it could chew, leading to muddle plot points and disappointing reveals. Diving into complex arcs without sufficiently laying the groundwork through world building and character development means the arcs may be as grandiose as can be imagined but still fail to work. A lot of corner cutting happened in seasons one and two – relying on the audience’s past knowledge of Klingons or the Kirk and Spock era – which makes me all the more intrigued with season three. By jumping so far into the future, the writers will have to do the world building work if they hope for the arc to make any sense. And, unlike before, they are no longer constrained by past Trek stories. This is their chance to lean on the characters they have built and let them loose in a new universe, creating conflicts for them out of whole cloth. It has to be quite freeing.

But there is still one big hurdle the show seems determined to keep tripping over: style over substance. While these initial two episode did some really great things (continuing to build up the show’s supporting characters, lean into the morally gray nature of Georgiou, give Burnham the emotions she’s been lacking), the writers were still too content to push the flashy tech and the deus ex machina to their limits. Sure, new tech is super cool, but a chase with personal transporters that didn’t add anything to the story (other than being an excuse to show off the Icelandic countryside and prove to CBS and Paramount that the travel budget was used)? That felt like a waste of time. Having the large animal eat the bad guys at the last second? Yeah, seen that one before. And having Georgiou roll up and save the day (and prove, once again, that Starfleet regulations aren’t always the best choice when you’re dealing with folks who don’t give a shit – which is a super interesting plot point that the show continues to side step)? A nice character beat for one of the show’s strongest characters, but still, not all that original.

I have faith that this time jump can serve as a creative reboot for the series, but the arc needs to remain grounded within the characters and Discovery and not become some universe-encompassing struggle where our heroes are just a small piece of the puzzle. The Dominion War arc on DS9 worked because the series took the time to build its character over several years and then pinpointed the focus of the narrative on the station with the character we knew. Yes, the war affected all of the Federation, but we didn’t need to see how Vulcan was handling things. We want to understand how the characters we love are impacted by the arc. So, if the writers manage to keep their focus tight, Discovery could turn the corner from good to great in season three.