Star Trek: Discovery’s second season has fallen into a comfortable groove right out of the gate, and “New Eden” has shown that many of the elements fans connected with and enjoyed about the season’s premiere “Brother” were not a one off.
Based on the first two episodes of Season 2, Discovery is poised to continue to capitalize on the things that it did exceedingly well in season one, and propel itself to new heights by incorporating a lighter tone and more traditional Star Trek elements as the show progresses.
“New Eden” was the most traditional episode of Star Trek that has been broadcast since Enterprise went off the air in 2005, and yet at no point did it feel like a stale rehash. The episode included a classic Prime Directive story — er, a General Order One story, that is — and a more comfortably-familiar A, B, and C story.
Having Star Trek franchise veteran Jonathan Frakes at the helm of this episode, who also directed “Despite Yourself” from last season, likely contributed strongly to capitalizing upon the script’s more traditional franchise feel.
The script he was provided, from writers Vaun Wilmott and Sean Cochran, was also of a high caliber. Discovery feels much more confident in taking time for characters to sit around a briefing table and have a conversation, and letting characters have a debate. Pike’s decision to bring chairs into his new ready room – which has a really cool design aesthetic that apes “The Cage” with its natural-wood finishes – will hopefully help with this.
Based upon the events of this episode, we have a much better idea about the direction of the overall season. Prior to the season premiere (and in many interviews since), the producers have talked about how Season 2 would explore ideas of science vs. faith, and also that they would try to build back in a more episodic structure to respond to feedback from the fans.
With the call-out to Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” it appears that theme may underpin the season. We have a sense that the red angels that have appeared to Burnham, Spock, and the residents of New Eden are extremely powerful. But are they religious icons, or just incredibly advanced aliens?
The residents of New Eden clearly believe they are gods, but Burnham does not seem so sure. It remains to be seen where Spock fits into all of this; he is merely mentioned but not seen in this episode again.
“New Eden” also tells a complete story, though it also has several plot threads that will extend beyond this episode. In that way, and like “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” from the first season, it is probably about as close as we are going to come to the truly episodic television production of most of Rick Berman-era Star Trek. And it works very well.
Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) beam down to a planet of humans who were transported many thousands of light-years away from Earth by the red angels in 2053 — during the height of World War III — to investigate, without violating the Prime Directive, how and why a group of humans without interstellar flight could have made it so far into the Beta Quadrant. Meanwhile, the remaining crew aboard Discovery work to stop a planetary disaster that threatens both the landing party and the colonists.
It was great to see the other crew aboard Discovery beyond the main cast get a chance to shine in this episode – with Owosekun beaming down to the planet, and Detmer (Emily Coutts) being critical to the final solution to save the planet. “New Eden” is just as plot heavy as many of the episodes of season one, but we get much more of an opportunity to pause and spend time with these characters than we did in the previous season. Ultimately, it is to Discovery’s benefit.
Anson Mount continues to shine as Captain Pike. We get shades of a number of previous captains in his performance – a wisdom not unlike Picard in his discussions with Burnham around the situation they find themselves in, and in a respect for the culture of the residents of Terralysium.
But at the end of the episode he displays a much more Kirk-like approach, bending the edges of General Order One just enough to ease the mind of one soul who Discovery must leave behind.
“New Eden” even affords an opportunity for one of the guest characters – Andrew Moodie’s Jacob – to shine and have a fulfilling story arc. Jacob is a colonist who does not share his fellow descendants of the survivors of World War III’s devotion to the red angels, and who believes in science and technology. We ache with him as he gets close but not close enough to being proved right about the landing party being from a technologically sophisticated Earth.
Ultimately, we feel his elation for him when at the end of the episode Pike reveals that it was all true, in order to bargain for the broken helmet camera of the 21st century soldier who captured video of the appearance of the red angels on war torn Earth.
One moment that particularly stood out to me and demonstrated how much this show has matured; at the start of the episode, Burnham holds back from telling Pike about her experience with the red angels. However, by the end of the episode she reveals it to him, demonstrating her growth as a character in being more trusting of others, but also making a statement about Discovery itself.
Season 1 was about secrets and learning why keeping secrets is unproductive, while Season 2 appears to be much more about applying that lesson, and the crew working together as a team to advance a shared objective.
Ensign Tilly (Mary Wiseman) remains a delightful character, and her story advances in “New Eden.” Clearly the writers love to write for Mary Wiseman, who continues to knock her performance out of the park — and this episode balances the humor of the character a little better than the season premiere, which veered a little too far at times into making Tilly straight comic relief.
I’m very curious to see where her hallucinations of former schoolmate May (Bahia Watson) will take us, and how it then relates to the season as a whole — and perhaps even return to that Tilly mystery from the end of Season 1, where a glowing green sparkle seemed to absorb into her shoulder.
If there is one thing that gives me pause, it is the speed with which the show returned to using Stamets (Anthony Rappy) to pilot the spore drive. Discovery has shown with this transition to Season 2 that it is much more aware of the show’s place in the Star Trek chronology. Shuttering the spore drive at the end of last year gave us more of an insight into why the technology is not in widespread use by the 24th century, but we took a step back from that this week.
I trust that the show has an idea about how to play that idea out over the remainder of however long Discovery graces our screens, but it feels like the spore drive should now be reserved for much more minimal occasions than the extensive use during the Klingon War.
“New Eden” has earned itself a place in my top five Discovery episodes right off the bat, and I think it will stand the test of time as we get further into the season. It had a traditional Star Trek feel with a unique Discovery twist on it, the special effects continue to be amazing, the characters are really gelling, and Pike is a great captain.
The show seems to have hit its stride, and as L’Rell (Mary Chieffo), Tyler (Shazad Latif), and the world of the Klingons return in next week’s “Point of Light” — with a bit of Section 31 agent Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) thrown in for good measure — we’re about to see how this new outlook on Discovery handles the biggest holdover from last year’s doom and gloom.
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