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"Anomaly"

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, Episode 2 – Debuted Thursday, November 25, 2021
Written by Anne Cofell Saunders & Glenise Mullins
Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

The follow-up episode to the season premiere delivers a perfectly balanced blend of sci-fi action, heartbreaking emotion, and even a little fun.

WARNING: Spoilers below!

RECAP

"Not on our watch"

Book is inconsolable, still not really coping with having witnessed the destruction of Kwejian and the loss of his family. Seeking isolation on his ship, he replays the tragedy over and over again. Captain Burnham feels his pain and is at a loss as to how to help, seeking her own refuge in the warm embrace of her old friend Captain Saru, who returns to the USS Discovery with a new Kelpien pin, a new (actually, renewed) position as first officer (but call him "Mr. Saru"), and a whole new demeanor as the ship's resident wise man. Together, along with Stamets, they brief a Federation summit on the gravitational anomaly. They know it's big, like really big, and it's moving, and it destroys everything that gets near it, and that's about all they know. Vance orders the Disco to head straight to it to get more answers. After a nice, brief, inspiring Burnham speech, it's black alert time.

Arriving at the ginormous ominous phenomena results in some fun dueling science jargon from Stamets and Tilly about an "accretion cloud," "dark matter," and "gravitational Doppler shift," but it was best summed up by "it's bizarre." Bottom line: They need to get really close to gather the necessary data. The only way to do that is to send in Book's ship, and the Captain isn't entirely sold on the idea of her grieving boyfriend being ready for such a mission. He says he is going regardless, so Saru has the winning idea to send a hologram projection of Stamets in with him, even though they've had an icy relationship ever since Book horned in on Paul's spore drive monopoly. And Michael will be keeping them on a short leash, literally, with a tether connecting the ships.

"I fly, you scan"

Things between Stamets and Book start off awkwardly and only get worse as Anthony Rapp and David Ajala embark on a tour de force purportedly to explore the anomaly, but really to dive deep into their shared guilts and regrets. If dodging pieces of his destroyed planet wasn't enough (thanks for pointing that out Paul, btw), Book is descending into visions of the destruction of his home planet and ghosts of his brother and nephew. Back on the Disco, the anomaly shows them who's boss by wreaking "that wasn't supposed to happen" havoc, giving those flame and spark canisters on the set a real workout along with some spectacular OMG-the-gravity-has-stopped-working wirework.

Tilly and Adira are tasked to figure out why the safe distance they had initially calculated turned into the danger zone. Sylvia does her best season one snippy Stamets with poor Adira, who just wants to be Tilly when they grow up. Their prediction of impending ship-destroying gravity waves forces a big decision. Captain Michael makes the tough call to cut Book's ship loose, calmly asking her crew for suggestions on how to bring her boyfriend back alive.

"Things just don't feel the same way they used to"

Even with all the action and character drama happing on that cut-off ship, the episode also finds time for other character moments. Hinted at in the first episode, we can now see how Gray will become a real person by being "incorporated" into an android body [Star Trek: Picard SPOILER ALERT] using the same technique that resurrected Jean-Luc Picard, who gets name-dropped along with Dr. Soong. Gray gets to do some fine-tuning as his android is being prepared, but this body-shopping moment is actually stressing him out. Adira diagnoses the problem: In a recurring theme for the episode, Gray is feeling guilty, although in his case it is guilt over being happy about being finally able to start making plans for a ghost-free life.

Tilly continues to feel unmoored, believing she came up short as acting captain last season—and the losses from her away mission in the last episode are not helping. Luckily, she has her surrogate dad Saru back to give her some comfort, and even a fun little bit of their old playful chemistry as she wonders if he has gotten taller in his time away. Hugh is also a big help, sensing her distress and helping her navigate the tension with Adira, noting there are bigger issues at play. Tilly knows "something's off" and she asks the good doctor for some real counseling, like "professionally" and everything.

"I'm here. We're all here"

The only way to get Book's ship and the precious data back to the Discovery is to literally "catch" a gravity wave and "ride it out," a solution courtesy of Tilly's science and Bryce's kite surfing. But Book remains lost, perhaps even resigned to his fate. Paul reaches out by admitting his distance from Book wasn't ego, but shame over being helpless when Book had to take control of the Discovery's spore drive to save his family back at the end of season three. Book appreciates the candor, but he is still haunted by his visions as he fails in an attempt to catch a wave. Saru sachets in with another perfectly timed piece of advice: It's time for Captain Burnham to be girlfriend Michael. She activates the cone sphere of silence; reaching out to pull him back from his guilt spiral just in time to catch the last wave to safety.

The near-death experience breaks ice across both ships. There's clapping and a high-five for Adira from Tilly. There's some spore drive brothers bonding over on Book's ship, but also a lovely moment when Stamets thanks Book for saving his family last season and pledges to find out what happened to Kwejian. Once he's back on the Disco, Book admits to Michael that he wasn't ready for the mission. Uh, no duh, but it's all part of the wave of honesty and openness sweeping the crew. He may have lost his family on Kwejian, but she reminds him he has a new family on Discovery. Yes, there's a lot of hugging too. That is until BuzzKilly Tilly reveals the anomaly actually changed direction, making its course entirely unpredictable. "It can go anywhere, at any time, and we may not have any kind of warning at all." Gulp.

ANALYSIS

Certainly uncertain

This second episode kept up the pace of the strong season opener. Co-writer Anne Cofell Saunders, who joined the show in season three, is adept at weaving strong character exploration in with the action. There were quite a lot of great paired character moments throughout, but the heart of this was the powder keg pairing of Stamets and Book. Anthony Rapp and David Ajala delivered some of their strongest performances of the series and showed amazing chemistry even though this is the first time they really have worked together to this extent.

While Captain Burnham played a critical role, "Anomaly" left room for all of these other character stories to thrive, such as Tilly's fallout from season three continuing to manifest into a full-blown crisis of confidence. However, and even with the five-month gap between seasons as an excuse, turning Stamets' animosity towards Michael at the end of last season into a "too soon" joke about being blown out of an airlock felt a bit flippant, dismissing a potentially interesting character thread. On the other hand, Doug Jones's sublime Saru was the MVP of the episode as he wove in and out of different character crises, always there with the right call. This new dynamic as Burnham's first officer feels just right for the ever-evolving relationship, with the "Mr. Suru" title even evoking the greatest of them all.

Most of all, this episode was really about something, in the strongest tradition of Star Trek. The character stories are tied together with recurring themes of loss and guilt, including the survivor's guilt that is plaguing Book and sending him to the edge. But the episode was about much more than that, manifesting the season's theme of uncertainty. While it may appear the exploration of the season arc mystery took two steps forward and one step back, that was apparently the point. The anomaly is a clear allegory to the global pandemic and this episode was like March 2020, when it became evident that we were all in this together, and yet we had no idea where it was all going except that it was a very scary place. T'Rina foreshadowed what is to come with a warning of civil unrest; Saru countered by pointing to the elusive but only solution: openness and a unified strategy.

Weird science

This episode was surprisingly heavy on science and technology, from the wild to the weird, and much of it evoked more questions than answers. The titular anomaly itself dominates, but the writers deftly wove all the real and imagined sci-fi science into various character stories instead of the prolonged exposition that Star Trek is infamously known to employ. That said, some of the specifics are head-scratchers, starting with the given size of the anomaly at five light years across (or about the distance between the solar system and its nearest neighbor). Postulated to be a collapsing binary black hole, that would make this far, far larger than the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, estimated to be 17 light hours wide. Clearly, there is more to uncover with this big bad (really really big bad) of the season.

The writers also subtly introduced what could be a profound new technology, the neurolink hologram projection used by Stamets. While simple projected holograms were seen back in the 23rd century, this super-telepresence puts someone into the location complete with tactile functionality. Depending on the range, this tech could prove quite useful, possibly even replacing space travel in some instances.

"Anomaly" gave us an update on a bit of Discovery tech that hasn't been touched on in a while, namely the evolving artificial intelligence of the ship's computer. We're now seeing that the ship itself, combined with the ancient sphere data from way back in season two, appears to have become self-aware, or at least self-identified, choosing the name Zora. This is another big step in the promised connection to the Short Treks episode "Calypso" where the ship was found alone in a distant future, being run by the AI "Zora." Actress Annabelle Wallis has returned to voice Zora, who now appears to be like Alexa as Captain Burnham addresses her directly. Having an AI as the ship's computer opens up many possible avenues of storytelling, especially if Zora starts making decisions on her own.

In addition, Discovery also made a big connection toStar Trek: Picard, choosing to explicitly use the same technology that resurrected Jean-Luc Picard to "incorporate" Gray. Here we learn the tech has severe limitations—which is a good thing, as otherwise, the galaxy would be full of consciousness-carrying immortal androids by now. It's a convenient way to not introduce yet another form of cheating death while finally allowing Gray to be seen, and hopefully, give the character some agency and distance from Adira to find his own path. This ties into the way Culber is fully coming into his own, doing double duty as resurrecting super doctor and sympathetic ship's councilor, even getting a Troi-like moment on the bridge to advise the captain mid-crisis. Let's hope Gray can come out of Adira's shadow to be a full character, unless his fate is to return to Trill to become a Guardian, which is apparently his dream job.

This is big

All together "Anomaly" is one of the strongest episodes of the series. It moves the plot forward in a big way, but the focus remains on the characters. It also makes good on the promise of a coherent theme for the season, something previous seasons have only dabbled in. The future is uncertain, which again, is exactly the point.

Random bits

  • This is the second Star Trek episode titled "Anomaly." The first was the second episode of season three of Star Trek: Enterprise.
  • This is the third Discovery writing credit for co-executive producer Anne Cofell Saunders, and the first for story editor Glenise Mullins.
  • Before it changed course, the models had the anomaly headed for the Riscot system, which we haven't heard of before.
  • Saru points to Captain Georgiou's telescope recovered from the USS Shenzhou to evoke her memory.
  • Saru's Kelpien pin signifies his continued role as a council member of his village. Starfleet has allowed cultural-specific adornments with uniforms in the past, including Bajoran earrings, and Worf's Baldric.
  • Saru has been offered the command of the USS Sojourner, also the name of a NASA Mars Rover, which was featured in the opening credits of Star Trek: Enterprise and was named to honor Civil War-era abolitionist Sojourner Truth. The US Navy also has a supply ship named for Sojourner Truth. There is also a Sojourner class of ships in Star Trek Online.
  • Having a captain serve as first officer is not unprecedented in Star Trek. Captains Will Decker and Spock served as first officers of the USS Enterprise under Admiral Kirk, and (the resurrected) Captain Spock stayed in the position even after Kirk was demoted back to Captain, in command of the USS Enterprise-A.
  • Among those assembled at Starfleet HQ was a Ferengi Starfleet Captain. Nog was the first Ferengi to join Starfleet back in the 24th century. In season three, Discovery featured a 32nd-century ship named in his honor (and in the honor of the late Aron Eisenberg). It remains unclear if Feringar is part of the new Federation.
  • Ni'Var is still not part of the Federation, but they will help analyze the anomaly data.
  • Captain Burnham has installed projectors in her quarters that can turn it into a sort of holodeck, although it's unclear if you would bump into the furniture if you started running around.
  • Michael likes a program featuring the Cliffs of Surak from her time growing up on Vulcan where she used to run away.
  • Bryce used to kite-surf on Manark IV, a planet first mentioned in the TOS episode "The Empath."
  • When they arrived at the anomaly it could only be seen on the viewscreen using a "polarizing spectrographic filter," but at the end of the episode, it was somehow visible to the naked eye.
  • Even in the 32nd century, damage to the bridge results in a deck strewn with rocks. Headcanon: it's programmable matter that has ceased functioning.

More to come

Every Friday the new TrekMovie.comAll Access Star Trek Podcastcovers the latest news in the Star Trek Universe and discusses the latest episode. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Stitcher and is part of the TrekMovie Podcast Network.

New episodes ofStar Trek: Discovery premiere on Thursdays on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Fridays where Paramount+ is available around the world. In Canada, it airs on CTV Sci-Fi Channel on Thursdays, and streams on Crave on Fridays. Starting November 26, Discovery also streams on Pluto TV in select countries in Europe and is available as a digital download in additional international territories.

Keep up with all the news and reviews from the new Star Trek Universe on TV at TrekMovie.com.

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Source: https://trekmovie.com/2021/11/25/review-star-trek-discovery-confronts-uncertainty-in-anomaly/