2x04 An Obol for Charon

[6.9/10] “An Obol for Charon” combines one of my favorite tropes from traditional Trek, and some of the worst excesses of Discovery. The result is a mostly functional episode of the show, that gets by on sheer pace and momentum for much of its run, but then drags to a screeching halt in its final stretch.

Finding some strange being or alien creature or unknown phenomenon and learning to communicate with it is a Star Trek classic, from the energy being of “The Metamorphosis” from The Original Series, to V’Ger from The Motion Picture to the famed “Darmok and Jilad at Tinagra” situation in The Next Generation. To that end, Discovery could do a lot worse than centering an episode on people learning to bridge divides and communicate with one another, with plenty of alien wildness mixed in.

“An Obol for Charon” signals that early with the way that this week’s peculiar space creature mucks with the ship’s universal translator causing the crew to spit out Klingon, Arabic, and a host of other languages, making what Captain Pike acknowledges is a “Tower of Babel.” That same theme of learning to communicate well stretches to include the U.S.S. Discovery and the interstellar maw that has it trapped, the ship’s scientists and the eukaryotic critter that has Tilly, and even the different-minded Commander Stamets and Lt. Reno.

These stories are all functional at worst, if a bit rote. Any Trek fan worth their salt has seen some ship’s crew struggle over whether to blast some unknown life form out in the reaches of space who’s threatening the safety of the crew, or to make some kind of contact or achieve some kind of understanding with it. There’s nothing particularly unique about the big pit of Mordor in space that Discovery runs into until the payoff, but the way it screws with the ship’s systems creates enough (literal and figurative) fires for the crew to put out to keep the episode moving.

The same goes for the story of Tilly and the magic mushroom. The parasite thing isn’t new for Trek, but this is a solid-at-worst rendition of it. For one thing, the combative dynamic between Stamets and his snark vs. Reno and her dry wit is an utter joy. There’s a lot of good tension and problem solving as the two of them have to figure out a solution, when Tilly is clearly not well. In particular, the moment where Stamets and Tilly sing “Space Oddity” (while a little on the nose) as he has to drill into her skull is the right combination of sweet and scary, and foreshadows the difficult act Burnham has to perform later in the episode.

Still, as with the other storylines in the episode, I’m more interested in what this portends for the future than what was delivered in this episode. For one thing, I’m interested in the parasite’s warnings about Stamets as an “alien invader” as a fix for why we’ve never seen the spore drive later in the timeline. For another, the mystery of Tilly being caught in the mycelial network has some juice to it. This initial scrape between Tilly and “May” is good enough as a self-contained story, but it doesn't really wow in the here and now, and it’s a little too familiar for folks who’ve been following the franchise for a while.

And I mostly like the finishes to these stories! The scientist character finding ways to talk to the weird species and save the friend who it’s attached to as a classic Trek bit for a reason. Stamets’s “I should have known” reaction and the parasite’s anger are intriguing. At the same time, the reveal that the space pit’s ship-screwing up signals are actually the thing trying to communicate its own epitaph feel very true to the spirit of the series and its “explore and learn rather than destroy and escape” ethos.

Hell, I even like the parallel with Saru’s situation. It’s signposted too much for my taste, but the idea that Saru and Burnham recognize the space pit trying to give its last words because Saru is trying to do the same is a solid bit of mirroring and inspiration for the reveal. And you can tell where the budget for this episode went when watching the impressive blast sequence of the entity dying and pushing the Discovery way.

But man, there’s so much emotional exposition here. I care about Saru. I care about his and Burnham’s relationship. But I was skeptical that the show would really kill him off, and if that didn’t dampen my ability to be moved by the situation, the clunky-as-hell dialogue between the two of them definitely did.

This show just cannot escape from these overwritten, too long conversations between characters that take a “more is more” approach to trying to convey feelings and mood, and leave the whole thing feeling more overblown than human. The ham-handed lines given to Saru about Burnham reaching out to her brother just as Saru wishes he could do for his sister land with even more of a thud, though at least it gives Burnham an arc in this episode.

It’s the thing that sinks what’s otherwise a perfectly competent episode of Discovery. The show spoon feeds us a little more detail on the season arc chasing Spock (replete with the first appearance from Number One!), and it gives us a solid theme that permeates all the crises of the week.

But at the same time it wants us to (a.) buy into a major character potentially dying and (b.) buy into the emotion of the scenes where he says his goodbyes, but it’s just not convincing in either. As with the other bits in the episode, I’m intrigued to see where a new, more fearless, more aggrieved Saru goes after learning that his species’s society is founded on a lie, but that doesn't do much for right now.

One of the best things about Star Trek as a franchise is its devotion to exploring themes like connection and communication, with the high concept thought experiment trappings that a sci-fi setting can provide. But one of the worst things about Discovery as a show is how it can do that traditional spacefaring material well enough, and then devolve into overwrought sequences where the emotions just do land. “An Obol for Charon” is half-well done traditional Trek, and half-painful attempts at ginning up real sentiment. The episode’s passable when it’s doing the former, and exhausting when it’s doing the latter.