Choose Your Pain

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Michael has a sense of empathy for Rippy the Gator, and who wouldn't? It was clearly a very discerning creature when it mauled Chief Landry. But now EVERY Starfleet ship has been ordered out to hunt these giant tardigrades to stuff into their mushroom engines. Discovery has had 3 weeks of success popping up out of a haze like Alice's Caterpillar and drowning the enemy in bong water.

Admiral Katrina Cornwell tells new fleet darling Captain Lorca he shouldn't have the mutineer on his crew, but she's not complaining very hard because Lorca is a dreamboat.

Dreamboat finds himself in a brutal Klingon prison. His cellmates are handsome Lt. Ash Tyler and Dwight Scrute, as an amazingly good Harry Mudd. Well, by GOOD, I mean a good performance. He picks who gets kicks & Mudd, plainly, never picks himself. The cynical civilian and his spider Stuart are squealing to the guards. But Ash is holding up handsomely, too, for a guy who's been captive 7 months. Lorca is suspicious, but not to worry- Ash is alive because he's been having human-on-pinecone relations with L'Rell the torturer.

Unsteady as Acting Captain, Saru asks for the most decorated Captains living & deceased, so a fanservice screen pops up. We’ve heard of EVERY one, they’re all human, and unless there’s a crammed page 2 of Q-Z you could count them on one hand. Nice diversity, Starfleet.

Oh, yeah, so, Tilly and Stamets drop the f-bomb. Amidst all this deadly serious joylessness, it was kind of a great moment! Not for kids. But I'd be more worried about the prison guards kicking a guy's fucking head in than whether your teens use curse words. This ain't your grandfather's Star Trek, old man!

Lorca is also an inspiration to your kids with his hints at Klingon anatomy, or the thrilling tale of how he blew up his entire crew on the USS Buran to save them from degradation at the clawed hands and doubled anatomy of the enemy, and was, obviously, rewarded with Discovery.

Overworked Tardy the Engine Bear squeezes itself out like a sponge & curls up. With 134 souls to protect, Saru insists on working it to death. Dr Culber tries to stick up for the possible sentient. I thought it goes: To seek out new life & stab them with needles until they aid our war effort.

Lorca & Ash make their escape, and in heroic Starfleet fashion they leave that wailing sellout Mudd behind to suffer as he swears revenge. Morally, it’s a garbage decision, but, hey, it's tactically very questionable too. Ash pummels L’Rell & Lorca melts her, uh, face, I guess you'd call it? Again, these are very ugly Klingons.

Not as ugly as the abomination they're calling the D7 battlecruiser now! You know, there are a lot of numbers and letters in the alphabet- call it the D4 and I wouldn't get to whine so much!

Paul Stamets saves the day with illegal eugenics to take Tardy’s place. So good news all around: Lorca & Ash are back aboard, and now we have a new action figure: Stigmata Stamets!

Saru mends fences with Michael, admitting his anger & jealousy of her mentorship. He orders her to save the tardigrade, so Tilly prays over it and they free it. Very laudable morally, & again, strategically bonkers.

While brushing their teeth, Dr Culber frets over his lover Stamets- neither notices that Paul's reflection is not behaving. Uh-oh!

In The Pale Moonlight

***** (5 stars out of 5)
Did you ever dance with the devil "In The Pale Moonlight"? And, after the dance, did you do a little smooching? Maybe a pat on the devil's rump?

It turns out when one thing leads to another, you might end up getting humped by the devil.

The Dominion War goes ever more badly for the Federation, and as the horrific death toll pours in, we hear Betazed was invaded and conquered within hours. It's a name we all know, and we're immediately worried about Lwaxana, her baby, Mr. Homn. Was Deanna there? Nobody here on Deep Space Nine can ask these questions, but that one piece of planetary name-dropping drives it home for me. What wouldn't you do to save your friends and their worlds? (By the way, next up: Andor, Tellar, Vulcan, Alpha Centauri. That little place beside Alpha Centauri everyone's always talking about? Great Chinese food? You know the one I mean...)

Captain Sisko pulls the trigger on a dastardly plan that goes against his every cherished belief. He asks Garak to help him. They'll turn the Romulans from neutral bystanders to Dominion aggressors by any means necessary.

Garak, whose brain is full of spiders, recuits and kills a seriously skeevy forgery expert in order to plant a fake Dominion plan to strike against the Romulan Star Empire on a nasty-ass Romulan Senator. Then he blows up the Senator's ship... to make it all official.

Quick as a wink and neat as a pin, a centuries-old enemy has become a passionate "friend" in the enemy-of-my-enemy sense of the word. The billions of nice old ladies, mixed-race babies, and Mr. Homn-ses might yet live.

And as Garak says through the bleeding mouth Sisko punches in when he learns the trick has turned deadly: "All it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal... and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain."

Wonderfully, there's no easy right or wrong here. It's Sisko doing exactly what that mean old Section 31 purports to do. Lies, bribes, a mere handful of the wrong people killed at the right time. And with a cause so righteous... where's the harm?

Just. Awesome. I'm going to watch it again.

Vortex

*** (3 stars out of 5)

One of a matched set of twinned Miradorn raider brothers is gunned down in a botched robbery. The thieves' thief and unintended killer was Croden from Rakhar, Gamma Quadrant. The surviving Miradorn, Ah-kel, has no goals anymore except deadly vengeance on Croden.

It seems very, very likely that Quark arranged the whole thing and probably gave Croden the gun. For some reason, Odo does not pursue this with any legal charges.

Even though Morn (the potato-shaped barstool accessory) confirms he saw Quark and Croden together.

Maybe Bajor's gun laws are ultra-lenient. For all I know, Ferengi phasers come free with a bowl of stew at Quark's. Still, Odo seems like the kind of guy who'd arrest Quark for littering if he could, so why does he let the 'conspiracy and abetting robbery/homicide' evidence slide by?

Imprisoned Croden names Odo "Changeling" and claims they are a harsh and judgmental people known to him. He has a trinket "from the colony of the changelings": a key that shapes itself to fit a lock. Bashir's analysis is that, like Odo, the key stone is somewhere between organic and inorganic. Might be a relative. Odo's desperate to find his people, but Croden's not exactly a good egg.

The Rakhari don't do trials, and they want Croden back. Odo immediately delivers him by runabout. (Remember how just last month they protected Tahna Los and explained asylum to Tosk? O.K., Tosk hadn't killed anybody, but as you'll recall- neither does the Federation. Handing him over for summary execution without moralizing is a little reminder that they do things differently here. And inconsistently.)

Croden relates how his government's security broke into his home at night and killed both his wives. He slit the cop's throats in return. A grisly tale, if true. He also claims changelings were too proud to maintain a humanoid shape on his world, and were persecuted because of it. Swell planet.

Instead of the gallows, Odo delivers Croden to the Chamra vortex, to the purported changeling colony. Unfortunately, the changeling stuff is all from legends. The key stone's origins are unknown, and the only thing on the asteroid is the only thing Croden cares about: his daughter Yareth in stasis.

Once it turns out the guy's a family man, (and Ah-kel conveniently blows himself to smithereens) Odo does a complete 180 and lets Croden go! He's killed at least three people and he's a professional liar. He belongs in rehab! Or just wandering free in the utterly honest touch telepath society of Vulcan. That should be fine.

"Vortex", as I mentioned, has a strange idea of justice. Still, the mystery of Odo's origins was intriguing. Also, this is the first time Morn is named, an anagram for that other bulky barfly from 'Cheers'. We learn that, like Cliff Clayvin, Morn's a motormouth: except he never talks onscreen.