Star Trek: Discovery unravels season-long mystery in “Species Ten-C”
The Discovery crew is at last fully prepared for their first face-to-face with Species 10-C, and not a moment too soon. With only hours before the destruction of both Earth and Ni’Var, the diplomatic arm of the Federation must communicate with 10-C and request the DMA be moved. However, Booker and Tarka have their own plans of how to remove it, and their actions could spoil things. We get the biggest reveals of the season in this week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery, “Species Ten-C.”
The opening sequence before the main credits conveys the situation in a quick and snappy manner. We start off on the bridge of the Discovery as the crew waits for a reply to their communication signal. When Michael suggests a Plan B, we cut to a meeting with the main decision-makers on the ship, then to Stamets and Adira preparing to implement the new plan. As we learn that Zora is beginning to sense a numbness where Booker’s ship is docked, we track out to where the ship is parked. It’s a very well crafted prologue and an example of how the show uses its runtime very efficiently this week.
The story in this episode is simple and fun. First, the Discovery crew manages to decode and answer every message sent to them by 10-C. On the other side we have Booker, Tarka and Jett Reno, who Tarka took hostage in the last episode. Booker and Tarka’s relationship is tested as the big moment approaches, and Reno tries to take advantage of the tension.
SPOILERS ahead for Star Trek: Discovery
The writing was pretty strong in this episode. I liked the tension between Booker and Tarka, which made sense because of their conflicting goals even though on the surface they seem aligned. Booker wants to stop the DMA from destroying more worlds, which he is willing to do by destroying the DMA. But he makes it clear he is willing to let diplomacy win the day too, if it works. Tarka’s main objective, on the other hand, is to get his hands on the DMA’s power source, which can only happen if it is destroyed. So he wants to blow it up regardless of whether the Discovery can the destruction through peaceful means. That subtle but important difference sets up a twist backstab. Whether or not you found it predictable, the writing backs it up.
I also found the emotional, slow moments very strong. Booker’s conversation with Reno was especially effective, as it was both powerful and set up several things to pay off later in the episode. It makes Tarka’s later betrayal more dramatically resonate and it shows Booker and Reno’s empathy for one another despite the circumstances, foreshadowing how they will be working together later. If there is one thing I appreciate it’s writing that multitasks, and this episode definitely has that.
Beyond the First Contact-style puzzles, the main storyline on the Discovery has a lot of neat moments. For instance, Michael and Saru share a very sweet moment where they try to release each others stress by screaming at one another. It was too cute not to mention.
In another scene, we finally learn what 10-C looks like, which I thought the show handled quite well by keeping the entity mostly in the dark. It’s enormous and arrives shrouded in orange mist, suggesting awesome proportions that we as a viewer can only guess at. Admittedly, later on we see a simplistic model of 10-C on a character’s holoscreen, which I’d be lying if I said didn’t dampen the effect a bit, but overall the creature is still left mostly to our imagination, which is a wise move. With the show hyping up the mystery of 10-C all season, clear answers and visuals would have inevitably been disappointing. I hope the season can end without giving us too clear a picture of 10-C; just a faint idea as to its shape and size is more than enough for me.
And that’s this week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Much better than last week for sure. We got exciting progression in both stories which collide at the end and leave us with one hell of a cliffhanger. I couldn’t have asked for more this episode.
Well, maybe I’d ask one thing: that they don’t make me wait another week to see what happens next.
Episode Grade: A
Next. Review—Star Trek: Discovery Episode 411, “Rosetta”. dark
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