Star Trek: Discovery — ‘Scavengers’ [3x6] ★★☆☆☆
By: Dan Owen
Tags: Star Trek, Television, Review, Culture, TV

Season 3 has felt more like a return to the values of Star Trek, albeit in a more punishing future that gives the writers a reason to subvert Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision. But “Scavengers” felt like things moved back a notch to how Discovery’s been in previous seasons, with a focus on action and not much intelligence.

After receiving a recorded message from Cleveland Book’s (David Ajala) returning vessel, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) disobeyed orders to stay aboard USS Discovery as part of the Federation’s rapid-response team. Instead, she partnered with Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) to take command of Book’s ship for a rescue mission, having learned he’s enslaved in a salvage yard full of ancient starships being scrapped for valuable minerals¹.

1. I did appreciate the mention of 'self-sealing stem bolts', which were always being mention on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The dynamic of Georgiou and her “daughter” Burnham is always enjoyable, as the latter is similar to the Mirror Universe version of her mentor in terms of her rebelliousness. Saru (Doug Jones) and Georgiou are essentially parental figures that speak to each side of Burnham’s personality, but sometimes you need to ignore your levelheaded father and embrace having an insubordinate mother who’s always up for a dangerous mission. Georgiou poses as a wealthy saleswoman with dilithium to trade, getting a guided tour around the junkyard with Burnham on hand posing as her slave, while they both secretly coordinated with Book and his Andorian friend Ryn (Noah Averbach-Katz²) to disable a head-exploding perimeter fence and escape on a transport ship.

2. Who is the real life husband of actress Mary Wiseman, who plays Tilly.

It was a functional storyline, even if we’ve seen many variations of the “prison break” storyline before and this didn’t add much new. It went through the jail break formula. Although we did get to see Georgiou suffering more with whatever Kovich did to her in last week’s episode, as she’s gone from staring into the middle-distance to having an intense flashback involving someone’s death and collapsing. My guess is that Kovich unpicked some repressed memory of something in Georgiou’s dark personal history, back in the Mirror Universe, and it’s traumatic enough for her to suffer severe mental repercussions when recalling it.

The B-story back on the USS Discovery-A (the suffix added because it’s been upgraded with detached warp nacelles etc.) wasn’t too exciting. But it confirmed that Adira (Blu del Barrio) is seeing her dead boyfriend Gray (Ian Alexander), and that’s not some new visualisation of what being a Trill must be like. It’s definitely not normal and Stamets (Anthony Rapp) notices Adira’s strange behaviour talking to thin air, so the two bond over their shared experience of being reunited with a lover they thought was dead. Although Stamets got the better end of this deal, as Dr Hugh (Wilson Cruz) is back in corporeal fashion to share his bed, whereas Gray’s an untouchable “ghost”.

And how does Gray feel about what’s going on? The whole idea seems like it’ll get tired sooner rather than later, as Gray doesn’t seem to add a lot to the show outside of what he means to Gray. It would have been better if Adira could communicate this way with all of her symbiote’s past hosts, so we could see a number of different actors being utilised around her for particular situations. I wouldn’t mind that this isn’t how it’s supposed to work for Trills, as it would be easy to excuse as a “glitch” that only affects human hosts.

Elsewhere, there was nice moment for young Tilly (Mary Wiseman) that showed she’s maturing faster, as she helped Saru come to a decision about Burnham’s insubordination that agreed with his Officer way of thinking. There was a time when she’d have put her friendship with Michael over everything work-related, but now she’s starting to see things from other people’s perspective and helps Saru make a difficult decision to let Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) know Burnham has “gone rogue”.

“Scavengers” was the sort of mid-season episode it’s hard to love, as it only really existed to push a few things forward: confirmation of Adira’s situation with Gray, more information about Georgiou’s state of mind, the retrieval from the scrapyard of a “black box” that could prove The Burn didn’t happen simultaneously to every ship (so was a coordinate attack?), and the demotion of Burnham back to Science Officer for running off behind Saru’s back. That was all weaved around a story it felt like we’ve seen done a hundred times before, which was the main problem, which means this was definitely the weakest instalment of season 3 so far.

Cast & Crew

writer: Anne Cofell Saunders.

director: Douglas Aarniokoski.

guest starring: David Ajala, Oded Fehr, Ian Alexander, Noah Averbach-Katz, Ian Lake, Emily Coutts, Patrick Kwok-Choon & Oyin Oladejo.