Review: Star Trek Discovery Eps. 4: The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry

​Star Trek Discovery Eps. 4: The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry

I loved the Michelle Yeoh cameo, even though her character is dead (minor spoiler). She's such an elegant woman, and very Obi Wan-esque in this series (in more ways than one). I don't think the Star War's aesthetics necessarily hurt the show. J.J. Abrams proved it could work with the Star Trek reboot (lens flairs not withstanding). There was even an R2D2 cameo in the Abram's Star Trek movie.

That said, the Discovery episodes are getting better and better. Although, the writing really could have used a science advisor as they are dealing with highly theoretical concepts and trying to blend them with quantum mechanics but not having the "science know how" to pull it off well.

That said, the sci-fi here reminds me more of the original series sci-fi, where the writers just wanted to tell imaginative stories--and the technicalities of the science really didn't matter that much.

That's harder to do in an age of instant information technology, but as a prequel series that takes place 10 years before the original Trek, it seems to be about right in terms of imaginative storytelling.

***Now onto Spoilers***

I love how they integrated the monster from episode 3 into the storyline overall. It made it so episode 3 wasn't just a horror on an abandoned spaceship ripoff. They found something and then they took it home with them. And then things begin to get interesting.

A lot happens in episode 4: The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry.

The title has to do with the Klingon side story, which is almost a throwaway story because, in my personal opinion, the stuff is so bizarre aboard the Discovery that you can't help but feel engrossed by it all. The characters are diverse and interesting. And there's lots going on. The Klingons are just over there being Klingons. But we did get to see the awesome Klingon EV suits again. This time in a lot more detail. Which was fun.

But I'm already tired of the Klingon storyline. All they do is stand around and talk. And that's opposite everything Klingons stand for. But I get it, they need to develop a storyline with the Klingons so they're not just one-dimensional characters.

But, somehow I don't think they need to be fleshed out all that much. Just make them evil baddies. The Discovery itself is interesting enough to carry the series. The war can be an incursion onto them every episode, just to remind us it's there. Spending half the episode with a boring Klingon discussion about who will lead the Klingons to victory seems moot at this point. This is where the writers will need to dazzle us, otherwise, they're wasting precious pages on a non-story.

That said, I enjoyed the latest episode immensely. I love how Michael discovers the creature is a space tardigrade. I thought it looked an awful lot like a real-life tardigrade when we first glimpsed it in the dark corridors of the sister ship. Although, it was too dark to really be sure it wasn't just some sort of monster creature. Nope. Definitely a tardigrade, as Michael explains to everyone.

I also thought it was fitting that new research on the firmament linking galaxies came out this week when the show uses this concept as the means by which the Discovery traverses the galaxy via quantum entanglement.

The spore drive thing isn't exactly explained well enough at this point to understand how it exactly works, and that bothers some of the geeky fans who get the science and expect more from Trek than just fantasy, but I think the premise makes sense. The spores act as a catalyst to signal jumps, the tardigrade navigates the jumps, and quantum entanglement takes them there. But how the spore work with quantum entanglement isn't explained well enough to comprehend--and the writers seems to be doing this deliberately. And this, seems to me, is because they never hired a science advisor to advise them on inventive theorectical ideas that could bridge their concept and make it a working theory (at least for a fictional sci-fi show).

And this just suggests sloppy writing.

It's nice to see that Michael has been given a direction. It's need to see that she befriends the monster with compassion when everyone only views it as a potential weapon.

There could definitely be a spinoff of this series called: The Adventures of Michael and Her Amazing Space Tardigrade!!!

They could steal one of those kickass shuttle crafts and go on many adventures as space bounty hunters! It would be worth watching.

I for one can't wait to see where they go with the Discovery in episode 5. I for one an still hooked. It's feeling more and more like Star Trek each and every episode. And I still don't get what all the hate is about. It seems people really don't get the concept of Trek. It's not hard sci-fi. It never has been. It's soft sci-fi with fantasy elements. The science is just the tool of Starfleet and the science reeks of scientism--aka magic science--as it can be used to solve anything. And this has always been the way of Star Trek. It's strange people seemed to be shocked by it all of a sudden. Oh, well. Their loss.