Discovery Season 4 Episode 02 “Anomaly” Review
After the catastrophic events of the Season 4 Premiere, the show slows down to ask us the question: is Booker okay? The answer to that question isn’t all that surprising, but the magic of the episode is all in the telling. ***Spoilers for episode 2 are coming up.***
PREVIOUSLY ON
The previous episode of Discovery, Kobayashi Maru, focused on the Discovery responding to a distress call from a far flung repair station. It turned out, after many explosions and harrowing twists of fate, that the station was flung around by some strange gravitational anomaly. The crew finds this out all too late for Cleveland Booker’s (David Ajala) home-world of Kwejian. The final moment of the episode is looking at Kewjian’s cracked, ruined surface as it’s slowly consumed by the massive anomaly.
BOOK IS NOT OKAY
The A plot of the episode is firmly fixed on Book’s state of mind. As far as we’re aware, he’s the sole survivor of his home-world, which was destroyed just minutes or hours after a coming of age ceremony with his “brother” and nephew was performed. The ritual was at best a C plot in the pilot, but gave us the emotional anchor for the main arc of this episode – and I have to say it’s really effective. It’s sometimes hard to balance how to show a character’s grief in a show without leaning into very well-worn tropes. Many of those tropes exist for a reason; humans react in predictable ways when it comes to grief, but it doesn’t feel that way in the moment for the one grieving. The way they choose to tell Book’s story in this is wonderful. They use a classic, unlikely pairing dynamic and thrust the empathic Book into the action — nursing his broken heart and twisted up mind — with the one person on the ship who is almost pathologically incapable of connecting with other humans, Stamets (Anthony Rapp). It’s a well known fact that Stamets is better with ships and spores than people. He struggles with how to connect with his own husband at times and as the episode plays out, we learn he has even more reasons to be distant with Booker than with most. The pairing is used to great effect, especially when combined with great performances from Ajala and Rapp who come together to create one of my favorite interactions in Discovery to date. There’s also some great moments in their mission where Book see’s the dead birds from the previous episode in front of him, mixed in with the space debris. I thought it was a really lovely touch and helped the viewer get into his state of mind.
THE LOOMING THREAT
The B plot of this episode is still enmeshed pretty well with the A plot. In this area we follow the Discovery as they investigate the anomaly itself, how it functions, and why it’s behaving the way it is. They postulate that it’s a set of rogue binary black holes, which is why it’s nearly undetectable and dangerous. This plot doesn’t move particularly far, as so much of it is squarely focused on the psychological drama and planting story seeds for other characters. However, it’s a much more interesting threat than I had anticipated from seeing the trailers for the show. Frankly, I’m bored by constant galaxy threatening crises for the Discovery to face. I understand it’s a serialized show and they need something going on at all times for the crew to deal with, but I’m personally over it. That being said, the anomaly is more interesting because it’s not actually a galaxy spanning threat. Like, as far as we can tell, it can’t eat everything. It’s big and it’s fast and, as we learn by the end of the episode, it’s path can’t be predicted, but this isn’t the Burn, or Control, or the Klingon War. What it is is an X-factor. It’s an unpredictable, dangerous phenomenon that Starfleet science can’t quite grasp yet. It’s something that will challenge the Federation’s right to re-form itself. It’s something that is honestly a not so subtle parallel to COVID-19. It’s a nearly undetectable and unpredictable threat that could pop up anywhere that can challenge all institutions and I’m feeling like the show will focus less on the destructive elements of the threat than on how it will eat away at all the things that allow society to function.
LOTS OF CHARACTER PLOT MOVEMENT (AND AN EASTER EGG)
Dr. Culber serves as the nexus for most of the other side plots (aside from the return of Saru to the bridge). Culber is helping with the process of splitting Gray from Adira by working with someone who can create a synthezoid using the “Soong” process. Apparently, the very same process they used to revive Picard at the end of season 1 will be used to give Gray his new body. This was a neat nod to the new shows. I like that they’re trying to build out the continuity between all these shows. The next one to get slightly advanced is when Tilly reaches out to Culber to get some therapy. No doubt the point made by (and subsequent death of) Nalas in the prior episode is digging at her. Has she been flying on autopilot this whole time? I’m sure there’s more to come from this, and I’m excited to see Tilly get more focus this season.
WRAP UP
Overall, I felt that the episode was really effective at giving us a look at where each of the characters are currently at, outlined the significance of the threat for the following episodes, and planted some excellent seeds to follow up on. All in all, it was a great episode of Star Trek that I can’t wait to revisit.
TALES FROM MY NOTES
- I just love the idea of binary black holes. It’s such a cool idea and I’m sure it has NOTHING to do with the secret Ni’Var/Federation SB19 project from season 3. Nope, probably not related at all and definitely not why the Ni’varese President offered to help.
- I love that they can seemingly make any room a holodeck now.
- Finally, the ship’s AI is named Zora. This is a reference to the BEST Short Trek, Calypso, which seems to take place further in the future than the current episodes.
- A lot of people online complained that they seemed to have forgotten about a Tractor Beam to grab hold of Book’s ship. I actually think it’s the other way around, and the programmable matter tether has replaced the tractor beam. They serve the same function, but the tether seems to be a lot more useful, and with a longer range.
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