Star Trek: Discovery 5-09: Lagrange Point (Quick Review)

Episode:

64

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Writer:

Sean Cochran & Ari Friedman

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Director:

Jonathan Frakes

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Air Date:

23-May-2024

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing Lagrange Point, the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Discovery!

It's the last episode by director Jonathan Frakes and writer Sean Cochran, who have produced some of my favourite episodes of the series. In fact, they were both credited on Despite Yourself and New Eden, and if this ends up being that kind of quality I'll be more than satisfied. It's also the first episode for writer Ari Friedman, who picked a great time to join the show! Though she wouldn't have known back then that this was also going to be her last episode, as the news of the show's cancellation came after filming had finished.

There will be SPOILERS below for this and earlier Star Trek stories.

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RECAP

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Discovery appears between two black holes and finds the treasure they came for: a mysterious cylinder with a lock that fits the key they've been assembling all season. Unfortunately Moll has their key and her Breen dreadnought arrives in time to grab the cylinder as well. So Discovery's crew comes up with a daring plan to disguise themselves as Breen, infiltrate her ship, and steal the cylinder for themselves.

The plan goes well until Captain Moll hears that shuttlebay guards are missing and catches Burnham and Book trying to tag the cylinder for beam out. Burnham tells Discovery to blast the shuttlebay forcefield, sending them all into space. Moll rushes inside the cylinder's glowing interior and Burnham follows, but the cylinder breaks open to form some kind of swirly thing.

Also a rival Breen fleet is on the way and Saru heads off in a shuttle to do something about it.

REVIEW

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I'm pretty sure that Saru used to be one of my favourite characters, but the episode spends almost exactly 7 minutes and 30 seconds with him here and I would've been happier if it didn't. Just think of all the time and money the writers could've saved by cutting all those scenes of him walking around the hallways and going to a meeting! They could've had Saru convey the same information to the viewer in quick hologram message to Discovery and saved his big return for the finale.

Dropping Saru from the episode would have also meant losing all of his scenes with T'Rina, but I'm okay with that! I like that they're in a relationship, and I like T'Rina, when the two of them are talking to each other I wish I was watching anything else. TV romances aren't really my kind of thing.

That said, I do still want Burnham and Book to work things out. Though maybe there's a better time and place for that than when they're sneaking around a Breen dreadnought in disguise.

The only reason they're undercover on a Breen ship in the first place is because the Breen swooped in and grabbed their treasure right in front of them, so you'd think they'd be feeling more of a sense of urgency right now.

Though honestly, I wasn't even bothered that they put the mission on pause for this, as I was too distracted by the revelation that these Breen ships have corridors! It turns out that they're not just one big open hangar deck after all.

Star Trek heroes have been stealing Breen suits to use as a disguise since their very first appearance, so I really should've seen this story coming. Especially considering all the time this season's already spent on the Breen dreadnought.

I finally got the heist I've been dreading all season and it was Burnham stealing from Moll's starship, not the other away around! I knew someone would be stealing something from somewhere at some point though.

I should've expected these Iron Man holographic displays as well, seeing as that's just how sci-fi helmets are depicted now. I'm not sure why the writing is in Breen, seeing as they made the suits themselves on Discovery, but maybe they were in too much of a hurry to mess with the hardware.

It wasn't so bad being back on the Breen ship again, but I didn't like Captain Moll. I mean, I had no trouble with Moll having authority, but she's a courier, so she shouldn't know the first thing about commanding a starship. She should've been telling her crew what she wanted to happen and letting them deal with the details.

I mean, even Tilly is a better trained and more experienced captain than she is, and people have the sense to keep her far from the captain's chair.

Oh, hang on, I just remembered that Rayner chooses Tilly to be his second in command in this episode. Damn. Well, I suppose Tilly could do with a little bit redemption for how she messed up at the end of season 3 and the show's finale is pretty much the last possible opportunity for that.

Speaking of people who messed up, Burnham and Book managed to alert the Breen to their presence and they failed to get the cylinder beamed up. Failure was pretty much inevitable however, as they made the mistake of telling the audience their plan! That's a dead giveaway that it's going to hit a snag and they'll have to improvise. Like when Book finds himself chatting up a Breen as a diversion.

The episode turned out to be a bit of a throwback to season one at times, with Discovery facing off against a giant super-ship while Burnham sneaks around and gets into fights on the inside. The crew even make a jump into hazardous space with dodgy navigation tech, just like the old days.

I'm not going to complain about the ship clearly not being directly between the two black holes, as Lagrange points are weird and I don't understand them very well. It looks better if you can see both of them on screen at once and it looks even better if you can see the ship as well, even if its supposed to be cloaked. They must have accidentally switched it from 'transparent' to 'translucent'.

Anyway, this time we got to see the space battle outside and the action inside simultaneously! In the past the villains waited until the action was over before gazing out at the instrument of their destruction, but I guess the LED wall makes this kind of chaos more viable.

This time though it wasn't Rhys pressing the torpedoes button as he was busy kicking Breen on the bridge! The scene wasn't amazingly well directed, I didn't realise until I was taking screencaps that Adira came over and grabbed one of the Breen to help, but it was nice to see the ship's Worf finally leap into action like this.

Owo and Detmer got less to do unfortunately, but that's mostly because they're not in the episode at all.

In this episode the roles of ops and helm went to Commander Jemison and Lieutenant Commander Asha, two characters I don't really know. I guess Jemison's probably named after astronaut Mae Jemison, but that's all I've got. She appeared halfway through the last episode to take over from Gallo, and with that rank she should've probably been made first officer instead of Lieutenant Junior Grade Tilly, but that wasn't ever going to happen.

Funny thing is, I'm actually glad that the supporting bridge officers have been replaced by new people I have no attachment to. Discovery has always struggled to keep my attention on the actors who were paid enough to properly participate, so it's nice to see some unfamiliar faces for a change!

Something else that Discovery has always struggled to do is keep its giant shuttlebay door shut, and here we finally get to see what happens when the forcefield breaks. Granted it took a lot of force, they rammed a 750m starship through it, but the results weren't pretty. Unless you like fire and explosions, in which case it did look kind of pretty. I especially liked the bit where Discovery's phaser beam sliced right through a tower. Hang on, Discovery fired her phasers? Has the ship even done that since the refit back in season 3? I genuinely don't know.

Also look, the nacelles moved to tuck in above the hull! The series finally found a sensible use for detached nacelles and the ship doesn't actually look bad like that. Maybe they should've always moved closer to the ship's centre of mass when not at warp, seeing as the whole point of the floating effect was supposedly to enhance manoeuvrability.

We see that Discovery took some damage in the impact as well, as the light strip on the bottom right of the turbolift has broken. Flame jets and sparks mean nothing, but when the lights start going out, that's when you know it's serious.

I kind of like how the episode ends with Rayner heroically sitting down in the chair at last, but we still don't really know why he was avoiding it. Was he that broken up about almost letting the town get destroyed in episode 1 that he didn't feel worthy of command anymore?

Okay, only one episode left. They didn't know this was the last season of Discovery during production so I'm not expecting a lot of closure outside of the scenes added in reshoots. But they've got to at least give us a resolution to the things set up in season 5. Which include:

• Stamets latching onto the Progenitor tech as his legacy after the shut down of the spore drive project.
• The Mitchell and it's pathway drive.
• Burnham getting back together with Book.
• Saru's wedding.
• Tilly feeling like she's letting her students down.
• Culber's spiritual journey.
• Rayner's hatred for Primarch Tahal, who's on her way with a fleet.
• And most importantly, Rhys really liking the Constitution class.

All I really want from the finale is Rhys getting command of the refit ISS Enterprise. They can choose to keep the Progenitor's tech to resurrect L'ak and terraform a new Kwejian, or they can decide to throw the technology into a black hole, whatever, just let Rhys live out his dream! Also they need to pay off Calypso already.


RATING

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The obvious thing for me to compare Lagrange Point to would be an episode like Into the Forest I Go or What's Past is Prologue, where Burnham goes sneaking around a super ship and escapes just before Discovery wrecks it. I really liked both of those episodes and I suppose that's because I'm into shallow action-adventure when it's done well. Undercover missions and daring manoeuvres are relevant to my interests, and I definitely had to rewatch that bit where Discovery slams into the back of the Breen ship.

But Lagrange Point was maybe a bit too shallow and unimaginative for me. It's a thoroughly okay episode but it didn't give me much to think about, or write about. When my favourite bit of an episode is Discovery's floating nacelles, it's maybe not reaching its full potential. Especially as my least favourite part was Saru's return! We've ended up in the backwards universe somehow.

I'm in a good mood so I'm going to be generous and give Lagrange Point...

7/10

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COMING SOON

Next on Star Trek: Discovery, the many built in the shape of the one will finish their chase. But will anyone be taking home the Holy Grail?

First though, I'm covering Doctor Who's 73 Yards. Yeah I know I've fallen a bit behind. In my defence, I was slacking off and playing video games.

What did you think about Lagrange Point by the way?