Star Trek: Discovery 5-02: Under the Twin Moons (Quick Review)

Episode:

57

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Writer:

Alan McElroy

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Director:

Doug Aarniokoski

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Air Date:

04-Apr-2024

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about the second episode of Star Trek: Discovery's final season, Under the Twin Moons! I need to pick up the pace though, as I'm falling behind. We waited two years for the series to return then they dropped two episodes on us on the same day, so they're a week ahead of me.

There are some familiar names up there under the picture. Director Doug Aarniokoski had been with the series since the beginning, or since the episode Lethe anyway. But he had more success over on Star Trek: Picard, with series highlights like Nepenthe, The Star Gazer and Penance having his name on them. Writer Alan McElroy hasn't impressed me as much, but I did like An Obol for Charon at least. I think there's the potential there for this to be a good one.

There will be SPOILERS after this point. Though I won't spoil anything that happens later, partly because episode 3 wasn't even out yet at the time I wrote this.

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RECAP

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Captain Burnham tries to defend Captain Rayner during a tribunal, but he encourages her to speak the truth about his actions during the speeder bike chase last episode and doesn't exactly help his own case. After getting the sand off the hull, Discovery heads out to the planet indicated in the ancient Romulan book they scanned, where Burnham and Saru find themselves being attacked by endless waves of drones. Tilly and Adira try to work out a science solution but they overthink it until Rayner contacts them to get them on track. Saru volunteers to be the distraction and runs off, killing three drones with his needles while Burnham EMP's the control device.

Now that they have a bit of peace, the two find a stone which has had its text burned off by L'ak and Moll. But they're able to figure out what it used to say and then uncover the secret final clue that the two thieves missed. They're likely on their way to Betazed while the Discovery crew know to set a course for Trill instead. But first Burnham offers the disgraced Rayner a new job: XO of Discovery.


REVIEW

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I have to give Discovery credit, it's the first Trek series in 30 years to look at the revelations in the Next Generation episode The Chase and go "Damn, that really changes everything about our perception of who we are and our place in the galaxy". Though it also implies that the reason for that is that the Federation, Cardassians, Klingons and Romulans all chose to keep it a secret, so maybe no one in Starfleet outside of the Enterprise-D crew and a few admirals ever knew the truth.

It seems a bit weird that the Federation would hide something like this, they're all about exploration and sharing knowledge. But it's probably for the best that they did if there's all-powerful terraforming technology at the end of this treasure hunt. Genesis Devices are fun until they're dropped on your own planet.

Burnham and Book are still working on reconnecting but it seems to be going well.

One of my biggest complaints about season 4 was the dialogue felt like it had been written on another planet by aliens who were horrified that the crew of the Enterprise were so mean to each other all the time. Thankfully season 5 seems to have fixed that, as the crew are funnier and more human here than I've seen them in ages. Sure they're still hugging each other all the time, but it makes perfect sense with Book showing up again after months and Saru leaving. In fact, he was one day from retirement here so it's a miracle the guy made it through the episode alive.

Though I don't know why they chose to film this scene inside a Romulan science vessel, that was all kinds of weird...

5-01 - Red Directive

Sorry, I'll stop going on about that set redress in the last episode. Even if it was hilariously blatant.

Here's a shot of a scene where they did spend the money to do it right:

The episode gave us another away mission on an alien planet, so Discovery's beating Strange New Worlds at its own game here. Speaking of games, I was getting Mass Effect vibes in this episode as well, especially in the scene where they were shooting the drones. It also reminded me of the Next Gen episode Arsenal of Freedom. Except, you know, far better looking.

I probably should've been thinking of the episode Booby Trap, seeing as this is a Promellian planet and the characters set off a booby trap. Those Promellians in the TNG episode died after falling into someone else's trap but I guess they had plenty of traps of their own. I feel like I'm a step closer to solving the mystery of how they all got wiped out.

So Burnham and Saru got in over their head and needed help from their science team back on the ship. Fortunately Rayner appeared as a hologram to tell Tilly and Adira to think better, correctly assuming that the command staff had gone down to the planet and left them unsupervised.

It was nice to see Tilly back on the ship, making jokes again, as she's always been a highlight of the series for me. I was a bit confused to see Rayner though, seeing as hacking into Discovery's communications to snoop around as a hologram while you're being kicked out of Starfleet for being reckless is a really weird thing for a person to do! At first I figured that the Antares had just arrived in the system, but nope he was still at HQ, being nosy.

Adira got to do something in this episode as well, which was a nice change. Though I should've figured out that their line about being comfortable without Gray being around was setting up a trip to Trill next episode. I missed that clue entirely.

Discovery is on two missions at the moment: to follow the clues to track down the Progenitor technology, and to prove to fans that the writers have totally seen Star Trek before. The episode doesn't just name-drop a bunch of alien races, it also makes use of lore introduced in Star Trek: Picard about Romulan houses having a fake front door.

I'm glad that Trek series have been finally getting around to fleshing out the Romulans a bit, as they got a lot less development than Kingons, Cardassians and even Ferengi in the '90s series. I'm a bit confused though, by the thieves claiming that the Federation had no claim on Romulan artefacts. Aren't the Romulans part of the Federation now that Ni'Var has rejoined? I really want the Romulans to be part of the Federation!

Also, it's admirable that Burnham was so serious about not damaging the sacred necropolis, but her choice to preserve Doctor Vellek's secret message was just bizarre. They don't need to be leaving clues behind when they're in a race against a pair of thieves who will almost certainly be coming back here for another look! I can just imagine Captain Rayner shaking his head in despair.

With Burnham teaming up with Saru in this episode, Book got to have a few scenes of his own, leading to crew's first contact with L'ak and Moll. With plenty of glitchy hologram effects to make it clear that they're not really in Engineering.

It turns out that Moll is his mentor's daughter, which seems like a ridiculously huge coincidence. But is it really so strange that two people who had the same teacher and lived similar lives would eventually run into each other? I mean he was called in to help the crew find her because of his particular skill set.

The answer is 'yes this is really strange'. But for Discovery the strangest thing about it is that she's not related to Burnham in some way. It was her captain who was the Mirror Universe emperor, her boyfriend who was the Klingon spy, her brother who went rogue, her mother who was the Red Angel, and it was her two planets that were threatened by the DMA. Moll being her former boyfriend's mentor's daughter is pretty damn restrained for Discovery.

At one point Saru mentioned that Burnham first arrived on Discovery as a court-martialled mutineer and earned her redemption, becoming first officer and then captain, and I started seeing parallels between her and Book. Then he mentioned that she needs someone like Book as an XO and I started worrying that they were actually going to make a civilian the first officer. I mean, they made Tilly XO when she was barely done being a cadet, so anything's possible for this series. Then it dawned on me that Tilly was back on the ship, ready to have a second try at the job, and I didn't want that at all. I didn't want either of these two things!

What I wanted was for Rayner to become her new number one and I think the episode wanted me to want that. He was already fairly likeable in the first episode but here he's very sympathetic as an old soldier with a good heart who's too set in his ways to adapt to a new era. It got me thinking about all the people who were disappointed when Captain Lorca turned out to be an evil doppelgänger from the Mirror Universe instead of just a wartime captain. Seems like they finally got what they wanted here: Starfleet's own Lorca. That means instead of Burnham butting heads with authority figures, this season she'll be butting heads with a subordinate who thinks he knows best and likes to go rogue to get the job done. Everything's been flipped upside down and I'm into it.

Though hopefully they can actually go on an adventure now instead of stopping at HQ between every trip.


RATING

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The title Under the Twin Moons makes me think of another recent Star Trek episode: Strange New Worlds' Under the Cloak of War. It took 57 years for an episode to have a title starting in 'Under' and then the next one came along in under 9 months. But which of these entirely different episodes is better?

I was completely engrossed by SNW's tale of wartime horror and trauma, while Disco's episode was just a throwaway bit of adventure on a drone-infested planet. But it was a nice drone-infested planet and it gave Saru a decent goodbye, despite the fact he's presumably still in the main cast and will continue to turn up all the time. Plus for the second episode in a row, Disco gave me what I was asking for, with Rayner becoming the ship's executive officer. So I'm going to be extra generous and give the episode...

8/10

Which is basically just a 7/10 with icing on it.

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COMING SOON

Star Trek: Discovery will return with Jinaal... man, there's no way an episode with that title is going to be any good. I've been taught this lesson over and over again, with stories like Aquiel, Melora, Rajiin, Elogium, actually I suppose Darmok was decent. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm starting Star Trek: Picard's final season, with The Next Generation!

If you've got your own opinions about Under the Twin Moons, you can leave a comment below.