Star Trek: Discovery returned from midseason hiatus with an episode directed by Jonathan Frakes that kicked us in the head.
[MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ST: DISCOVERY EPISODE 10, “DESPITE YOURSELF” AHEAD]
Before we go any further, we have to address the sad and angry elephant in the room: the murder of Doctor Hugh Culber, one-half of Star Trek‘s first established LGBTQIA couple. Many fans were outraged at Culber’s death, but actor Wilson Cruz and showrunners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg have been quick to reassure us that this is not an instance of the “bury your gays” trope.
That doesn’t mean the choice for Culber wasn’t emotional. “It was hard,” Cruz told BuzzFeed News. “There were tears.” The actor is all too aware of where history has often taken characters like his. “I understand why people are upset. I am familiar with the problematic tendencies of television shows to do away with their LGBT characters, especially people of color.”
But Cruz and Discovery’s creatives insist that, well, Culber’s death is not the end. “This is a beginning, rather than an ending,” Harberts told Buzzfeed. He continued:
“We’re more than happy to put our gay couple front and center and let them guide the audience on a story of love and loss and redemption and heroism and grief and life and all of those things.”
“There is a timelessness and endlessness to how we envision Hugh and Stamets,” added Berg. “They’re the couple with the epic love story. We knew in order to have an epic love story, you have to have big things happen and have really high stakes.”
Okay, phew, so we have some mysterious reassurances that at least we haven’t seen the last of Doctor Culber, and it’s nice to see that those involved with the storyline recognize the important and sensitive nature of what they’re dealing with.
Even so, I have to say that it was an unpleasant and painful surprise to watch Tyler so callously murder Doctor Culber—I actually exclaimed “No!” out loud, loudly—and whether or not this is “the end” we’re still going to have to see Culber’s love Lt. Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and the rest of the crew deal with the fallout from his death. And, of course, we can never “unring that bell.”
Since this is Star Trek, any kind of return of Culber in the future could play out a million different ways. But what I hope does not happen is that they acquire the mirror universe Culber, since they’re in the mirror universe at current. I’m gonna give the show the benefit of the doubt that they go in a far more interesting direction with this, especially since Cruz teases that “My favorite experience on camera in my entire career is still yet to be seen in this series.” That’s pretty damned promising. I can see Stamets trying to use the spore drive to leap back in time to restore Culber to him, but the fact of the matter is that Discovery is good at pulling twists on us, and since the possibilities are endless, we probably won’t be able to guess the resolution here. I’m still gonna try, a lot.
The other real bombshell of the episode was also connected to Culber’s death. We got to see just how compromised Lt. Tyler truly is and the brutal extent of the Klingon torture that he underwent (OR DID HE??). Because Tyler’s new status as a sort of Klingon sleeper agent—Culber even alluded to a “Manchurian” test that apparently failed to recognize what had been done to him—lends credence to the fan theory that Tyler may actually be the Klingon Voq, so important in the first few episodes and then gone. (Plus, Voq’s ally, L’rell, was Tyler’s torturer.) And considering Culber’s analysis that Tyler had been “opened up” and had bones crushed and altered, it seems like that could have been done to conceal his Klingon origin.
Other takeaways from this episode:
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- The performances were excellent across the board. Frakes knows what he’s doing. We knew this, but it was glorious to see it in action on Discovery. IndieWire has a great article about Frakes’ take on directing Cruz through the Culber death scene. “One of the great advantages of being a recovering actor, is that I kind of speak actor, so that I know how to prepare, I know how other actors prepare.”
- Every day I love Captain Lorca more. He may have moral shades of gray, but as we saw here, he’s also self-sacrificing and brave, basically walking straight into a torture chamber to help the mission succeed.
- CAPTAIN KILLY!!!
- Who is the mysterious, “savage” Emperor? Teresa and I have our money on Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou—who else would make such an impact as the Emperor, especially where Michael is concerned? And wouldn’t we have heard who Georgiou was in the mirror universe otherwise?
- Poor Lt. Tyler, whoever you are, dude, it’s a lot to go through. Poor Michael who finally lets herself like a dude and he’s possibly a Klingon and at least a brainwashed murderer.
- Poor Lt. Stamets. This is going to be the worst returning-to-consciousness ever. We’ve gotten some hints that whatever it is that might return Culber to him—or at least let him see Culber again—will be rooted in Stamets’ own research. I’m ready to see Anthony Rapp challenge death itself.
- The performances were excellent across the board. Frakes knows what he’s doing. We knew this, but it was glorious to see it in action on Discovery. IndieWire has a great article about Frakes’ take on directing Cruz through the Culber death scene. “One of the great advantages of being a recovering actor, is that I kind of speak actor, so that I know how to prepare, I know how other actors prepare.”
Talk to me more about Star Trek: Discovery’s return and “Despite Yourself.” See you back in the mirror universe next week.
(via Buzzfeed, Pink News, images: CBS/Paramount)
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