Star Trek: Discovery gets tense in the excellent “Rubicon”

Having figured out that the Dark Matter Anomaly is in fact Species 10-C’s mining device and not a weapon, the Federation predicts its destruction will be seen as a sign of war against these powerful extragalactic beings, and the Discovery is charged with seeing that does not happen. However, Booker and Tarka now have all they need to create a weapon capable of destroying the DMA. They must be stopped, and Captain Michael Burnham may have to make the hardest call of her life.

I have to say, the drama and twists of Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 are really getting to me in the best of ways. At the start of this episode, Michael and Booker have a brief convo. We learn that StarFleet has shared what it learned about the DMA’s true function with him in hopes it will give Booker pause, but no such luck. Booker’s conviction is unshakeable, which creates lots of conflict. But we also get an internal struggle within Captain Burnham, who wants to believe that a middle ground can be found.

The Federation designates Commander Nhan to join the Discovery crew on its mission to stop Booker and Tarka. Nhan, unlike Michael and Saru, has no personal attachment to Booker, and has been given the authority to use the bloodiest means imaginable to stop him should Michael prove incapable. Nhan’s presence is a stark reminder of a bleak possibility; she’s an external manifestation of Michael’s dilemma, and someone Michael can debate.

And the conflict isn’t just philosophical. With Discovery hot on the heels of Booker’s ship, Saru, Culber, and two other crew mates are sent on an away ship. With a smaller vessel, they hope to gain entrance onto Booker’s ship without drawing too much attention. However, things go pear-shaped when one of Tarka’s latest upgrades attacks the away team.

SPOILERS ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Episode 409, “Rubicon”

Now, usually in TV shows, I’m not that on the edge of my seat over near-death encounters, so I have to give major props to this episode of Discovery for getting me legitimately worried for the away team when their ship was getting shredded by Tarka’s defensive invention. For one thing, the music was effective; some people consider intense music cues a cheap way to build suspense, but hey, if it works it works. There were also some great effects when the shuttle ship was falling apart.

And finally, there’s the fact that Saru is by far my favorite character on this show, and given how close to the end we are to this season, I thought it was within the realm of possibility that he and Culber might get killed off. But it all works out and Saru, Culber, and the rest get beamed back in the nick of time.

In retrospect, I guess it would have been dumb writing to lose two main characters in a skirmish like that. Point is though, getting me to breathe a sigh of relief that a character didn’t die is just as good, from a writing perspective, as getting me to be sad over a character death. It shows they really had me going there.

From there, things only heat up further. Booker, for his part, tries to help the Discovery shuttle escape. This widens the rift between him and Tarka, who cares far less about the possible casualties of their quest. This creates another one of those wonderful parallels: as Michael and Booker have no choice but to return fire at one another, each of them has the little devil on their shoulder — Nhan and Tarka respectively — telling them to deal the final bow. It’s only the two captains’ love for one another that keeps the battle tame. It’s conflict on top of conflict, and the show juggles it really well.

And just as a bonus, for anyone who’s been waiting on pins and needles to see where the romance between Saru and President T’Rina goes, we get some progress on that too. It is one of the cutest things ever. I have nothing bad to say about it. I want more of it. The episode ends on an amazing cliffhanger: Will Saru take T’Rina on a date? That’s really the only question on my mind…oh, and the Dark Matter Anomaly, of course.

And that’s “Rubicon.” I hope the show is able to keep this momentum up all the way to the end.

Grade: B+

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