Review: Star Trek Discovery – Far From Home s03e02

After last week’s promising start, Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery continues with episode 2, ‘Far From Home’. *Spoilers Lie Ahead!*

Previously, we had seen Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green) appear in the future and encounter Book (David Ajala), who she then formed an alliance with.  This week, we see the flip side of the Discovery coin, and find out what happened to the ship itself, including the rest of the crew.

Emerging out of the wormhole, they are damaged and essentially adrift, with key systems offline.  As the bridge crew struggle to regain consciousness, having been knocked out by the tidal forces, things look grave.  They are heading towards an unknown planet and need to avoid fatally crashing.  This they manage to do just about, but incur further damage when they impact the surface.

Everyone seems ok, except for Detmer (Emily Coutts) who has an injury near her cybernetic implant and is confused.  Despite her being given a clean bill of health in sickbay, it does seem like they are laying the groundwork for something later with this.  Hopefully, it will not be something as cheap as ‘Control hitching a ride’ to the future, or similar.

Far From Home is essentially the crew fixing the ship and then trying to take off, but alongside an overly stretched storyline that points out the main ethos behind the Federation.  It definitely feels like the bulk of this episode could have been done in half the time and something more interesting done with the rest of the show.

What actually happens is that Saru (Doug Jones) and Tilly (Mary Wiseman) trudge off across the bleak planet to get materials to fix the comms.  What they find in the settlement is a sort of rustic western saloon, complete with swing doors.  Here, there is the standard ‘locals threatened by the regional warlord/thug’ trope, with one plucky local still believing there is a principled sheriff to help.  In this case that is obviously the memory of the Federation, and Kal (Jonathan Koensgen) is the true believer mocked by his peers for holding out hope.

This extended ‘proof of the ethos’ is all a bit trite and is hackneyed on many levels, making Far From Home, far from satisfactory.  This is frustrating, as they could have found some other way of demonstrating it and had some more interesting elements alongside it.  If anything, what they do, shows that they are remarkably naïve and wander into the saloon totally unprepared.  It is only because Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) follows them and is her usual self, that they get out of the situation intact.  On the plus side, Tilly and Saru are excellent and interesting as always.

Elsewhere, the cast do an excellent job of giving some levity, and include a lot of character development.  Especially good here are Tig Notaro and Anthony Rapp, who have a nice love/hate relationship going that should prove entertaining long term.

Despite the issues with the plot, Far From Home is still a good episode, and continues the trend from last week that implies the show could be on an upswing.  With any luck the patchy nature of the first seasons is behind us, and Discovery can forge ahead.