1x15 Will You Take My Hand?

[7.0/10] There was no shortage of pearl-clutching and garment-rending over the tone and spirit of Star Trek Discovery in its first season (some of it from yours truly). The show’s embraced a moral ambiguity in Starfleet’s mission that every series outside of Deep Space 9 has only hinted at. Captain Lorca leaving Harry Mudd to rot in a Klingon prison cell was touted as a betrayal of Federation, and franchise principles. And Heaven help any writer who’d dare to have any character suggest that some Star Trek ideals must be bent or broken in a time of war.

But for all that folderol (or maybe because of it) Star Trek Discovery ends its season with a firm embrace of those hallowed ideals, a firm rejection of those who would eschew or ignore them when it’s inconvenience, and firm vindication of a lead character who grows enough to discover that it’s worth a mutiny to stand by those principles, not to elide them.

That’s commendable (and, in fact, most of our heroes are literally commended for it), but “Will You Take My Hand?” falls victim to the larger problem that’s plagued Discovery from the beginning -- its propensity to heavily underline all of its points, resort to overwritten dialogue to explore its ethical conflicts, and using grand speeches to announce its points.

The bookends for the episode feature Burnham giving a speech at her reinstatement/commendation/”We love you again!” ceremony at Starfleet, telling some tired, florid parable about recognizing fear that seems to point toward and ensuing battle at the beginning of the episode, only to be revealed to fit the episode’s “find another way” ethos by the time the credits roll. Burnham has ponderous back-and-forths with Georgiou, Tyler, Cornwell, and even L’Rell about What This All Means and How Far We’ve Come. And there’s plenty of dramatic moments where people take a stand and everything’s set right again.

But what I appreciate about Discovery’s first season finale is how it mainly goes for anticlimax rather than the raging finish it seemed to be setting up in the penultimate episode of the season. While there’s a few tense moments, they tend to be smaller, more interpersonal, with few explosions or bits of hand-to-hand combat or firefights that have filled the space the show’s other high stakes episodes.

Instead, “Will You Take My Hand?” centers on Burnham, Tyler, Tilly, and Mirror Georgiou infiltrating a section of Qo’noS where the Orions have set up shop, trying to gather intel to find the right spot to plant a probe (which turns out to be a weapon of mass destruction) and sniff out what information they can in the libertine environs everyone but Georgiou finds awkward to fit into.

It adds more texture to the world of Discovery than we’ve gotten so far. This part of Qo’nos feels a little more Mos Eisley Cantina that Star Trek (or at least more like the outpost from Star Trek V, speaking of locations visited by long lost Spock siblings), and it gives Discovery the chance to explore a little of the culture clash and cultural exchange that it’s been enmeshed in with the beginning.
Sure, it gets a little gratuitous at times. I don’t know that Star Trek fans ever needed to see a Klingon “crossing the streams” or even more scantily-clad Orion slave dancers, or the aftermath of a threeway with a Mirror Universe leader (though I suppose Mirror Kira says hi). But it serves the episode’s purpose of showing all these alien races as regular folks with their own customs and lives, just doing their thing, regardless of the Federation or the Klingon Empire or anyone else.

Again, the episode hits the point a little too on the nose in the dialogue, but the scenes set in that part of Qo’noS both help give Discovery a sense of place and establish a normalcy of life there that makes it more difficult to see the orc-like Klingons as faceless villains who can be wiped out without a second thought.

That forms the crux of Burnham’s second mutiny, one that mirrors her first, based on a belief that they cannot preemptively wipe out the Klingons, rather than one that they have to. The episode lays the moment on too thick, but it’s just stirring enough to pass muster when she, Saru, and the rest of Discovery’s bridge crew stand-up, literally and figuratively, to Cornwell.

Cornwell gives into Burnham’s semi-convenient plan, which involves trading Mirror Georgiou her freedom in exchange for the detonator, giving it to L’Rell as a bargaining chip for her to unite the Klingon houses through strength, and avoiding the death and destruction that would otherwise reign down as Starfleet makes moral compromises in the face of an existential threat.

It’s all a bit too neat, but it’s sound. Burnham’s perspective has been widened, both through her interactions with real live Klingons (of both the standard and Manchurian Candidate variety) and with her Mirror Universe counterparts, in a fashion that hones both her sense of humanity even in her enemies, and in what principles must be clung to even in the face of annihilation. That’s a very Star Trek tack that ought to hopefully quell some fans and critics over whether Discovery is carrying the torch Gene Roddenberry, Gene Coon, Fred Freiberger and so many others lit more than fifty years ago.

But so much of the struggle of Discovery in this finale and in the season as a whole is the same struggle that all late-coming Star Trek works face: how to both honor the franchise and its hallowed past, but also to modernize it for the present day. Lord knows Captains Kirk and Picard provided no shortage of sweeping oratories, but that kind of lofty rhetoric lands with more of a thud in 2018 than in the more colorful confines of the 1960s or 1980s where it fits better. Dark takes on everything from the intricacies of war to questionable affections sometimes give Discovery a sense of maturity, but sometimes give it a sense of grimdark adolescence.

Star Trek Discovery ends much as it began, as a mixed bag. It’s a show that diversified the world of the franchise in multiple laudable ways, that presented a vision of the world of the Starfleet that looks as good as it ever has on the small screen, and which tied the grand ethos that that the franchise forefathers would approve of to complex and colorful individuals. But it also often gave way to empty action, never quite found the balance between serialization and standalone outings, and couldn’t help but wear its points on its sleeve through innumerable overblown colloquies.

And yet, as “Will You Take My Hand?” demonstrates, the show’s heart is in the right place. Any number of other Star Trek series (and arguably all of them) started out shaky before finding their footing. Though a bit misaimed at times, Discovery is confident and self-assured out of the gate, and even as it works out the kinks and offers a fanservice-y tease as it signs off, gets the spirit of Star Trek right, which gives us reason to be excited for what new frontiers the show will explore next.

I am dissapointed by the last couple of episodes.

As a season finale this was really lame. Zero excitement but instead a fake Giourgou whose behavior would have raised red flags all over with the crew. Her plan was to no ones surprise, that the Federation would go along with it incomprehensible, that she could have been simply talked out of it was weak. They could have at least given us some kind of fight. And we have to go back again to Burnham/Tyler for a considerable time and hearing her recollection of her real parents death. Not a bad scene in itself and possibly good for character depth but not something I want to see in a season finale.
And then there is not much incentive to watch season two to be honest. That grand speach and showing the Enterprise at the end feels exactly like throwing a bone to the fanbase to stick with the show. And playing the TOS music at the end was kind of insulting.

Now I've always said I am given Discovery a chance to develop and to convince me to stick with it and I was really into it for what it was. But after those final two episodes let's just say I won't loose any sleep over the next year to wait for the second season.