Star Trek: Discovery 5-01: Red Directive (Quick Review)

Episode:

56

|

Writer:

Michelle Paradise

|

Director:

Olatunde Osunsanmi

|

Air Date:

04-Apr-2024

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching some Star Trek!

Hey, remember Star Trek: Discovery? It was the first Star Trek spin-off of the modern era and lasted four seasons before completely disappearing in March 2022. It's been gone so long that Paramount has released 71 episodes of Star Trek in the meantime, split between five different series. That includes half of Lower Decks and Prodigy, most of Picard and the entirety of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

But after a two-year absence, Discovery is back for its final season! They didn't know it was going to be its final year when they were filming it and they probably would've liked it to go on for longer, but the series has had a good run. It didn't hit the traditional seven seasons, but it did run from 2017 to 2024, which matches Star Trek: The Next Generation's run of 1987 to 1994. And when it ends it'll have 65 episodes, which may turn out to be the best we'll get from a series during this era.

I've had my issues with Discovery in the past, but I do have my hopes up for this final year. Like I hope it doesn't have that unpleasant blue tint to it, and I hope characters start talking more like regular people (or regular Star Trek people at least). I also hope it's more about boldly going to new worlds rather than being traumatised by what happened on them.

Alright, this is going to be my review of season 5, episode 1, Red Directive, by showrunner Michelle Paradise. There will be SPOILERS beyond this point.

---

RECAP

---

The Discovery crew get a Red Directive from Dr Kovich telling them to retrieve an item from a 24th century Romulan ship by any means necessary. It's phasers on 'kill' time. Unfortunately, thieves L'ak and Moll get to it first and Captain Burnham's attempt to get into their ship at warp fails. It doesn't help that Captain Rayner on the Antares was stubbornly pulling their ship apart with a tractor beam.

Burnham reunites with Book to find the thieves and he leads them to a antique dealer called Fred. They find that L'ak and Moll have killed him, but Stamets and Culber are able to pull images from his memory showing an ancient Romulan book they were trying to sell. Burnham, Book and Rayner pursue the thieves on speeder bikes but are distracted when they cause an avalanche that will destroy the nearby settlement. Burnham talks Rayner into letting the thieves go for now to bring the Antares down to join Discovery in protecting the city.

Afterwards, Burnham trades information with Kovich to find out what the Red Directive is all about. It turns out the Romulan scientist who wrote the book had found the ancient technology of the Progenitors, the beings that seeded all life in the galaxy. A technology that can never fall into the wrong hands.


REVIEW

---

Discovery finally got its own version of the Star Trek logo, with the ship spore-jumping in at the start! I love it, they nailed it.

The opening titles are pretty much the same as ever though, besides a few altered shots to suit the season arc. At first I thought the music had changed slightly, but it turns out it's just been so long since I've seen Discovery that my memory was faulty.

In fact, Discovery seems to have settled into an identity at this point, as visually this could've been straight out of season 4, with the same blue tint and everything. They even started the episode in a cavernous-looking AR wall set with everyone in their dress uniforms, just like season 4.

Okay, it technically starts with Captain Burnham pulling a Mass Effect and walking on the outside of a starship during warp. I generally try to avoid trailers these days but I'd seen enough to know that this was coming and I'm pretty sure someone somewhere was complaining about it being ridiculous. The episode makes it clear she's protected by the warp bubble and we've seen this before in Enterprise, so personally I was fine with it.

I did have a different problem though: we get pretty much nothing out of it. The sequence was just a flashy backdrop for a discussion with Captain Rayner about letting the ship go, and seeing as the USS Antares was also at risk Burnham didn't even need to be there to add stakes.

Even worse, they did the 'FOUR HOURS EARLIER' thing with it, flashing back to the crew at an exposition party in the Blue Zone and making me wait 15 minutes for the disappointing resolution. How are writers still structuring stories like this in 2024? I'm deducting 47 points for that alone.

After the characters had taken some time to tell us where they are in life and set up their arcs for the season, Dr Kovich gave them a Red Directive to go check out a beautiful 24th century Romulan science vessel, and look at that thing! If art department were trying to make it look 100% identical to the one that showed up in Star Trek: The Next Generation they failed, but no one said they were, so I'm giving it a big thumbs up.

They must have spent a fortune on the visual effects for this episode. I'm saying that because they clearly didn't have much left over for the sets.

I've seen Star Trek before, I'm very familiar with the practice of redressing a set to look like it's something else entirely... but this ancient Romulan ship is blatantly using USS Discovery sets. This is the crew quarters set, you can tell instantly by the shape of the windows.

Still, it was nice to see Rhys and Owosekun on an away mission... for just under two minutes. I have to admit, it's been so long that I forgot Rhys' name, and episodes like this aren't doing anything to help me remember him. I think Burnham's transforming phaser pistol rifle got more attention than they did.

They were attacked by L'ak and Moll, the 32nd century Bonny and Clyde, and it's nice to see Elias Toufexis back in the series. At least I think that's who's underneath that makeup.

It's too early for me to have much of an opinion on these two, as whenever people are shown to be the most badass thieves in the galaxy (or bounty hunters, assassins etc.) it always takes me a while to stop rolling my eyes. That's nothing the series has done wrong, I just think they're the kind of characters that are more welcome on return appearances. Shame we're in the show's final season.

I feel like the series is deliberately drawing a parallel between the two of them and Burnham and Book. The thieves are in sync and have a strong bond, Burnham and Book are no longer thinking alike and don't know how to be in the same room together anymore. I guess they'll have to rebuild their relationship to win in the end.

They're not the only couples in the episode though, as there is also Stamets and Culber... and Saru and T'Rina.

I wasn't keen on Saru and T'Rina's relationship in season 4. Actually to be precise I wasn't keen on their scenes together; the relationship itself was fine. It's a bit weird to see a Vulcan joke around and admit to loving him, but they're very sweet together and hopefully now that they're getting married they can start having more interesting conversations. I also like that he's quitting Starfleet to be closer to her, as it's been a bit awkward having him and Burnham on Discovery together after his promotion to captain.

Though this raises the question of who's going to be the ship's new XO. It can't be Tilly this time, as she's still a teacher (thankfully). I'm absolutely certain it won't be Detmer or Owo, because if they got that much of a spotlight they'd have to pay them more, but it probably should be one of them considering their rank and prominence on the bridge.

It'd better not be Stamets or Culber, even if Stamets' spore drive project has been cancelled. The poor guy was going to revolutionise space travel, but now they've apparently just come up with an alternate drive that doesn't need tardigrade DNA to run, so Discovery will always be one of a kind.

You know, I'm sure sickbay has gotten even bluer than it was last season.

Anyway, the episode did a good job of tying in the Soong-type android with Stamets' dilemma. It took me about two seconds to realise that Fred was an android like Data, so full marks to the actor and makeup team, and it turns out he was created by Alton Soong! It seems like the guy may have become more famous than his dad Noonien and poor Stamets has to deal with the idea that he'll never have a legacy like his. I guess creating a race of artificial beings is hard to match.

Maybe they should try cybernetics themselves. It can't be that hard if a spore drive engineer and a doctor can figure out how to hack an android's brain in a couple of hours.

Though Fred doesn't seem like he was as smart as the other androids we've seen, as he covers the ancient 24th century book with his hand as he's reading it. The Discovery crew are missing 20% of the information!

I did like the episode using the android's memory as a way to duplicate the book and give the two sides the same information. It was very Indiana Jones, and this is a very Indiana Jones story. The heroes are taking part in a race to find ancient artefacts of great power and they've got a proper adventure movie soundtrack backing them up. That, plus some proper action scenes.

Well, they have the visuals of an action scene at least, with the heroes pursuing the thieves on speeder bikes across the desert, their shields lighting up with phaser fire.

Wait, sorry, wrong picture.

Well, they have the visuals of an action scene at least, with the speeder bikes flying across the desert, their shields lighting up with phaser fire. But the scenes are never about what the characters are doing, they're about them discussing what their ships should do. All of this action is basically irrelevant, the real conflict is between Captain Burnham and her rival Captain Rayner.

I'm not sure what we're supposed to think about Rayner, but right now I like him. He doesn't come across as a complete dipshit like Captain Shaw on Star Trek: Picard. He does make a terrible call, risking an avalanche to stop the thieves, but he's more of a foil for Burnham than a bad captain. In fact, he's a reckless risk-taker who jumps into the action personally and will do what it takes to get the job done, so Burnham's kind of going up against her former self here.

Though there's still plenty of rule-breaking going on with Team Discovery, as Tilly breaks into confidential files... and Admiral Vance lets her do it! I like to think the two of them have formed a bond due to the events of the season 4 finale. I'd also like to think that the head of Starfleet would have access to this information anyway, but apparently not!

When the crew were discussing their options and shields were mentioned, I immediately thought "Oh, take the ship down, take the ship down!" and then they did, so I was happy. I wasn't expecting them to shove the ship's nose into the ground, but hey, it got the job done. My only issue with the avalanche scene is that we didn't really get a good shot of the sand hitting the shields and stopping.

We did get a good look at the Antares though, and I am still really not sold on 32nd century ship design. No wonder Rayner can be a little cranky when he commands such an ugly ship. I liked Leland's Section 31 ship in season 2 a lot more... though hopefully the crew's rivalry with Rayner ends better than their rivalry with Leland did.

We also got a good look at Discovery's flame jets again! They really need to rethink running gas pipes through the bridge like that.

The episode ends with the reveal that the reborn Federation is in a race to find the technology of the Progenitors from the Next Gen episode The Chase, and honestly I saw it coming. Mostly because of all the vague article headlines I've been trying not to see. They gave me just enough fragments of information to let me put the whole picture together and it sucks.

On the other hand, I have no idea where they're to take this idea and I'm going to try to keep it that way. No speculation, no spoilers. Though if this is anything like the original Next Gen story, we may see them teaming up with the Tholians and the Breen by the end.


RATING

---

Here's some trivia for you: in the whole history of Star Trek there has never been an episode called Prime Directive. But there is a Voyager episode called The Omega Directive and both stories are about the crew having to take their gloves off and do whatever it takes to stop a threat of immense magnitude.

Though Discovery has always been about the heroes learning to reject the 'whatever it takes' option and do what's right instead, and this is no exception. Is it a better story however? I'm going to say... maybe. Omega Directive promised more than it ultimately delivered for me. On the other hand, Red Directive is absolutely what you'd expect from an episode of Discovery. It failed to entirely pull me into the story, but it has less of what annoyed me last season and it kept my attention. Though maybe they should've spent less money on spectacle and more on sets.

I want to divide the score in half for that 'four hours earlier' thing, but the writer listened to me when I said I wanted them to bring the ships down and use their shields, so I'm going to be kind and give the episode a very average...

7/10

---

COMING SOON

The next Star Trek: Discovery episode is Under the Twin Moons, but next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to be writing about the first episode of Babylon 5 spin-off, Crusade: War Zone! Just the first episode, not the whole series; I've got enough to write about with all this Star Trek.

If you've got any thoughts about Red Directive, you can share them in the box below. Please don't say anything about Under the Twin Moons though, I haven't seen that yet.