Star Trek: Discovery: Season 1, Episode 5 "Choose Your Pain"

 Star Trek: Discovery: Season 1, Episode 5 "Choose Your Pain"

October 15, 2017

“Choose Your Pain” is a very promising episode of Star Trek: Discovery. I liked the title and how it is applied in the episode. Essentially, the name comes from a Klingon torture practice where prisoners choose amongst their own who will be beaten. Given the shows fast pace, it could have been explored more here, but it is still a powerful, forceful concept. Star Trek fans may have been rightfully surprised when Tilly used the “f” word, the first time any Trek character did so. Welcome to the 21st century television. Burnham takes a backseat here, but still plays an important role in terms of the audience getting to know who she is…someone who will do the right thing, no matter the cost. The episode does a good job in developing characters not named Burnham. We see how Saru adjusts to captain life as he tries to save Lorca from the Klingons, we learn pivotal information about Lorca’s dark past and how his last ship blew up under his command, and we get confirmation that Stamets and Dr. Culber are dating. There is plenty of promising development. Some scenes, such as the argument between Saru and Burnham (which ended with her confined to quarters), seem a tad artificial. For every artificial moment comes twice the amount of authenticity. Also, Rainn Wilson is a fantastic guest star as Harry Mudd, a name fans of the original series may be familiar with. For such a serious show, I am glad we get someone with a sense of humor.

In this episode, Lorca is kidnapped by the Klingons and is trapped on their prison ship. Saru takes over command to try and rescue the captain. There is little for Burnham to do, so she concentrates her efforts on the well-keeping of the tardigrade. When used to activate the spore drive, the animal is in so much pain. Burnham discovers that the poor guy is no beast after all. That puts her at conflict with Saru, who needs to use the spore drive to rescue the captain. On the prison ship, Lorca discovers he is not the only prisoner. In addition to Harry Mudd (whom is later left behind), we meet Ash Tyler (played by Shazad Latif). It seems like he will be a central figure in the series moving forward.

Overall, I was somewhat taken aback with how dark the episode was. There was some humor sprinkled here and there (especially when Wilson was in the picture). The character development of the side characters is important, and I think director Lee Rose was mostly successful. We did learn more about the captain and a dark past that would be bound to haunt anyone. I was on board here, and I am ready for what’s next.

My Grade: A-


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Image
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” Ah, wise words from our new young friend, Ferris Bueller. In John Hughes’s 1986 film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , all Ferris wants to do is take a day and have fun. That is the most simplistic theme the movie has. You can go deeper, but the main takeaway is that it is okay to have fun. That is a motto I have taken to heart. I really loved the film. People consider The Breakfast Club to be Hughes’s best and most important movie. That’s a fine statement to make, but I would personally rank the film number two behind this particular one. The teen characters are instantly relatable, it has a memorable antagonist for the children, and this is basically a thirty-year-old travel guide for Chicago. Just how Woody Allen creates his movies as love letters for New York, this is applicable for John Hughes. A Chicago love letter!   Like all of his films, Hughes wrote...
Read more

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Image
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) The James Bond franchise is one of those franchises that will never die. It has been going strong since the first movie rolled out in the early 1960’s, and new James Bond movies are still produced today. What makes this series unique is they use multiple actors to play the titular character over the years. They all bring their own gravitas to the role, and each Bond is a different man when compared to each other (although the martini, shaken not stirred and the beautiful women among other things remain a constant.) So my first James Bond review for this blog is 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. This wasn’t my first look at the series, but it was my first look at the older movies. I really liked what I saw. This is an old-fashioned story that combines a spy drama and an action-packed war movie into one package. Like many of the older Bond movies, the story can get borderline preposterous. The cheesiness of the plot did come to grow on me after awhile, even...
Read more

Table for Five (1983)

Image
Table for Five (1983) I can guarantee that ninety percent of my readers here have not seen this tear-jerking melodrama 1983’s Table for Five , yet alone heard of it. Hopefully after reading my kind words, you will be somewhat intrigued by this movie. When doing my research for the film, I was shocked to see how vastly underrated the movie is. There are only a few reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, hardly any information on Wikipedia or Google-hardly anything out there in this vast Internet landscape. Then, why on earth is this movie so good? Sure, maybe some folks will say the movie is just a predictable Lifetime TV movie, but honestly it is much more than that. There are some elements that makes this film seem destined for the television at times, but to me it is much more than that. I consider the movie to be an honest, emotional portrayal about fatherhood and family. Directed by Robert Lieberman, this film is about a man named J.P Tannen (Jon Voight) who fails at being fathe...
Read more