The Sanctuary offers little respite from Star Trek Discovery’s worst habits. S3E08 Review

*SPOILERS*

Having done a pretty good job so far of pairing a ‘story of the week’ with drip-fed hints of the ongoing series arc, “The Sanctuary” sees “Star Trek: Discovery” fall back into its worst habits with a pick ‘n’ mix episode that feels assembled from odds and ends which were bounced around the writers’ room without ever achieving the critical mass to carry a whole episode themselves.

We open with Georgiou versus Culber as the once-was-Empress reluctantly accedes to medical evaluation meanwhile Book receives a distress call from his estranged brother on Kwejian where the people are starving due to an infestation of sea locusts and under pressure from Osyraa, the leader of the Emerald Chain. Meanwhile, Stamets and Adira continue their search for the origin point of The Burn.

The idea of a commercial empire rising up to fill the void left by the collapse of the Federation is an interesting one, albeit dramatically inert. The decision to focus on Osyraa, the leader of The Emerald Chain, immediately undermines the sense of scale of the threat. She’s a small-scale adversary, an antagonist who’d’ve lasted no more than a two-part episode in nearly any other Trek series because Trek works better with more diffusely complex threats. The Dominion weren’t great bad guys because of that one Founder played by Salome Jens, it was because they were multifaceted and multi-faced. Osyraa, thus far, comes across as a small-time (on the Galactic scale) gangster who’s probably more focussed on getting hold of a pair of ruby slippers than building an empire to rival any of the other powers in the quadrant.

After finding an excuse for the Discovery to boldly go where it has no jurisdiction, the episode picks up the mystery of The Burn. Interestingly, Acting First Officer Tilly isn’t present for the mission briefing with Admiral Vance and doesn’t seem to be involved in much of the decision making. She is, however, managing Saru’s diary. She was promised Executive Officer and seems to have ended up as ‘Executive Assistant’. I hope Saru gets her a nice present for Administrative Professionals’ Day 3188 at least.

The Discovery crew have made remarkable progress in their investigation, to the point where even accounting for the newly released data from Ni’Var, it beggars belief that Starfleet weren’t able to figure out the source of The Burn in over a century when it’s taken our heroes less than a few weeks. It’s such a huge piece of the season’s puzzle that bringing it up only to put it onto the back burner again feels like an artless bait ‘n’ switch.

“The Sanctuary” draws its name from a force-field protected area of Book’s home planet where they have the resources to mount a planetary defence but not to resolve an ongoing crop/ pestilence problem. There’s also a conspicuously localised approach to an entire planet in this episode which feel scientifically suspect and narratively convenient.

Character-wise, we get a couple of quick and clumsy updates to ongoing issues. Adira’s pronoun issue is raised and dealt with, albeit with a clumsy lack of grace and an almost fourth-wall breaking lack of tying it to her character’s nature. Not that it necessarily needs explaining but it’s handled so bluntly it feels underwritten. What works better, though, is Stamets and Culber taking Adira Tal under their wing and doing a ‘My Two Dads’ to them. It makes the throwaway exchange between Culber and Georgiou about children at the top of the episode feel like foreshadowing.

Detmer’s ongoing PTSD and self-doubt get a cursory nod too, with her ongoing crisis of confidence being dismissed or ignored by her colleagues and commanding officers in favour of letting her fly the series’ answer to the Millennium Falcon in just one of too many action beats in an episode which has too many action beats and not enough exploration of its ideas. It’s nice to see them trying to give other characters some screen time, but ‘has PTSD’ doesn’t really make a fully developed character, even if the writers could handle it consistently which they can’t. Too many characters still act too arbitrarily at the whim and caprice of the narrative, not that the narrative itself is any more coherent or organic.

The sea locust plague which is destroying Book’s home world – a dilemma which would have taken up a whole episode of “Star Trek The Next Generation” – is resolved with embarrassing ease in five spare minutes at the end of the episode while the goofy sub-plot of Saru looking for his own captain’s catchphrase is just cringingly out of place for a character and series which takes itself as seriously as “Star Trek: Discovery” does.

Every season has its clunker and “The Sanctuary” felt like “Star Trek Discovery” falling back into old habits and scraping the bottom of the midseason barrel. Hopefully it’s a temporary stumble in a series which has been notably more consistent than the previous two. There are bigger, more intriguing plots still in play but there’s still the nagging doubt that this is a Starfleet crew that succeeds in spite of themselves rather than because of their abilities.

5/10