Review—Star Trek: Discovery Episode 411, “Rosetta”

First, a quick summary of the episode: The Discovery, with all its leadership and diplomats abroad, is outside of the galaxy, and though they know where 10-C is, they have no idea how to even begin to communicate with them. While some, like the Earth delegate Ndoye, suggest that language isn’t necessary, the Federation remains firm in its commitment to diplomacy. As such, they order an investigation of the form gas giant that used to be the home of Species 10-C in order to find some clues about their culture and speech in hopes of finding some way to talk with them. Burnham, Saru, Detmer and Culber are selected for the mission, and naturally things go awry.

The conflict comes when Saru begins getting haunted by hallucinations of horror. There is no explanation for it, but soon Culber and Burnham are experiencing visions too. Time is too short for a retreat, so the group heads forward.

When comparing the large bones found outside to smaller bones found within, the team comes to the conclusion that the structure is a nursery for 10-C’s young. They also find out that the source of the nightmare visions was a powder compound released by an individual 10-C at their dying moment, an expression of their fear. They compare that to the powder compound found in the nursery, and the StarFleet members are overcome with emotions of love and happiness. After some comparisons to pheromones from Earth, the team begins to understand the language of 10-C.

Star Trek: Discovery and the case of bafflingly malfunctioning tech

Getting on to analysis: the content of the episode is alright. In a way, the writing is smart, because the solution to the secondary problem of what is causing the nightmares ends up providing a vital clue to accomplishing the main mission of how to communicate with 10-C. I like that. It makes these spikes of horror mean something to the story, instead of just being something to shake up what otherwise would have been a boring moonwalk. My problem is that I don’t think that conflict ever peaked or turned in an interesting direction; it just fizzled out.

There were also plot issues with this story: as fans of Discovery know, Saru is a Kelpien, a species whose lives were once dominated by the emotion of fear and the anticipation of death. Saru getting exposed to something that produces great fear sounds, initially, like a terrific catalyst for conflict on such an important mission. But Saru somehow remains cool-headed enough to participate, and gets affected by the nightmares to about the same degree as Culber and Michael. That seems like a weird, if not weak, direction considering Saru’s backstory. Why not explore some of the erratic decisions Saru could make after he relapses into the fearfulness his species was accustomed to? That way, not only do you have the mystery of what is causing the nightmares, but you have a character drama; Saru could present a problem the rest of the crew has to deal with before they can restore things to normal. Maybe they could expose Saru to that powder compound in the nursery that provides feelings of love rather than fear?

However, in typical Discovery fashion, the problem does not get solved by the characters, but rather the “tech,” which is boring. It turns out that their space suits, which were sealed off from the environment (as you hope a space suit would be) were letting in the powder compound because they could not identify it, and bing bang boom, a few adjustments to the suits and problem over. This is something the writers do often. There is always some sci-fi loophole that explains why the Discovery’s tech gets compromised, and another loophole to fix it. However, this time the loophole was so dumb I can’t help but spill some more ink complaining about it. Why in the name of Gene Roddenberry do you have filtering space suits that would let in material they couldn’t identify? If the tech in the suit is smart enough to know a material is unidentifiable or not in its database, why would it not make the safe assumption that it might be deadly and keep it out?

Even allowing that dumb malfunction, Discovery fails to make the most of it and instead devolves into the same old soft problem-easy solution pattern I’ve seen too many times this season. This episode had all the elements it needed for a great story, but it just didn’t get there.

Booker and Tarka draft more people to their plan

Moving on to the second story, we have Booker and Tarka on board the Discovery playing real-life Among Us as they crawl through vents and compromise the ships exterior sensors so Booker’s ship can attach itself and hitch a ride. Not too many complaints with this story. It goes about how I expected it would: Booker gets caught by Ndoye, who agrees to help. That makes perfect sense, since Ndoye was on Booker’s side during the vote on how to make first contact with 10-C. Now that her home world faces the same destruction as Booker’s, it’s natural for them to become allies.

Meanwhile, Tarka starts messing with the ship, drawing the attention of the crew long enough for him to accomplish his goal. Still, Tarka ends up getting caught himself by Tig Notaro in a rather poorly edited scene. There’s very little build up and poor communication about where the characters are in relation to each other and inside the room; when Tig discovers Tarka, it leaves no impact. I get that perhaps the show wanted to play that moment as a joke, but it didn’t set things up properly to earn a laugh. Other than that, this a fine B side story.

So, that’s this week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery. There were a few other small story lines here and there, but there wasn’t much to them. With the Discovery crew beginning to understand the enigmatic 10-C and Booker and Tarka’s dastardly plans including more and more people, just what will happen next? I don’t know, but whatever happens, I’ll be talking about it next week. Catch you then.

Grade: C

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